Summary
Celebrate Indigenous People's Day with four poems from California authors.
This October, the Literatures community in the UC Berkeley Library wants to acknowledge that Berkeley sits on the territory of xučyun (Huichin (Hoo-Choon), the ancestral and unceded land of the Chochenyo (Cho-chen-yo) speaking Ohlone people, the successors of the historic and sovereign Verona Band of Alameda County. For more information on UC Berkeley’s stance, take a look at Centers for Educational Justice & Community Engagement’s statement on Ohlone Land.
To celebrate that history, here are a few excerpts from different California Indigenous peoples including Ohlone as well as Chowchilla- or Coast Miwok poets that this Literatures group enjoys. We encourage you to read the full poems and check out the authors’ collections.
November 1980
and up near Eureka
the highway has tumbled
with what may be
the last earthquake
of the year; offshore
Jade green water
chops holes in the yellow
sandstone cliff.
[…]
For more of Rose’s poetry, take a look at Lost Copper (1980, UC Library Search)
Old Territory, New Maps
through Colorado’s red dust,
around the caustic edge of Utah’s salt flats
a single night at a hotel
in the Idaho panhandle. Our plans change.
It’s spring, we are two Indian women along
together and the days open:
sunrise on a fine long road,
antelope against dry hills,
heron emerging from dim fields.
You tell me this is a journey
you’ve always wanted to take.
You ask me to tell you what I want.
[…]
For the Living
Standing high on this hillside
the wind off the Pacific
forming the language of grasses
and escarpment eternally speaking
the sea birds far out
on their planes of air
gather and squander
what the short days encompass
[…]
Memory Weaver
Grandmother weave me a story
The memories she pulls out of me sting like poison. Her little fingers nimbly poke the top of my scalp, as if she was carefully choosing each memory to set on top of her loom.
The silence is deafening as Grandmother Dreamweaver works on my unusual request. She is the protector of dreams, not a keeper of memories. Yet, she understands what I have asked of her.
[…]