Takuwe

Performance poetry and art exhibited across South Dakota, March 2018-Present

Lakota word: Takuwe. In English: Why. The focus of the exhibit is the 1890 massacre of Lakotas at Wounded Knee, but it will include historical context leading to the massacre, along with contemporary context related to land issues and opportunities at Wounded Knee today.

I am one of seven poets (43 total artists) participating in this year's CAIRNS' exhibit. My poem, Root My Heart at Wounded Knee, plays on a similar title by Dee Brown , who depicts Natives primarily as pitiable victims. While that's not necessarily inaccurate (really, it's a great book), it's definitely not the whole story, especially when considering Wounded Knee's descendants.

Here's what I wrote about my poem for the exhibition:

Aside from the fact that the Wounded Knee Massacre is one of the most significant events in Lakota and Indigenous history, I chose to participate in this exhibit for two reasons: to heal and help heal. As an individual actively healing from various traumas, creating art allows me to express my emotions in positive ways and there is no better organization to heal alongside than the Center for American Indian Research and Native Studies, which provides a safe and supportive space to share my heartwork. And because the traumatic subject matter of this exhibit is so inextricably tied to Indigenous identity in the United States, I wanted to narrate the history from an angle of strength, hope, and healing. 

The writing prompt for my poem was "interment," the burying of a corpse. One of the photos people share heavily on the anniversary of the Wounded Knee Massacre depicts a trench around which several men in long winter coats and hats pose; two men stand coatless inside the trench, the top of which comes to about their necks. Mounds of bodies, some covered and some with atrophied limbs and faces frozen in tragedy, are inside the trench, and other bodies await the mass grave at the feet of the posing, coated men. I hate this photo. Even in death, my ancestors are treated like trash, and every year this picture shows them literally at the feet of gun-toting colonizers. It felt necessary to change the narrative of an image like this, of the narrative surrounding the interment of my people at Wounded Knee.

I was introduced to the word "inter" as a high school freshman studying the work of Shakespear. After Julius Caesar is murdered, Marc Antony tells a crowd, "I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones; so let it be with Caesar." Antony goes on to rile up the crowd in a trickster-like fashion, which eventually leads to Caesar being avenged. In this way, the interment of Caesar ultimately exposed the evils of others and led to healing among the people he ruled. I modeled my poem on Antony's emotionally-charged rhetoric and wrote from the perspective of the being into whom my ancestors were interred: Maka, the Earth. 

Maka is timeless and her experiences are beyond what any human could ever comprehend. What happened to my ancestors at Wounded Knee was terrible and its terribleness continues to have a profound impact on the intergenerational psyches of Lakota people. We are still in mourning, still trying to survive and sometimes it feels like we're dying of each survival tactic we're forced to adopt. My heart aches for a time Native people won't have to simply survive - but thrive. Perhaps adjusting the narrative so that Native people are repositioned as ones who overcome can help, which is what I attempt to do in this poem through the Earth's acceptance of those who were massacred at Wounded Knee. The Earth doesn't dismiss the tragedy, but instead appreciates that these 300 hearts will seed the next generations - that they are the foundation--the roots--of the ultimate resistance our young people will lead.

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Listen to an audio version of my poem, Root My Heart at Wounded Knee.