Whereas and Roofwalker, reviews

Whereas, poems by Layli Long Soldier

Graywolf Press, 2017

Roofwalker, Susan Power

Milkweed Editions, 2004

Ever since I read Unsettling Truths: The Ongoing, Dehumanizing Legacy of the Doctrine of Discovery by Mark Charles and Soong-Chan Rah, I’ve read a couple other books by Native Americans. I loved Roofwalker, Milkweed Editions, 2002, by Susan Power (enrolled member of the Standing Rock Tribe) mostly because I’ve lived in the Uptown neighborhood since 1982, since it was a wreck. I was familiar with the Native Americans dislocated to Uptown. It wasn’t by accident that Native Americans came to Uptown. 1) There was again one of those misguided federal programs (Urban Indian Relocation Program) directed at Native Americans living on reservations, to help them get off their land and assimilated into mainstream society. There was an incentive to come down to Chicago—and back then there was manufacturing work. 2) Native Americans ended up in Uptown because in 1953 the American Indian Center was established there. And, 3) there was day labor organizations that worked in cahoots with the bars n Wilson Avenue that would cash their checks. It wasn’t really pie in the sky.

Between 1950 and 1970, Chicago's American Indian population grew from 775 to 6,575, according to census records. The largest concentration was in Uptown.

Lately that number has gone way down with the rapid increase of gentrification and loss of low-income housing. Additionally the American Indian Center moved to the near suburbs. From the Chicago Reporter: “In the earliest days of the center's life, 70 percent of our Native population was in walking distance of the center and that is no longer true," said the Rev. Peter Powell, a retired Episcopal priest and American Indian Center founding member who has deep ties to Chicago's Native American community, having been adopted by the Cheyenne nation of Montana.

A longtime presence at the American Indian Center and the man behind the now-closed St. Augustine's Center for American Indians — one of more than a dozen sister agencies that assisted Native Americans in the city — Powell, 88, said Uptown was a perfect fit for migrating Native American families in the 1960s.”

Housing in Uptown was nothing grand, but it was affordable. Jobs were not great, but there was work. There was a sizable population that some didn’t always feel homesick. I met many extended families of Native Americans living in Uptown. Nearly all of them were living with trauma, either hereditary or recent. Roofwalker does a good job of representing the Native American experience by taking us inside many different family situations. I particularly remember the story of the lady running the junk store. I remember when coming to Uptown that there were several Mom & Pop junk stores on Wilson Ave. that sprung up and disappeared as the junk ebbed and flowed.

Whereas, poems by Layli Long Soldier. She is an enrolled member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe. Her book is a mediation on language and specifically upon the apology offered by President Obama (U.S. Apology To Native Americans) in 2009. It was an “apology” that sowed more discontent than resolution and re-opened past wounds. I won’t go into specifics. Buy Unsettling Truths: The Ongoing, Dehumanizing Legacy of the Doctrine of Discovery by Mark Charles and Soong-Chan Rah for a more in-depth look from a Native perspective.

In whereas Long Soldier meditates on the language and wording of the Apology, making it personal ie how does it apply to her, her family, her work, her art. We already know it fell woefully short to rectify or bring reconciliation to past injustices (maybe not so far in the past—see Standing Rock and Keystone pipeline. This story is ongoing.), but Long Soldier sets up many “poems” that examines it.

“I’m transformed by language. I am often

Couched in footnote or blazing in title.

Where in the body do I begin;”

Whereas she looks at the apology from moments in her own life.

“WHEREAS at four years old I read the first chapter of the Bible aloud I was not Christian

Whereas my hair unbraided ran the length of my spine I sometimes sat on it

Whereas at the table my legs dangled I could not balance peas on my fork

Whereas I used my fingers carefully I pushed the bright green onto silver tines

Whereas you can eat like a pig the lady said setting my plate on the floor

Whereas she instructed me to finish on my hands and knees she took another bite . . . “

Long Soldier brings us into that corner, into the silent grassesgrassesgrasses wavering around her. Through her words we are able to understand what it feels like to be invisible—yet awake to what is inside. All those words floating around our mind.