Feast I
kú·s
first taste of life
not air but water, carried
by our mothers, we taste water
rising from earth, turning in salt waters where
you nacóɂx̣ travel
through ocean waves and
darkness gaining power
in those faraway salt
currents of sea and labor
to return again
to the cold river of your origin
upriver to give life
where wewúkiye bugle
in fog-mantled mornings of our
land awaking we step
toward ɂímes each foot
fall a quiet petition to be worthy of your
gift, we bring you in, carry you
adorned in beadwork and beauty
as drums beat
through heart and women sing
łit́á·n
songs return to
earth, belong
to the land, gathered by
hand thick bitter taste of
green hills qéḿes cradled
in your hand, rooting
you to this place, songs
flow from our throats a
fine rain, the water cycle
gives qá·ws in spring
first feast of our green
returning
sun grows long branches
reach to sky, hungry birds
share tíms offering
hard seeds to roll on our tongues
with succulent sound of our
ni·mi·pu·tímt
we sing cemí·tx mountains
in new dresses with baskets woven
by grandmothers’ hands and songs
we carry, we are carried
to return again, give thanks again, return these songs
give breath and good words, ring, lift hands
to sky release heart thoughts, we
are borne in
kú·s
Feast II
kú·s
I had a dream not long after I started. Some people say that when you start dreaming in a language, that is when you know it has become fluent to you, but I know this can’t possibly be so. I think I maybe knew twenty or thirty words at the time, mostly nouns and greetings and a few verbs. But I had this dream, and it was beautiful. In the dream I saw the longhouse at Nespelem, and on the side of the longhouse I saw clearly this word: PÁ·YN. Arrival. I woke just then, suddenly, and as I woke I heard my own voice say: pá·yca. I am coming, I am arriving. The shock of hearing my own voice impressed upon me the feeling of the dream. That dream helped me persevere when I felt small, when I was alone, when I looked upon the enormity of it all. There were times I was discouraged, when I faced the entire ocean of words, and I feared the undertow would pull me under, like an eagle who is dragged into the current of a river, talons locked on the back of a salmon. Later I would learn another word, and I would hold it just as close, say it to myself, to the sky, say it to Phil and those who spoke: pá·yca pá·ytoqsa. I am coming. I am coming back.
nacóɂx̣
He was from a Salmon tribe over that way, over to the coast.
And his tribe got terminated.
I don’t know why, but the folks around there stopped. Maybe it was a dark time for them. But they gave up the Salmon ceremony, all them. Except this one guy.
That’s not something to do with just one person, but he did. Not even his family came. Some of his own people got on him. Went hard on him for doin’ that. And maybe it wasn’t right to do it that way, just he alone. I know that man. He’s stubborn! He don’t care. Eight, maybe ten years like that, he kept it up, all alone.
After that people started coming back.
Now you go over there to Salmon ceremony with them, and there’s hundreds of people there. Not even all them know this story, but it’s true.
wewúkiye
The animals help us. We know this from the old stories from when the world was coming to be, and the animal people offered themselves to us, each in their way, each one in order. And still they offer themselves to us. A few years ago, I saw a photograph in the newspaper of a ship in the Pacific Ocean, headed north. The ship was bearing the corpses and belongings of the Haida Gwaii people. The ship was carrying them back home, bringing them home from a museum. So there was the ship, headed north. And in front of the ship, leading the procession, was a bald eagle flying in the sky. And swimming alongside the ship, cresting with the waves, was a pod of killer whales. They traveled that way all along the Pacific Coast, all the way home.
The animals help us. We know this from the old stories, from family stories, from court stories. I know a story that is happening right now, about a man who called on an elk to help him, and the elk came to his aid, and now the man is in court. But listen. This is a good story. You see, the man is Sinixt from north of here. Many years ago, the Sinixt people were suffering from smallpox. They were weakened, and the Canadian miners and settlers hunted those people down, drove them out of their homeland. The survivors came to us for refuge. We took them in, and now they are strong again. Here we call them the Lakes people. But they never stopped wanting to go back, or going back, in fact, to visit their homelands and hunt. Canada, in the meantime, decided the Sinixt were extinct and extinguished their rights. But the Sinixt people, of course, are still alive and so are their rights.
A few years ago one of these unextinct Sinixt men killed an elk in his homelands. Then he called the game officials in Canada and turned himself in. They took the bait. When the province pressed charges against him for taking big game without a license, he pleaded not guilty. He cited his aboriginal rights to hunt in his own territory. And now that case is in court, and Canada will have to look at that man, standing in the middle of the room, and all his people around him, and Canada will have to admit that the Sinixt are not extinct. The Sinixt man is very brave. And so is the elk that gave himself. That man and that elk knew each other from long ago; they met in dreams and sweat, blood and forest. The man needed the elk; the people need the elk. Without the elk, there would be no case, no path home, no court for the man to present himself to the State and say: we are alive.
ɂímes
From the Colville Confederated Tribes TANF (Temporary Aid to Needy Families) Survey:
- What are the responsibilities of a father?
- What are the responsibilities of an uncle?
- Should a deer be considered acceptable payment in lieu of cash?
łit́á·n
And this one, you need to remember this. This one is good for nursing mothers.
qéḿes
After World War II, advances in astrophysics allowed humans to see their planet from space. In 1972, Apollo 17 took the most famous photograph of Earth, the blue planet. It might be fair to say that since the midtwentieth century, humans have seen things that were never within their visual grasp before. But do we have better dreams? Have we seen better things? I think I would give up my fridge magnet of Planet Earth, every glimpse of snowy mountain folds from the window of a plane, the glittering view of Paris from the Eiffel Tower on New Year’s Eve—I would give up all of these things to see what our ancestors saw, to dream their vivid dreams, to come over a mountain with my mothers and sisters and suddenly see, in the wide open, an enormous blue meadow of blooming camas, an endless, unbroken field of periwinkle, lake, and lapis that today you could barely imagine, a land breathing and rolling with blue, a land so beautiful that you would wonder how to find your voice, find your offering, draw out a song on your breath and press the strength of your body to the earth, into the earth, into the deep wild blue.
qá·ws
From the Treaty of 1855:
ARTICLE 3.
The exclusive right of taking fish in all the streams where running through or bordering said reservation is further secured to said Indians: as also the right of taking fish at all usual and accustomed places in common with citizens of the territory, and of erecting temporary buildings for curing, together with the privilege of hunting, gathering roots and berries, and pasturing their horses and cattle upon open and unclaimed land.
tíms
We had been camping for several days, and then we packed up to go home. It was August. Hot. And we were going down a dry, dusty mountain road when we saw these big bushes loaded with chokecherries, right beside a little stream. We stopped there and picked until we filled two big buckets, which took a long time, and I have to admit we were not the most agreeable children at that time. We were tired and sweaty and wanted to go home. But my parents simply could not drive past those trees aflame with ripeness. We picked, we complained, we spit out the bright red ones—too bitter to eat raw but filled with pectin and good to keep. Our parents did not scold us. The next day my mother and I cooked the fruit down, strained it through cheesecloth, and made jelly. We poured the jelly into a mismatched collection of jars and small glasses and sealed them with paraffin wax. We laughed at how long it took to pick those buckets and how much fruit it took to make each little jar, which, when held to the light of the late afternoon sun, cast a rosy glow on the kitchen table.
cemí·tx
. . . ɂiceyé·ye hiɂsé·pte kamó·twalc pá·x̣at, ka· papćícqi ka· ɂáps ɂá·likaɂs. capáypa ćixćíxne luḱúpluḱúp pé·kuya ka· hé·neḱe pá·tyoxna, “ɂicwé····ẃlcix! kíye pí·wetemeyleksix.” koní·x wá·qo’ pé·tqexne ćíxćix hilḱú·pluḱu·pce ka· hihíne, “wéye ɂí·m nisé·ẃeylu, kawó’ ɂí·nanq́o’c mú·xsnim, wetemeylékim.” wá·qo’ ka· ɂiceyéyenm péhinewye ka· ɂinekí·ḱu’ q́o’ tiwíwtiwíw ɂicwéẃlcix hikó·qana. koná ɂiceyé·yenm pé·ne, “kawó’ ɂí·ne weteméylekim—wáqo’ ɂóykalana titó·qana ɂekú·s ɂé·. kawó’ ɂí·nenḱu’, ké·n····ex tillá·pno’.” kuɂús peq́sisimnúye. ka· wá·qo’ pé·temeyleke ɂicwéwlcisnim. kála konmá pé·ɂnehneme ɂiceyé·yene koná páɂnixqawna titlúqawsna ka· titlúkikeyene “kíne titó·qanm pá·ɂya·x̣cano’ ka· hipalló·yno’. kí·mtemcimḱey’ hiwéhyem netí·telwit” . . .
. . . Coyote carried on his back five agate knives and pure fir pitch and flint for making a fire. After some time, he made the grasses sway, and again Coyote shouted to the monster, “ɂicwéeeeẃlcix! Let’s inhale each other!” At that point Monster suddenly saw the grasses moving, and he said, “Now, then, you little Nisé·ẃeylu, you first inhale me!” Then Coyote tried, and he made Monster stagger a little bit. Coyote said to him, “Now me you inhale—now that everyone, all the titó·qana you have just eaten. Take me too, lesssst I become lonely.” Thus he insisted. And now the Monster inhaled him. Just that way Monster took Coyote in, and as he went flying through the air, Coyote placed each one along the way, the titlú-roots and titlú-service berries, saying: Here the Indian People will find them, and they will be happy. In only a short time away, the human beings are coming . . .
Rain came in abundance after years of drought in California, and we had no desire to complain about the gift of water. We wore our boots and beaded medicine bags and assembled on the steps, held aloft our soggy banners. Some of us had been to the camp, some not. We each did what we could. I marched with thousands in DC, also in the rain, sent money and supplies. I followed the stories of tribal delegations and ordinary activists to Oceti Sakowin protests at Spokane, Seattle, the Capitol. We shouted, we marched, we wrote, we prayed, we drummed and sang, and rang bells. We lifted our hands with eagle feathers and banners and holy anger, the anger of Jesus storming the temple, the holy fire of Chief Joseph, Sitting Bull, Martin Luther King. I saw my kin lean against the bitter winter with hand-lettered signs that said kú·s hí·wes wá·q́is. Water is life. Water is alive. All life begins and ends with water: our mothers, the rivers, the rain. From the beginning of time to the end of time, the word we carry on our breath, the taste of this world on our tongues and our tears, is alive, is life, is
kú·s
Feast III
Water coughed from the mouth of the hand pump, smacking the floor of the metal bucket, which tipped suddenly from the force. With one hand, Mae reached to steady the pail, whose handle was looped on the neck of the pump, and with the other she pushed the arm of the pump to weaken its stream. The water flowed smoothly now, filling the bucket quickly, and Mae cranked down again to stop it. Mae knew that the water would be frigid, but nonetheless she dipped her hand, cupped to break its surface, and slurped the drawn coldness from her palm. Emptied, her hand retained the shock of iciness, feeling to her like another substance, not at all her own body, but weighty, slick, and cold as the underside of a salmon just pulled from the river.
She wiped her hand quickly on her dungarees and unhitched the pail, then filled a second one. It was easier to carry two than one and less likely to spill. She anchored herself and lifted both buckets, striding evenly toward the camp. As she walked, she took in the sounds: the low rumble of mourning doves in the barn, a blackbird’s hail, the swish of grass against her leg. Without warning she flashed upon a memory of herself as a child, losing control of a wash bucket and mop in the hallway of the girls’ dormitory at Carlisle. Miss Lunsford had barked angrily at her, accusing Mae of carelessness and sloth, and the sudden fury had caused such tension, as Mae and all the girls froze in place, that Mae was overcome with the impulse to laugh. She had fought hard against it as the inopportune urge tugged at the corners of her mouth. She tried to breathe evenly and stare at the floor, but the pressure was too much. Just as the water had liberated itself from the wash bucket, the laugh escaped her mouth. The girls stared, wide-eyed, as Miss Lunsford seized Mae by the arm and dragged her to the supply closet, shutting her in the dark with only her thoughts and the stinging smell of lye to surround her. Her eyes and lungs burned. None of the other girls had laughed. But later, retelling the story outside under a tree, with Mae their returned hero and Miss Lunsford’s reaction on vivid replay, they laughed until their stomachs ached. Mae smiled then, remembering her school chums.
She set the buckets down beside the stove and used a dipper to fill the enamel coffee pot and toss in some grounds. The stove was the central fixture of the camp kitchen, which was really no more than a stove and a table on a platform under a pitched roof. The kitchen and the outhouse were the only structures with any permanence in the camp. At the work table, Annie was cutting flour with lard for biscuits. Mae could hear others in the camp stirring. Faintly she heard a man singing “When You’re Smiling,” the sound muffled by a canvas tipi wall. Its source was the far side of the encampment, near the farmer’s house. She remembered Jim getting dressed in the morning and singing to himself, then pushed the image out of her mind. She missed his voice. His hands. His gentle nature. Mornings were always the worst; grief like fog lifted only as the day wore on. Still, these mornings had been a bit easier. While for some of them, the labor camp was a departure from life’s ordinary comforts—a wooden door, a soft chair, a reliable icebox—for Mae it was a welcome escape from the thunderous stillness of the small, stick-built house that she had once shared with Jim and their daughter, Jeannette.
Annie glanced up from her bowl and asked Mae to look after the beans. The pot was heavy; Mae lifted it gingerly and clamped the lid slightly askew with her thumbs, lugging it to the edge of the platform and tipping the pot to drain off the soaking water. This took time and finesse, but she managed it, then delivered the pot to the stovetop, covering the beans in fresh water. The pot would dutifully simmer all day, while the crew was in the orchard.
“Mae, I had a dream last night,” Annie said. “I was picking cherries.”
They laughed. It was always the case that two or three days into the harvest, everyone would be dreaming about picking cherries—or strawberries, plums, peaches, hops, or apples—whatever crop demanded their attention. Sometimes these dreams would morph into gigantesque wildness—trees multiplying across an endless plain, or fruit appearing the size of lambs, or canvas drop cloths knee-deep with the ruby flesh of plums. When the chiefs were summoned to this valley in 1855 for treaty talks, the Americans said this: You will walk in blood knee-deep if you do not sign. Now the valley was bursting with orchards, and the Indians begged the agents for passes to follow the harvests all summer. They were migrant workers in their own land, a fact they accepted by day but still questioned in their sleep.
“I’d like to count those bushels I picked all night,” Annie said.
“Once I dreamt I had to eat everything I picked,” Mae said. “It’s worse than the picking dream.”
“Ooh, I get that one too,” Annie replied. “All summer, same dreams.”
Mae hadn’t eaten a single cherry or other piece of fresh fruit for nearly a year, either in waking or dream life. After a death a person ate only dried food for a set of seasons, until the memorial. Jim died in September, after Jeannette had gone back to Chemawa. Mae’s friends brought her offerings of smoked salmon and dried venison all winter. She tasted every recipe on the reservation. Now, in late spring, new cherries dripped from lush branches. She contemplated a small bucket of fruit that had been set aside for eating—the farmer always let them have whatever they could eat. She tried to conjure desire for the sweet, juicy taste. But she felt nothing. Perhaps some part of her had died. Perhaps it was just the natural antipathy of the day harvester for the harvest.
She could see that everyone was up by now and headed to the stove. Everyone would take coffee, and most would eat food they brought from home. The farmer’s wife had left them a large glass jar filled with milk for the children, though they didn’t care so much for the grassy taste and sometimes complained of stomach aches after. In the schools they learned to drink weak coffee, and this was now the universal drink.
There was no leisure to the morning routine, save what one could steal by singing or joking in the course of work. Mae tied her hair, still too short for braids, in a bun at the nape of her neck and popped on her hat. On the first days, she had tied it back in two low ponytails, like a girl. She had surprised herself when she looked in the mirror. A girl! So far was she from the world of flour-sack skirts and long stockings. Her hands were already chapped and rough from the work, dirt ground into her nails and pads of her fingers. She could feel the sandpapery texture when she rubbed her fingers together.
Still, there was every morning an optimistic sky.
She did not want to admit that there was anything good about her new life, stark as it was. But she did feel something like relief that without Jim she felt less judgmental—or perhaps simply less aware—of her own hard edges. Next to him, she felt that she was always overwhelming him a bit with her opinions, her loudness, her physicality. Not that he ever said so. No, he would never say so! He was quiet, and when confronted with things he did not like, he was absolutely silent. He had that way about him. His death was the greatest silence, of course.
No one knew how it happened. One night he didn’t come home from town, where he had been playing the fiddle at a dance, and early the next morning they had found him. Mae felt that this great mystery around his death had attached to her. She could feel it sometimes in the way the others regarded her, as though she were moving about the world with the word HOW? blazed across her chest. Some days she wished she could be like Hester Prynne, except instead of an “A” she would wear a scarlet question mark. She imagined herself beading an elaborate “?” in a contoured floral pattern, with a sky blue background, and affixing it directly to her dresses. She and her friends at school had loved Hester Prynne, the most Indian heroine a white man ever invented. They believed that when Hester disappeared at the end of the book, she had gone to live with the Indians who were always present, watching from the edge of the forest. The Puritan town fathers, the girls thought, reminded them of the agents back at home.
Not knowing the how of Jim’s death deferred Mae’s query as to why. Why would he be taken from this world so suddenly? Why should she be left all alone? It was true that Jim had a weakness for drink, but why should that define his final moments, his life? It was only his gentle nature, his sensitivity, that made him weak. The pain of the world seeped into him, and he had tried to wash it out with work, with drink, with music. He had been tall and lanky and had dressed in western shirts and straight-leg denims to play fiddle on Saturday nights in town. He would wear a white straw Stetson and a pair of elaborately beaded floral cuffs—red tulip motif, green leaves, and white background, with copious fringe—on his wrists. He was quiet, but he could dress loud! Mae used to call him Jackson Sundown. When Jim was on stage, sometimes she would feel the sorrow of his bow pulling across the strings—but he would quickly turn from it, the bow suddenly skipping like a child, the fringe of his cuffs animate with dance. When he played, none of them could stay in their seats—his reels and jigs brought them out. This year would be the first time that the labor camp would be without his playing on Sunday nights. Getting through the first time of everything without him—the first Christmas, the first birthday, the first feast—was the sum purpose of this year. The last feast would arrive in late summer, and soon after would be the anniversary of his death. Just one day, Mae would tell herself, although she knew it wasn’t true. A sudden loss like that colored all the days around it, rendering the days before and after into bright, stinging hues, until the event of his death spread over many days, a season unto itself.
In the immediate shock of Jim’s passing, Annie and the other ladies had brought Mae willow tea for the pain. Ah, this had been soothing. Later, once the why questions set in, they brought her small dry cakes made of ground roots. She received these not with pleasure but with equanimity, with bland recognition that he was gone, and she was still here.
A crow cawed loudly from a tree just then. Annie’s husband, Frank, was yelling too, telling them to load up in the truck to get to the fields. Mae noticed something odd then. A blue Ford truck loaded with workers—with men, all men—passed by them on the highway. Frank and some of their men waved. And some of the braceros waved back. Mae watched the truck disappear over the hill. She strode across the camp toward Frank’s truck, hurrying now. That crow cawed again.
“I hear you!” she called to the crow. But this only made the crow louder and chattier.
She stopped under the branch where the crow continued to cackle at her. She put her hands on her hips and studied him. He regarded her evenly.
Look up, the crow said.
She was, in fact, looking up. She was looking at the black crow with deep, glassy eyes, perched in a verdant wreath of cottonwood leaves. She allowed her gaze to shift, to move to the sky beyond, cloudless and bright, and in the distance she could see the snow-tipped blue mountains. The valley had changed, she thought, but the mountains were the same. In the mountains, the qéḿes was filling the meadows; the huckleberries were opening their leaves, drinking the sun. In the mountains, butterflies were massing in brilliant crowds beside the creeks, whose sparkling waters sang and skipped down the hillsides, finding a way, again, to the river.
