We Who Walk the Seven Ways by Terra Trevor

Excerpt: We Who Walk the Seven Ways

University of Nebraska Press 

Native And Indigenous Studies | Memoir

Growing Old in a Beautiful Way

This morning I watched a red-tailed hawk circle up from the bottom of the canyon and glide past, wings spread wide to catch the wind. Then a second hawk glided past, and then a third arrived in the air and was joined by a fourth and all of a sudden Auntie showed up, just as strong in my mind as she had been in life. I remembered the way she answered my questions by telling me to put it in my holy center and not to think about it too much, to just let the answer come in its own time. I returned to the times when Auntie would surprise me by talking about what was good medicine and bad, and how to figure out what to do, and not do, if power was given. 

 

Her shoulders had bent as she grew older, but Auntie always stood straight as a young girl when she told me her stories. Her words sounded like wind shaking the leaves on a tree. 

Auntie’s stories began in the evening, as the sun was going down. The turquoise beads she wore on Sundays made her white hair shine. Her skin was like dark smooth clay and when she laughed, she held her hand in front of her mouth hiding her bare gums. Before bed, she gathered me and all of the girl cousins and reminded us to remember our dreams and to feel our feet growing up from the ground so we would be able to find our paths within the great circle in relation to how Indigenous people viewed the world... Continue reading

We Who Walk the Seven Ways is Terra Trevor’s memoir about seeking healing and finding belonging. After she endured a difficult loss, a circle of Native women elders embraced and guided Trevor (mixed-blood Cherokee, Lenape, Seneca, and German) through the seven cycles of life in Indigenous ways. Over three decades, these women lifted her from grief, instructed her in living, and showed her how to age from youth into beauty. 

With tender honesty, Trevor explores how every ending is always a beginning. Her reflections on the deep power of women’s friendship, losing a child, reconciling complicated roots, and finding richness in every stage of life show that being an American Indian with a complex lineage is not about being part something, but about being part of something. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR 

Terra Trevor is an essayist, memoirist and the author of We Who Walk the Seven Ways (University of Nebraska Press). She is a contributor to fifteen books and her essays appear widely in journals and anthologies, 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), Unpapered: Writers Consider Native American Identity and Cultural Belonging (University of Nebraska Press), Voices Confronting Pediatric Brain Tumors (Johns Hopkins University Press), Take A Stand: Art Against Hate (A Raven Chronicles Anthology), News From Native California, Yellow Medicine Review: A Journal of Indigenous Literature, Art, and Thought. She is the founding editor of River, Blood, And Corn Literary Journal. Visit her at Terra Trevor: Writing, Reading and Living.

Poetry by E. Fox

Ink & Lead 

I’m too afraid to be that of the bold permanence. 

Afraid to be the spilled ink seeped into the bones of a page. 

Etched not only into the surface but run deep into one’s core. 

With the daring stance of unwavering line after line. 

Forever waiting to be scrutinized and yet still stay unchanged. 

Never truly able to be erased. 

Meekly covered in an attempt to be conformed. 

All I ever will be is the faded lead. 

The blended marks left on the page. 

Standing alone in despair. 

Left for others disposal. 

Bringing the weight of everything sinking down. 

Drowning to the bottomless pit of one’s mind. 

Blackened with the ink pressed over my skin. 

Seeing what is left in my wake. 

Only after I’ve been erased. 

 

Flesh Filled Face 

You know that feeling when you see another beautiful person 

And you can’t help but touch your own delicate skin in response 

I can’t help but notice that mine is not so delicate 

Not so beautiful 

It feels as a softer mask waiting to be peeled from the bone 

The flesh sits atop my skull in mock disguise 

Seeing another beautiful person only makes me realize that I am not that 

I am only a faceless entity waiting to truly figure out who I am 

 

A Role, Not a Model 

My dad never loved me, I know it 

He liked me when I was just a small child 

Until I got older and then 

Then he didn’t even like me 

I realize now it wasn’t hate when I was growing up 

It was only dislike 

It became hate as I aged more and more 

But once I was “old enough,” 

He started to like me once again 

Or at least what he could make me to be 

He liked that I didn’t like “her” 

But he never realized I hated him too 

It was almost in the same way he did me 

But I was so much younger 

I just wanted to be happy and loved 

He never accepted my choices 

They weren’t his, so neither was I 

Even now it is the same 

It always has been 

And always will be 

First published in Yellow Medicine Review: A Journal of Indigenous Literature, Art & Thought 

Copyright © E. Fox. All rights reserved. 

 

Fox is an Indigenous aspiring poet from the Arikara and Lakota-Sioux Nations who was born and raised in North Dakota. They have been a lover of books & reading from a very young age, always searching for more to fulfill themself with as time has gone forward. Their published works can be seen featured in Yellow Medicine Review's 2023 Fall Edition. Fox's motivation in writing stems from their want to reach all communities and show the ability along with the importance of Native American & LGBTQ+ youths' writing about the experiences of growing up & coming of age. Fox is currently a recent high school graduate with the hopes of transitioning to a career in creative writing through workshops and apprenticeships. With every gained experience, they are working on a collection of poetry with aspirations to soon publish a book of their own that will help take off their career in writing.

Pick a Garnet to Sleep In

by Kim Shuck

We are hunting the graveyards and 

Practicing fly-casting off of the roof at 4am 

It must be summer 

I paint the symbols on my feet 

Study the evolution of bats and 

21st century poetry of the 600 block of Chenery 

Oh child 

I braid you into my hair most days 

And I’m the only one who can read you there 

But then 

We are descended from the symbolic dead and 

I’m becoming the old woman out of those stories 

If not as quickly as I’d hoped 

Copyright © 2024 Kim Shuck. All rights reserved.

 

Kim Shuck loves fiddling with words and puzzles and stones. Shuck served as the 7th Poet Laureate of San Francisco and is still recovering. Her latest book is Pick a Garnet to Sleep In.