The cover of Sinister Wisdom‘s 1983 edition, A Gathering Spirit. The storm clouds were drawn in pencil by Rosemary Anderson in 1982.

Beth Brant was asked by Adrienne Rich and Michelle Cliff, editors of the lesbian feminist periodical Sinister Wisdom, to assemble its 1983 edition, in which they wanted to include solely North American Native women artists and writers. Brant—Mohawk essayist and poet—accepted, and prioritized elevating the voices of “women yet unheard” in A Gathering of Spirit. She searched for writers within the greater collective of Native women by writing to prison organizations, Native women’s health projects, and other networks to spread the word and collect stories previously silenced (6). Through this project, she established the power of the Native women collective that cultivates change through sharing stories.

Brant precedes the writers featured in this edition in her introduction titled “A Gathering of Spirit.” She calls upon the Women’s Liberation Movement to recognize its inherent flaws in excluding Native voices, a theme we see echoed throughout Native feminist poetry. She articulates her anger towards the “so-called women’s movement that forgets we exist,” that exploits Native women and their culture through “Romantic fantasies of ‘earth-mother’ and the Indian-woman-as victim” (7). One of the themes Brant draws upon that are echoed throughout the poems in this collection is the vital role that Native women play as the original “fire-tenders” and lifekeepers, whose hands “live and work in the present, while pulling on the past. It is impossible for us to not do both” (8). In her introduction, Brant initiates “The Ritual” of honoring Native women of the past, “The Gathering” of Native womens’ spirits, and “The Making” of a future that the collective of Indigenous women storytellers has been tending to all along (8).

An excerpt from Beth Brant’s introduction to A Gathering of Spirit, including two quotes from Linda Hogan and Gloria Anzaldúa.

Sources:

Brant, Beth. “A Gathering of Spirit.” Sinister Wisdom: A Gathering of Spirit, no. 22/23, Iowa City Women’s Press, 1983, pp. 5-9.

Native American women are often portrayed in American media through a narrow lens that negates the complexity of their experiences. Paula Gunn Allen of the Laguna Pueblo speaks to misrepresentation in her poem “The One Who Skins Cats,” included in A Gathering of Spirit (“Paula Gunn Allen,” 2021). The poem is preceded by a quote from Tom Rivington, who describes Sacagawea as a woman deeply in touch with nature, who “worshipped the white flowers that grew at the snowline on the sides of tall mountains” (12).

The excerpt from Tom Rivington included at the beginning of Paula Gunn Allen’s poem “The One Who Skins Cats.”

Gunn Allen’s poem is told from the perspective of Sacagawea herself, juxtaposing the perception of a Native woman through the eyes of a man. In the first section of her poem, Gunn Allen names the many facets of Native womanhood: “I am the one who / holds my son close within my arms, / the one who marries, the one / who is enslaved, the one who is beaten, / the one who weeps, the one who knows / the way, who beckons, who knows / the wilderness” (12). In describing Sacagawea’s role as the “legend” as well as the many other roles of “woman” she inhabited throughout her lifetime, Gunn Allen honors the dimensionality of Sacagawea’s character. She is “Slave Woman, Lost Woman, Grass Woman / mountain pass / and river woman,” and she is also “free” (13). The natural world is eternal, ever-changing, and inextricably linked to the power of Native women. Through demonstrating this power within multiple identities, Gunn Allen rejects stereotypical portrayals of Native American women that fail to acknowledge the entirety of their influence. To subject Sacagawea to the image of her face on a coin and only recognize her for one part of her life is to deny her of her personhood. This simplification of experience perpetuates the suppression of Native identity.

In the second part of her poem, Gunn Allen confronts this tendency to generalize
Indigenous stories more directly: “I have had / a lot of names in my time. None / fit me very well, but none was my / true name anyway, so what’s the difference?” (13). Here, Gunn Allen emphasizes the importance of language and referring to people how they choose, by their true name, as it affirms their being-ness. Gunn Allen calls out white women for simplifying the histories of Native women: “Those white women who decided I alone / guided the white man’s expedition across / the world, what did they know? Indian maid, / they said. Maid. That’s me” (13). She goes on to identify white feminism’s exploitation of Native women by using them to advance their own liberation without creating space for them in the Women’s Liberation Movement:

Sakakawea, by Bruno Louis Zimm 1904 .

I lived a hundred years or more / but not long enough to see the day / when those white women, suffragettes, / made me the most famous squaw / in all creation. / You know why they did that? / Because they was tired of being nothing / themselves. They wanted to show / how nothing was really something of worth. / And that was me (14).

By including the history of white women utilizing Native womens’ experiences for the purposes of their own liberation, Gunn Allen highlights how the Women’s Liberation Movement itself appropriated and oppressed women of color who did not have agency over their own narratives. Failing to include Native women in the feminist movement in a way that gives them control over sharing their experiences and telling their own stories has further oppressed Indigenous women.

Excerpt from the first half of Gunn Allen’s “The One Who Skins Cats.”

The white feminist romanticization of Sacagawea negates her experience as a Native woman. It fails to address the rejection Sacagawea faced from her own people, who called her names and said she had “betrayed the Indians / into the white man’s hand” (15). Native women bear an immense burden as women of color facing an intersection of injustices from both white women feminists who seek to exploit them and the men in their own communities who blame them as traitors. Gunn Allen works against this paradigm by recounting the lesser-known but equally important story of how Sacagawea fled from her abusive husband (17).

Gunn Allen reiterates the diversity of identity of Native women in her final stanza: “the story of Sacagawea, Indian maid, / can be told a lot of different ways. / I can be the guide, the chief. / I can be the traitor, the Snake. / I can be the feathers on the wind” (17). Gunn Allen exemplifies the importance of interrogating mainstream views of Indigenous women, and more than that, she acknowledges the breadth of roles that Native women take on, whether they fit the stereotype or not. By invoking the voice of Sacagawea to uncover the myth and legend behind her own name, Gunn Allen furthers the Indigenous feminist mission of appreciating the full, intersectional experiences of Indigenous women.

Sources:

Brant, Beth. Sinister Wisdom: A Gathering of Spirit, no. 22/23, Iowa City Women’s Press, 1983.

Gunn Allen, Paula. “The One Who Skins Cats,” Sinister Wisdom: A Gathering of Spirit, no. 22/23, pp. 12-17.

“Paula Gunn Allen.” Wikipedia, 17 November 2021. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paula_Gunn_Allen.

Zimm, Louis Bruno. Sakakawea. 1904, The University of Montana, Missoula, http://www.lewis-clark.org/article/2492.

The recognition of Native women from the past is central to the work of Indigenous feminists. Poet Gayle Two Eagles ties the promise of future generations of Native women to the influence of Native women ancestors within their communities, which has been historically underappreciated. In her poem “The young warrior,” Two Eagles begins with the image of a young warrior who “sees the world through brand-new eyes,” and embodies such promise that the Lakota people can “be proud again” (108). Accompanying the image of a young warrior is the representation of a woman warrior, who fights alongside all warriors as equals, because she too is “proud and strong” (108).

The first half of Gayle Two Eagle’s poem “The young warrior.”

But the woman warrior’s charge is to be fierce in the face of the injustices aimed against her, to combat the traditions “as told by men, / Written in history books by white men” (108). She stands in “Quiet defiance to the men who say, ‘respect your brother’s vision,’ / she mutters, ‘respect your sister’s vision too’” (108). Two Eagles asserts that this vision that Native women carry is not honored within their own communities. The woman warrior is not included in the warrior histories of her people, despite the fact that “She was with you at Wounded Knee, / She was with you at Sioux Falls, / Custer, / And Sturgis, / And has always remembered you, / Her Indian people, / In her prayers.” By including the presence of the Native woman in well-known battles and massacres of Native people, Two Eagles rewrites history through poetry, a powerful practice among Indigenous feminist poets.

The second half of “The young warrior.”

Two Eagles continues to harness the power of truth-telling within a community as she speaks to the extreme violence against Native women, who “were beaten by the men they love, / Or their husbands” (109). By highlighting the dangers Native women face even in their own homes, Two Eagles demonstrates their inherent strength and resilience. She returns to the image of the Native woman warrior, who “gave strength to women who were raped, / As has the Sacred Mother Earth.” Here she makes an important connection between the violation of Indigenous women and that of the land. Both women and land have been violated, but “Sacred Mother Earth” has also been a source of fortitude. Two Eagles invokes a vital characteristic of Indigenous feminism, which is the support cultivated in gathering spaces where Native women voice truths in the language of stories and honor women of the past who survived for their sake. This collective ritual is intrinsically tied to traditions of honoring Mother Earth and the role she plays in sustaining communities as a central part of Indigenous identity and thereby Indigenous feminism.

Tintype of Native youth from the collection of Joy Harjo, included in A Gathering of Spirit. 

Indigenous identity has been threatened for centuries, but the resistance to discrimination within Native American communities has not always centered Native feminism. Two Eagles turns our attention to the future of Native people and how indigeneity must be centered around women: “The new eyes that once were in awe at what the world had to offer, / Looks down at this new girl child, / The Lakota woman warrior knows her daughter also has a vision” (109). Two Eagles uplifts future generations of young Indigenous women warriors who will make change, gather strength from the earth, and share that strength among each other. She empowers Native women by asserting that Native future relies upon respecting the woman warrior, for she holds the power to foster change, gather the collective, share truths, and make her people proud.

Sources:

Brant, Beth. Sinister Wisdom: A Gathering of Spirit, no. 22/23, Iowa City Women’s Press, 1983.

Harjo, Joy. Untitled Tintypes. Sinister Wisdom: A Gathering of Spirit, no. 22/23, p. 143.

Two Eagles, Gayle. “The young warrior,” Sinister Wisdom: A Gathering of Spirit, no. 22/23, pp. 108-109.

Muscogee (Creek) Nation poet Joy Harjo is a renowned “fire-tender.” She was named the twenty-third Poet Laureate of the United States in 2019 and is widely recognized for her ability to express the Native experience, female expression and liberation, and the power of the earth in her poetry (Zongker). Her poem “From the Salt Lake City Airport-82,” originally published in A Gathering of Wisdom, integrates decolonization and womanhood, two essential themes of Indigenous feminism.

Throughout the poem, Harjo invokes the being-ness of the natural world and ties the history of the land to the history of Indigenous people: “The Wasatch Mountains plead / to be remembered. / in the East. / They watched wagon trails / wear down men, allowed them / to cross their bellies / thinking these white skins / could learn to love this land / as much as them, and the darker ones / already here” (145). Harjo speaks to how the earth itself has witnessed the simultaneous destruction of it’s own body and those of Native Americans carried out by white settlers.

The first two stanzas of Joy Harjo’s poem “From the Salt Lake City Airport — 82.”

White colonialism extracts life from the earth and also seeks to erase Native culture in its mission to develop and civilize. As a result, Harjo points out that white, patriarchal society is divorced from the land and life itself: “They build a city of separation. / Grew children / and named them names of men, / another language / not the land” (145). The inherent culture in white society is not of the land or the feminine, but of the male and inanimate that perpetuates the dominant language of capitalism and exploitation. The histories of the earth and Indigenous peoples are thereby interlaced: “It is a crazy, dangerous joke / to forget the red hills / that border your city / with passion. / They are mirrors / that make you hate yourself / for what you didn’t / want to remember” (146). Here, Harjo directly references the ignorance of the history of genocide and oppression against Indigenous peoples that society was founded upon. The land embodies those histories and serves as a reminder to combat the continued oppression of the land and Indigenous peoples, especially to those of us who benefit from that exploitation and robbery.

While the land is intrinsically tied to Indigenous culture, there is an even deeper connection between the earthen and the feminine and their shared history of violation: “Salt Lake City, / you grow hot and ashamed / when you look East, / and feel uncomfortable / with the power of the womb, / and place the blame / on the devil / and your wives” (146). White culture is patriarchal and ignores the inherent “power of the womb,” subjecting women to inferior roles in society rather than the forces of change and power that they embody. Here, Harjo echoes rhetoric from the Second Wave of Feminism by challenging the Manifest Destiny ideology that elevates the patriarchy, but she also importantly calls upon white women for their complicity in oppressing people of color: “I see your women caught behind windows / in their homes, behind rows and rows / of bleached and frightened children. / They speak men’s words, not their own / except those languages they’ve learned to speak in secret / and in dreams, if they’ve / not forgotten” (146).

In these last two lines, Harjo makes a turn in the poem by suggesting the possibility that some women have not forgotten the vital language of truth, the earth, and the life force of womanhood. Harjo understands that language, in addition to being a tool of liberation, has historically been used as a weapon to suppress thought and dialogue. Harjo is among many Native poets who speak the language of resistance, who are fluent in these dialects of freedom, reciprocity, spirituality, and intergenerational connection. White women in the Second Wave of Feminism were only beginning to find their own words, and are still learning the difference between appropriating the experiences of women of color and authentically making space for Indigenous feminist voices within the movement.

Portrait of Joy Harjo taken by LaVerne Harrell Clark in Albuquerque, NM, 1975.

Harjo continues to look towards the future: “I see tribes / gathering themselves together / not for war, but for recognition” (146). By envisioning this acknowledgement in spaces of gathering that prioritize neither war nor reconciliation but recognition of history and responsibility, Harjo actively challenges the status quo of silence and ignorance that has perpetuated systems of oppression. Action against these systems necessitates the empowerment of femininity and indigeneity: “The Earth does break open and spill / by the quakings of the heart / by forces other than man. / The lake of salt that floats / West of here feeds you. / She is the womb of your discomfort, / your mother, a ghost / you could easily disrupt” (147). Harjo returns to the theme of white mens’ fear of the earth and thus their drive to conquer it, a fear related to their fear of the deep, natural force of women that threatens to dismantle mens’ hierarchies of power.

The final stanzas of Harjo’s poem.

Harjo once again emphasizes that the power of women’s liberation is bound to the liberation of truth. As she urges her reader to “Let your memory break open,” Harjo asks us to remember the history of this land and let it move us to change (147). The land, after all, is our greatest teacher. Harjo exemplifies Indigenous feminism in the final lines of her poem: “When we die / all our bodies darken / into rich, scarlet / woman earth. / When we die / our bodies turn to salt / but our spirits are shimmering / colored stars / and we are food” (147). Harjo is no stranger to the relation between the generative force of women as makers of change and the soil of the earth where natural processes of renewal take place. Women are sources of regeneration, the eternal tenders of the flame of revival. Harjo leaves us with the knowledge that the way forward must be to decolonize, indigenize, and womanize our systems of life so that future generations may grow stronger from a more fertile ground.

Sources:

Brant, Beth. Sinister Wisdom: A Gathering of Spirit, no. 22/23, Iowa City Women’s Press, 1983.

Clark, LaVerne Harrell. Joy Harjo, Albuquerque, 1975, Silver Birch Press, https://silverbirchpress.wordpress.com/2013/08/17/eagle-poem-by-joy-harjo/.

Harjo, Joy. “From the Salt Lake City Airport-82,” Sinister Wisdom: A Gathering of Spirit, no. 22/23, pp. 145-147.

“Joy Harjo.” Joy Harjo Website, 2021, https://www.joyharjo.com/.

Zongker, Brett. “Joy Harjo Appointed to Third Term as U.S. Poet Laureate,” Library of Congress,10 November 2020, https://www.loc.gov/item/prn-20-075/joy-harjo-appointed-to-third-term-as-u-s-poet-laureate/2020-11-19/.

Chrystos, a Menominee and two-spirit writer and activist, exemplifies several commonalities among Native feminist poets in the three brief stanzas of their poem, “I Walk in the History of My People” (“Chrystos,” 2021), which is included in the renowned feminist anthology This Bridge Called My Back: Writings By Radical Women of Color. Among these themes is the recognition of the Native American’s body as exploited and corrupted. Chrystos establishes their own body as a manifestation of oppression of generations past, describing in the first line how they carry the “women locked in my joints / for refusing to speak to the police” (53). In the first stanza they list out the suffering that lives “In my marrow,” along with “women who walk 5 miles every day for water / In my marrow are hungry faces who live on the land the whites don’t want / In my marrow the swollen faces of my people who are not allowed / to hunt / to move / to be” (53). In three lines, Chrystos points to the dangers that Native Americans face in their communities, including hunger and scarcity of clean water, both of which result from the forced separation of Native Americans from their ancestral homelands and relocation to underserved and isolated areas.

A scan of Chrystos’s poem “I Walk in the History of My People” from the second edition of This Bridge Called My Back published in 1983.

This injustice manifests in the physical and emotional psyches of Native Americans today. Indigenous activism is seldom featured in mainstream media and contemporary social justice movements. Chrystos speaks to the danger of this ignorance in the third stanza: “My knee is so badly wounded no one will look at it / The puss of the past oozes from every pore / The infection has gone on for at least 300 years” (53). In the first line they reference the massacre at Wounded Knee, in which over 300 Lakota people were killed by the US army (“Wounded Knee Massacre,” 2021), one of multiple massacres that are accepted as American histories and were celebrated as victories in their time. Now, the lack of these events from the education of American history contributes to the “infection” of the American colonial initiative to erase Native culture and life and robbing them of their right “to be” (53). Oppression also manifests in the appropriation of Native culture, the way it has been commodified and made into “pencils, names of cities, gas stations” (53). Chrystos highlights the burden of these oppressions carried by Native Americans and that every day they face dismissals of their very existence.

Along with intergenerational trauma, Native Americans inherit resilience from their ancestors. The continued existence of Native Americans is an act of resistance itself, a reminder that Indigenous life has survived despite centuries of attempted genocide: “My knee is wounded / see / How I Am Still Walking” (53). Chrystos empowers indigeneity by recognizing atrocities committed against their ancestors and thereby affirming their ancestors’ existence and success against all odds in protecting the future, in immortalizing Indigenous resistance through surviving and creating new life. Chrystos demands that we see how they continue to resist by existing proudly, fully, and unapologetically.

Sources:

Anzaldúa, Gloria and Moraga, Cherríe. This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color. 2nd ed., New York: Kitchen Table, Women of Color, 1983.

Anzaldúa, Gloria and Moraga, Cherríe. This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color. 4th ed., SUNY Press, 2015.

Chrystos. “I Walk in the History of My People,” This Bridge Called My Back. 4th ed., SUNY Press 2015, p. 53.

“Chrystos.” Wikipedia, 19 November 2021. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrystos.

“Wounded Knee Massacre.” Wikipedia, 4 December 2021.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wounded_Knee_Massacre.