The People Who Stayed: Southeastern Indian Writing After Removal

 University of Oklahoma Press

Native literature, composed of western literary tradition is packed into the hyphens of the oral tradition. It is termed a “renaissance” but contemporary Native writing is both something old emerging in new forms and something that has never been asleep. The two-hundred-year-old myth of the vanishing American Indian still holds some credence in the American Southeast, the region from which tens of thousands of Indians were relocated after passage of the Indian Removal Act in 1830. Yet, a significant Indian population remained behind after those massive relocations.

This volume represents every state and every genre, including short stories, excerpts from novels, poetry, essays and plays. Although most works are contemporary, the collection covers the entire post-Removal era. While many speak to the prospects and perils of acculturation, all the writers bear witness to the ways, oblique or straightforward, that they and their families are connected and honor their Indian identities despite the legacy of removal. 

The People Who Stayed: Southeastern Indian Writing After Removal 
edited by Geary Hobson, Janet McAdams, and Kathryn Walkiewicz.

Golden Eagles over Franklin Mountain

by Robert Bensen

On Oct. 25, 2018, we counted 128 Golden Eagles, a single-day record for eastern North America. The previous single-day high was 71 (Nov. 11, 2015) so the magnitude of this big day cannot be overstated. The reason for this Golden Eagle push two weeks before the traditional migration peak, is unknown.  

                                                            —Andy Mason, Franklin Mountain Hawkwatch 2018 Report

The scaffold bristled with digital Yashicas clamped on scopes

and monopods strutting in khaki and camouflage, as a flock

of hawk-watchers scanned quadrants of sky from Otego 

to the peaks where the Susquehanna swerves into the valley, and east.

I stood by, naked eye aswarm with floaters the one,

the other useless that magnifies and smears every human face.

Peter, half-felled by flu, and Becky tallied the count 

and helped the dozen-some visitors identify specks 

that could be buzzard, or goshawk, or harrier, or sharp-shinned

or rough-legged or Cooper’s or red-tailed hawks, or merlin, falcon,

kite or kestrel, among twenty-nine listed, including Unknown Raptors, 

hoping for Goldens riding the polar stream from Canada, or, better, one

gliding low and hungry on a hunt.  I couldn’t see diddle.

And it seemed weird to me to have the drum, but to my hand ungloved 

the skin felt warm and taut.  So I slipped away and up the path,

deer-silent for the spring of thatch underfoot.

I dug my heels in and labored up the grade, paused

to catch a breath at the hill’s brow, midway through the field                           

walled in by limb-laced fir and hardwood, when a shape or shadow rose—no, 

an enormous bird rose above the brim and—Wait! I yelled and I swear

                                                                                                                        

it gave pause mid-air while bone-chilled I fumbled the drum,

and out of a cloud of sage-smoke started a roll of thunder

that closed in, closed fast and passed, then the song brought

a line of thunders helping the verse find drafts and currents 

to ride and sign God-knows-what to the bird, white flame-tongued

wings that skimmed the tree-rim, gliding so slowly with the song

that so tethered the two of us it seemed the wall of trees revolved

the way between the potter’s thumb and fingers the new bowl turns.

We shared the easy slip of air around the bowl of circled trees.

Once around, his flight feathers splayed, trimmed then splayed,

eyes holding steady gaze, with each lift of song a fresh wind.  A quick

turn of his head and he vanished.  Who’d not be at first forlorn? 

But filled with that glory who’d mourn or sorrow for long

or deny he’d gone to let the others of his kind know,

ready for passage through this valley to the Catskills, that here,

here someone had kept the song the eagles gave so long ago: 

Wanbli gleska, naha anunca, heya a uh chun kay.

Mea trocha heya anpetu wawakeay:  

“Golden eagles, Spotted eagles, the first to fly with the dawn,

come see this one trying to become a human being, come see.”

So they did and were counted: one-hundred twenty-eight strong. 

© Robert Bensen. All rights. Reserved.

www.robertbensen.com

Robert Bensen has published six collections of poetry, including Orenoque, Wetumka and; Other Poems, and Before. His work has earned an NEA poetry fellowship, the Robert Penn Warren Award, the Harvard Summer Poetry Prize, and Illinois Arts Council and NY State Council on the Arts awards. His scholarship in the Caribbean and Native America has produced essays, studies, and editions, won fellowships from the NEH and Newberry Library, and led to teaching in St. Lucia, Trinidad and Tobago, and Venezuela. He is the editor of Children of the Dragonfly: Native American Voices on Child Custody and Education. He is Emeritus Professor of English at Hartwick College (1978-2017).  He teaches at SUNY-Oneonta, and conducts a poetry workshop at Bright Hill Literary Center, Treadwell.

Marching orders

by Deborah Jang

Sometimes pre-dawn I pretend

I’m hiding from the Nazis

I slo mo breathe in semi-darkness
inches from light sleeper 

Each inhalation rising smooth
drawn deep from belly

ballooning lungs, up open throat,
a u-turn at the larynx

Then straight out rounded lips
suspended in a gentle O

All of the above of course —
silent, slow, steady.

If we were in Krakow
a frosty puff would linger.

Here, into a world of hurt,
this one bare breath alights.

I make myself a secret, a refugee
from sight. A figment of creation.

Arm waves softly through dark air.
No creak. No chafe. No bristle.

No cough. No smacking of dry lips.
No errant bump or sniffle.

With focused grace the body knows
the margins of its bearing.

A patch of air is all that lies
between liberty and terror. 

Trampling boots kick hard against
the mind’s hard won freedom.

Flesh winces at the thought
of quick, steel toed precision, 

of the pounding at the door,
the stench of human danger.

History guts presence
with shards of hate and fear. 

Renders mute our sorrow.
sends us to our caves

where in sacred silence
each breath softly quickens.

We make way through harrow
in dusky daring measure.

Mind’s eye searches escape routes
past the brink of dire.

If we were in Krakow we’d pile
in the cellar, shush the baby sister,

lock eyes with the neighbors.
cringe into harsh light.

Would I not go gentle
without hiss or fight?

Would I link arms with others
and march into harm’s way?

Would I face tall gallows
with head held up high? 

Would I offer comfort
on the train to chambers?

Not look away or wither
from the cruel of might?

Moon and sun trade places.
I breathe in morning skies. 

I pray with extra fervor.
I note the warning signs.

Practice silence in the air
Walk with care, stare down demise.

Ease each out-breath into flow.
Let each find its way to brave

whole and holy into the fray.
Breath by breath by breath, unhide.

Marching orders is included in Float True by Deborah Jang.

© Deborah Jang. All Rights Reserved.

 

Deborah Jang writes her way through the mysteries, perplexities, and joys of being human — on this planet, at this moment, in this skin. She is also a visual artist, engaging connection through forms and objects. She wanders between Denver, CO and Oceanside, CA; between mind and heart; between land and sea. She is the author of Float True. 
deborahjang.com