Novels

"Certain artists of our time, casting a serious look upon what surrounds them, devote themselves to painting wretchedness, the abjectness of poverty, Lazarus's dung-heap. This may belong to the domain of art and philosophy; but when they paint poverty so hideous and degraded, sometimes so vicious and criminal, do they attain their end, and is the effect wholesome, as they would have it."
(George Sand, The Author to the Reader (I.), The Hunted Pool, translated by Frank Hunter Potter)

The question of content dogs the ethical writer aware that words have power and stories shape reality. There are ethics in storytelling, seasons that define when each story can be told, and societies responsible for certain knowledge. Everything is not everyone's domain.

I was raised with this knowledge: it is a shield I walk behind. I was also raised under the influence (colonialism, alcoholism, mental illness and domestic violence). When I encountered the work of radical women of color feminists I felt like I was given breath and in that breath, life. Audre's writings in Sister Outsider and Dorothy's work in Skin pushed me to confront, publicly, what I was ashamed of, in myself and in my family. I've come to understand that life is not an either or, but a balance between each point on the line that defines what seems extreme to some and normal to others.

"When it comes to wars you can never tell who is going to lose their life."
(José Saramago, The History of the Siege of Lisbon)

Welch's Fools Crow, Beckett's Molloy, Gertrude's Three Lives each speak eloquently to and about poverty, both hideous and degraded, but their purpose is neither vicious or criminal. Their end is not to exploit. They do not raise themselves above the world of their work. They take their place within and set a place for you to join them.

During the siege of Leningrad 750,000 people starved in 900 days. When Anna Reid began her archival project many of the younger generation had a sterile notion of the siege and felt it represented the strength of the people and their survival. They were aware of what they had been told: people came together and made it through, alive, mostly. We should honor their fortitude and forget the rest. The survivors themselves knew more. The siege was a "cold, cruel, time when people lost their personalities, relationships broke down, people broke down, [and] turned into beasts."

"There was nobody who escaped death completely."

"Your world becomes smaller and smaller: the apartment, water source and food shop."

These survivors wanted Reid to comprehend and reveal the scope of the damage and the nastiness of that moment. They wanted her to tell their story so that we could not forget it.

"What determined whether someone lived and died?"

After the siege the survivors knew: " A great work had ended, impossible deeds had been done. We all felt that. . . But we also felt confusion. How should we live now?" (N.B.: the images in this link are formidable and dreadful.)

This question informs my work inside and outside of the archives, among the stories I am a part of, and the stories my stories are related to. Sometimes our worlds feel small: the apartment, water source and food. And sometimes we must remember to step outside of what we know and what we are afraid is true and write.

"Except that it still has not been established whether it is the novel that prevents the man from forgetting himself or the impossibility of forgetfulness that makes him write novels."
(José Saramago, The History of the Siege of Lisbon)

Novels

URBAN NIZHÓNÍ is my response to D'Arcy McNikle's novel WIND FROM AN ENEMY SKY, Linda Hogan's poem Those Who Thunder, and Gertrude Stein's WARS I HAVE SEEN.

Epigraph:
"A man by himself was nothing, a shout in the wind. But men together, each acting for each other and as one—even a strong wind from an enemy sky had to respect their power."

Part One:
Those Who Thunder

The novel opens to a moment when worlds collide and the people must learn a new language. They must translate between peoples and desires. War: the White Man wants them (Arikara, Mandan, Hidatsa) to make their heads one (becoming Indians, then becoming Americans). The people desire and are responsible to remain Arikara, Mandan and Hidatsa. Part one introduces "those who thunder" through a process of immersion, revealing the way stories walk among us. Like Dorothy Allison's A River of Names the novel is season of stories you step into. You let it wash over you, not attempting to still bits, hoping to identify one drop of water from another.

Indians are not a naked running wild. We live a disciplined life. Reciprocity shapes every relation. War involves a question of enemies. The novel defines these questions of war and warriors. There are no chapter breaks, just a season of stories, one following the other. Illustrating McNikle's point that man alone was nothing. The work assumes and requires the reader develop fluency, through immersion in the oral tradition. Those Who Thunder's narrative cycle and language considers the nature of warriors, war and power, illustrating the role warrior societies have in maintaining order—social and military, among relations and enemies. The novel turns over a stone of truth: once we had each other, that was a lot to have, and that was a lot to lose.

Those Who Thunder refuse to make their heads one and refuse hate. They reveal the way stories provide direction and power through cycles, repetitions, epics and continuity. Part One begins: "The season is here and stories are evenings, one following the other." The first story framing the season, and the entire novel is of the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851. Alfred, one of the novel's two storytellers begins: "Wah. Now I will tell you about the white man's Dream that we make our heads one."

A season of stories: Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851; NIKIL©; Four Bears the Mandan; Karl Bodmer; Language Is Life; Miss Navajo Nation; The Scalped Man; Mato Tope; Francis A. Chardon; Not Afraid of the Enemy; The Arikara Bear Medicine Men; Arikara Ledger Artists; the Navajo Delegation of 1874; Isaac Many Goats; L. Frank; Speaking from the Earth, We Are Gathering Power; Two Stans; Green Bible; waaRUxtií'u'; Urban Nizhóní; Thomas Short Bull; the Arikara Crazy Dog Society.

Understanding requires you place yourself within their world. Warriors and artists are not like other people. Men together create an immersion. Some of the men promised are women.

Men alone are people who refuse relations. Men together realize that sorrow takes its place in the company of words in the open field of silence. The health of the nation requires every part to complete the whole. Destruction, through hate and extermination, is the wind from an enemy sky threatening us all. The Urban Nizhóní are goats. Power, they possess their own, transforming the artifacts of consumer capitalism into the compost of Armageddon. Their powers of digestion are spiritual, manifest in the real. This is not a metaphor. They are real goats eating real metal and wood, and shitting real goat shit. Isaac Many Goats is their leader.

Part Two:
Putting The Sun Back Into the Sky

The novel continues with the artists (warriors) who have come together, transcending time through language and place. They know art markets and international negotiations—archives and road shows. The economy is in our hands and stomachs as we struggle to control images and narratives. Stories continue to walk the earth; we walk beside them. Isaac Many Goats, his Urban Nizhóní and NIKIL in her studio of the street continue into part two.

Putting The Sun Back Into the Sky describes a different beginning, post treaties intended to end The Indian Wars. In this beginning, place defines our world. We retain possession. Our souls cannot be purchased. Our words become weapons. They travel these newly structured networks, one reservation to another, and one city to another. This is a story of what we (Arikara, Mandan, Hidatsa, Sioux, and Diné) share: experience and power.

Putting The Sun Back Into the Sky opens with connections and conversations between Indians of all Nations, reflecting new alliances, new understandings, and our varied responses to the white man wanting us to make our heads one. These moments of unity reflect a response to our American Heritage, a shared experience under United States' occupation, a belief among the colonists that they have succeeded: The government has made us Indians—our heads are one.

Putting The Sun Back Into the Sky declares: it is best for humans to be human. We eat. We shit. We make survival. Genocide is a mold that grows on every surface. Dead Indians ferment the mind. We live by staying alive.

A season of stories continues: Short Bull; the Ghost Dance; Wounded Knee; One Kernel of Corn Woman; Stuwi; Garbage Warrior; Pine Ridge Earthship; MHA Nation Direct Living; White Headed Eagle addresses the Great Black Father; The Horse and the Hoe; the Gun and the Loyalty of Dogs; the Forgotten Ear; Pawnee Grass Dance, the Diné Policy Institute; and Isaac Many Goats and his Urban Nizhóní.

Putting The Sun Back Into the Sky ends as Isaac Many Goats and his Urban Nizhóní make their way along this warpath, north to the MHA Nation, among the descendants of the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851, among kitchen and cornfield warriors, those who keep the stories through action. They are those, like Gertrude Stein in WARS I HAVE SEEN, who say: "A long war like this makes you realize the society you really prefer." They run the food joints that can't pass code, publicly declaring our existence. These people live in their own language. They are who they are, strong enough to face the emotion life raises, reaching into the unknown and developing a relationship with it. They live by staying alive. They know war is weak; it cannot destroy everything. They know books and peach orchards can be burnt, but the people go on.

You can read the novel at Urban Nizhóní.