River, Blood, And Corn Literary Journal

Tomol Evening: California's Indigenous People

by Terra Trevor

When I return from Limuw—Santa Cruz Island, at first I only want natural light. It is past ten when I rinse the salt water from my hair. Moonlight falls from the open window, a flood of light from above.

I am still under the influence of sea tides springing strong.

I came to spend four days and nights on the island, to let come what may. I want to be helpful to my friend, eighty now and a deeply loved and respected, elder. Sometimes she needs a tiny bit of help fetching things and getting from here to there. I’m learning as she teaches me how to be helpful and grow old in a beautify way.

Used to be, when you walked on the island of Santa Cruz and looked around, all the land you could see was Chumash Indian land. The island was once home to the largest population of island Chumash with a highly developed complex society and life ways.

Marine harvest and trade with the mainland. Island Chumash produced shells beads used as currency. Grasses and roots for making baskets and other necessities for living were there for the taking. And so, apparently was the land.

Historical records show that by 1853 a large herd of sheep was brought to the island. The Civil War significantly increased the demand for wool and by 1864 some 24,000 sheep over grazed the hills and valleys of Santa Cruz Island. Some of the early buildings from sheep ranching still stand. Now, instead of sheep for the next four days the island is again filled with Indians.

We have come to honor the Chumash peoples' annual channel crossing from the mainland to the Channel Islands. A camp village is put up, where basket making, cordage making, song, prayer and storytelling take place. On day one we are about fifty Indians gathered. By Saturday, the day the Tomol arrives, there will be nearly two hundred of us, and the quote “a single bracelet does not jangle alone” describes us. The connectedness we have to each other is so much a part of our lives, it can’t be distinguished from our lives.

For the record, I am not Chumash. I’m of mixed-blood Cherokee, Lenape, Seneca, German descent. Yet for 40 years I lived in an area that made up the traditional Chumash homeland. I hold the culture, traditions and history of the Chumash people in my heart. For my Chumash friends this is their heritage, their landscape of time.

There’s real power here. When we leave the campsite village and walk to the rim of the island first there is silence. Raven and Sea Gulls at the waters edge dip and wheel and dive. Under a sky turned pink we go for a sunset swim. With much island and ocean and so few people there is the lazy wag of space. I float in the sea with my head surrounded by gulls and fledglings.

At dawn we wake to sunrise singers. A high sweet trill of voices, abalone beads swaying, carrying songs from the ancestors. The singers are letting us know it is time to gather for sunrise ceremony.

Next we wait for the paddlers to arrive. I stand with others on the shore and feel the sun rise from my heart. I’ve known two of the paddlers, a male and a female crewmember, since they were babies, and I’ve watched them grow to strong, beautiful, kind and responsible, young adults. Now I’m in my 70s, moving toward elderhood and I know the world that I will one day leave behind is in good hands.

If only in my mind I am again back in 1997, back when these two young paddlers where small kids and the Santa Barbara County American Indian Education Project began the series “Tomol Trek.” After much hard work, the project put together an academy with federal (Title V) funding and the year’s final outcome produced a modern-day recreation of a tomol. Our modern-day tomol was built by the children under the guidance of Peter Howorth, in his backyard tomol building workshop.

There was a perfect balance between master and apprentice as the children sanded pieces of the vessel throughout construction. A dozen hands move slowly across the handle, moving towards the paddle end of an oar. Small hands, young hands, skin so smooth and maroon, peach-colored hands, muted brown, every child with a tribal memory circling her or his heart.

Remembrance weighs heavy on my mind, as it does for most Native people seeking to affirm cultural identity in a high-tech world. There is a comfort in being with those who understand. Our kids did not have to trade in their Indian values for education; the project carried ancient memory and cultural knowledge into their lives today.

And now two of those children—now grown, are making the crossing. The paddlers leave the mainland at three a.m. There will be a careful change of crew three times. The moment the paddlers in the Tomol come into view my heart breaks open and I’m ageless and timeless and feel the welcome arms of the ancestors. The Tomol is brought forth from the sea and there is song and prayer.

Photo by Terra Trevor

Back at camp we prepare dinner, while island fox keep a steady eye trained on us. A near Harvest moon rises. We eat, talk, joke, and tell stories of past crossings to the island, and “the old ways” moving through our evening together like dancers, stirring to the same rhythm. All of the people, the paddlers and those that help make the crossing and camp village possible, are honored.

The day fades into liquid dusk and moonlight. Time is a continuous loop until our stay on the island comes to a full circle closure. Thankful for what I have been given, yet reluctant to let go, I prepare to leave and make the rounds to say goodbye to everybody who welcomed me.

On the boat ride to the mainland we are soaking wet, laughing. A Humpback whale is sighted in the ocean navy blue. In the Chumash language my friends sing in the whale, and she surfaces.

At home in earthen shadows, rinsing off the salt water and sand, I feel the light from the moon, full and wan. I braid a pungent memory and fill my lungs and my heart with it, knowing it will permeate my body and cling to my soul as a reminder of what I can feel when we are all together on the Island.

© Terra Trevor. All rights reserved.

Tomol Evening was first published in the Winter 2015-16, Volume 29, Issue 2 of News from Native California a quarterly magazine published by Heyday Books.

This essay also appears in slightly different forms in Terra Trevor's memoir We Who Walk the Seven Ways and in Unpapered published by the University of Nebraska Press.

You might also want to read the backstory Tomol Trek first published in the Winter 1997 issue of News from Native California.

Terra Trevor is the author of We Who Walk the Seven Ways (University of Nebraska Press). She is a contributor to fifteen books in Native studies, Native literature, nonfiction and memoir. Her essays have appeared in numerous anthologies and literary journals including, Tending the Fire: Native Voices and Portraits (University of New Mexico Press), Children of the Dragonfly: Native American Voices on Child Custody and Education (The University of Arizona Press), The People Who Stayed: Southeastern Indian Writing After Removal (University of Oklahoma Press), (Johns Hopkins University Press), and in numerous other books. Of mixed descent, including Cherokee, Lenape, Seneca and German, her stories are steeped in themes of place and belonging, and are shaped and infused by her identity as a mixed-blood, and her connection to the landscape. She is the founding editor of River, Blood, And Corn. Learn more at Terra Trevor: Writing, Reading and Living.

DEAR SIERRA: AN OPEN LETTER TO CALIFORNIA FOURTH GRADERS

Read more... DEAR SIERRA: AN OPEN LETTER TO CALIFORNIA FOURTH GRADERS
by Professor Deborah A. Miranda (Ohlone/Costanoan Esselen Nation)

The Role of the Poet in Contemporary Culture(s)

By Jody Aliesan. From the Raven Chronicles, Vol. 6, No. 1, “Power of Language" Fall, 1996

These days, especially in a city, our definition of culture/community is often something other than geographic: it’s a matter of affinity, experience, solidarity, common purpose and struggle. For example, I consider myself a member of:

—the women’s community, ever since the second wave of feminism in the late 60’s, early 70’s, when I had the first experience of my words being useful to others, the function of the “cultural worker”;
—what I will call, in order to be most inclusive, the queer community: gay, lesbian, bisexual, and trans-gendered people;
—the “counter-culture” or “alternative” community, although I might not choose those labels;
—and other communities, such as those who have suffered rape, or clinical depression.

But my sense of the place of the poet in a culture has come most (consciously or unconsciously) from what’s leaked into me out of my Irish ancestory.

Gaelic bards were perceived as a particular obstacle by the colonizers, not just because they epitomized a cultural tradition which the occupiers hoped to destroy, but, more practically, because they were figures of political influence in their own right, second only to the chieftains, to whom they sat next to in council. —Declan Kiberd, “Irish Literature and Irish History,” The Oxford Illustrated History of Ireland.

The resident officials in Ireland gave considerable thought to the wiping-out of the two significant and overlapping elements in Irish society; the traveling craftsmen, messengers and entertainers, and the learned class of brehons [jurists] and poets…. This would have torn asunder significant parts of the structure of Irish society, more particularly by eliminating the jurists—the poets were more difficult to silence. —D.B. Quinn, The Elizabethans and the Irish.

In ancient Irish/Gaelic culture, the people, led by their chieftains, were married to the land. But there was an itinerant learned class who moved with safe conduct around the country, uniting the nation:

—the druids (a word I hesitate to use because of what’s been invented about them by New Age writers. If you read anything that claims to know what the druids believed or what rituals they used, it’s creative writing. Everything was oral, and it was all lost). They were priests, healers, and philosophers;
—the brehons, who were judges, legal counselors, and scholars of the law;
—the filii, the poets, who were the seers, historians, and keepers of the myths and sagas. They looked forward and backward and spoke of what they saw.

All this was orally produced and transmitted, and the filii studied 21 years before they were considered poets—they were walking libraries among the clans, and members of scholarly communities.

Most important to me is their twofold function: telling the truth, and speaking for those who cannot speak for themselves. Giving them words. The poets were called to sit beside chieftains because they could be counted on to do this. And they were protected from the consequences.
After this ancient culture was finally crushed, the poets became dispossessed outcasts sheltered by the people; itinerant teachers and custodians of literacy during the Penal Years of the Seventeenth Century when the native Irish were forbidden education. They were hunted down, because they raised the spirit of the people and reminded them of their history, of who they were. Their power, of critique and satire, was feared.

So what does this mean for me, personally? What does it have to do with the present? During the reign of the English King Henry VIII, ancient Irish manuscripts on animal skin were cut into strips and used to stiffen the spines of English books. Now these books are being taken apart and the strips recovered. One of them includes a fragment that reads: “The poet is the wick in the lamp of the community. Not the oil, and not the flame; but the simple piece of cloth that unites the two so that the people can see their own light.”

I am a member of communities. I feel a responsibility to them. Being a poet is a job, a calling, a way of life (also a doom, a fate, and a curse). It’s a function among other human beings, an absurd assignment—but somebody has to do it.

So I contribute to my communities as a poet by doing things like organizing benefit readings for Hands Off Washington; or providing an invocation at Tilth’s 20th Anniversary conference; dedicating royalties (such as they are), or donating books and performances to auctions. Most of all I believe I contribute by living my life, writing about what moves me, from my community-influenced point of view, and telling the truth: pursuing it down through the mazes of my own self-delusion and denial.

But here’s the central paradox: I can do this best if I’m separate, detached, standing one step away, independent and spiritually itinerant. If I don’t belong to anyone, no one owns me. Then I can speak the truth, even if I’m not protected from the consequences.

It’s a matter of binocular vision: one eye is the personal “I”, the ego, the personality; the other is the mythic eye, that sees my life as representative of human experience. So, my community, my culture, is our common humanity. I aspire to speak for that.

from the Raven Chronicles, Vol. 6, No. 1, “Power of Language”, Fall, 1996

The Raven Chronicles. A Journal of art, literature and the spoken word

ravenchronicles.org

Jody Aliesan 1943—2012, poet, writer, and feminist

This Place

Listen to the silence of the great trees.

Birds shelter among branches

heads tucked beneath wings,

feathers preened.

Underground, the earth vibrates

with hungering roots

the trembling hearts of rabbits

the shuddering dreams of moles.

Above, clouds scatter and collect,

reflect muted colors

as the sun seeps along the horizon,

and stars parade to center stage.

Time to go though there’s something

about this place that urges me to stay;

something that makes me want to whisper.

Breakfast

Your toast is burnt

the way you like;

coffee strong

as I demand.

Cream drenches mine, sinful sweet.

Yours stays blacker than

the argument

our account depleted again

when you found a deal,

“Golf clubs, half-price, a steal!”

At breakfast,

the argument slides

into shadow.

You linger

at the counter

watching me

watching the toaster.

It’s the peanut butter we share

our one agreement,

other than how the curves of me

find home

within the angles of you.

All the rest,

our differences,

are melodies played in a minor key

You cup my face;

dare me to lick peanut butter

from your thumb.

Finding Home

If you have a true heart,

you know how to listen.

You understand the

negative space of silence;

how words linger near our hearts,

how stories dwell within our ears.

If you have a true heart,

you are a friend for life;

who will listen and laugh

or smack you upside the head

from time to time.

If you have a true heart, you will

catch the unspoken need

within the words

and be there

with him

beside her

hold a hand

jump-start a battery

let supper grow cold

pace lonely hospital halls

because you know,

you remember

what the elders taught us:

We are here to help each other find home.

About The Author: Linda Boyden has loved words all of her life. After teaching for a long while, her husband’s work took them to Maui, Hawai’i where she stopped teaching and started to get her stories published. Her titles are “The Blue Roses,” (Lee and Low Books, 2002), “Powwow’s Coming,” and “Giveaways an ABC of Loanwords from the Americas,” (University of New Mexico Press, 2007, 2010), and ”Boy and Poi Poi Puppy,” (Progressive Rising Phoenix Press, 2013). “RoxyReindeer” is the fourth book she has written and illustrated. Besides picture books Linda has had poems published in many journals and belongs to the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers, and Writers Forum of Redding CA. www.lindaboyden.com

Tsi’sdu on the Desert

I smell sage

and dust on the wind

the heat of baked tarmac

spliced with the tang

of nail polish

I’m painting

one toe at a time

foot propped on the glove box

as we cruise the endless desert highway,

sagebrush rimmed by mountains,

going nowhere special

just out driving,

when a jack rabbit bounds onto the road,

pisses you off

you gear down and we

tool off road into the brush.

We bounce a fair distance

the pickup snapping our bones

better than any chiropractor,

the nail polish lands on the floor;

our go-cups of wine spatter

the seat and our jeans in red.

With a final lurch, the truck stalls

and I fall against your shoulder.

Out the window a cloud of dust

settles on us like new snow.

All we can do is laugh at ourselves

and how we got tricked by Tsi’sdu, the rabbit.

You ask, Think the truck’ll start?

I say nothing, lay back against the seat,

still catching my breath.

From the west the wind picks up,

carrying the tart aroma of Honey Lake.

You wipe dust from my eyebrows.

I smell the fresh scent of your skin,

the linger of soap in your shirt,

taste the wintergreen on your lips.

Later as we drive back to town

I think to tell Rabbit I owe him one.

Spirit Man

Deep velvet night, the Seven Sisters watch

Shadows flick across my face, cloud ripples on the moon.

Under my pillow, your thunder speaks;

Hoof-beat rhythm of the drums:

Chanting our love song,

Crying our dream song,

Cursing our magic night song.

I rise–breathe your name to the moon,

“Beloved, Beloved Man!”

Through glass prison walls, I stare,

Patient pulse, eager for reply.

You rise–

Toss your massive head, white shag, ivory horns

Sear through the vaulted black.

Rear and tear the supple path beneath thunder hooves.

Across the ribboned trail, the moon-trail of the night,

My silent voice commands,“Come home, Beloved Man, come.

Home to me.”

The words sweep and spiral; gather strength, lure you to my side.

My prison shimmers, vibrates to your beat,

Breath quickens with delight.

I feel you first–tremors through my legs;

Hear you–warrior wails against the dark;

See you–a speck, fermenting into bloom.

I stand, unflinching target of your sights.

You lunge, ghostly arc across the sky,

Your rushing breath, inhaled, melts my snow;

Black eyes rivet, pierce through my empty shell,

Swallow, then redeem my tattered soul.

Strange harmonies in tune, our forces spent.

Jagged breath now metered and controlled, we rest.

Shattered, intersected, yet combined,

Full moon meetings of our souls.

"Spirit Man" published in “Through the Eye of the Deer An Anthology of Native American Women Writers” edited by Carolyn Dunn and Carol Comfort, aunt lute books, 1999.

Ladder of Women

You stand on the shoulders

of your Grandmothers

at the top of a ladder of women

you the Seventh Generation

wait

listen

hope

for a breath, a word, a sign,

the release of a bird

any animal spirit

something

to show the way home

its general direction.

Nothing comes from tongues of stone

but the silent dark

the chaos of wind

the static of a fractured planet eating itself

wanting to add you to its menu, too

when all you want is to breathe clean air

smell the top of your baby’s head

brush your lover’s shoulder with your lips

find your way home.

You stand alone

your heart blood drains

you can’t function

this lost

this empty

with nothing, no words,

no guidance from even

the women who bore you.

So you rage

at them

at luck

at God’s vacant eyes.

Drink away the pain

inject it into your veins

let anger be your home

or at least the warm vent

for this cold night.

Dream deep and awaken

inside your Grandmothers’ truths

see the sorrow each endured

circle after

circle, broken.

Piece together their tales

taste their tears and in the tasting

know this life, this burden they gave you

is a gift.

Inhale it

weave it a strand at a time

into your misery

try again.

You

the least likely to succeed

You

climb back into place

at the top of a ladder of women.

You listen

weary of the wind

and how much your legs tremble

You stand alone

yes, but not alone.

Listen to the voices

of your Grandmothers:

It is enough to stand.

A version of “Ladder of Women” was published in in “Cemetery Plots, Souls Beneath the Stones” by Lind Boyden, Don Peery and S.J. Luke, 2006.

Tomol Evening: California's Indigenous People

DEAR SIERRA: AN OPEN LETTER TO CALIFORNIA FOURTH GRADERS

The Role of the Poet in Contemporary Culture(s)

This Place

Tsi’sdu on the Desert

River, Blood, And Corn Literary Journal: A Community of Voices