Fall 2008 TCJ STUDENT EDITION
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STUDENT EDITION - PAGE 2
Hail to the Grape Soda By Gerri L. Williams
Courageous Youth By Portia Koebach
Waiting for Spring By Melanie Howick Erickson
Elements of a Piast (Social dance of the Tohono O’odham) By Amy R. Juan
Here’s to Cruisin’ the Rez By Rayleene R. Elliott
The North Woods By Timothy J. Hearson
The Path We Will Walk By Thomas Conine
Soft Talker the Dawn Bearer By Kyerin Bennett
 Gerri L. Williams |
Hail to the Grape Soda
By Gerri L. Williams
Two summers ago I was back home on the rez hanging out with my older brother, Junior, and my little sister, Lucy. We are all fairly close in age; I was 27 then. I had some extra cash from my tribal scholarship and I wanted to do something special for someone else.
"I know what we can do,” my brother said.
"Yeah? What bro?” I asked.
"We can buy some bread, sandwich meat, and some soda, and feed these homeless guys that I know from Tacoma,” he said. I instantly knew who he was talking about, because there is this homeless camp off of Portland Avenue, next to Keye’s Smoke Shop.
My brother, little sister and I drove out to the Federal Way grocery and bought some bread, sandwich meat, Capri Suns, potato chips, Twinkies, Ziploc bags and brown paper bags. We then made our way to Portland Avenue, taking the back roads because we didn’t want to chance getting stopped by the police in our little blue worn-out car for driving too slow. We stopped at a little park that had two picnic benches overlooking the city and began to assemble the lunches.
"This is a really cool idea,” Lucy said. Her long black hair was dancing in the wind.
"Yeah thanks, Gerri,” my bro said while placing the sandwiches into plastic Ziploc bags.
"No problem,” I responded, as we each did our part to assemble the food. I was first on the streets in Seattle as a 12-year-old. Hunger then was like a million needles jabbing at my insides. Today I was happy we were able to provide at least one meal for those homeless people, because I had hated going to sleep on the streets of Seattle without anything to eat.
After we finished making the lunches, we drove out to Portland Avenue, where my brother handed out the first lunch bag to a guy at the corner who was holding a sign that read Hungry while the light was still red. As the light changed, we took a left, crossed under a small bridge and pulled into Keye’s Smoke Shop where my brother knew of some other people. He left a few lunch bags there by a huge green dumpster. The people living there had made that green box into a home with plastic bags and blankets as their rooftop and torn, stained throw-away beds as their floor. We still had about twelve sandwich bags left, and so I asked my brother if there were any other places we could hand out the rest of the food.
"I know of a shelter, but it is closer to downtown,” he told me. Portland Avenue was on the east side of Tacoma, and the shelter was halfway across town.
"Well, let’s go,” I said. Lucy smiled because she was just happy to be off of the rez. So we drove down and stopped in an alleyway where the shelter was, and there were about fifty people standing in line for a cup of Kool-Aid. There was a white guy handing out Kool-Aid from a huge yellow container. He was one of maybe two or three other white people at the shelter. As we pulled up and everyone looked at us, my brother jumped out and started handing out lunches. As soon as the first person opened up their lunch bag and pulled out a sandwich, our car was swarmed with people. Most everyone was dressed in torn, tattered clothes. Some of them had no shoes; some had yellow teeth, fractured teeth, missing teeth.
"Do you have any more?” An elderly black woman asked.
"I’m sorry,” my brother said.
The twelve people who had received a lunch bag all ran to an isolated part of the alley and quickly finished everything. I felt bad as we pulled out because there were so many other people there who didn’t get anything to eat.
"Well, I still have some money left if you two want to find a store to make a few more lunches,” I told them. My brother and sister nodded their heads, and we drove a few blocks away to Safeway, bought some more food, and stood outside in the parking lot and made about thirty more lunches. The sun was close to setting as we drove back to that shelter.
When we got there this time, we were instantly swamped. I stayed in the car as my brother and sister got out and gave away the rest of the brown paper bags. Still, not everyone got a lunch bag. As we were leaving, I handed my package of plain M&M’s to this elderly homeless woman who was wrapped up in a blanket, sitting a few feet away from everyone else. My little sister handed me her soda, and we gave it to that lady, too.
"Thank you,” she said. I remember her missing front teeth and dark, dark skin. As we began to pull out of the driveway, everyone was waving and saying “thank you,” and one guy – a tall, black guy – took the grape soda out of his bag and finished it in one gulp. After he was done, he held the can up in the air and said, “Hail to the grape soda!” Then he squished the can and smiled. He then held it back up high in the air like it was a first place trophy and waved at us. My brother and sister waved back.
I am glad that my brother wanted to feed the homeless, because I know how hard it is to live on the streets with only the sky to hold you at night. I understand the heartache of those with nothing but a winter breeze as a blanket when the sun goes down.
There was a time once, when I was 13 or 14 years old, that I almost didn’t make it through the night. “We had to bring you back last night, Miss Williams,” the nurse had said. “I am glad to see that you are better now.” And she had held me for a second. I still remember her coconut perfume and her light blue eyes.
Gerri L. Williams is Muckleshoot, and also Yakama, Umatilla & Puyallup. At the Institute of American Indian Arts she is studying creative writing. She loves the art of poetry, playwriting, screenwriting, fiction and creative non-fiction. She is also a singer and dancer with the Muckleshoot Canoe Family.
“My love for my culture and my people is equivalent to my love for writing,”she says. Williams acknowledges the instructors who have been great mentors to her: Jon Davis, Erika T. Wurth and Ann Filemyr.
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Courageous Youth
By Portia Koebach
To swim in depths too dark to see,
to feel on thigh a brush
of cold fingertips, just out of reach
in the black, silent deep, a hush.
With silence drumming in my ears,
legs pumping in the cold,
I swim as though the ancient wyrm
breaks forth from days of old.
Portia Koebach, 41, is the mother to six children and has been married for 20 years. She attends College of Menominee Nation where she is working toward a Microcomputer Specialist associates degree.
Koebach enjoys reading and writing and being a mother. She says, “Starting my education career so late in life was a difficult decision for me, but the support of my family has made the decision worthwhile. I am looking forward to graduation in December 2008 and possibly continuing beyond an associate’s degree.”
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Waiting for Spring
By Melanie Howick Erickson
You broke your promise and did not come today;
yesterday you touched my shoulder, a soft breath of warmth,
but you did not stay.
I smelled you in the forest,
earthy, damp, green,
your mantle of hard white marble beginning to crack,
your softening yet to be seen.
It was your voice I heard - distant in the swaying boughs,
rustling in the old, dry grasses.
So long to come, so quickly gone -
We are waiting, waiting.
Melanie Howick Erickson grew up in England and has lived in the U.S. for over 20 years. She spent many years working with handicapped people and now works with children and teenagers in an after-school program.
Erickson says, “Now that my twin daughters are grown, I have time to finally take some classes at Leech Lake Tribal College, which I am really enjoying. I have always enjoyed art and writing and one of my dreams for the future is to complete my degree.”
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Elements of a Piast (Social dance of the Tohono O’odham)
By Amy R. Juan
O’odham life, O’odham love is prominent tonight
JEH, JEH, JEH, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, tap your boot to the Fender wannabe and the Metallica impersonator
No paved parking creates dusty faces and dusty lips giving all the O’odham ladies the fine complexion Cover girl promises
Swaying Levi clad hips and bobbing black cowboy hats, dipping shoulders, high heels and Converse sneakers scrape along the concrete dance floor
Sweet and sbitagi boys and girls watch their mothers lean into the arms of her s-kegchu while two grandmas both named Mary shuffle to the happy saxophone.
We all learn from each other, someone always has a new move: the lemon twist, the preying vulture, salt the beans, flip the cemait, new chotes, new cumbias, new kwaliyas and two-steps
Rainbow colored crepe paper flowers wave from above, proud creations of gentle hands
Dark O’odham, light O’odham, drunk O’odham, sober O’odham, poor O’odham, rich O’odham, shy O’odham, loud O’odham, churchgoing O’odham, traditional O’odham, all like to shake their booty
Pass the kokol hidod! Pass the stew and the strong black tar coffee that never changes color, no matter how much creamer you put in; sop up all the mingled juices with your plush fragrant yeast bread
Here comes the spetho keli, whiskey coursing through his veins, forcing him to ask any cehia for a dance, for a chance to show everybody what he’s made of, with dreams of a romantic cowboy in his cloudy head
Several blazing fires beckon your allegiance, enveloping a wandering body in its musky mesquite scent, tantalizingly warm and inviting
Cu:dagi! Cu:dagi! O’gi: hi:m! Bring us some glowing red coals to warm our feet, but take care of the elders first or we’ll hear about it in the morning….when the last song is played, when the last O’odham child is covered in a thick HECHO EN MEXICO blanket.
S-keg Tas! Amy R. Juan, 21, is from the Tohono O’odham Nation in southern Arizona. Her dream is to develop a strong and effective O’odham Language Department within tribal government. She feels that there is not enough tribal language being incorporated into local schools, workplaces and everyday tribal lifestyles. Juan says, “I dream that one day every label, billboard and sign on my Nation will be in O’odham. Our language is still strong, but like many, it is quietly fading.”
Juan believes her tribe is sometimes lesser known, “even though we have the second largest reservation after the Navajo Nation in Arizona.” She adds, “In my writing I desire to bring my reader into the scene I create. I want the reader to feel the warmth of a fire, see the people, and hear the music and laughter of the Tohono O’odham.”
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Here’s to Cruisin’ the Rez
By Rayleene R. Elliott
Here’s to cruisin’ the rez
And riding shotgun with Rose
To toasting tears with Coronas
And dirt roads and old cars
that start with a screwdriver
faded and falling apart
but took us far enough
To the graveyard
To the crosses and to the mounds
covering the deceased who dared
take the journey of the dead
Here’s to the dead
To my ancestors and the tears we share
in a 200-years’ difference
To Halapuuk or “Jim McCarty”
the last Kwaipai of the Kumeyaay
The last rattlesnake shaman
The last images made
To all ceremonies and myths lost
To carriers of dreams
And the visions that varied with time
Those who foresaw the future
and the Spanish conquerors coming
To the 22,000 who died
in a 20-year time frame
at Mission San Diego de Alcala
To the revolt
And “Francisco” and “Carlos”
who rounded up the 800 warriors
For the insurrection of 1775
The hostiles who couldn’t wait to attack
And to those who cried
over the Friar
covered in stone-tipped arrows
Here’s to the ruins of imposed religion
And the flame they never extinguished
To the heathens Serra couldn’t convert
And his statues standing at the peak of Presidio Park
His praying palms and pity pardons
To Fray Luis Jayme and his holy hands
To Mass and the mass murder of our culture
Here’s to our culture
Here’s to the traditions touched by time
Those withered withering
never written down and forgotten
Here’s to the ancient ancestors
who saw what was to come
The aging elders
who see what is to go
Here’s to the children
who may see nothing
Nothing but the past
Here’s to the past
“Howka, ma hun temwa? Nyaa Rayleene Elliott nysich, nyaa Snyaawkwatun mat hmii. Hello, how are you? My name is Rayleene Elliott and I grew up in Manzanita, one of thirteen Kumeyaay reservations located in San Diego County in Southern California.”
Elliott’s hometown is Boulevard, CA, which is also home to two of the smaller Kumeyaay reservations, including Manzanita. The area is landscaped with mountains, oak trees, and sage. Elliott adds, “Its history and culture is not well known to America.”
Elliott says, “I am grateful that my mother and grandfather maintained our history, both in writing and orally. From them and others that I respect, I learned about my culture and I heard our stories.” She learned to dance to birdsongs at age 10 and also learned to play the peon. She says, “I realized it is important to preserve what little we still have within our reach, and that is the muse to my poetry.”
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The North Woods
By Timothy J. Hearson
Twenty miles of puddle hopping North
beyond the land of a thousand lakes.
The sun melts into itself as it
retreats to its bed at the bottom of the lake.
It descends, extinguishing
the rainbow of fire that has enveloped the clouds.
The wind bows in respect,
then all is still.
Faces glow, sweet tobacco rises with
the sounds of laughter and pine embers.
Rum circles the fire.
The one that “got away” grows with every pass.
We go to bed hungry.
The moon, exhausted as we are,
will not come out.
Wolves, never seen,
cry for her return.
The sky hears their pleas and stars cascade,
igniting another rainbow of fire in the northern sky.
The moon, she will not be missed.
Where do dreams begin or end in the North Woods?
Timothy J. Hearson was raised in Coffeyville, KS. He graduated from high school in 2002 and took some classes at two other colleges before enrolling at Haskell Indian Nations University in 2007. He says, “I found a home here.” Hearson plans to graduate with a bachelor’s degree in business administration and to pursue a graduate degree.
“Before I took creative writing classes at Haskell,” Hearson says, “I couldn’t even keep a journal.” He’s always been a reader but now he is writing fiction and poetry. He adds, “It’s like discovering a new kind of freedom. I look forward to developing my skills as a writer.”
The Path We Will Walk (in memory of Harrison Secondine, Sr.)
By Thomas Conine
| I walk in your footsteps, But I walk them my own way. |
You were forced to assimilate The ways of men with pale skin, But I already know them. |
| When you walked the path, You did it not by your own choice. |
At the time you were here, You were not a father, Not yet even a senior. |
| The buildings that you saw Are still here, The ones that were like prisons. |
I am your daughter’s daughter’s son. |
Far from home we walk, About a hundred years |
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Thomas Conine attends Haskell Indian Nations University. He says, “I have found that stories can be turned into poetry. This poem is about Harrison Secondine, Jr., my great grandfather, a person I have never met.”
Conine wrote this poem based on a story told to him by his grandmother. Like Conine, his great grandfather attended Haskell when it was a boarding school, only “he tried to run away three to four times. I dedicate this poem to him.”
Soft Talker, the Dawn Bearer
By Kyerin Bennett
His face is the dawn
Silent eastern twilight
We wear his face
Around his eyes and mouth
Mist in lines rising
From clay shaped by life
Rain clouds suspended above
From his mouth
Ascend
Upward corn stalks
Grow with the sun
Over the horizon
Wooly tufts of hair
Dark red at the roots
Turquoise stones
Hidden sacred
Among hair hung
Like willow whips
Corn meal and pollen fall
From eight eagle tail feathers
Four plumes wave at the tips
They grow fan out from his head
Soft voice of the dawn
He speaks softly
Hoozhoogo noseel dooleel
Grow holy grow pure grow in beauty
Hozhoogo naasgo yiika dooleel
Into the future we walk
holy pure beautifully
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Kyerin Bennett’s (Navajo), 21, maternal clan is Red Palms People and he is born for Near the Water’s Edge. Bennett attends Haskell Indian Nations University and hopes to one day attend Harvard University to earn a graduate degree in anthropology. He dreams of traveling the world while also preserving and protecting ancient cultures.
Bennett says, “I use writing to express myself and I am looking to improve my skills to do this even better.” He intends to write stories and children’s books next.