Contact us at: whispernthunder1@gmail.comNative Nostalgia
For Mom Danna
Northern drum songs played on cassettes,
Scalding coffee sipped from a Thermos,
Pendletons placed between your shoulders and the wind,
Your old truck reaches the powwow in time to begin.
There's always such hope in Grand Entry.
Old style dancers,
before casinos spun steps into gold
and chamois sunk into sequins,
Back when Creator meant more than the judges,
Honored the Earth with
Paha stitch of beads and mirrors,
Knots and feathers,
hand-rolled jingle cones,
Dancing in praise, not for payouts.
Frybread folded from kneaded dough,
Paperwhite plates letting everyone know,
With chili, there is more than plenty.
Setting aside thin napkins and dixie cups,
That's when Pop asked you to dance,
Two step,
Round Dance,
Sweetheart song,
Two hearts in rhythm
Your whole lives long.
~ Dawn Karima
Vision Quest
A holiday gift for Duane Brayboy
Voices and Visions.
That's how Goyathlay knew.
After hanbleceya,
Crazy Horse did, too.
Tecumseh had a Comet of his own.
Sitting Bull was always Wichasa Wakan.
If we ask John Horse,
He'd probably advise you,
Put Chiefs' names in your mouth,
Their ascensions, too.
As answers to all who ridicule,
caustically mock your right to rule,
with
"Behold, This Dreamer cometh."
~ Dawn Karima
We Are the First Light
We are not the past,
we are the first light.
Before borders, before names,
we sang the rivers into being,
danced the mountains awake,
and listened when the stars spoke
in the language of kinship.
They marked our lands with fences,
but our stories leap them.
They renamed our ancestors,
but our breath still carries
the syllables of truth.
We are the cedar smoke rising
from grandmother’s fire.
We are the moccasin prints
that refuse to fade.
We are the children learning
the songs that were almost stolen.
Today is not a holiday.
It is a heartbeat.
A drum echoing through
courtrooms, classrooms, and canyons.
It is a prayer whispered
in every treaty they forgot
but we remember.
We are not vanished.
We are vision.
We are not broken.
We are becoming.
So let the wind carry this:
We are the first light,
and we are still shining.
~ Joelle Clark
New Moon Winter Solstice Song
A holiday gift for Duane Brayboy
As I slipped the last stitch
Into my son's medallion,
Tawodi, rendered in blues and greens,
I heard a screech in the trees.
A hawk perched in the branches.
I held my beadwork up so the raptor could see,
And wondered if you would appear,
If I wove a Bear from my beads.
~ Dawn Karima