This is my first time to attend an event at the Minnesota Humanities Center. The $5 admission price was quite reasonable. The event was held in a large room filled with chairs and couches. I had a comfy chair, a cup of coffee, and a cookie. I was ready to go. All I was missing was a laptop and some wi-fi.

A lady gave a brief chat about how the purpose of the Minnesota Humanities Center was to develop a thoughtful, literate engaged society. There was a little bit of introduction of Heid E. Erdrich, talking about her work in preserving the Ojibwe language, her work with educators in using Native American literature authentically, and her association with Birchbark Books (run by her sister, Louise Erdrich, an award-winning author in her own right).

Heid E. Erdrich started out her talk with some plugs for other books. I appreciate that she handed out a book list before the talk, and then made comments on the books on the list. I had heard of Sherman Alexie, and I had heard of The Repatriation Reader, but only because Erdrich had mentioned them in the notes to National Monuments. But I had never heard of any of the other books or authors before.

Erdrich read poems from National Monuments, then brought up various websites from a nearby computer (Kennewick Man, NAGPRA, etc.)

Some time ago, I wrote that Langston Hughes wrote “I, Too, Sing America” as a snappy comeback to Walt Whitman’s “I Hear America Singing.” On further review, I grasp that part of a poet’s job description is to write snappy comebacks to other poems. I learned that “The Theft Outright” by Heid E. Erdrich is a snappy comeback to “The Gift Outright,” recited by Robert Frost at President Kennedy’s Inaugural.

The evening actually didn’t last that long. She started slightly after 7:00 and finished around 8:15, so there was plenty of time for shmoozing afterward, and checking out the book table.

During the talk, my mind wanted to know more about the Ojibwe. I’ve seen the name spelled Chippewa, Ojibway, Ojibwa, Ojibwe and Ojbwe. The Ojibwe call themselves Anishinabe in their own language, which means ‘original person.’

A young lady behind the booktable told me that the Ojibwe once lived in what is now Quebec. They had a prophecy that they should move west until they found food that grew on the water. That food they found was wild rice in Minnesota. I can just imagine the Dakotas saying “Oh, you had a prophecy! Well sure, just come and take our land. Not!”

But because of this westward migration, there is now an Ojibwe diaspora, with bands as far west as Montana, as far east as Quebec, and as far north as southern Canada.

Heid E. Erdrich is a member of the Turtle Mountain Band. The young lady behind the book table is a member of the Red Lake Band. I felt like the racist of the world when I asked her if she was an Ojibwe.

Heid mentioned that there were somewhere between 70,000 and 100,000 Ojibwe speakers. Ojibwe was pictographic for a long time. A system for using the English alphabet for writing the Ojibwe language was developed in the 1950’s, and I believe it is being used in the blurb by Margaret Noori on the back of National Monuments:

Heid Erdrich bkaan wii zoongimshkwendamoan kchitwaa kinoschiganan. Aki gda’noondawaanaan ginaajwanan mazanaaikidowinong miidash gaashkozyang.

Some people might think that the preservation of the Ojibwe language isn’t the best use of people’s time and energy, but the heart language of people is a big deal. Anything in nature will reveal its secrets to you if you love it enough, and the Ojibwe language has secrets that are yet to be revealed to the world.

As I thought about the Ojibwe, I recalled the book Bruchko by Bruce Olson, missionary to the Motilone of Columbia. There was a part of the book where the Motilone believed Jesus was one of them. I wonder what the Ojibwe think of Jesus. Heid read the poem “Mahto Pata, Bear Butte” about Christian motorcyclists who want to build a church in a spot sacred to a number of tribes, so I think she thinks Christians are colonizers and desecrators.

I am generally against the idea of hyphenated Americans. I do not refer to myself as a Scottish-American, for example. I believe it goes against the American ideal of “E pluribus unum” The Ojibwe challenge that view for me. One the one hand, I think they might be better off if they became full-blast Americans, and dropped any special status. But that doesn’t seem quite right. On the other hand, things staying as they are doesn’t seem quite right either.

Even with all of the awkward moments and unasked questions, it was still a rewarding evening for me.

Technorati: Heid E. Erdrich, National Monuments, Poetry

What do I like about National Monuments? I like it that she asks a good question, which is “When do the remains of the dead stop being sacred and inviolate, and start being materials for scientists to examine and entrepreneurs to trade?” She writes in the notes at the end:

Because the body has become a location, a site and a text to scholars, what would seem violation of a sacred space (say a temple or shrine) has become a legitimatized and urgent need of study. The rules in place to protect our bodies when we die simply to not apply to anyone who has been dead long enough. That seeming contradiction troubles me and made me want to express my dis-ease learning that an ancestor’s bones have been crushed for testing.

I consider “Dis-ease” a good word for the describing the emotional tone of National Monuments, especially the final section “Discovery: An RSS Feed Series.” When do the remains of the dead stop being sacred and inviolate, and start being materials for scientists to examine and entrepreneurs to trade? Heid E. Erdrich’s answer to her question is “It should be ‘Never,’ even though it isn’t right now.” You might disagree with her answer, but her poems will definitely encourage you to think about your answer to the question. Would you donate your body for scientific research after your death? Erdrich is against the very premise (in the poem “Body Works’). And don’t get Erdrich started on the Bodies exhibit at the Mall of America. She would consider the creators of that exhibit to be desecrators of sacred spaces.

I like it that one doesn’t have to belong to any particular nation (like the Ojibway, to which Erdrich belongs) to appreciate her poetry. That’s because she asks the kind of questions that a poet is supposed to ask. There are some Ojibway themes (“De’an,” “Star Blanket Stories”), but her poetry is more addressed to a general audience.

I like that Erdrich has created some small series of poems about certain characters. One of the blurbs on the back cover says she is having an argument with the poet William Carlos Williams, but it was too much of an inside joke to me. Williams wrote a poem “To Elsie,” and Erdrich wrote a number of poems in National Monuments about various aspects of Elsie’s life. I recalled “Madam to You” by Langston Hughes when I read them. Kennewick Man is another character that inspired a group of poems. I sincerely hope that Erdrich will write a book’s worth of Elsie poems and Kennewick Man poems.

What do I not like about National Monuments? I don’t like that I almost stopped reading after I read the poem “Desecrate,” the exclamation point for the first section “Grave Markers.” Desecrate is a bitter, venom-dripping hate note to Western civilization, describing what it would be like if Western civilization had done to it what was done to the Ojibway and other First Nations. I had just seen the movie “Avatar,” another hate note to Western civilization, and after reading Desecrate, I had my fists up, ready to rip this book a new one. I believe other readers might stop reading after reading Desecrate.

I don’t like the blurb on the back by Robert Warrior:

Heid Erdrich’s new poems are beautiful and brave explorations of the depths of national identities and the real people who live them. These are arguments with historians, archeologists, William Carlos Williams, and the overwhelming, deeply rooted, conflicting myths of what being an American is all about.

While most of these two sentences are true, I grasp that this book is only incidentally concerned with what being an American is all about. Erdrich neither embraces being American nor repudiates being American. It’s not the conversation that National Monuments is about.

I don’t like the faux-Cyrillic lettering for the title, back cover and section title pages. I found it a distraction from the conversation of the poems. Is it a reference to the fallen Soviet Union and its desecrated sacred places?

The things I like about National Monuments are much more significant than the things I don’t like. It was definitely worth the investment. It should also be noted that one of Erdrich’s previous books, The Mother’s Tongue, was a Minnesota Book Award nominee. Her persistence was rewarded. Denise Low-Weso, Poet Laureate of Kansas, wrote a blurb for the book. Perhaps Heid E. Erdrich will be Minnesota’s Poet Laureate one day, the wise grandmother Kookums who we cannot leave.

Technorati: Heid E. Erdrich, National Monuments, Poetry