Carolyn Dunn's News and Views

I Met an old Woman

I met an old woman

who looked beyond

the years of living,

scattered among stones,

grain,

and living between

ashes, reeds,

forgotten things.

She took my hand

in hers.

bebe, bebe,

she whispered, then I

was standing under

a splash of stars

spreading from a center

of the womb

of hidden and swollen

satrs.

In her touch,

she displaced

memory rooted

and routed along

a trail of tears,

from which

spring roses

born of thorns

and deep red bloom.

Survival is this,

she said,

biology speaking a language

unspoken by stars

whose light

has long gone

back to the exploding

dome of the sky.

Entrails

of light, each

seeping into

new and wet

beings and blessing.

We can trace the trajectory

of a spark, of birth

of life, of death.

Here it ends

when it begins.

Bebe, she smiles,

you look so like my own.

A motherless child

sees oceans of stars

in her eyes,

laced within

the shining sorrow

of a long foreshadowed

unfolding prayer.

Albuquerque

10-16-08

Memorial Tribute to Paula Gunn Allen

Saturday, Oct 25, 2008

5 - 9 PM

City College of San Francisco
50 Phelan Avenue, San Francisco
Diego Rivera Theater

Please join us. Program details forthcoming.

The blog always suffers when it's back to school time. So we've been in for a month and I'm now just updating. Trying to get everything done---get back into the working mom mode, finishing dissertations, articles, short stories, getting review copies out, fly fishing (or in our case raiding Kernville for anything 50's pink) with my Sisters, has kept me busy. But I am up to my ears in ideas and complaints as well as rants. Once again, the only people paying attention to Indians arew Indians, what else is new. Palin's record on Alaska native rights? Atrocious! Of course one does not find that little tidbit in the mainstream media but only amongst Native America. And once again, I am still not surprised. It's ok to complain about Indians if you live near a casino and traffic pisses you off, or to complain about how Indians rip off the state of California, as our governor so eloquently stated when he was about to oust the previous governor. In 1992 I visited the Shakopee casino in Minnesota where I overheard a little elderly blue haired lady complain about how much the Shakopee community was making money hand over fist as she plied her quarters into the slot machine. (she really did have blue hair). So all of this gets me thinking about the theory section of my current project and the colonization of America. I should say the continuing colonization of America....


Theories of nation building and narrative, decolonization, and what Linda Tuhiwai Smith calls “the decolonizing moment” can shed light onto the particular situation of the American Indian diaspora. Research on indigenous peoples, according to Smith, has been cloaked in the language of colonization; from “discovery” to “claiming” and “naming”. Utilizing indigenous epistemology from her Maori culture as well as Michel Foucault’s theories on power and Jacques Derrida’s theories on language, Smith examines the intersections of western imperialism, knowledge, and research, and how indigenous researchers must access and utilize indigenous epistemologies in researching and writing. Smith also argues that western (European-American) research on indigenous peoples forecloses on indigenous representation and identity, that the language of colonization remains intact within academic, historical, and critical studies on indigenous nations by researchers outside of these indigenous communities. The narrative of research conducted in native communities has furthered the colonial and imperialistic narrative of western hegemony, and in order for decolonization to take place and for new narratives to emerge, researchers – native and non-native- must address the language of colonization within these narratives and examine their own complicity within constructing colonial narratives. Smith insists that indigenous researchers must not only use indigenous narratives as a mode of resistance but as a way to rebuild integrity of native communities utilizing native epistemologies. Indigenous scholars are educated in western epistemology as well as in the narrative of their communities and therefore are bicultural, as both Smith and Roseanna Henare-Salomona argue. The language of colonization is reiterated, rearticulated in western trained indigenous researchers’ narratives; we must acknowledge colonial research systems and implemement indigenous research systems and ways of knowledge into our own methodology. Henare-Salomona, a Maori clinical social worker living and working amongst the Dharru aboriginal nation in western Australia, argues that indigenous peoples must be bicultural and bicompetent in order to survive ongoing colonization. Indigenous people are not only competent in their own cultures, but as a diasporic people must be competent in the epistemology of the west as well as that of our adopted indigenous homelands. Henare-Salomona’s work as a diasporic indigenous Maori woman living amongst a different indigenous community than her own is an example of multiple indigenous epistemologies that can be applied to American Indians living far from nation and home, multiplicitous in their ways of knowing. Henare-Salomona’s work in the application of Maori metaphor to research in Maori communities living abroad is groundbreaking in the sense that she argues for community metaphor as a research method for Maori communities. Henare-Salomona developes multiple approaches to her investigate of Maori identity; like American Indians, Maoris in Aeoteoroa and abroad acknowledge their tribal identities and then their national indigenous designation (Maori). Henare Salomona’s work seeks to “highlight the possibilities for the emergence of a new way of being, one that is more suited to the next generation and their anticipated experiences in this land. The narrative will then be analysed and examined for what toanga or gifts of knowledge may then be offered for future Maori living here in Australia. At the same time, this thesis is an introduction to Maori culture in the hope to give readers a better understanding of Maori people and the cultural protocols and concepts that guide the way in which they live and exist in the world. It also reveals the way they feel about their sense of place in this new land and the connection they still have with Aotearoa.” Chadwick Allen’s Blood Narrative, an exploration of indigenous identity in contemporary American Indian and Maori writing, is a text of great impact upon my project as well. Allen investigates “the construction of indigeneity within the context of a deep and enduring settler colonization…writers and activists who self-identify as American Indian or New Zealand Maori to mark their identities as persistently distinctive from those of dominant European–descended settlers and as irrevocably rooted in the particular lands these writers, activists, and community leaders call home.”What makes indigenous cultures distinctive? How has the demarcation of identity categories been addressed by indigenous peoples as colonized by European powers? Allen argues, N. Scott Momaday’s “genetic memory” trope, that blood/land/memory is "a complex of interrelated tropes and emblematic figures that were developed by American Indian and New Zealand Maori writers and activists to counter and, potentially to subvert . . . dominating discourses" (220) of First World nations. "Blood" represents "an enduring indigenous identity" (220); and "Memory," "a specific indigenous history" (218) or "narratives of connection to specific lands" (220). The blood/land/memory complex trope of native writers becomes even more provocative in an American Indian setting of dispersal in Indian lands of other nations.

So when I say Rick Nelson was right, I'm thinking of his song Garden Party: "...you can't please everyone, so you've got to please yourself..." We just got a review of Coyote Speaks from the School Library Journal, which can be a blessing or curse in the publishing world in which we operate. Apparently, to some reviewers (and hiring committees) one cannot be an academic and a poet, nor can one be a Native American and a scholar at the same time. My co-author (and evil twin brother) is referred to as "academic" and "scholar" and "Professor Berk" while I am "Native American poet", "tribal member", and "Ms. Dunn". And all I do is think about blood-land-memory complex and survivance and decolonizing frameworks all day. Ari, however, says that sometimes being an "academic" and a "scholar" isn't always the best classification to be assigned. Just like Henry Kissinger is "Dr. Kissinger" and Jean Kirkpatrick isn't "Dr. Kirkpatrick". There is still a class ceiling in this world and it's still smeared by the blood of my ancestors.

It has been a wonderful summer. I spent a week with the Creek Divas at this year's playwrights' retreat with Native Voices at the Autry. It was my third retreat, first as an actor, since I was workshopping two of my plays in the previous retreats. I had the honor of working with my friend Joy Harjo on her new one-woman show Wings of Night Sky, Wings of Morning Light as well as on Creek playwright Julie Pearson-Little Thunder's The Girl Who Was Captured By Ghosts. I'm also really excited to announce that my play The Frybread Queen will be presented as a staged reading at the Wells Fargo Theatre at the Autry National Center in Griffith Park on November 3rd.

My new poetry book, Echo Location, will be published by the end of the year and we are in editing stages. Griselda Suarez is editing and some of you may know her work from Through the Eye of the Deer. Griselda is on faculty in Chicano-Latino Studies at Cal State Long Beach and is working on several of her own manuscripts, including the excellent The Mysteries of the Maginficent Rosario Santos. Gris and I have known each other since working together at Upward Bound at Cal Ploy Pomona where she was a lead tutor and resident advisor for summer programs. She later went on to become the assistant director for Educational Talent Search for AASE in San Francisco where she earned her MFA in creative writing and returned to Southern California to teach at Idylwild Summer Arts and CSULB. We both have had similar career tracks, being academics as well as dedicated to educational opportunity and TRIO programs.

We will also be developing the literary journal Angelena in the coming year, both online and in print. Angelena is a journal devoted to creative and critical works by women writers of color in Los Angeles, "from the freeway to the river." Our inaugural edition will feature Georgiana Valoyce-Sanchez, the Chumash/Tohono O'odham poet; African-American playwright Calysta Watson; Tongva scholar and artist Cindi Alvitre, the Kickapoo-Creek diva herself, Arigon Starr (who many people don't know is an incredible artists as well as musican/ playwright/ singer/songwriter, etc. etc...) among other L.A. based poets. The sense of a poetry community in Los Angeles is very limited and Gris and I are working toward filling the void and using the journal as a way to build community and use art as activism here in this city. We are looking forward to getting Angelena out by Spring 2009, so look for coming updates on this issue. Paula Gunn Allen had agreed to write the editorial for the inaugural issue but due to her illness was unable to do so. We honor her memory by continuing with the first issue.

Sadly, the final edition of the Endicott Journal of Mythic Arts will be forthcoming in the fall. Terri Windling and Midori Snyder have worked so hard over the years to keep this online journal up and running and will close the journal in order to concentrate on their own work but will keep the mythic arts alive in other venues. I will have a new piece in the final journal, "Spider Woman". Terri and Midori published several of my Deer Woman articles and most of my poetry published in the last few years has been through Endicott.

And, in closing, I am very pleased to announce that my first children's book, coauthored with my evil twin brother Dr. Ari Berk, will be published at the end of the month by Abrams. Coyote Speaks contains original poetry and stories by me as well as re-tellings of traditional stories by both of us from across Indian Country. Some of Ari's wonderful artwork is in the book as well as his dedication to preserving storytelling traditions of Native America. Also included is a final chapter on storytelling in Los Angeles, since both Ari and I are from this city alot of people love to hate. Ari also has some exciting projects forthcoming and I hope to be able to announce them soon (hint, hint).

I'm also pleased to announce that we are working on a new website for both myself and Mother Bear Media. Karen Strom, who has by sheer determination and will brought so many native writers to the web, has been my webmistress for the past eight years and I thank her so much for her patience with me and my lack of mad computer skills to get my site up. Robert Silent Thunder will take over from her and will struggle to comprehend the madness as we work on getting new sites developed and published this fall.

More sooner than later, hopefully!

Endicott Journal of Mythic Arts final issue now online:
http://www.endicott-studio.com/jMA08Farewell/index.html

Coyote Speaks is now available through the usual suspects...published August 20th.

Labels: Coyote Speaks, literature, poetry

Spider Woman

Here

in your house

amongst the

pretty lace

china cup,
silk scarves

and books lining the shelves,

I take comfort

in you having

slept here,

thought new worlds

here,

breathed fire here,

made your enemies

drink their own blood,

watched the sun rise,

the sound of water

slowly spreading

its fingers in loving

prayer.

Your beautiful

linens, wallpapered

borders hand-drawn,

woven in color and content,

all in one.

I’m not long for

this world,

you said in

a dream

of another time,

space, life, lace,

feathered light and air,

yet there you sat, telling

me it was time.

Then you were gone.

Five hundred miles later,

through old haze,

children crying,

gnarled trunks

and congested airways,

I lay here, looking for you.

A last song of days

looms sweetly

amongst the tangled web

you so carefully spun from

your body,

fingers dancing, spinning,

until time stood still.

I lay here, dreaming your voice,

watching light and air

fall from spinarets and

thousand faceted eyes

of sky blown clouds.

Last night,

frogs sang, calling rain home.

The sky opened up,

dreaming the dark rimmed

edge of night along

a rain basted sky,

clouds seamless,

the only thing missing

was you.

© 2008 Carolyn Dunn

Labels: myth, poetry

For those who have sent messages of condolences on the passing of my mentor, teacher, and dear friend Paula Gunn Allen, mvto. Paula was a great influence not only to me but to many others. She was a pioneer in the field of American Indian literary studies and in connecting the dots between American Indian matrilineal, matrifocal gynocratic societies and western feminism. As a poet and novelist, she was a strong influence. I was honored to sing at her funeral and thank her children, Lauralee Brown and Sulieman Russell Allen, for asking me to participate and allowing me to be with them during that time.

A memorial service for Paula is being planned for the third week 0f July in the Bay Area. For more information, please see www.paulagunnallen.net. There is a guest book to sign and more info about Paula and her work.


Paula's Corn Dance

ne hi pah
ho pe le tok
hey ya

cha ha ti keya
cha ha ti keya

I plant this seed for you,
so it will grow,
so it will grow.

My cousin, Janet Colson, is the Director of the Creole Studies Center at Northwestern Louisiana State University and is doing excellent work on the preservation of Creole identity --- language, religion, culture--- and they are sponsoring this conference in Chicago, which is part of the Creole Diaspora. Speakers include Dr. Andrew Jolivette of San Francisco State University who does work on intersections of race and identity in Creole (French, Spanish, African, American Indian) culture.

I posed this information on my myspace site and got great response from folks who were just confused or wondering about the difference between Cajun and Creole culture. I shall do my best to explain these sometimes subtle, sometimes not subtle, differences.

The term Creole comes from the Spanish "griol" which means native born. There were two types of Creoles in Louisiana during this time, the white Creoles, those native born of French or Spanish origin. There were also Creoles of color, "Les gens de coleur libre", who were born in Louisiana of mixed white French (or sometimes Spanish), African, and American Indian - often Choctaw or other Muskogean speaking tribes--- who were and are indigenous to the area. Now those with European only ancestry were considered white of European ancestry - French or Spanish- very different than the white Cajuns who inhabited and still inhabit Louisiana.

Cajuns are the descendants of early French immigrants to Nova Scotia, who were kicked out of Nova Scotia by the English speaking majority. These folks traveled down the Mississippi River into northwestern Louisiana and settled in the bayou country there. Cajun French and French ancestry are different. Many folks will tell you that there really was no intermarrying on child bearing between Cajuns and Creoles. In fact, there are many misconceptions of this very early racial mixing unique to Louisiana. My mother's maternal grandmother was a Cajun born in Opelousas who married a Creole man (French/African/Choctaw/Biloxi) from Marksville. Let me be clear: my great-grandfather wasn't Cajun; in fact his father was from France. My great-grandmother's family had been in Louisiana as far back the early 1700's after migrating from Nova Scotia. She was a Cajun; he Creole.

So these groups share common cultural histories, but generally we are told that Cajuns and Creoles of color did not mix well. There are many, many oral traditions that tell us differently, that these groups did indeed mix very well.

White Creoles took the name Creole to denote who was born in the so-called "New World" and who was not. They also took the name and it came to connote only white or European-American born folks. Thee Creole Heritage Center at Northwestern State Louisiana University (www.nsula.edu), under the direction of my cousine, Janet Ravare Colson, seeks to assert the historical and cultural presence of Creoles of color in Louisiana and the Creole diaspora, including California, Texas, and Illinois, among where the largest concetration of Creoles outisde of Louisiana generally reside.

To us, Louisiana is more than just a state; it is the "Old Country" the place from where we were born, and where we came from. Our indigenous roots tie us to that land, our African roots tie us to the history and culture of slavery and freedom; our French (or Spanish) roots connect us to the history, colonization and culture of settlement of Louisiana by the French and Spanish. So many generations from European colonization have passed for many Creoles that the "old country" is just that and we feel no cultural connection to these places. For us, Louisiana will always be "home", the place from where we emerged.

See Dr. Andrew Jolivette's work on Creole and American Indian familial connections in his books, Louisiana Creoles: Cultural Recovery and Mixed-Race Native American Identity, and his essay in the book he edited, Cultural Representation in Native America; Sybil Kein's Creole: The History and Legacy of Louisiana's Free People of Color, among many excellent texts examining the culture and traditions of Creole peoples. For Cajun biographies, with some Creole resources, look at Barry Jean Ancelet's Cajun and Creole Folktales: The French Oral Traditions of South Louisiana, and Cajun Country, co-edited by Professor Ancelet with Glen Pitre and Lynwood Montell.

__________________________________________________

National Creole Conference on Language & Culture

Call for Proposals for the Chicago Creole Heritage Conference & Convention scheduled for July 31 – August 2, 2008 are now available online. Preliminary information about this conference has been posted at :

http://www.nsula.edu/creole/chicago/index.htm

This site will be updated as additional information is finalized.

The first national conference to explore "Documenting Creole Language and Culture" has been set for July 31-August 2, 2008 in the Chicago area. The aim of the conference is to bring together scholars and members of the general public from throughout the U.S. and beyond to share their research findings and family histories. This project is a collaborative endeavor between Northwestern Louisiana State University and and local Mid West representatives.

Call for Papers/Presentations

Call for Proposals
(Revised 11/15/07)

"Documenting Creole Language and Culture"
Conference Dates: July 31-August 2, 2008
Location: Pheasant Run Resort, St. Charles, Illinois (just outside of Chicago)

Although language is an essential part of everyday life, few of us think about how vital human speech is to the transmission of thoughts and ideas. Studies have shown the strong link between language and culture; language determines how its native speakers view the world. Language allows us to share ideas, teach children about their heritage, and gives us a way to disseminate our cultural ideals. Since language remains such a fundamental part of culture, the theme for the 2008 Creole Heritage Conference is "Documenting Creole Language and Culture."

The Creole Heritage Conference strives to bring together Creole cultural constituents and researchers to share knowledge within a relaxed setting. This unique event draws participants from across the country who have a desire to preserve and promote Creole culture. The Creole Heritage Conference seeks presentation proposals from academics, professional and community researchers who have undertaken studies in any area that relates language to a cultural component. This conference will combine a substantial scholarly component with community-oriented activities (family history exhibits, genealogy workshops, and city tours.)

In preparation for the scholarly component of the conference, we are issuing this call for papers on any topic relating to Creole people, culture, and language. While the primary focus of the conference is on the Creole people and culture of Louisiana and the Gulf Coast, we also welcome contributions that examine the broader context of Creole societies to which Louisiana belongs. In addition to individual papers, we encourage submission of proposals for panels consisting of three or four papers organized around a coherent theme and that include a panel chair. The organizers reserve the right to make changes in the overall configuration of panels.

Some topics of interest may include but are not restricted to: ·
Food names and the Creole culture
Place names in the natural environment
Music as a way of language transmission
Passing language on to the next generation of Creole children
Oral history documentation of Creole elders
Origins of Creole languages and dialects
Language in literature
Terminology of traditional occupations
Language and Community
Origins of specialized terms for material culture
Geographic analysis of Creole languages
Endangered language research methods
Linguistic studies of Creole French

Please note that all presentations will be limited to 20 minutes with 10 minutes for questions and answers. Presenters are required to pay the conference registration fee and are welcome to become Creole Heritage Center Members.

Deadline for submission of abstracts:
January 15, 2008 Notification of Acceptance: February 15, 2008

Preferred Form of Submission: Send your abstract (150 words or less) as an email attachment in Word format to colsonj@nsula.edu. Within the body of the email message (but not on the attachment page containing the abstract), please provide the title of your submission as well as your name, institutional affiliation (if any), and full contact information, including mailing address, telephone and fax numbers, and email address.

Alternative form of submission: Send a hard copy of your abstract (150 words or less) to Janet Colson, Louisiana Creole Heritage Center, Northwestern State University, NSU Box 5675, Natchitoches, LA 71497. On a separate sheet of paper from your abstract, please provide the title of your submission as well as your name, institutional affiliation (if any), and full contact information, including mailing address, telephone and fax numbers, and email address.

winter count

Deepened octaves of winter,
three different words for
snow
and we can't seem
to fathom even one.
Bringing us to our
knees, the road ends
here, in a mist of sky,
water, and air
greeting earth in
a kiss of white and
the end of time.
Drifts rise
smoke of prayers
ascending upon a
breath of a distant
light, long ago laden
with the end of beauty.
How can we move
'if we are frozen
in a fear of change, of death,
of endings and beginnings
that are one in the same?
Can this frozen starlight,
glittering starry-eyed
in the darkness and silence
of night,
remain just what
breathing was meant to be---
beginning, ending, ending,
beginning---
and the mercy of an eternal
night
brings the breathing
to prayers looking
skyward
to heaven as we wish
the road would lead
us home.