We started the week with Native American art and we will close with it too. LeAnne Howe (Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma) is the Eidson Distinguished Professor in American literature at the University of Georgia, who “connects literature, Indigenous knowledge, Native histories, and expressive cultures in her work.”

You can learn more about this brilliant poet here. Photographs are of fowl in action, busy in March.

A Duck’s Tune

BY LEANNE HOWE

Ya kut unta pishno ma*
Ya kut unta pishno ma
Ya kut unta pishno ma
Ya kut unta pishno ma

So I moved to this place,
Iowa City, Ioway
Where green-headed mallards
walk the streets day and night,
and defecate on sidewalks.
Greasy meat bags in wetsuits,
disguise themselves as pets
and are free as birds.
Maybe Indians should have thought of that?

Ya kut unta pishno ma
Ya kut unta pishno ma
Ya kut unta pishno ma
Ya kut unta pishno ma

Maybe you would have
left us alone,
if we put on rubber bills,
and rubber feet,
Quacked instead of complained,
Swam instead of danced
waddled away when you did
what you did…

Ya kut unta pishno ma
Ya kut unta pishno ma
Ya kut unta pishno ma
Ya kut unta pishno ma

So I moved to the Place
The “Jewel of the Midwest”
Where ghosts of ourselves
Dance the sulphur trails.

Fumes emerge continuous
from the mouths of
Three-faced Deities who preach,
“We absolve joy through suffering.”

Ya kut unta pishno ma
Ya kut unta pishno ma
Ya kut unta pishno ma
Ya kut unta pishno ma

So I moved to this place where
in 1992, up washed Columbus again
like a pointy-chinned Son of Cannibals.
His spin doctors rewrite his successes
“After 500 years and 25 million dead,
One out of 100 American Indians commit suicide
One out of 10 American Indians are alcoholics
49 years is the average lifespan of American Indians.”

Each minute burns
the useful and useless alike
Sing Hallelujah
Praise the Lord

Ya kut unta pishno ma
Ya kut unta pishno ma
Ya kut unta pishno ma
Ya kut unta pishno ma

And when you foreigners
build your off-world colonies
and relocate in outer space
This is what we will do
We will dance,
We will dance,
We will dance
to a duck’s tune.

Ya kut unta pishno ma
Ya kut unta pishno ma
Ya kut unta pishno ma
Ya kut unta pishno ma

Notes:

* This is a dance refrain for a song. The phrase is to be performed. Ya kut unta pishno ma means “We were doing this.” Dancing.LeAnne Howe, “A Duck’s Tune” from Evidence of Red. Copyright © 2005 by LeAnne Howe.