Carolyn Dunn's News and Views

Spider Woman

Here

in your house

amongst the

pretty lace

china cup,
silk scarves

and books lining the shelves,

I take comfort

in you having

slept here,

thought new worlds

here,

breathed fire here,

made your enemies

drink their own blood,

watched the sun rise,

the sound of water

slowly spreading

its fingers in loving

prayer.

Your beautiful

linens, wallpapered

borders hand-drawn,

woven in color and content,

all in one.

I’m not long for

this world,

you said in

a dream

of another time,

space, life, lace,

feathered light and air,

yet there you sat, telling

me it was time.

Then you were gone.

Five hundred miles later,

through old haze,

children crying,

gnarled trunks

and congested airways,

I lay here, looking for you.

A last song of days

looms sweetly

amongst the tangled web

you so carefully spun from

your body,

fingers dancing, spinning,

until time stood still.

I lay here, dreaming your voice,

watching light and air

fall from spinarets and

thousand faceted eyes

of sky blown clouds.

Last night,

frogs sang, calling rain home.

The sky opened up,

dreaming the dark rimmed

edge of night along

a rain basted sky,

clouds seamless,

the only thing missing

was you.

© 2008 Carolyn Dunn

For those who have sent messages of condolences on the passing of my mentor, teacher, and dear friend Paula Gunn Allen, mvto. Paula was a great influence not only to me but to many others. She was a pioneer in the field of American Indian literary studies and in connecting the dots between American Indian matrilineal, matrifocal gynocratic societies and western feminism. As a poet and novelist, she was a strong influence. I was honored to sing at her funeral and thank her children, Lauralee Brown and Sulieman Russell Allen, for asking me to participate and allowing me to be with them during that time.

A memorial service for Paula is being planned for the third week 0f July in the Bay Area. For more information, please see www.paulagunnallen.net. There is a guest book to sign and more info about Paula and her work.


Paula's Corn Dance

ne hi pah
ho pe le tok
hey ya

cha ha ti keya
cha ha ti keya

I plant this seed for you,
so it will grow,
so it will grow.

My cousin, Janet Colson, is the Director of the Creole Studies Center at Northwestern Louisiana State University and is doing excellent work on the preservation of Creole identity --- language, religion, culture--- and they are sponsoring this conference in Chicago, which is part of the Creole Diaspora. Speakers include Dr. Andrew Jolivette of San Francisco State University who does work on intersections of race and identity in Creole (French, Spanish, African, American Indian) culture.

I posed this information on my myspace site and got great response from folks who were just confused or wondering about the difference between Cajun and Creole culture. I shall do my best to explain these sometimes subtle, sometimes not subtle, differences.

The term Creole comes from the Spanish "griol" which means native born. There were two types of Creoles in Louisiana during this time, the white Creoles, those native born of French or Spanish origin. There were also Creoles of color, "Les gens de coleur libre", who were born in Louisiana of mixed white French (or sometimes Spanish), African, and American Indian - often Choctaw or other Muskogean speaking tribes--- who were and are indigenous to the area. Now those with European only ancestry were considered white of European ancestry - French or Spanish- very different than the white Cajuns who inhabited and still inhabit Louisiana.

Cajuns are the descendants of early French immigrants to Nova Scotia, who were kicked out of Nova Scotia by the English speaking majority. These folks traveled down the Mississippi River into northwestern Louisiana and settled in the bayou country there. Cajun French and French ancestry are different. Many folks will tell you that there really was no intermarrying on child bearing between Cajuns and Creoles. In fact, there are many misconceptions of this very early racial mixing unique to Louisiana. My mother's maternal grandmother was a Cajun born in Opelousas who married a Creole man (French/African/Choctaw/Biloxi) from Marksville. Let me be clear: my great-grandfather wasn't Cajun; in fact his father was from France. My great-grandmother's family had been in Louisiana as far back the early 1700's after migrating from Nova Scotia. She was a Cajun; he Creole.

So these groups share common cultural histories, but generally we are told that Cajuns and Creoles of color did not mix well. There are many, many oral traditions that tell us differently, that these groups did indeed mix very well.

White Creoles took the name Creole to denote who was born in the so-called "New World" and who was not. They also took the name and it came to connote only white or European-American born folks. Thee Creole Heritage Center at Northwestern State Louisiana University (www.nsula.edu), under the direction of my cousine, Janet Ravare Colson, seeks to assert the historical and cultural presence of Creoles of color in Louisiana and the Creole diaspora, including California, Texas, and Illinois, among where the largest concetration of Creoles outisde of Louisiana generally reside.

To us, Louisiana is more than just a state; it is the "Old Country" the place from where we were born, and where we came from. Our indigenous roots tie us to that land, our African roots tie us to the history and culture of slavery and freedom; our French (or Spanish) roots connect us to the history, colonization and culture of settlement of Louisiana by the French and Spanish. So many generations from European colonization have passed for many Creoles that the "old country" is just that and we feel no cultural connection to these places. For us, Louisiana will always be "home", the place from where we emerged.

See Dr. Andrew Jolivette's work on Creole and American Indian familial connections in his books, Louisiana Creoles: Cultural Recovery and Mixed-Race Native American Identity, and his essay in the book he edited, Cultural Representation in Native America; Sybil Kein's Creole: The History and Legacy of Louisiana's Free People of Color, among many excellent texts examining the culture and traditions of Creole peoples. For Cajun biographies, with some Creole resources, look at Barry Jean Ancelet's Cajun and Creole Folktales: The French Oral Traditions of South Louisiana, and Cajun Country, co-edited by Professor Ancelet with Glen Pitre and Lynwood Montell.

__________________________________________________

National Creole Conference on Language & Culture

Call for Proposals for the Chicago Creole Heritage Conference & Convention scheduled for July 31 – August 2, 2008 are now available online. Preliminary information about this conference has been posted at :

http://www.nsula.edu/creole/chicago/index.htm

This site will be updated as additional information is finalized.

The first national conference to explore "Documenting Creole Language and Culture" has been set for July 31-August 2, 2008 in the Chicago area. The aim of the conference is to bring together scholars and members of the general public from throughout the U.S. and beyond to share their research findings and family histories. This project is a collaborative endeavor between Northwestern Louisiana State University and and local Mid West representatives.

Call for Papers/Presentations

Call for Proposals
(Revised 11/15/07)

"Documenting Creole Language and Culture"
Conference Dates: July 31-August 2, 2008
Location: Pheasant Run Resort, St. Charles, Illinois (just outside of Chicago)

Although language is an essential part of everyday life, few of us think about how vital human speech is to the transmission of thoughts and ideas. Studies have shown the strong link between language and culture; language determines how its native speakers view the world. Language allows us to share ideas, teach children about their heritage, and gives us a way to disseminate our cultural ideals. Since language remains such a fundamental part of culture, the theme for the 2008 Creole Heritage Conference is "Documenting Creole Language and Culture."

The Creole Heritage Conference strives to bring together Creole cultural constituents and researchers to share knowledge within a relaxed setting. This unique event draws participants from across the country who have a desire to preserve and promote Creole culture. The Creole Heritage Conference seeks presentation proposals from academics, professional and community researchers who have undertaken studies in any area that relates language to a cultural component. This conference will combine a substantial scholarly component with community-oriented activities (family history exhibits, genealogy workshops, and city tours.)

In preparation for the scholarly component of the conference, we are issuing this call for papers on any topic relating to Creole people, culture, and language. While the primary focus of the conference is on the Creole people and culture of Louisiana and the Gulf Coast, we also welcome contributions that examine the broader context of Creole societies to which Louisiana belongs. In addition to individual papers, we encourage submission of proposals for panels consisting of three or four papers organized around a coherent theme and that include a panel chair. The organizers reserve the right to make changes in the overall configuration of panels.

Some topics of interest may include but are not restricted to: ·
Food names and the Creole culture
Place names in the natural environment
Music as a way of language transmission
Passing language on to the next generation of Creole children
Oral history documentation of Creole elders
Origins of Creole languages and dialects
Language in literature
Terminology of traditional occupations
Language and Community
Origins of specialized terms for material culture
Geographic analysis of Creole languages
Endangered language research methods
Linguistic studies of Creole French

Please note that all presentations will be limited to 20 minutes with 10 minutes for questions and answers. Presenters are required to pay the conference registration fee and are welcome to become Creole Heritage Center Members.

Deadline for submission of abstracts:
January 15, 2008 Notification of Acceptance: February 15, 2008

Preferred Form of Submission: Send your abstract (150 words or less) as an email attachment in Word format to colsonj@nsula.edu. Within the body of the email message (but not on the attachment page containing the abstract), please provide the title of your submission as well as your name, institutional affiliation (if any), and full contact information, including mailing address, telephone and fax numbers, and email address.

Alternative form of submission: Send a hard copy of your abstract (150 words or less) to Janet Colson, Louisiana Creole Heritage Center, Northwestern State University, NSU Box 5675, Natchitoches, LA 71497. On a separate sheet of paper from your abstract, please provide the title of your submission as well as your name, institutional affiliation (if any), and full contact information, including mailing address, telephone and fax numbers, and email address.

winter count

Deepened octaves of winter,
three different words for
snow
and we can't seem
to fathom even one.
Bringing us to our
knees, the road ends
here, in a mist of sky,
water, and air
greeting earth in
a kiss of white and
the end of time.
Drifts rise
smoke of prayers
ascending upon a
breath of a distant
light, long ago laden
with the end of beauty.
How can we move
'if we are frozen
in a fear of change, of death,
of endings and beginnings
that are one in the same?
Can this frozen starlight,
glittering starry-eyed
in the darkness and silence
of night,
remain just what
breathing was meant to be---
beginning, ending, ending,
beginning---
and the mercy of an eternal
night
brings the breathing
to prayers looking
skyward
to heaven as we wish
the road would lead
us home.

notes left on the door on the house on 46^th street, PART ONE

I.

Henry- when are you coming home?

Department of Water and Power 48 hour notice: please do not mail your bill. Your service at 926 W. 46^th Street may be turned off if payment of 196.74 is not made to our office by Friday, May 25^th.

Jessie: do you have any more lemons? Pie goes well with shame, sweetheart.

Henry- please come home. We all miss you. All is forgiven. P.

48 hour notice….

It’s 2:00 am, Henry. Do you know where your daughters are?

Department of Water and Power…

Dear Daddy: when are you coming home?

This house is condemned.

One night, my father dreamt of his father, snoring loudly in the basement in their house on 46^th Street. “Pop,” my father said to his father, “why are you here?”

“I just walked all the way from Sawtelle,” my grandfather said, “and I can’t find anyone home.”

The Veteran’s Cemetery, on Sawtelle Avenue in West Los Angeles, is the cemetery where my grandfather is buried. Both of my grandfathers are buried there; both are World War I veterans.

Years later, when my father’s spirit lies snoring in empty spaces of the house that was once his, I’m reminded of this dream, except I’m the one lost and searching for someone to be home. But no one is here. The empty shell that my mother once lived in no longer gives the comfort I would like to lay my head in, wishing for rain. She’s checked out instead, following my father back across the dirt and concrete and jimson and alata and palm trees lining the streets all the way from here to house on 46^th Street.

There’s a photo of my aunt, heavily pregnant, trying to avoid her image being caught for prosperity, desperately trying to dodge behind the pillar on the porch on the house on 46^th Street. She’s young, beautiful, laughing…so much the 1950’s housewife caught in that moment. Years later she would waste away as cancer ate at her brain. Still beautiful, still vibrant to the end, unable to speak or make words that were her gift. She looked exactly the same as she did that day on the porch on the house on 46^th Street.

I lost my front teeth at the age of three to the house on 46^th Street. My sister, 6 years my senior, was swinging on the porch railing and I had to join her. “Be careful,” my mother admonished.

“I will!” I cried, as I fell face first to the concrete. My mother was nowhere to be found as my grandmother wiped blood, tears, and bone from my face. I remember swallowing my tooth. “Look at all the pretty blood,” Grandmother cooed, trying to calm me.

My mother is still nowhere to be seen. Grief has gotten the best of her. Her retreat has been silent, painful. Like most leavings usually are.

What is the imprint of our presence upon those we leave behind? The house where my aunt hid her extended belly – that became my cousin Kim- and the place where I swallowed my own bones was claimed by fire years ago. Yet I drive by this place and feel its pull from in my blood and I cannot resist it. Sacred places do not exist in cathedrals of glass or stone and wax but in the space of time and the souls who inhabit, whose footprints are still etched on dirt and concrete and urban blood.

When my grandmother was in her later years, she sold the house on 46^th Street, and my grandfather’s ghost tried to return there in their son’s dreams. “Pop,” my father said to his father, “where are you going?”

“I walked all the way from Sawtelle,” my grandfather said, “and couldn’t get into the house.” So he found his way into the basement and went to sleep, where my father followed the sounds of his father’s snores and found him. We follow scents and sounds all the time. That is who we are as animal people in this desert. Following scents and sounds on concrete and ash isn’t what the ancestors had in mind, but it is what’s left of them. Sand, glass, stone, earth. Bricks and mortar and blood and tears. What stories does the land of sparkling sidewalks, genocide, eternal sunshine and smoke and fire tell? Look to the wild tobacco sprouting in cracks of pavement along the ribbons of freeways. Look to the hawks sitting on telephone lines after the rain, gaze fixed not on the SUVs and signs of extravagance but smaller things we tend to ignore. The smaller things are sustenance. In a wold of opposites people have lost sight of the smaller things. But hawks, traditional messengers. see the hidden. They filter out noise and SUVs and density and look to the world of smaller spaces for their sustenance.

© Carolyn Dunn 2008

Labels: global footprint, Los Angeles, survivng Alzheimer's

Thursday, January 03, 2008

365.1.3.8 a blessing of birth and life, living in eyes of depths and darkness, she smiles a smile of 1000 year old starlight, bright in the darkest moments of a sunlit and dawning sky. all things end, but in her, a heart is renewed, shattered stones reworked and pieces back together with love, old tongues, and words pushed forth like new life waiting to begin. a new beginning, greeted with sorrow and regret, has come to sing a song of joy, like the promise and vision of new dreams and ceremony, calling the next world into the one in which we live. Carolyn Dunn 2008

365.1.1.08

A New Year...a New blog!! Yippee!! New resolutions include taking better care of myself, finishing a dang dissertation, getting student papers back at an earlier pace (yippee!), and writing a poem a day. At this point, I should have twenty books finished by Jan 2009!!

Drifting on a blue sail
of shell, rock, sleet
and all that comes between,
facing the daunting tide
for again the first time.
Passing the stones
between the teeth of
passing stones,
we rise, we rise,
falling away the depth
of sadness and grace.
Can I rescind what
magic has left on breath
of bitterness and grief?
Only then can we accept
the rough song
escaping from lips torn
by teeth and regret,
breathing life
into once dying songs.

(c) 2008

My introduction to the world of comic books began at age 9 when my mom, who was an educator, took us on some educational adventure to the missions or to Oak Glen to get apples or some other Southern California one day road trip and we stopped to go potty (sorry, I do have small children) and get something to drink at a mom & pop store and there was a limited, first edition of the first five Wonder Woman books from the 1940's in mint condition. Mind you, this was in the 1970's, way before Neil Gaiman, Dave McKean, Charles Vess and their contemporaries revolutionized the industry in the late 80's, so the books weren't that expensive and my mom, who I found out later loved Wonder Woman, Batman and Superman from the 40's, bought the books for me. I read that thing cover to cover. I still remember William Moulton's artwork and writing and the melodrama of Wonder Woman’s romance with Steve Trevor and the Amazonian purple healing ray that brought Steve back to life so he could accompany Wonder Woman back to Man's World and be by her side in a dramatic clinch and save the free world from the tyranny of Nazism. I knew the origin story of Bullets and Bracelets and how Diana won the competition to be Wonder Woman and how her mother, Queen Hypolyta, didn't want her to go. I loved the idea that women were warriors, having been raised by women warriors myself, and this was nothing new. But Wonder Woman was created in the 1940's when we really needed as much feminine s-heroics that we could get.

So thirty something years later, when I was asked to talk about Jason Aaron's new book Scalped from Vertigo for an article for the student publication of the Native American Journalist's Association, I thought, here is my chance to be an Indian and a comic nerd at the same time...since there's only two...maybe three...of us out there (Arigon Starr, this is for you) I thought I could do this. So I ran down to 3rd Planet and picked up the first five issues of this new, well received Vertigo series and got to reading.

First of all, let me say this: Jason Aaron is a great writer. The pitch for these books has been "the Sopranos meet the rez," and I would say that's pretty accurate, except my take would be if Deadwood, The Sopranos, and Thunderheart all got together and had a love child, it would be Scalped. The writing is sparse and poetic, the art is gritty, and unfortunately, it's the return of the western all over again.

But at least it's not 1870 in the Great Sioux Nation as they are "the last vestiges of a great civilization fading with the frontier". But it's the great Sioux Nation on the “Prairie Rose” reservation that's supposed to be Pine Ridge or Rosebud, a place where "the great Sioux Nation came to die." (Scalped,). Many Lakota people, especially the literary critic and writer Elizabeth Cook-Lynn would argue that Pine Ridge is where the Lakota people came to live. That is, to survive and continue in a way that the federal government would never have imagined. It is a place of survivance rather than death, destruction and corruption. Scalped is the complete end of the spectrum of Indian stereotypes… if the 1970’s activists grew up and became mortal enemies. The chief, Red Crow, is a corrupt crime/casino boss who runs the tribe; his old comrade, Gina Bad Horse, still a badass community activist. Into this walks Gina’s son, Dashiell Bad Horse, who has been gone for years and there is no love lost between him, the chief, and his mother. Good and evil is delineated very early on, and the characters are complicated, but in the sense of one note complications. Red Crow is corrupt. Gina is angry, Dash even angrier. Red Crow’s daughter, Carol, is the angriest of all, so when she and Dash rekindle their “romance”, we know something bad is going to happen. All of the Indians in the book are pissed off, corrupt, violent, and addicted to some substance in some form. It is what most non-Indians imagine Indians to be (if they haven’t imagined Indians killed off with the buffalo yet), especially if they live near rural areas such as Pine Ridge, Rosebud, etc.

As an Indian woman who knows a lot of Indian women, I won’t even get into the outright misogyny of the book. I won’t treat you to a treatise on native feminism, because I don’t think there’s any such thing, but the Hollywood Indians are alive and well in Scalped and although I applaud the effort to place Indians in the contemporary moment, it’s a contemporary moment that takes its cues from the imagined Indian rather than Indian survivance.

# # #

Next time… Scottish men…and the Indian women who love them…