;)
For almost a week now, I have been delaying this post on these two Iñupiat poets, Cathy Tagnak Rexford and d g nanouk okpik. That's because on the Monday after they did their reading at the International Gallery of Contemporary Art in Anchorage, as part of the Still North series, they drove out to Wasilla and I met them at Kaladi Bros.
It was then that I came to understand that, not only were they superb poets, but they have led amazing lives.
I wanted to tell at least a tiny portion of their life stories, but to properly do so, I needed some time that I did not have. I kept thinking that I would find that time the next day, but each day would pass and the time would not materialize for me.
And now I am about to leave for Barrow.
I do plan to tell their story in a special edition of Uiñiq Magazine that I am working on. I do not think that I will have time to write it until I put the issue together. Perhaps, after it comes out, I will find an excuse to revisit Cathy and d g and put the story here, for readers who will not see Uiñiq Magazine.
So, for now, I will just say this: they are close relatives, who grew up not even knowing about each other. d g did not even know she was Iñupiaq. As a baby, for complicated reasons, she was adopted out to a white family in Anchorage. Her adopted parents never told her she was adopted, they raised her as if she were white, but she noticed that she wasn't.
She wanted to find out who she was and therein began a long story that took her to an Indian college in Northwestern Montana, where she learned the spiritual ways of the people from that part of the country. Due to privacy laws, she could learn nothing about her origins but, after prayers and a sweat with her friends and mentors in Montana, she set out on a journey that took her to see Senator Ted Stevens and that ultimately led her to what might seem a chance reunion with her mother, or perhaps one that was not chance at all, but guided. Later, she met Cathy at a Lower 48 powwow and then wound up going to school with her at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Sante Fe, New Mexico.
Both are accomplished and published poets who work to find and encourage other young Native writers.
The reading of poetry that they did was from their works published in the book, Effigies.
With their generous permission, I include a poem from each here.
;)
A Wind Drives Over the Waters
by Cathy Tagnak Rexford
A small brown Dukha girl
offers her hand
bearing black medicine
to a short fine haired reindeer
a wind drives over northern Mongolian taiga.
A round aged Inupiaq woman
stretches wet sealskin
over white driftwood
lashing tightly with oiled sinew
a wind drives over Northern Alaskan tundra.
A stout fearless Inuit boy
sits on softened spruce branches
daydreams of spearing the land
as lichen islands surface in salt water
a wind drives over treeless Nunavut plains.
A tall agile Yuit man
treading on fragrant wet moss
watches breathless - a rusting of the soil
A wind drives over Chukotkan sedges.
;)
Cathy Tagnak Rexford, reading.
;)
Cathy Tagnak Rexford takes her bow.
;)
The standing-room only crowd listens, some with eyes eyes closed to better to see the mental images evoked by the words of the poets.
;)
Foist
by d g nanouk okpik
Bones surfaced on the old land
as the earth thaws and cracks.
In Kuukpik area we find them,
let no one be in any doubt,
of the remedy from Anatkuq,
for the red illness. She prepares
the poultice in the mortar bowl,
Cotton grass, seal liver, rainwater.
The soil rattles with bleached
ivory bones, bones clack and claw,
at the walls of glaciers melting,
crossing all darkness into grey.
I roam in a sideslip of clouds,
I paint a sign used in music,
algebra, marking in the direction
of light-shadow, as if for a fossil record.
I meet her bringing lead pieces
for making spark, pumice burns slowly.
Coldest moon reacts to the equinox,
the age of the earth is already intact.
;)
d g nanouk okpik reads.
;)
d g nanouk okpik takes her bows. She made her beautiful deerskin and fur outfit, which reflects both her Inupiaq heritage and that of the Lower 48 Indians who gave her guidance, herself.