Darlene Naponse - Before the Usual Time: A Collection of Indigenous Stories and Poems

Copyright 2020 the authors

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, except for brief passages quoted by a reviewer, without written permission from the publisher or, in the case of photography, a license from Access : the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency.

Sherwin Bitsui, , [On limbs of slanted light] from Dissolve from Dissolve. Copyright 2018 by Sherwin Bitsui. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Copper Canyon Press, www.coppercanyonpress.org.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: Before the usual time : collection of Indigenous stories and poems / Darlene Naponse, editor.

Identifiers: Canadiana 20200169564 | ISBN 9781988989150 (soft cover)

Subjects: LCSH: American literatureIndian authors. | LCSH: American literature21st century. | CSH: Canadian literature (English)Native authors. | CSH:

Canadian literature (English)21st century.

Classifi cation: LCC PS8235.I6 B44 2020 | DDC C810.8/0897dc23

Cover photo: Stephanie One Spot

Published by Latitude 46 Publishing

109 Elm Street, Suite 205

Sudbury, Ontario P3C 1T4

www.latitude46publishing.com

We acknowledge the support of the Ontario Arts Council.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CYCLIC EXISTENCE, CONNECTED.

Ive been told I express time differently. If it is thinking years ago was the other day or needing the immediacy to know now. Time can be the reliant, the dependent, the lost lover or the dream. Does time exists mostly within need? The need to get somewhere; for a day to come, for yesterday to be gone?

Ill exclude a vocabulary that is not necessarily mine. I will experience as I hope you will, in all the moments, movements and a vision of the time we spend/spent.

Without community we dont exist. I truly believe that. It has been what I was raised to understand. Thou it was never said that way. I acknowledge a way of life I was gifted from my Grandparents, my mother, father, aunties, uncles, the community, as they work together. All in moments of happiness and complete sadness, together.

Yet from what stories are presented in this anthology, time/community is one.

Yesterday is formed around the stories as much as tomorrow is. We travel through visions of what can be reimagined, re-experienced out of the days before us and into the days ahead.

From around Mother Earth, the Indigenous voices of emerging and practiced writers are in the following pages. We go deep into their communities, their visions, their creations, their experiences. Their words are open, full of courage, strength, beauty, sadness and wild creativity. Poetry, prose, stories that allow the reader to know, the fire never went out, community is alive, connected to the land and the people.

Darlene Naponse

LEANNA MARSHALL

Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug First Nation

Leanna Marshall was born and raised in Thunder Bay, Ontario. She is a mother of two gentle and vibrant daughters. Leanna writes poetry and uses performance to express social inequities and to demonstrate acts of compassion: the space between resistance and acceptance. As a lover of her culture and land, she is committed to exploring the spaces of healing from colonial trauma, including our bodies. Leanna has her poetry included in two current art shows: Lessons- The Artistry of Learning, Thunder Bay Art Gallery 2018; Beads, Theyre Sewn So Tight, Textile Museum of Canada, 2019.

OUR STORY IS IN HER BODY

The fluidity

of waawaatae

Delivered her essence

Gently and purposefully down

They whispered prayers into her blood

Those prayers strengthened with the cycles

Of the grandmothers

Breath was given to her

The cyclical and systemic violence

Forced her breath to contract within herself,

As she flowed through the waves of calculated coldness

Her blood came out of her body

Unceremoniously

Those prayers of so long ago came in the form of her blood.

The conversation between her blood and dibiki-giizis

Happened when life was resting

They whispered to her in her dreams

They whispered to her in her dreams

They whispered to her in her dreams

She brought herself back to life

by breathing the air

As the blood flowed with ease;

With purpose

Carving pathways in the earth,

Small red rivers joining

Moving together to honour

One another over and over again

She is the story:

Watch her movements

Listen to her silence

Contained in her vessel is our story

Our blood is on the land

Our blood is in the land

Our blood is the

ancestral lines that

connect

Our relations together,

always moving in a forward motion

always petitioning for

the ones to come

in the space

that is

beyond the horizon :

her body speaks to trees

her blood strengthens nibi

her voice becomes the prayers of waawaatae

her whispers are taken from her mouth

landing in the hearts of the ones preparing

to ascend

the ancestors pause for a moment

listening to her

gratitude

sounding

in the

form

of

her

breath

EMMA PETAHTEGOOSE

Atikameksheng Anishnawbek

Emma Niigaanii Petahtegoose is a 22 year old storyteller and illustrator. Her work is influenced by her dreams and culture.

TRYING TO REMEMBER A DREAM

Morning:

My head is too hot. I heard it again. The same sad voice as last night. The voice called out, can anyone hear me?. It sounded like a girl. When I called out, she couldnt hear me. I want to find her. I want to help her. Why am I so sweaty? Was she alone? How do I get to her? But it was a dream. What time is it? 7:30 AM. I should try and dream this again. What am I supposed to do today? Ill try tonight. Wheres my phone? I have to get up. I need clothes. I hate work. No, I dont.

Evening:

Wheres my phone? What time is it? 10:15 PM. Im tired. Am I forgetting something? Oh well. Sleep. What was that dream I had? Ill think about it until I go to sleep. A girl. Was she lost? No. Sad. Maybe alone? Yeah! I wonder if Ill actually find her. I hope its a girl. I need more friends. I should start a club. I should lay down. Is she mean? Will she like me? Im nice enough. Why am I worried? Shes not real. Maybe she is. If I just think really hard. Ill close my eyes. Ill try calling out to her. Hello?. Can she even hear me? Maybe she doesnt want to be found. Thats stupid. Why would she call out? Focus and try again. Can anyone hear me?. Im too tired. One more time Hello!. I hope I can find her.

JOAN NAVIUYUK KANE

Inupiaq with family from King Island and Marys Igloo

The author of seven collections of poetry and prose, most recently Another Bright Departure (2019), she is the 2019-2020 Hilles Bush Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, and in 2018 was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry. She teaches in the MFA program in creative writing at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, is a lecturer at Tufts Universiy, and raises her sons as a single mother.