[As I’ve detailed at
length here and elsewhere,
to my mind Columbus Day is by far the most troubling of our national holidays. So I’m
proposing Cross-Cultural Day, which would be an occasion to remember and
celebrate some of the most inspiring relationships between Native and
Non-Native Americans in our history (and which could of course co-exist with Indigenous
Peoples Day celebrations). This week I’ll be highlighting such inspiring
individuals and interactions in my posts. Your thoughts, nominations, and other
perspectives appreciated for the weekend’s crowd-sourced post!]
[Re-posting this wonderful 2015 Guest Post, highlighting
a recent and ongoing cross-cultural effort!]
[Siobhan Senier is Professor
of English and Women’s Studies Program Coordinator at the University of New
Hampshire. Her groundbreaking scholarship, teaching, and activism in American Studies, Native
American Studies, and New
England Studies have offered a model for this AmericanStudier for many
years, and I’m very excited to share this Guest Post on one of her most
important projects.]
Many thanks to Ben for inviting
this guest post on Dawnland Voices: An Anthology of Writing from
Indigenous New England [BEN: That’s a website for the second iteration
of this great anthology, Dawnland Voices
2.0.]. If your concerns here are to introduce “compelling writers and
voices,” and to ponder the “differences these might make to our national
identity and narratives,” then this new anthology definitely aspires to
contribute.
It was more than ten years ago
that I started compiling material for this book. Upon coming to teach in New
England, I felt a responsibility to represent the indigenous writers of this
place. But no one seemed to know who those writers are, aside from the two
Heath anthology staples, Samson Occom and William Apess. I hated to see our teaching and scholarship
perpetuating the vanishing-Indian mythology. We northeasterners do love our
James Fenimore Cooper and apocryphal chiefs jumping off cliffs.
Almost immediately, I figured out
that I wasn’t going to be able to publish a collection of regional indigenous
writing on my own steam. I started inviting area indigenous writers and
historians to my classes, and it became eminently clear that they knew their own literary histories,
whether or not these had survived the much-vaunted “test of time.” Wayne Newell
(Passamaquoddy) showed me bilingual books Xeroxed or even mimeographed for
dissemination among tribal members. The Dove family (Narragansett) kept copies
of the short-lived 1930s magazine The
Narragansett Dawn, and the many other writings of its editor, Princess Red
Wing. Lisa Brooks told me about
nineteenth century Abenaki-language primers, long out of print but still
cherished and circulated among Abenaki people. And hilariously, tribal elders
were patently unimpressed by my archival “discoveries.” When I asked Joan
Tavares Avant (Mashpee Wampanoag) if she knew of Wampanoag poets, she
hesitated, until I triumphantly showed her Alfred DeGrasse, who had published
in the Carlisle Arrow. “Oh, him,” she said, and proceeded to
tell me about her great-aunt Mabel Avant, whose poems are still recited at
tribal events today.
So I asked as many people as I
could whether they would be willing to serve as editors for a new collection of
this literature. Indigenous knowledge-keepers, after all, are in the best
position to select materials that are meaningful in their communities, whatever
their “literary” credentials. They knew where to find historic writings and
from whom to solicit newer ones. They knew
how to navigate culturally sensitive questions surrounding which texts to
include, and which to leave out. They
knew how to present this material to a diverse audience of tribal and
non-tribal readers. We organized Dawnland Voices by tribal nation,
because the editors felt that this best reflected how Native people think of
their own literary histories. The beauty of how this played out is that every
tribal nation’s section has its own distinct character, determined partly by
tribal history and partly by the editor’s knowledge and approach. Jaime
Battiste, an attorney by training, selected heavily historic and legal
documents for the Mi’kmaq section.
Stephanie Fielding and Donald Soctomah used their broad community
connections to solicit quite a bit of contemporary poetry for the Mohegan and
Passamaquoddy sections. Ruth Garby Torres and Trudie Lamb Richmond drew on
their considerable family archives for the Schaghticoke section. Indeed, finding material was never the problem.
The book clocks in at nearly 700 pages and includes a rather dazzling variety
of genres: a redrawn petroglyph; news articles; a triolet and hip-hop poems;
blog entries; political petitions and historic letters; language lessons and
recipes. And there was still so much
more we could have included.
The anthology thus challenges the formation of “New
England,” and of “American literature” more broadly, insofar as it puts the
original people of these places, presumed to have vanished, back at the
center—not only as authors, but also as stewards and scholars of their own literary
histories. Carol Bachofner, one of the
Abenaki poets in the volume, calls it “the gathering place.” She says, “it’s
like a small village, where all these voices have come together, in terms of
historical documents, and exposé, and telling things that were secret for so
long because they were painful or shameful, all the way through to the
light-hearted song lyrics. . .all of those things have come together and now
exist for those people who have forever, really, not understood us, to
understand us.” These voices are telling
stories of settler colonial violence, yes, but also of continuous indigenous
presence, of survival and resilience and resurgence.
Because there was so much more we
could have included, we are starting an online extension of Dawnland Voices. [BEN: And now, again, a second version of the anthology, which that website details at length.] We have spaces for
tribal historians to upload and curate historic documents;
for students to collaborate with Native institutions on exhibits;
and for young and emergent writers to share their work. We very much welcome new project
partners—whether you are an aspiring Native writer; a tribal member or a
museum/archival employee with particular documents to share; or a teacher of
Indigenous Studies who would like to involve your students in this kind of work—so
please do contact Siobhan.Senier@unh.edu if this looks of interest.
[I know Siobhan would still love to hear from
you! And please also share your responses to any of the this week’s posts, or
to anything else related to Columbus Day, cross-cultural America, and more, for
the weekend’s crowd-sourced post!
Ben
PS. You know what to do!]
No comments:
Post a Comment