Indian Giver
By John Smelcer; Leapfrog Press; 2016; 128 pages; $14
Most white Americans don't like to be told this, but by and large Native Americans still consider themselves an occupied people. Americans are raised on the national story of a country that pulled itself up from the wilderness and became a world power by advancing the ideals of freedom and justice. The notion that our continent was in fact already heavily populated prior to the arrival of Europeans, and that millions of those occupants were shoved out of the way to make room for our freedom and justice is, much like slavery, one of those inconvenient historical truths we'd rather forget.
The inherent tendency of Americans to place a higher value on the future than we do on the past only aggravates our inability to confront past sins. Our national mythos is one of picking up and lighting out for the territories. A trait almost completely unique to Americans, among all the peoples of the world, is our ability to psychologically remove ourselves from history. We like to believe it doesn't affect who we are today. When the topic of what was done to Native Americans is raised, the usual response is to admit, "Well yes, it was awful, but we didn't do it, it was done by past generations. Life is good now, there are sufficient opportunities, why can't those people just get over it?"
Just getting over it is something John Smelcer has no intention of doing. The Alaska-based historian, linguist, author and poet has devoted himself to Native American and Alaska Native causes and affairs and language preservation while maintaining an enormously prolific writing career. He's published more than 20 books, including fiction, Native studies and poetry.
Resident alien
In his latest collection, "Indian Giver," Smelcer boils his views down into a collection of tightly composed poems that convey the Native American experience through brief vignettes that are at turns political, spiritual, angry, celebratory, tragic, comic and, at all times, gripping. It's quite the work.
The title and outlook of this book are captured on its opening page: "The Great Spirit gave this land to us. / Then he took it away / and gave it to someone else. Indian Giver." These words indicate what follows: anger and loss channeled through humor and irony. The poems are dispatches from the land. Land that was taken away. Land that was assigned to Natives. Land that was taken again. Reservations where a culture pushed aside tries to perpetuate what it can of itself. Cities where the author feels at best a resident alien.
Most of these poems are broadly Native American in outlook rather than locally focused. Thus we have the Eternal Poverty Reservation located somewhere unstated. It's where characters like Mary Caught-in-Between and Silas Carries-a-Dream attend the Wekonvertum Boarding School for Indian Eradication and the Church of Infinite Confusion. They drift through life unmoored with little money, crumbling homes and a vanishing language in a reservation awash with alcohol, suicide and carefree summer tourists who buy tchotchkes they vainly believe will bring a bit of authentic Native Americanness into their lives.
That co-opting of Native culture by whites extends far beyond the reservation, and it prompts from Smelcer one of the most biting lines in this book: "Some American sports teams are named for Indians. / There should be an Indian baseball team called / the Cherokee Crucified Christs, complete with / a bleeding team mascot nailed to a wooden cross. / Would that hurt your sensibilities?"
If your answer is yes, then consider the ongoing dispute over the Washington Redskins and ask yourself, is it right to tell Native Americans to just get over it?
Longing for the land
Smelcer directs his anger at both the government and God. The first poem, "The Book of Genesis, Revised for American Indian History", places the two in cahoots. God "told the White people to go west and multiply / and he said unto them / 'Let there be colonization,' / and so there was." In "Oneupmanship", Smelcer tells us, "God got angry at humanity / So he created a cataclysmic flood. / Raven got angry at Indians / So he created Christopher Columbus."
Elsewhere Smelcer pushes back, devising an alternate discovery for Columbus, laughing at the fate of George Custer, slicing deeply into the reputation of George Washington, and writing in between the lines of the treaties America has made with Native tribes. It's history and culture from the side omitted from school textbooks.
Underlying all the anger and black comedy, however, is a longing for the land which, along with language, is core to Smelcer's identity. In one of the few poems that takes a peaceful turn, he tells us, "I never want to leave this land. / All of my ancestors are buried here ... When I finally fall to pieces / this is where my pieces will fall."
Much of the land has been taken, but those who were there first still claim it as their own.
Despite our efforts to the contrary, we cannot escape the past. Historical wrongs can be atoned for to a degree, but they cannot be made right. The consequences of the past created the present. Enormous gulfs between peoples remain. They can't be closed by telling those on the other side to get over it, but they can be narrowed by closing our mouths and opening our ears and considering why those gulfs exist. John Smelcer is, of course, just one voice. His is a well-honed voice, however. There's much to be gained from listening to him.
David A. James is a Fairbanks based critic and freelance writer.