MergedFile

women

and

standing
rock

On sacred water and the body

introduction by

layli long soldier

photographs by

camille seaman

35th anniversary issue 2017 O R I O N 51

words for water

A few years ago, while living on the Diné the water for ranching, farming and coal mining operations.” The
Nation, I first heard a striking proclamation that corporate interest in the water was not new or surprising, yet it
rang through the community with profound heightened community outrage and protest. Fortunately, the bill
urgency: “Tó éí íín´ á!” — “water is life.” I saw was never enacted. As a high-desert community that already lives
these words in bold letterpressed signs, t-shirts, with natural conditions of water scarcity, Diné people have devel-
and bright gra=iti along roadsides. Diné people raised this cry out- oped traditional ways of honoring and conserving water. Yet they
side tribal o=ices in Window Rock, Arizona, and literally chased continue to be beleaguered by threats of contamination, waste,
Senator John McCain, seated inside a moving black suburban, o= and legislative robbery of what little water they have.
their land to protect their hold on the Little Colorado River water.
Such strong reactions were in response to Senate bill S.2109, also The people of Standing Rock Reservation and their
known as the Navajo-Hopi Little Colorado River Water Rights allies have stood solid in prayer to face lines of armed
Settlement Act of 2012. This bill proposed that the Navajo and police who used attack dogs, tasers, tear gas, rubber bullets,
Hopi Nations would waive rights to the Little Colorado River in water cannons, and sonic weaponry to silence this undeniable
exchange for the Bureau of Reclamation piping clean drinking truth: Mni Wiconi. “Water is life.” Hundreds of US tribes issued
water into tribal homes. But why waive their rights? I wondered. statements of support for Standing Rock’s fight to stop the Dakota
Who would benefit? According to the New York Times, “Other par- Access Pipeline from drilling under Lake Oahe in the Missouri
ties, including Peabody Coal and two other corporations, want[ed] River. People from around the world, from the Pacific Islands to
the Middle East to Europe, called out in the Lakota language, “Mni

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Wiconi!” It’s this sensibility that is important to the present: water people camping at Standing Rock to protect the Missouri River
is not a “resource,” it’s not a “utility,” it’s not negotiable. Rather, “it could not stop the siege of the Dakota Access Pipeline, then what
is sacred.” I have heard these words many times. Without water, does it take? What more?
there is no life. Simple. True. Resonant, down to our very cells.
On March 5, 2017, six weeks after the current US president
Tonight, I spent time rewatching footage of both Diné and signed an executive memorandum to resume construction of
Lakota e=orts to protect their water. It hurts to watch outright vio- the Dakota Access and the Keystone XL pipelines, the Whitney
lence by law enforcement and, equally so, the casual dismissal of Museum held an event, “Words for Water.” A gathering of art-
urgent community voices by onlookers and passersby. Yet there’s ists, all of whom are Native women, presented written and musi-
an inimitable strength in the people’s stance that gives me hope. cal pieces in honor of this land, its water, and the people working
The Diné and Lakota people are not alone, mind you. These bat- to protect it. Artists included Natalie Diaz, Heid Erdrich, Louise
tles rage across the nation — in tribal and nontribal communities Erdrich, Jennifer Elise Foerster, Joy Harjo, Toni Jensen, Deborah
alike. But I drank in these videos with amazement. I’m reminded A. Miranda, Laura Ortman, and myself. Here, we o=er a selection
that at the center and inception of so many of these movements of works shared that night to a room tossed by waves of emotions
are the youth — bright, resilient energy. Fire. In concentric circles and questions. I do not have the answer to What more does it take?
around them, I see our women. Our men. Elders. Allies. I have except to say that I know, we all know, it will take more. And toward
considered why I feel devastated by our losses as much as I feel this, our work continues.
bolstered and empowered. I sometimes think, If ten thousand
— Layli Long Soldier

35th anniversary issue 2017 O R I O N 53

prayer of prayers

For the Water Protectors at Standing Rock

deborah a. miranda

The leaves hang on This planet is a prayer. The leaves hang on
into mid-November Each icy night into mid-November
oak, alder, locust —  under floodlights oak, alder, locust — 
each one a prayer flag and water cannons each one a prayer flag
singing aloud —  she o=ers up moon howling hoarse — 
scarlet, cinnamon, gold and stars, a holiness of cold. scarlet, cinnamon, gold
rippling with snapping under
wind’s rough caress.  You think prayer wind’s cracked hands. 
cannot change this war? Every acorn,
Every acorn, Then redefine prayer: every hickory nut,
every hickory nut, it is clothing frozen a tobacco tie
a tobacco tie to the bodies of warriors swaying in the trees;
hung in the trees; who do not carry they cry out to us
they call out to us any other weapon come harvest your prayers
come harvest your prayers. against water cannons; come pound them into meal
it is eyes swollen shut come mix them with river water
Soon a blanket of prayers with tear gas, a relative come cook them on this blazing rock:
will cover the earth holding a bottle of saline solution;
and the trees will stand it is the ferocious flower oh people, come feast
like prayer poles left behind by a rubber bullet on this prayer so righteous
dressed in feathers —  blossoming on the face it burns your tongues;
gifts from blue jay, of a woman wash it down
eagle, hummingbird, who is, in the end, with a sip from the river
meadowlark. made wholly of prayer, whose songs will always call you
The planet prays for us, her spirit an impenetrable vessel Beloved.
for itself; carrying prayer out to the edges
the planet sings of camp where armed o=icers
for November’s endurance, try to hold prayer at bay,
weaves a nest as if prayer were a rabid bear
for our future or a pack of wolves
to curl up inside that must be isolated,
and learn winter’s beaten, eradicated
Kevlar-wrapped stories. because prayer is contagious
prayer is that dangerous
prayer rages like a bonfire
no fire hose can quench.

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35th anniversary issue 2017 O R I O N 55

56 O R I O N 3 5 t h a n n i v e r s a r y i s s u e 2 0 1 7

women in the fracklands

On water, bodies, and Standing Rock

toni jensen

I. have their windows down, as you have left those in your own
On Magpie Road, the colors are in riot. Sharp blue sky over green car down the road.
and yellow tall grass that rises and falls like water in the North
Dakota wind. Magpie Road holds no magpies, only robins and Magpie Road lies in the middle of the 1,028,051 acres that
partridge and crows. A group of magpies is called a tiding, a gulp, make up the Little Missouri National Grasslands in western
a murder, a charm. When the men in the pickup make their first North Dakota. Magpie Road lies about two hundred miles north
pass, there on the road, you are photographing the grass against and west of the Standing Rock Reservation, where thousands
sky, an ordinary bird blurring over a lone rock formation. of indigenous people and their allies came together to protect
the water, where sheri=’s men and pipeline men and National
You do not photograph the men, but if you had, you might Guardsmen donned their riot gear, where those men still wait,
have titled it “Father and Son Go Hunting.” They wear camou- where they still hold tight to their riot gear.
flage, and their mouths move in animation or argument. They

3 5 t h a n n i v e r s a r y i s s u e 2 0 1 7 O R I O N 57

If a man wears his riot gear during prayer, will the sacred says, company. A floorhand is responsible for the overall main-
forsake him? If a man wears his riot gear to the holiday meal, tenance of a rig. A floorhand is responsible.
how will he eat? If a man enters the bedroom in his riot gear,
how will he make love to his wife? If a man wears his riot gear But who is responsible for and to this woman, her safety, her
to tuck in his children, what will they dream? body, her memory? Who is responsible to and for the language,
the words that will not take their leave?
Magpie Road is part of the Bakken, a shale formation lying
deep under the birds, the men in the truck, you, this road. The In a hotel in Texas, in the Permian Basin, you call the front
Bakken is what is known as a marine shale — meaning, once, desk and report on the roughneck in the room upstairs. You dial
here, instead of endless grass lay endless water. You left Stand- zero while he hits his wife/girlfriend/girl he has just bought.
ing Rock for the Bakken, and the woodsmoke from the water- You dial zero while he throws her and picks her up and starts
protector camps still clings to your hair. again. Or at least, one floor down, this is the soundtrack. Upon
his departure, the man uses his fist on every door down your
There, just o= Magpie Road, robins sit on branches or peck hall. The sound is loud but also is like knocking, like Hello, like
the ground. A group of robins is called a riot. This seems wrong Anybody home? You wonder if he went first to the floor above
at every level except the taxonomic. Robins are ordinary, every- but think not. Sound, like so many things, operates mostly
day, general-public sorts of birds. They seem the least likely of through a downward trajectory.
all birds to riot.
At a hotel where South Dakota and Wyoming meet, you
In the Bakken and in all fracklands towns, the influx of are sure you have driven out of the Bakken, past its edge, far
men, of workers’ bodies, brings an overflow of crime. In the enough. That highway that night belongs to the deer, and all
Bakken at the height of the oil and gas boom, violent crime, forty or fifty of them stay roadside as you pass. You arrive at
for example, increased by 125 percent. North Dakota attorney the hotel on ca=eine and luck. The parking lot reveals your cal-
general Wayne Stenehjem called this increase in violent crime culus to have been a mistake — frack truck after pickup after
“disturbing” and cited aggravated assaults, rapes, and human frack truck.
tra=icking as “chief concerns.”
Two roughnecks stagger into your line of sight, one drunk,
When the men in the truck make their second pass, there the other holding up the first while he zips his fly. This termi-
on the road, the partridge sit in their nests, and the robins nology, fly, comes from England, where it first referred to the
are not in formation. They are singular. No one riots but the flap on a tent — as in, Tie down your tent fly against the high
colors. The truck revs and slows and revs and slows beside you. winds. As in, Don’t step on the partridge nest as you tie down
You have taken your last photograph of the grass, have moved your fly. As in, Stake down your tent fly against the winter snow,
yourself back to your car. The truck pulls itself close to your car, against the rubber bullets, against the sight of the riot gear.
revving parallel.
The men sway across the lot, drunk loud, and one says to the
You are keeping your face still, starting the car. You have other, “Hey, look at that,” and you are the only that there. When
mislabeled your imaginary photograph. These men, they are the other replies, “No. I like the one in my room just fine,” you
not father and son. At close range, you can see there is not are sorry and grateful for the one in an unequal measure.
enough distance in age. One does sport camouflage, but the
other, a button-down shirt, complete with pipeline logo over You cannot risk more roadside deer, and so despite all your
the breast pocket. They are not bird hunters. The one in the wishes, you stay the night. A group of deer is called a herd; a
button-down motions to you out the window with his handgun, group of roe deer, a bevy. There is a bevy of roe deer in the Red
and he smiles and says things that are incongruous with his Forest near Chernobyl. The Bakken is not Chernobyl because
smiling face. this is America. The Bakken is not Chernobyl because the Bak-
ken is not the site of an accident. The Bakken is not Chernobyl
II. because the Bakken is no accident.
In the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania, a floorhand shuts the
door to his hotel room, puts his body between the door and III.
a woman holding fresh towels. A floorhand is responsible for On Magpie Road, the ditch is shallow but full of tall grass. With
the overall maintenance of a rig. The woman says to you that one hand, the button-down man steers his truck closer to your car,
he says to her, “I just want some company.” He says it over and with the other, he waves the handgun. He continues talking,
and over, into her ear, her hair, while he holds her down. She talking, talking. The waving gesture is casual, like the fist knock-
says it to you, your ear, your hair. She hates that word now, she ing down the hotel hallway — Hello, anyone home, hello?

Once on a gravel road, your father taught you to drive your way

58 O R I O N 3 5 t h a n n i v e r s a r y i s s u e 2 0 1 7

out of a worse ditch. When the truck reverses, then swerves for- arms in motions that do more than mimic water, that conjure
ward, as if to block you in, you take the ditch to the right, and when it. Their voices are calm and strong, and they move through the
the truck slams to a stop and begins to reverse at a slant, taking the gathering like quiet, like water, like something that will hold,
whole road, you cross the road to the far ditch, which is shallow, something you can keep, even if only for this moment. a
is like a small road made of grass, a road made for you, and you
drive like that, on the green and yellow grass until the truck has This piece was first published in Catapult, January 2017.
made its turn, is behind you. By then you can see the highway, and
the truck is beside you on the dirt road, and the truck turns right,
sharp across your path. So you brake then veer left. You veer out,
onto the highway, fast, in the opposite direction.

Left is the direction to Williston. So you drive to Williston,
and no one follows.

At a big-box store in Williston, a lot sign advertises over-
night parking for RVs. You have heard about this, how girls
are traded here. You had been heading here to see it, and now
you’re seeing it. Mostly, you’re not seeing. You are in Williston
for thirty-eight minutes, and you don’t leave your car.

You spend those thirty-eight minutes driving around the
question of violence, of proximity and approximation. How
many close calls constitute a violence? How much brush can a
body take before it becomes a violence, before it makes violence,
or before it is remade — before it becomes something other than
the body it was once, before it becomes a past-tense body?

IV.
At Standing Rock, the days pass in rhythm. You sort box upon
box of donation blankets and clothes. You walk a group of chil-
dren from one camp to another so they can attend school.

The night before the first walk, it has rained hard and the
dirt of the road has shifted to mud. The dirt or mud road runs
alongside a field, which sits alongside the Cannonball River,
which sits alongside and empties itself into the Missouri.

Over the field, a hawk rides a thermal, practicing e=iciency.
After school but before the return walk, the children and you
gather with hundreds to listen to the tribal chairman, to sit with
elders to pray, to talk of peace.
That afternoon, you walk the children home from school, there
on the road. You cross the highway, the bridge, which lies due
south of the Backwater Bridge of the water cannons or hoses. But
this bridge, this day, holds a better view. The canoes have arrived
from the Northwest tribes, the Salish tribes. They gather below
the bridge on the water, and cars slow alongside you to honk and
wave. Through their windows, people o=er real smiles.
That night, under the stars, firelit, the women from the Salish
tribes dance and sing. Though you’ve been to a hundred pow-
wows, easily, you’ve never seen this dance, never heard this
song. You stand with your arms resting on the shoulders of
the schoolchildren, and the dancers, these women, move their

3 5 t h a n n i v e r s a r y i s s u e 2 0 1 7 O R I O N 59

winter watch

jennifer elise foerster

— Cannonball River, November 2016

We committed ourselves to the prairie,
bees without a queen, swarming frozen ground.
Our hours lifted their lacy black veils — 
a procession of grieving women.
Broke, we talked of wilderness
and failure, time’s sentient materialism,
the clock without hands now, without its tick — 
awoke, snow-covered, in a dead meadow.

Watching the sunrise rake across stones
I think about stories superimposed,
all these bodies passing through each other.
mudbank Startled, a doe slips into fog — a fugue
blows my shadow to the other side of grief.

We sort more piles of things — no answer.
Fresh hay for horse feed; tipi poles; propane.
Hours like dull gold blow across the prairie.
Oatmeal, canned beans. Garlic salt, hominy.
White, brown, or wild rice.

Rock salt. Flour.
A queen travels to the inner reaches
alone, by foot, lanterns clicking through grass.
Brightness for a moment, until time
returns, and I remember who I am,
how crowded this terminal of the world — 
deer gutted at the mudbank,
hoofprints trailing into winter wheat.

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3 5 t h a n n i v e r s a r y i s s u e 2 0 1 7 O R I O N 61

62 O R I O N 3 5 t h a n n i v e r s a r y i s s u e 2 0 1 7

ANAAMIINDIM in the depths of
a body of water
heid erdrich

Bakobiikawe S/he leaves tracks going into the water
the water
Bakobiidaabi’iwe S/he dives into the water
the water
Bakobii S/he goes down into the water
the water
Agwamo S/he floats, still in the water
the water
Mookibii S/he emerges from

Gwaaba’ibi S/he draws

Biidoobii S/he brings

Nibi



3 5 t h a n n i v e r s a r y i s s u e 2 0 1 7 O R I O N 63

the first water is the body

natalie diaz

The Colorado River is the most endangered river in the In American minds, the logic of this image will lend itself to
United States — also, it is a part of my body. surrealism or magical realism — 

I carry a river. It is who I am: ’Aha Makav. Americans prefer a magical red Indian, or a shaman, or a fake
Indian in a red dress, over a real native. Even a real native
This is not metaphor. carrying the dangerous and heavy blues of a river in her body.

When a Mojave says, Inyech ’Aha Makavch ithuum, we are What threatens white people is often dismissed as myth.
saying our name. We are telling a story of our existence. The
river runs through the middle of my body. I have never been true in America. America is my myth.

So far, I have said the word river in every stanza. I don’t want ~
to waste water. I must preserve the river in my body.
Derrida says, Every text remains in mourning until it is translated.
In future stanzas, I will try to be more conservative.
When Mojaves say the word for tears, we return to our word
~ for river, as if our river were flowing from our eyes. A great
weeping, is how you might translate it. Or, a river of grief.
The Spanish called us, Mojave. Colorado, the name they gave
our river because it was silt-red-thick. But who is this translation for? And will they come to my
language’s four-night funeral to grieve what has been lost in my
Natives have been called red forever. I have never met a red e=orts at translation? When they have drunk dry my river will
native, not even on my reservation, not even at the National they join the mourning procession across our bleached desert?
Museum of the American Indian, not even at the largest
powwow in Parker, Arizona. The word for drought is di=erent across many languages
and lands.
I live in the desert along a dammed blue river. The only red
people I’ve seen are white tourists sunburned after being out The ache of thirst, though, translates to all bodies along the
on the water too long. same paths — the tongue and the throat. No matter what
language you speak, no matter the color of your skin.
~
~
’Aha Makav is the true name of our people, given to us by our
Creator who loosed the river from the earth and built it, into We carry the river, its body of water, in our body.
our living bodies.
I do not mean to imply a visual relationship. Such as: a native
Translated into English, ’Aha Makav means the river runs woman on her knees holding a box of Land O’Lakes butter
through the middle of our body, the same way it runs through the whose label has a picture of a native woman on her knees
middle of our land. holding a box of Land O’Lakes butter whose label has a
picture of a native woman on her knees . . .
This is a poor translation, like all translations.
We carry the river, its body of water, in our body. I do not mean
64 O R I O N 3 5 t h a n n i v e r s a r y i s s u e 2 0 1 7 to invoke the Droste e=ect.

I mean river as a verb. A happening. It is moving within me We must go to the point of the lance our creator stabbed into
right now. the earth, and the first river bursting from that clay body
into mine. We must submerge beneath those once warm red
~ waters now channeled-blue and cool, the current’s endless
yards of emerald silk wrapping the body and moving it, swift
This is not juxtaposition. Body and water are not two unlike enough to take life or give it.
things — they are more than close together or side by side. They are
same — body, being, energy, prayer, current, motion, medicine. We must go until we smell the black-root-wet anchoring the
river’s mud banks.
This knowing comes from acknowledging the human body
has more than six senses. The body is beyond six senses. Is ~
sensual. Is always an ecstatic state of energy, is always on the
verge of praying, or entering any river of movement. What is this third point, this place beyond the surface, if
not the deep-cut and crooked bone-bed where the Colorado
Energy is a moving like a river moving my moving body. River runs — like a one thousand four hundred and fifty mile
thirst — into and through a body?
~
Berger called it the pre-verbal. Pre-verbal as in the body when
In Mojave thinking, body and land are the same. The words the body was more than body. Before it could name itself body
are separated only by letters: ’iimat for body, ’amat for land. and be limited to the space body indicated.
In conversation, we often use a shortened form for each: mat-.
Unless you know the context of a conversation, you might Pre-verbal is the place where the body was yet a green-blue
not know if we are speaking about our body or our land. You energy greening, greened, and bluing the stone, the floodwaters,
might not know which has been injured, which is remember- the razorback fish, the beetle, and the cottonwoods’ and willows’
ing, which is alive, which was dreamed, which needs care, shaded shadows.
which has vanished.
Pre-verbal was when the body was more than a body and
If I say, My river is disappearing, do I also mean, My people possible.
are disappearing?
One of its possibilities was to hold a river within it.
~
~
How can I translate — not in words but in belief — that a river
is a body, as alive as you or I, that there can be no life without it? A river is a body of water. It has a foot, an elbow, a mouth.
It runs. It lies in a bed. It can make you good. It remembers
~ everything.

John Berger wrote true translation is not a binary affair between ~
two languages but a triangular affair. The third point of the tri-
angle being what lay behind the words of the original text before it America is a land of bad math and science: the Right believes
was written. True translation demands a return to the pre-verbal. Rapture will save them from the violence they are delivering
upon the earth and water; the Left believes technology, the
Between the English translation I o=ered, and the urging I same technology wrecking the earth and water, will save them
felt to first type ’Aha Makav in the lines above, is not the point from the wreckage or help them build a new world on Mars.
where this story ends or begins.
~
We must go to the place before those two points — we must go
to the third place that is the river. If I was created to hold the Colorado River, to carry its rushing
inside me, how can I say who I am if the river is gone?

3 5 t h a n n i v e r s a r y i s s u e 2 0 1 7 O R I O N 65

What does ’Aha Makav mean if the river is emptied to the Yamuna rivers now have the same legal status of a human
skeleton of its fish and the miniature sand dunes of its dry being. Slovenia’s constitution now declares access to clean
silten beds? drinking water to be a national human right. While in the
US, we are tear-gassing and rubber-bulleting and kenneling
If the river is a ghost, am I? natives who are trying to protect their water from pollution
and contamination at Standing Rock in North Dakota. We
Unsoothable thirst is one type of haunting. have yet to discover what the e=ects of lead-contaminated
water will be on the children of Flint, Michigan, who have
~ been drinking it for years.

A phrase popular or more known to non-natives during the ~
Standing Rock encampment was, Water is the first medicine.
It is true. We think of our bodies as being all that we are: I am my body.
This thinking helps us disrespect water, air, land, one another.
Where I come from we cleanse ourselves in the river. Not But water is not external from our body, our self.
like a bath with soap. I mean: the water makes us strong and
able to move forward into what is set before us to do with My Elder says: Cut off your ear, and you will live. Cut off your
good energy. hand, you will live. Cut off your leg, you can still live. Cut off our
water: we will not live more than a week.
We cannot live good, we cannot live at all, without water.
The water we drink, like the air we breathe, is not a part of our
If we poison and use up our water, how will we cleanse body but is our body. What we do to one — to the body, to the
ourselves of these sins? water — we do to the other.

~ ~

To thirst and to drink is how one knows they are alive, and Toni Morrison writes, All water has a perfect memory and is
grateful. forever trying to get back to where it was. Back to the body of
earth, of flesh, back to the mouth, the throat, back to the
To thirst and then not drink is . . . womb, back to the heart, to its blood, back to our grief, back
back back to when we were more than we have lately become.
~
Will we soon remember from where we’ve come? The water.
If your builder could place a small red bird in your chest to
beat as your heart, is it so hard for you to picture the blue river And once remembered, will we return to that first water,
hurtling inside the slow muscled curves of my long body? Is and in doing so return to ourselves, to each other, better and
it too di=icult to believe it is as sacred as a breath or a star or a cleaner?
sidewinder or your own mother or your lover?
Do you think the water will forget what we have done, what
If I could convince you, would our brown bodies and our blue we continue to do?
rivers be more loved and less ruined?

The Whanganui River in New Zealand now has the same
legal rights of a human being. In India, the Ganges and

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3 5 t h a n n i v e r s a r y i s s u e 2 0 1 7 O R I O N 67

advice to myself #2:

resistance

louise erdrich

Resist the thought that you may need a savior,
or another special being to walk beside you.
Resist the thought that you are alone.
Resist turning your back on the knife
of the world’s sorrow,
resist turning that knife upon yourself.
Resist your disappearance
into sentimental monikers,
into the violent pattern of corporate logos,
into the mouth of the unholy flower of consumerism.
Resist being consumed.
Resist your disappearance
into anything except
the face you had before you walked up to the podium.
Resist all funding sources but accept all money.
Cut the strings and dismantle the web
that needing money throws over you.
Resist the distractions of excess.
Wear old clothes and avoid chain restaurants.
Resist your genius and your own significance
as declared by others.
Resist all hint of glory but accept the accolades
as tributes to your double.
Walk away in your unpurchased skin.
Resist the millionth purchase and go backward.
Get rid of everything.
If you exist, then you are loved
by existence. What do you need?
A spoon, a blanket, a bowl, a book — 
maybe the book you give away.
Resist the need to worry, robbing everything

68 O R I O N 3 5 t h a n n i v e r s a r y i s s u e 2 0 1 7

of immediacy and peace.
Resist traveling except where you want to go.
Resist seeing yourself in others or them in you.
Nothing, everything, is personal.
Resist all pressure to have children
unless you crave the torment of joy.
If you give in to irrationality, then
resist cleaning up the messes your children make.
You are robbing them of small despairs they can fix.
Resist cleaning up after your husband.
It will soon replace having sex with him.
Resist outrageous charts spelling doom.
However you can, rely on sun and wind.
Resist loss of the miraculous
by lowering your standards
for what constitutes a miracle.
It is all a fucking miracle.
Resist your own gift’s power
to tear you away from the simplicity of tears.
Your gift will begin to watch you having your emotions,
so that it can use them in an interesting paragraph,
or to get a laugh.
Resist the blue chair of dreams, the red chair of science, the black chair of the humanities,
and just be human.
Resist all chairs.
Be the one sitting on the ground
or perching on the beam overhead
or sleeping beneath the podium.
Resist disappearing from the stage,
unless you can walk straight into the bathroom and resume the face,
the desolate face, the radiant face, the weary face, the face
that has become your own, though all your life
you have resisted it.

3 5 t h a n n i v e r s a r y i s s u e 2 0 1 7 O R I O N 69

70 O R I O N 3 5 t h a n n i v e r s a r y i s s u e 2 0 1 7

3 5 t h a n n i v e r s a r y i s s u e 2 0 1 7 O R I O N 71

72 O R I O N 3 5 t h a n n i v e r s a r y i s s u e 2 0 1 7

this morning
i pray for
my enemies

joy harjo

And whom do I call my enemy?
An enemy must be worthy of engagement.
I turn in the direction of the sun and keep walking.
It’s the heart that asks the question, not my furious mind.
The heart is the smaller cousin of the sun.
It sees and knows everything.
It hears the gnashing even as it hears the blessing.
The door to the mind should only open from the heart.
An enemy who gets in, risks the danger of becoming a friend.

Reprinted from Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings by Joy Harjo. 3 5 t h a n n i v e r s a r y i s s u e 2 0 1 7 O R I O N 73
Copyright © 2015 by Joy Harjo. With permission of the publisher,
W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.

Cybele Knowles contributors Heid Erdrich is a
Turtle Mountain Ojibwa
Natalie Diaz is author. Her new book
a Mojave and Pima is Curator of Ephemera
language activist. She at the New Museum for
grew up at Fort Mojave Archaic Media.
along the Colorado River.

Chris Felver

Sheri Griffith River Expeditions Louise Erdrich recently Richard Bluecloud Castaneda Jennifer elise
Paul Emmel won a National Book Critics Foerster is the author
Circle award for fiction. She of Leaving Tulsa. She is a
is Ojibwe, enrolled at Turtle member of the Muscogee
Mountain. (Creek) Nation and a PhD
candidate at the Univer-
sity of Denver.

Joy Harjo’s most recent Toni Jensen’s first
collection of poetry is the story collection is From the
award-winning Conflict Hilltop. She teaches at the
Resolution for Holy Beings. University of Arkansas.

Sophia Odelia Bauer Camille Seaman
is a photographer whose
Layli Long Soldier is the CAMILLE SEAMAN work focuses on the fragile
author of WHEREAS and resides environments, extreme
in Santa Fe, New Mexico. weather, and stark beauty
of the natural world.

Layli Long Soldier

Kevin Remington Deborah A. Miranda is
Esselen and Chumash. She teaches
literature and creative writing at
Washington and Lee University.

74 O R I O N 3 5 t h a n n i v e r s a r y i s s u e 2 0 1 7