Reconnect with Nature: Lessons from Indigenous Poets
Stories are so important, aren’t they? The stories we inherit from our families, the stories we tell ourselves. I believe the most courageous and loving act anyone can do is to listen to another person's story.
My story traditionally has been…November is a batshit-crazy month. I’m at the top of the holiday rollercoaster, about to dive down into a three-loop-de-loop whirlwind at 90 miles an hour, and the safety bar just popped up, and I’m dangling upside down by my fingertips. And my pinky fingers are slipping off.
Between the heightened expectations and the mad dash between recitals and potluck offerings, I am often up until midnight or later, moving that damned elf around, hiding presents, or putting together the turkey holiday grocery list.
These times are supposed to be the “most wonderful time of the year,” and that just makes it worse. Let’s add some guilt in there with the added pressure, shall we?
How To Change Your Story (by going outside)
I am going back to my roots and even further back to honor the beginning stories of these lands we love and the people who were here first. I’ve been researching ways to make this month and the next feel centered, grounded, and creative.
If that sounds good to you, join me in pushing back (by sitting out) on at least a few holiday to-do’s. Let’s find some quiet space outside to read and write some poems, shall we? (Yes, being outside really improves our mental health.) Our brains were made to be there!
Before we can find ourselves jauntily strolling through a winter wonderland, I need to tell you what I found in my research. Did you know that before written language, Indigenous tribes throughout the US and Canada kept the spirit of their people alive through oral stories and chants?
If you’re like me, you’ve probably heard or read that, but it didn’t hit home until I started asking questions about my ancestors. The total of all I’ve gathered about my family history could fit in the palm of one hand. As far as I know, my ancestors were a combination of liver-crushing barflies and tee-totaling evangelicals from way back on red-coat soil. But stories of their triumphs, failures, grief, and joy? Those, and my own personal story of the winding route that led to me and my children, are lost forever.
Stories matter.
But Indigenous tribes didn’t just tell stories to remember the past. They spoke powerful words of healing and faith that were repeated during sacred ceremonies, healing rituals, and seasonal celebrations. They reflected the cyclical nature of life, honoring the earth and animals and respecting the environmental and spiritual forces that shaped their daily lives. Both sacred and casual poetry were embedded into the fabric of their daily lives.
“Poetry is a particularly compelling literary form for comforting the ruptures of history and the fragmenting effects of settler colonialism. (It is) also an ideal form for naming the fierce beauty of contemporary Indigenous personhood. ”
I recently learned about the Diné Blessingway, or Hózhójí, which originated with the Navajo tribespeople and is a complex system of healing and blessing ceremonies. It includes many rites, such as the Kinaaldá ceremony, which marks a girl's transition to womanhood. It is also used to bless pregnancies and homes and to prevent misfortune.
The Cherokee have a traditional smudging prayer. Like any poem or prayer that’s said orally, there will be differences in wording geographically, it goes a little something like this:
May your eyes be cleansed so you might see the signs and wonders of the world. May this person and space be washed clean by the smoke of these fragrant plants. May that same smoke carry our prayers spiraling to the heavens. Bless all who enter there.
The tribes whose words for places we still use today (such as Manhattan being named after the Manna-hata tribe) used poetry to heal and connect to the earth in ways we in Western society are just now discovering. (We are discovering, packaging, and selling, but I digress.)
President George H.W. Bush officially declared November National Native American Heritage Month about 34 years ago. So, instead of saving up your money for the inevitable family holiday drama therapist bills, let's use this liminal space between the October holidays and December to focus on the poetry of and by Indigenous people.
Find some magically sunny spot beneath a giant elm tree and get reading!
Honoring The OG Poets
If you're a Mary Oliver or Robert Frost fan, you'll find a kindred spirit in Indigenous poets like Natalie Diaz and Joy Harjo. Their poetry, while universally connective and appealing in their own right, is also a testament to the inspiring resilience and inseparability of a people from the land.
Historically, Indigenous stories speak of nature not as a thing to be conquered, but as a distinct, living being with which they shared a symbiotic relationship. This reverence for the natural world is a hallmark of Indigenous poetic tradition, even in modern times. If you have a deep love and reverence for nature like I do, these poets are your next must-read.
I started with Joy Harjo. She is an internationally renowned performer and writer of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. From 2019 to 2022, she served three terms as the 23rd Poet Laureate of the United States and won Yale's 2023 Bollingen Prize for American Poetry. She’s kind of a big deal.
She has written a memoir that needs to be on the syllabus of every literature course everywhere, Crazy Brave. Her memoir and her book of poems, American Sunrise, have altered the arc of my life. I bought the audio versions in which she narrates herself and couldn’t recommend them more. Her story is a personal and universal tale of the triumph of creativity and spirituality over rigid dogmatism and abuses of the patriarchy.
“Once, I traveled far above the earth. This beloved planet we call home was covered with an elastic web of light…shaped by the collective effort of all life within it. Dissonance attracted dissonance, harmony attracted harmony…the most humble kindnesses made the brightest lights.”
I don’t know how you will simplify your life in the next few months. I will go outside as often as possible and read as many poems as possible. And I’m going to write some, too. Not because I have to, but because I will have the space and frame of mind to get in touch with my still, inner creative.
Think of this sweet, creative, you-and-nature time as a minor rebellion against capitalism. As a way to grow your craft in a way that honors the spirit of both yourself and this land that we love.
In anticipation of the BrainTrust I’ll be teaching in April, here are a few of the savory morsels of wild poems that have caught my heart and that I hope catch yours, too.
Contemporary Native American Poems
1. “How the Milky Way was Made” by Natalie Diaz
I have always been attracted to poets who use vivid imagery to make their poems feel alive, and Diaz is no exception. This poem leaps, shimmers, and drags us along the vast night sky, and we aren’t even afraid to fall.
You see them now—
god-large, gold-green sides,
moon-white belly and breast—
making their great speeded way across the darkest hours,
rippling the sapphired sky-water into a galaxy road.
The blurred wake they drag as they make their path
through the night sky is called
‘Achii ‘ahan nyuunye—
our words for Milky Way.
Read “How the Milky War was Made”↗
2. “How to Write a Poem in a Time of War” by Joy Harjo
This poem by Joy Harjo has been caught in my throat since I first read it. It is hard to hold this trauma with her, this unspoken rage against an enemy who would hurt even the children.
You can’t begin here.
This is memory shredded because it is impossible to hold by words, even poetry.
These memories were left here with the trees:
The torn pocket of your daughter’s hand-sewn dress
She is at a loss even to hold this grief in the confines of a poem, and anyone who really reads it can never be the same afterwards.
Read “How to Write a Poem in a Time of War” ↗
3. “For-The-Spirits-Who-Have-Rounded-The-Bend IIVAQSAAT” by dg nanouk okpik
I found this poet while researching a different article about fishing for a memoir essay I’ve been working on. I love how she flits words around so the imagery glides past us like a fish in the water.
I make a hole in the ceiling for smoke and prayers to rise together in song.
I remember cleaning smeared smelt off my hooks sharpening them
to catch mirror-back salmon, fins spread, heading the opposite way,
nosing up the river to spawn in eclipse water when the sun moves
around the earth, and all days are ebony backwards.
I don’t have to know exactly what the last line means to enjoy it, to love how “ebony backwards” feels in my mouth.
Read “For-The-Spirits-Who-Have-Rounded-The-Bend IIVAQSAAT ↗
I wish you all a poetic, creative, and restorative end to the year, no matter what you celebrate (or don’t).
I hope you find yourself exploring a diverse array of voices through art, while sipping some hot pumpkin spice coffee as the wind scatters leaves over your feet. Because life will go as fast and narrow as you want.
For myself, I want to live slowly, widely, a little wild, and always on the hunt for new stories. So if you see me sitting under a big tree in a park, reading poems, please join me, and stay wild, my friends.
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This article was published on December 3, 2024. Written by:
