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Layli Long SoldierA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
In an interview of poet and U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo conducted by Layli Long Soldier in May 2017, the two discuss the idea of a continuum of poetry from generation to generation of Native American poets from diverse tribes. In the interview, Long Soldier recalls how in her past studies of Native poetics, she and her contemporaries were encouraged to identify differences between their poems and the poems of the generation before them. Later, however, Long Soldier became more drawn to the idea of a thread that pulled them together.
“A generation is like a person,” Harjo says. “Each bears particular themes and predominant colors.” However, one generation feeds the next, and the older generation is nourished by the up and coming one. The idea of a Native poetics is complex, as “Native American” encompasses nearly 600 tribes and over one hundred and 75 languages. In the introduction to the Poetry Foundation collection “Native American Poetry and Culture,” Harjo writes, “The literature of the aboriginal people of North America defines America. It is not exotic. The concerns are particular, yet often universal.” Similar histories of migration, removal, oppression, and treaty negotiation constitute a litany of shared, and often ongoing, experiences. Attention to individual indigenous cultural practices, connection to land, and active participation in contemporary politics and events are subjects and themes echoing through the poetry of many Native poets.
The idea of a continuum of Native American poetics does not preclude a diversity of subject matter, form, experimentation, or any other poetic possibility amongst Native poets. Anthologies such as New Poets of Native Nations (2018) feature traditional lyrics alongside expansive experimentation and a wide range of form, encompassing a full breadth of human experience. Long Soldier’s own work takes formal risks, combining documentary techniques with the Lakota language and the intimacy of personal narrative. Poems such as “WHEREAS” honor the poet’s connection to her tribe while directing a keen eye toward injustices that continue to affect multiple populations. At the same time, the poem demonstrates the artist’s dedication to her art, and her courage to take risks in both subject matter and form.
In 2015, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe passed a resolution declaring the Dakota Access Pipeline would negatively impact the natural resources used by the citizens of the sovereign nation, and that construction of the pipeline should cease. The resolution cited Article II of the Fort Laramie Treaty, signed in 1868, which guaranteed the “undisturbed use and occupation” of reservation land through which the proposed pipeline would run. The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe asserted that completion of the pipeline violated the treaty. Regardless of the historical document, they were met with resistance.
A treaty is a document of language, wholly reliant on language to accurately communicate the interests and compromises of its signers. Contracts and Senate bills are documents of language, as well. A reinterpretation of a contract may require a court appearance and litigation, but while the language of contracts is designed to eliminate ambiguity, it frequently does the opposite. In other words, words can be reworked. Agreements can be undone and promises unmade. Sometimes, promises are hollow from the start.
“WHEREAS” is a poem that utilizes language from an official document to draw attention to the power of language to obfuscate and erase meaning. It is, in the most literal sense, an example of documentary poetry, creating its own form and tenor from the form and language of a legal document. In her poem, Long Soldier uses the word “whereas” to introduce action and interiority; whereas the word “whereas” in the Federal apology introduces statements that, rendered as an apology, in fact achieved nothing. The final section of the official resolution is a disclaimer declaring the document meaningless: “Nothing in this Joint Resolution—(1) authorizes or supports any claim against the United States; or (2) serves as a settlement of any claim against the United States.”
“WHEREAS,” Long Soldier has said, came about not specifically because of the language of the resolution, but because the resolution itself flew so low under the radar when it passed. There is a layering to “official” language that occurs not only in the actual documents, but in their accessibility, or lack thereof. In her review of WHEREAS, poet and essayist Natalie Diaz uses the word “excavate” to describe Long Soldier’s use of language. Long Soldier digs into and past the soporific nature of legalese to expose the rich dirt underneath.