a Native American thought of it

See Soul Blossom Living, coordinating Poetry Friday’s list. Last week we danced with LINDA B at Teacher Dance.

[11.30 alert- I’m grateful to add this Nov. 30, 2020 event with The Seminole Tribe of Florida. “Gather ” is available to stream throughout the month. A panel discussion  with FSU faculty from four different departments and representatives of the Seminole Tribe will take place at 3 p.m. Monday, Nov. 30.” From The Florida State University communications office.]

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“Once upon a time when the world was new there was only one language.”

c. all rights reserved, Betty Mae Jumper, LEGENDS OF THE SEMINOLES

::::My spirit lifts each time I find more quality books about the Western Hemisphere’s First Peoples/Indigenous/ American Indian/ Native American families and communities, meaning, I find titles that are written by and sometimes illustrated by, enrolled members of tribes or those writers with strong, continuing connection with tribe communities.

This idea arose from the Native community and gains supporters each book launch season.

I feel the popularity of the  National Museum of the American Indian (a Smithsonian Institution agency) has helped raise the profile of these books. Mighty work in looking at these titles is evermore prominent from the untiring and detailed research of Dr. Debbie Reese, at American Indians in Childrens’ Literature.

More Native American Topics , a resource page, is available on this site year round ::::

Here are highlights of excellent referral opportunities

::::Blogs at American Indians In Children’s Literature on published POETRY from tribal communities and members.

::::2020 AMERICAN INDIAN YOUTH LITERATURE AWARD the inaugural year

As already mentioned, AMERICAN INDIANS IN CHILDREN’S LITERATURE

and

NATIONAL MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN

OYATE

::::Today I’m sharing from a book that I’ve re-read for enlightenment in this year of 2020, by poet Leslie Marmon Silko, of Laguna Pueblo heritage. I went back to it on my shelves after not one but two people mentioned an unpublished lovely anecdote about this impassioned author. It’s prose piece I’m reading as a poem, from her introduction to the book, Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit:

Except for a few fragments

the magnificient folding books

of the Maya and Aztec people

were destroyed in 1540

by Bishop Landa

who burned

the great

libraries

of the Americas.

©1996 Leslie Marmon Silko, all right reserved

I have not yet seen this 2019 title for adult readers, NATIVE VOICES: Indigenous American Poetry, Craft and Conversations, from Tupelo Press, but it looks to be a superior volume to read.

Photo of a map, created by Aaron Carapella, C. all rights reserved. Photo is C. by Hansi Lo Wang/NPR, all rights reserved
Aaron Carapella, a self-taught map maker in Warner, Oklahoma, has designed maps of Canada and the continental U.S. showing the original locations and names of Native American tribes before first contact with Europeans. View the full map (PDF).PHOT If you have a home or classroom wall that it would nourish, it is offered here.

November is Native American month, each year, where once in the land every month of every year was Native American month.