Tumgik
#indigenous poetry
gennsoup · 1 month
Text
Sun makes the day new. Tiny green plants emerge from earth. Birds are singing the sky into place. There is nowhere else I want to be but here. I lean into the rhythm of your heart to see where it will take us.
Joy Harjo, For Keeps
60 notes · View notes
slayingholofernes · 1 year
Text
Tumblr media
“My House is the Red Earth” from Secrets from the Center of the World by Joy Harjo, 1989
716 notes · View notes
ronycore · 1 month
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
EXCERPTS OF FROM TURTLE ISLAND TO GAZA (2019)
BY DAVID GROULX
READ FULL COPY HERE
27 notes · View notes
takataapui · 3 months
Text
A poem about how time is a circle, echoing down through the generations. And also colonisation and psychosis, I suppose.
You, my tūpuna A hundred years after the empire came. Forced into a school, Forced to speak the Queen's English. You didn't know how you didn't kōrero their reo so you stayed quiet to avoid punishment. Yet punish you they did for disobedience for not listening for silence. Me, your moko, Two hundred fifty years After the empire came. Forced into a school, Forced to be a good student. I had a split from reality. Stayed quiet to avoid killing everyone as the delusion said speaking would do Yet they still punished me for disobedience for not listening for silence. A hundred fifty years between us Yet I feel the echo of you in me A hundred fifty years between us Yet the colonisation lives on A hundred fifty years between us Yet we are a pool of water reflecting each other They see our silence as breaking their rules, I see it as survival.
24 notes · View notes
mudaship39 · 1 year
Text
Info about me and my WIPS art and projects as a as a disabled and queer/trans native of color writer artist and creator
Native intro for social media.
Hello.
My Indigenous Pasifika preferred name is No’eau Aitonui Hoata/Heiani Mareva Hoata
If you are Indigenous or Indigenous Pasifika please refer to me by that name
My Vietnamese Kinh name is Ngoc Hien/Xuan Dinh Nguyen
If you are a non native person of color please refer to me by that name
My English/French name is Christian/Jeanne Nguyen
If you are a non native white person you can only refer to me by this name.
Im a Southeast Asian Vietnamese or Kinh Indigenous, European French, East Asian Chinese Hoa, & Polynesian Tahitian Indigenous Pasifika. I’m an Asian Native Pasifika.
I’m a disabled native of color. I’m autistic, neurodivergent, chronically ill spoonie disabled, & mentally ill disabled.
Im a disabled gamer/streamer. My Playstation tag is warpdriveplanet39. My Xbox tag is Mudaship39. Twitch is mudaship39. I play and stream PS3, PS4, & PS5 games. I play and stream Xbox 360, Xbox One games. I plan to play Xbox Series X games in the future.
I’m a QTIPOC or queer and trans Indigenous person of color. Nonbinary bigender or genderfluid pansexual or omnisexual. Polyam or polyamorous. Maohi/raerae in the middle indigenous third gender. Any and all pronouns. Including neopronouns and indigenous third gender pronons. He/him. She/her. They/them. Xer/xers. Native third gender neutral oña.
Im a writer, creator, & artist. Im an author, comic book writer, screenwriter, spoken word poet, & songwriter.
I’m a Indigenous language keeper, culture keeper, & storykeeper.
I write about racial, sex, cultural identity, sexual orientation, & gender identity in music and poetry.
I write about Black, poc, Indigenous, disabled, and or lgbt characters in disabled, bipoc, and qtipoc futurism.
Im the writer and creator of the precontact and post land back Bipoc and qtipoc futurism project. It’s a hybrid science fiction cyberpunk and magical high fantasy comic books and graphic novels series Chronicles of War.
Basic info is the pinned post of my tumblr. More information is on a google doc on my google drive.
Im the performing artist spoken word poet of the spoken word poetry book Heart of Fire Dragon, Soul of Flame Pheonix, & Sea Fairy Ocean Blood that is about being a disabled native, an Asian Native, a displaced disconnected diaspora, & QTIPOC.
The cut and censored version of it is linked in the pinned tweet on my twitter mudaship39. Uncut and uncensored version is on a google doc on my google drive.
If anyone wants to pay me for the poetry book and or the futurism project as a disabled writer, artist, and creator. Be sure to dm or pm me. There is a specific way to do so as a disabled writer artist and creator.
Be sure to check out my carrd in my bio. It has info on how to contact me for my projects. Info on how to pay me for my art. Info on my other social media accounts if mutuals want to follow me on other social media.
Do you want to read a spoken word poetry anthology book I wrote as an Asian native Pasifika artist who’s a songwriter and spoken word poet? Its called Heart of Fire Dragon Soul of Flame Phoenix and Sea Fairy Ocean Blood. It’s about being a disabled native (autistic, neurodivergent, chronically ill, & mentally ill disabled), a displaced disconnected state side diaspora, being an Asian Native (as a Vietnamese Kinh, French, Chinese Hoa, & Polynesian Tahitian Indigenous Pasifika person of color), & about being a QTIPOC (queer and trans third gender Indigenous person of color). I have been working on it for a long time as a storykeeper, language keeper, and culture keeper. It includes a personal foreword and personal afterword to Indigenous people specifically Polynesian, Micronesian, and Melanesian audiences. The cut and censored version of it is linked in my pinned tweet of my Twitter mudaship39 if you are interested in reading something like this. The uncut and uncensored version of it is on a google doc on my google drive. Need email for google doc invite link. Let me know which version you prefer to read if you're interested in reading something like this. Be sure to like and reblog my pinned post to boost my art to other native of color mutuals.
For the cut and censored version. Go to the pinned tweet. Like and retweet the pined tweet. This is so it gets out to your followers. Use any Indigenous and poc hashtags if you know any. This is so it gets out to others in the poc community and Indigenous community especially those indigenous to turtle island or Indigenous to Pasifika Oceania or Moana. Its also so I can find poc or Indigenous producers and publishers to actually make it into a spoken word poetry book. For the uncut and uncensored version post comments into the google doc itself and leave a review at the end. Let me know if you know anyone else interested in reading something like this. Let me know if know any poc and Indigenous artists especially indigenous to turtle island or Indigenous to Pasifika Oceania or Moana who are willing to draw art for this poetry book.
Im also a writer and creator who writes bipoc, disabled, and qtipoc futurism. I write magical high fantasy and science fiction books, comics, and graphic novels. My bipoc, disabled, and qtipoc futurism project called Chronicles of War. It is a cyberpunk science fiction and magical high fantasy hybrid comic book or graphic novel series. It is precontact and post land back. That is about several disabled, bipoc (or Black Indigenous and or person of color) characters, and qtipoc (or queer and trans indigenous people of color) main characters. One is a Asian pasifika/Afro latine native demigod metahuman and alien hybrid superhuman superhero in a cyberpunk world in the near and far future. The other is an Afro Asian native coded magical human with fae elvish, hobgoblin goblinoid, & giant kin ancestry who’s a spellcaster, swordfighter, and gunslinger adventurer in a magical high fantasy world. Both of them are qtipoc disabled and bipoc. There are other bipoc and qtipoc main characters in other worlds pre contact and post land back. Such as a Sami Indigenous and European Scandinavian coded third gender god/goddess Jotunn Loki. Such as a third gender Afro Indigenous Chickasaw Native Freedman were lion and were leopard hybrid character and her friend a Afro Latine South American Native were jaguar and were cheetah werecat hybrid character. Both of them living in a town of Afro Indigenous Freedman and hybrid humanoid communities. Such as a Central and South American summoners of kaiju or titans based on Nahuatl Quechua and Maya Indigenous mythology. Such as a female Asian and Asian Native half human half firebird and lighting bird monk fighter. Such as a Indigenous Pasifika sea pirate. It has Black, Native, poc, queer, trans, & disabled representation. It has Indigenous and indigenous pasifika representation too actually. If that’s something you are into. Need email for google doc invite link also if you are also into this.
If anyone wants to pay me for the poetry book and or the futurism project as a disabled writer artist and creator. Be sure to dm or pm me. There is a specific way to do so as a disabled writer artist and creator.
Cover art of the Spoken Word Poetry Book: Heart of Fire Dragon Soul of Flame Phoenix and Sea Fairy Ocean Blood:
Tumblr media
Upcoming project once i find cast crew and a studio and network to green light it: Modern take movie about Medusa and her blind lesbian love interest. With more diverse characters since modern take with disabled, queer trans, and bipoc representation like my other wips and projects.
Polynesian Micronesian and Melanesian sports anime or cartoon. Each season being about different Pasifika sport. Volleyball football ruby rowing or canoeing sailing. Each season with different main characters. Characters from past seasons returning in cameos. Gay volleyball with a vahine femme main character about a pasifika girl in varsity hs volleyball. Hawaiian or Tahitian and her partner is Tongan or Samoan.
47 notes · View notes
bones-ivy-breath · 1 year
Text
Tumblr media
Abecedarian Requiring Further Examination of Anglikan Seraphym Subjugation of a Wild Indian Rezervation by Natalie Diaz
41 notes · View notes
laikacore · 5 months
Text
i finally found the thing i've been looking for
searching for, for years
i finally found it on an island out east
and there it tasted just as i'd imagined it would
rich chocolate, delicious and sweet
where i couldn't smell the difference in the air
but i could feel it on my skin
where i found myself in that rich red dirt
where it fades to soft amber sand
where it fades to an endless horizon of steely blue
and when i found it again here
at home, in the gray world
of tall glass buildings and honking cars
and the gasoline i can smell
it doesn't quite taste the same here, no
synthetic sugar, not quite right
not like it did on that island out east
with the rolling hills and the deep green trees
and the goats and the cows and the potato fields
ah, that's home, that's where i'm from
if not me then my family
and my family's family
l'nuk, on the mi'kma'ki
prince edward island/epekwitk by laika wallace
8 notes · View notes
manwalksintobar · 10 months
Text
Remember  // Joy Harjo
Remember the sky that you were born under, know each of the star’s stories. Remember the moon, know who she is. Remember the sun’s birth at dawn, that is the strongest point of time. Remember sundown and the giving away to night. Remember your birth, how your mother struggled to give you form and breath. You are evidence of her life, and her mother’s, and hers. Remember your father. He is your life, also. Remember the earth whose skin you are: red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth brown earth, we are earth. Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them, listen to them. They are alive poems. Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the origin of this universe. Remember you are all people and all people are you. Remember you are this universe and this universe is you. Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you. Remember language comes from this. Remember the dance language is, that life is. Remember.
14 notes · View notes
the-verses-stained · 3 months
Text
Abecedarian Requiring Further Examination of Anglikan Seraphym Subjugation of a Wild Indian Rezervation
Tumblr media
Natalie Diaz, “Abecedarian Requiring Further Examination of Anglikan Seraphym Subjugation of a Wild Indian Rezervation” from When My Brother Was an Aztec
3 notes · View notes
Text
Tumblr media
14 notes · View notes
washontaes · 2 months
Text
of the land
heart-shaped face passed down across generations; my momma, from the land of coal and sandstone my pops, from the land of cedar and flint my body, carved out by both
2 notes · View notes
gennsoup · 1 year
Text
you make me wanna slow dance under moonlight and snowflakes hand tangled in your hair led down into heartbreak and hope
Tenille K. Campbell, I want to taste your language
82 notes · View notes
slayingholofernes · 1 year
Text
Tumblr media
Blue Corn Woman by Amber McCrary, a Diné poet and zinester.
289 notes · View notes
spaceysoupy · 1 year
Text
Sweetbitter
Tumblr media
“We once had burning fingertips on soft mornings.
Gloves of ice cold water to protect from the fire.
It hurt anyway. We didn’t care.
We are creating, you whispered, we are creation.
Honey dripping over open wounds, we relished the sting and our time together. They stung just the same.
Hands held together, stuck together, for a time that ended far too soon.
A little bit of sweetness for the bitter soon to come.”
Full image description below
[image ID: A square image of a drawing of a hand facing palm side down outlined in golden yellow on a cream yellow background. The hand is covered in a golden orange honey color and has multiple pale pinkish red scratches and sores. Text on the image reads "We once had burning fingertips on soft mornings. Gloves of ice cold water to protect from the fire. It hurt anyway. We didn't care. We are creating, you whispered, we are creation. Honey dripping over open wounds, we relished the sting and our time together. They stung just the same. Hands held together, stuck together, for a time that ended far too soon. A little bit of sweetness for the bitter soon to come." End text. Copyright “Alitsanosga Nebulae @spaceysoupy” pronounced Ah Lee Zah No-Shh Gah end image description]
26 notes · View notes
piizunn · 1 year
Text
mihkokwaniy
by joshua whitehead
mihkokwaniy
my kokum has many names:
the indian woman
the whitehead lady
a saskatoon female
but my favourite is:
the beauty queen;
they never meant to call her beautiful
what they meant by beauty was:
cheapdirtybrownprostitutedrugaddictalcoholicfirewaterslut
when they write: “an indian about 35 years old
naked from the waist down
died from asphyxiation
at the queen’s hotel
effects of alcohol
&sedatives”
they don’t mean beauty as in:
mino iskwēw
or: “pleasing the sense or mind aesthetically;
of a very high standard; excellent”
what they mean is
she is beautiful for a squaw in ‘62
she pleases the body
of white men who burn in the loins
for the teal-shade of a browning bruise;
when i type into google
“how to say beautiful in cree”
i get: shaoulle
& when i type that into google i get:
“brutal murder-sex assault case”
seeRE:rinelleharpercindygladuetinafontaine
that’s my grandmother:
she is a mino iskwēw
the beauty queen
a woman with a name:
rose whitehead
&shediedbecauseofit
i read somewhere that saskatchewan
is an economic machine
for producing rape—
seed&honey
& in tisdale you can buy a mug that says:
the land of rape and honey
that’s where my kokum is buried
& her grave is a modest little place
where rabbits visit & sometimes chew
where little dandelions bloom
grant wishes to the wind
to her children who are scattered
across the plains of kanata
looking for a quick fix
& for anger to heal
or at least amend
like it does for a judge
who gifts a man six years
for the death of three women;
i think of my nôhtâwiy
her son who lost his name to a polish man
& felt the sting of day schools
even if priests beat & made honey
with their fists smooshed
into the sweet rot of little brown boys
who liked hockey & lived in suburbs
with whites who made them wait
in the freezing cold
& broke their noses on the ice—
but you’re still not ready to apologize
for that just white yet
my kokum has made many headlines:
“woman found strangled”
being the most consistent
a fifty word article that calls for sympathy
not for the “strangulation death
of the whitehead woman”
but for the man:
steven kozaruk of esterhazy
who “was suffering from the effects
of alcohol and sleeping pills”
even with a “seven-man jury”
& “thirteen witnesses,” lives—
his whiteness is his weakness
(even if its biceps can crack a brown neck like a wishbone)
and that weakness is his innocence;
the life of my kokum is worth:
six years & fifty words;
all these things overlap
interweave, interlay, interplay, interact
penes
|inter|intra|
|probo|capio|vita|
terra|corona|letum|nullius
tansimaslow
my kokum is famous
a real holly golightly
i bet she even eats
fried bologna sandwiches
at tiffanys
aint that right gran?
when i visit your grave
in saskatoon
i see the face of kozaruk
on the prairie scene
fatteninginsuburbia
& here you are
with a rag-tag little monument
made of sticks & leaves
stems from jackrabbits
that seem to visit often
a little blue ribbon
god knows from who
& a sad little brown boy
with a million questions like:
how are you doing?
do you hate klik too?
what would life have been like
if you had lived beyond thirtyfive?
would i be alive?
would the cancers in my dad
not have crept & lived
spelled doom on his skin?
would i be able to speak cree
without having to google translate
this for you?
would you make me cookies
& teach me how to sew back on the limbs
to my plush rabbit floppy ears?
would you call me “m’boy?”
& take me to sundances
powwows, bingo nights too?
would you make sure i feed the rez dogs
when they all come around?
would you make me a jingle dress
cause i want to be a pretty dancer like you—
would you teach me what it means to be two-spirit
tell me i can be a beautiful brown boy in love?
make me say niizh manitoag—feel the power on the tongue?
would you teach me to knead bannock
make life from lard—
a real ratio for reckoning?
hi kokum?
can i call you on the phone?
i promise not to call collect
i just want to hear your voice
tell you i learned what it means
to say i love you
& feel the whole of cree
coalescing in my breath:
kisâkihitin; my god, kisâkihitin
hey gran?
can i ask you something quick?
are you okay up there in godknowswhere?
do you see what we’ve all done?
my dad says these things all happen for a reason
that i wouldn’t be here if they didn’t
hey gran?
i’m sorry—
you know that right?
did you have to die for me to be alive?
heygranheygranheygranheygran
i’ll let you be
& stop being sick’ning
i bet you’re busy
cooking macaroniandtomatosoup
for twelve hundred missing & murdered women,
girls & two-spirit folk
it’s just, am i supposed to hate him, gran?
tell him that with one death
he ruined the lives of an entire family?
i want to tell him that the life of a person
is an archive of memory
& when you he strangled the life out of you
in a queens hotel shoddy little bed
the last gasping breath you exhaled
held in it little particles
fragments of time:
a bay leaf boiling in tomato sauce;
a flake of tuna that a
cat named randy
licked&licked&licked;
the soft cry of a baby boy
plummeting into day;
the smell of sweet grass smudging
monsters from our bedrooms;
tell him: when you kill a memory
you snuff out metaphor
turn off the light in a home;
you destroy a world where children
are nursing still&still;
—& aint that the hardest truth?
to be honest
i’m no aeneas
no marvellous country house poem
no faeryland, no golden world
no chimeric homeric epic
i’m just a little brown boy
queered by his colour
writing for a kokum he’s never met;
but i promise you:
these spaces can transform
an injun into a warrior
who can claw, scrape, fight
who can write on a piece of paper
sign a name instead of an ‘X’
that says, “this is my kokum
& her name is Rose Whitehead;
and she is
beauty queen extraordinaire.”
I dedicate this poem to all missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, and two-spirit peoples; for their families, friends, loved ones, and kin.  We are a collective trauma that demands to be examined, reconciled, resolved, and healed.
Today we survive; tomorrow we resist.
12 notes · View notes
arkcana · 1 year
Text
Tumblr media
the maiden dances down the mountainside burning, painting her home behold! she who is awake, who is restored from her dormant slumber
earth-eating woman (nov. 2022)
19 notes · View notes