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A Dream of Common Language

This poem is written in free verse. It is lyrical. It came to me when traveling on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation some years ago. I was inspired by the cultural activity I witnessed there. It is about recovery of a tribal language and how impactful that is. It...

Ancestor Moon

Ancestor Moon is a Shakespearian sonnet. The topic of the poem is based in pre-contact time. It is lyrical and romantic poem. It is indirectly from historic stories of when and where young men and women met. That an acquaintance or even a love at first site could...

Weaving with My Grandmothers

The poem Weaving with My Grandmothers is rooted in the years I have spent taking classes to learn to weave. I am not an artful weaver, but I am a committed student of both the Yakama wapaas baskets and the Coast Salish cedar and wool weaving. This poem relates some of...

Acknowledgement Three

The Acknowledgement series in Rivers in My Veins is based on the trend of groups offering land acknowledgements at the start of meetings. While I realize many offer land acknowledgement out of a spirit of contrition or awareness, the impact on Native peoples can be...

When Facts Matter in Your Writing

As a Native writer, my writing is not only for myself but also for my tribes. The Sauk-Suiattle Tribe, where I am enrolled, wasn’t even counted by the U.S. Census until about forty years after the surrounding tribes. When the local newspaper published wrong...