A Motherhood Life Lesson
Pushing up the Sky: A Mother's Story
The Cherokee Word for Water
There was water for pie baking, and when the sun seared overhead water to mix with Kool-Aid to freeze into popsicles. Home canned goods must be put up in hot, sterilized jars and we had water for boiling before we used them. We had water to wash our hands before pressing a tortilla on a hot skillet, and it was clean and safe to drink.
When no one else believed in them, they believed in each other.
Set in the early 1980s, the story of The Cherokee Word for Water begins in a small town in rural Oklahoma where many houses lack running water. The film tells the story of a tribal community joining together to build a waterline by using traditional Native values of reciprocity and interdependence and is told from the perspective of Wilma Mankiller and Charlie Soap, who join forces to battle opposition and build a 16-mile waterline system using a community of volunteers. In the process, they inspire the townspeople to trust each other, to trust their way of thinking, and to spark a reawakening of the universal indigenous values of reciprocity and interconnectedness. This project also inspired a self-help movement in Indian Country that continues to this day.
“The Cherokee Word for Water” is dedicated to Wilma Mankiller’s vision, compassion and incredible grace, and tells the story of the work that led her to become the Chief of the Cherokee Nation. The film was funded through the Wilma Mankiller Foundation to continue her legacy of social justice and community development in Indian Country.
Yellow Medicine Review
Yellow Medicine Review: Women’s Wisdom, Women’s Strength
10 of my favorite places in the US where you can experience Native American cultures responsibly
You will notice that the title of the original article says culture. It ought to read cultures, reflecting the fact that Native American people are of many tribes, Nations, cultures, languages and histories.
I greatly enjoyed researching and writing the article and I’m thankful for the invitation to take my readers into Native America to visit the thriving lifeways of a continuing land and people.
Tending the Fire: Native Voices and Portraits
Children of the Dragonfly: Native American Voices on Child Custody and Education
The University of Arizona Press
Children of the Dragonfly, edited by Robert Bensen, is the first anthology to document this struggle for cultural survival on both sides of the U.S.-Canadian border. Through autobiography and interviews, fiction and traditional tales, official transcripts and poetry, these voices— Seneca, Cherokee, Mohawk, Navajo, and many others— weave powerful accounts of struggle and loss into a moving testimony to perseverance and survival.
In the Veins Lost Children of the Indian Adoption Projects
POETRY | First Nations and American Indian Poets | Native Studies | History
I'm honored to have my work included.
We are inter-connected branching vessels
carrying the pain of the earth back to source
like the roots of the sacred cedar
to heal and breathe new life into being?
Have we been forced deep underground,
pressurized through the weight of suffering,
to become a treasure sought by others
who don’t understand that we carry
healing powers in the wisdom of our ancestors?
Sacred life interwoven with sorrow, blood memory, in our very DNA
The People Who Stayed: Southeastern Indian Writing After Removal
The University of Oklahoma Press
Native literature, composed of western literary tradition is packed into the hyphens of the oral tradition. It is termed a “renaissance” but contemporary Native writing is both something old emerging in new forms and something that has never been asleep. The two-hundred-year-old myth of the vanishing American Indian still holds some credence in the American Southeast, the region from which tens of thousands of Indians were relocated after passage of the Indian Removal Act in 1830. Yet, a significant Indian population remained behind after those massive relocations.
I'm honored to have my work included in the first anthology to focus on the literary work of Native Americans with ancestry to “people who stayed” in southeastern states after 1830.
The People Who Stayed: Southeastern Indian Writing After Removal
edited by Geary Hobson, Janet McAdams, and Kathryn Walkiewicz
Unraveling the Spreading Cloth of Time: Indigenous Thoughts Concerning The Universe
This brilliant anthology explores quantum physics in relation to Indigenous peoples' understanding of the spiritual universe. Includes writings from 40 Native writers from various nations, and I'm honored to have my work included.
Contributing authors include, Suzan Shown Harjo, Gabriel Horn, John Trudell, Dean Hutchins, Lois Red Elk, Suzanne Zahrt Murphy, Amy Krout-Horn, Jack D. Forbes, John D. Berry, Sidney Cook Bad Moccasin, III, Trace A. DeMeyer, Clieord E. Trafzer, William S. Yellow Robe, Jr., Bobby González, Duane BigEagle, Carol Wille`e Bachofner, Lela Northcross Wakely, Georges Sioui, Keith Secola, Mary Black Bonnet, Kim Shuck, Trevino L. Brings Plenty, Dawn Karima Pe`igrew, Stephanie A. Sellers, Natalie bomas Kindrick, Basil H. Johnston, Barbara-Helen Hill, Alice Azure, Phyllis A. Fast, Doris Seale, Terra Trevor, Denise Low, Vine Deloria Jr., Jim Stevens, ire’ne lara silva, Susan Deer Cloud, Odilia Galván Rodríguez, Tiokasin Ghosthorse, Tony Abeyta, MariJo Moore.