Welcome to Litsy!

I needed poetry. The library came through.

Attended another great Edmonton #Poetry Festival event today: #Indigenous author Marilyn Dumont.

A collection of potent, dexterous verse that connects contemporary lives to Métis history. Gabriel Dumont was instrumental in the Métis resistance in 1885; Marilyn Dumont is descended from his uncle. In her poems, Louis Riel is ‘Louis‘ or ‘Riel‘ or ‘Our Prince‘ -
“Louis / the one who gave us Manitoba / brokered pluralism / and language rights” - but Gabriel Dumont is always referred to by his first name. #Indigenous history with so much heart.

The fiddler rosins up his bow
we had to fly him here just for tonight
rouses our toes, servant to the teasing bow
tunes us to the strumming guitar, second fiddle
lured in the fiddler‘s trance
feet stitched to the fiddle strings
we step-shuffle in time

-from Just Tell Me When the Fiddler Arrives
(Art by Julie Flett: Li Vyaloñ [Michif for ‘fiddle‘]

#Indigenous #poetrychallenge2018

How to Make Pemmican
Kill one 1800 lb buffalo
Gut it
Skin it
Butcher it
Slice meat in long strips for drying
Construct drying tripods & racks for 1000 lbs of wet meat
Dry it while staving off predators for days
Strip from drying racks & lay on tarps for pounding
Pound 1000 lbs of dry meat
Mix with several lbs of dried berries, picked previously
Add rendered suet
Cut buffalo hides in quarters
Fill with hot dried meat, berry & suet mixture
👇

Marilyn Dumont‘s poetry inspired me to borrow from the library a couple of alphabet books: one celebrating Métis culture, the other Métis language (Michif).
“Riding his swiftest buffalo runner
Will Gabriel, aiming Le Petit
rise, his horse‘s hooves rumbling?
dust of buffalo spirits passing”
-Notre Frères
#Indigenous #poetrychallenge2018

Elizabeth Brass Donald, referenced in The Land She Came From, was a victim of land swindles that are a part of Edmonton‘s history. To a Fair Country is about wholesale land thefts through “official trickery:” “ I want to forget the number of Métis / less than one percent / who hold property from that scrip today.”

Friend at book club last night: “I loved this book, & also hated it for making me feel ignorant of things I should have known about.”

each bead a birth, she senses
as light grows faint as thread
each bead a birth, she sees
her eyesight fine as thread
each bead a birth, she listens
each bead sewn down, a word
in prayer

-from With Second Sight, She Pushes
#Indigenous #OwnVoices
#poetrychallenge2018

& John, that goddamned railroad never made this a great nation
cause the railway shut down
& this country is still quarreling over unity
& Riel is dead
but he just keeps coming back
in all the Bill Wilsons yet to speak out of turn or favour because you know as well as I
that we were railroaded
by some steel tracks that didn‘t last
& some settlers who wouldn‘t settle
& it‘s funny we‘re still here & callin ourselves halfbreed.
👇