Whereas by Layli Long Soldier—National Poetry Month 2023

Oglala poet and advocate Layli Long Soldier.

Layli Long Soldier, and enrolled member of the Oglala Lakota Nation, poet, writer, feminist, artist, and activist reflected in a very personal way the gulf of understanding between the experiences and lives between Native peoples and even the most would-be White sympathizers in her acclaimed poem Whereas.  It’s a hard lesson for even the most self-proclaimed ally to understand.

Long Soldier grew up in the four corners region of the Southwest, where she continues to live and to advocate against the continued, systematic oppression of indigenous populations.  She graduated from the Institute of American Indian Arts in in Santa Fe, New Mexico with a B.A. in Fine Arts, and went on to earn a Master’s at prestigious and progressive Bard College.

Her first complete volume of poetry, Whereas was published in 2017 by Graywolf Press and explores the systemic violence against and cultural erasure of native tribes in the United States through a thoughtful investigation of language.  Whereas responded to the cautiously phrased and quietly passed 2009 U.S. Congressional Apology to Native Peoples for the history of genocidal policies and actions that the Federal government enacted against them. In writing these poems, Long Soldier studied similar apologies from governments across the world to indigenous peoples and considered the nature of authentic apology.

The collection’s longest poem, the five-page 38 which recounted how 38 Sioux warriors were hanged, with the approval of President Abraham Lincoln, after the 1862 Sioux Uprising, on December 26, 1862. Long Soldier wrote “This was the same week that President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation.”

The shorter verse Whereas, focused mainly on personal experiences, including Long Soldier’s reflections on her relationship to her daughter and motherhood.

The book and poem led to widespread acclaim and earned her the 2017 National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry, and 2018 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award.  She was also a finalist for the 2017 National Book Award for Poetry and shortlisted for the 2018 Griffin Poetry Prize.

This summer youth and adults from Tree of Life Unitarian Universalist Congregation in McHenry, Illinois will make a Re-Member trip to the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota where they will complete service projects; live, work, eat, and play with tribal members; and have educational opportunities.  Another group from the Congregation made the journey a few years ago and were deeply changed by the experience.  Hopefully they will learn from Long Soldier’s experience as well.

Whereas

 

WHEREAS a string-bean blue-eyed man leans

 back into a swig of beer work-weary lips at the dark bottle keeping

cool in short sleeves and khakis he enters the discussion;

 

 Whereas his wrist loose at the bottleneck to come across as candid “Well at least there was an Apology that’s all I can say” he offers to the circle each of them scholarly;

 

 Whereas under starlight the fireflies wink across East Coast grass and

me I sit there painful in my silence glued to a bench in the midst of

the American casual;

 

 Whereas a subtle electricity in that low purple light I felt their eyes

 on my face gauging a reaction and someone’s discomfort leaks out in a

well-stated “Hmmm”;

 

 Whereas like a bird darting from an oncoming semi my mind races to the

Apology’s assertion “While the establishment of permanent European

settlements in North America did stir conflict with nearby Indian

tribes, peaceful and mutually beneficial interactions also took place”;

 

 Whereas I cross my arms and raise a curled hand to my mouth as if

thinking as if  taking it in I allow a static quiet then choose to stand

 up excusing myself  I leave them to unease;

 

 Whereas I drive down the road replaying the get-together how the man

and his beer bottle stated their piece and I reel at what I could have

said or done better;

 

 Whereas I could’ve but didn’t broach the subject of “genocide” the

absence of this term from the Apology and its rephrasing as “conflict”

for example;

 

 Whereas since the moment had passed I accept what’s done and the knife of my conscience pierces with bone-clean self-honesty;

 

 Whereas in a stirred conflict between settlers and an Indian that night in a circle;

 

 Whereas I struggle to confess that I didn’t want to explain anything;

 

 Whereas truthfully I wished most to kick the legs of that man’s chair out from under him;

 

 Whereas to watch him fall backward legs flailing beer stench across his chest;

 

 Whereas I pictured it happening in cinematic slow-motion delightful;

 

 Whereas the curled hand I raised to my mouth was a sign of indecision;

 

 Whereas I could’ve done it but I didn’t;

 

 Whereas I can admit this also took place, yes, at least;

 

 WHEREAS we ride to the airport in a van they swivel their necks and

shoulders around to speak to me sugar and lilt in their voices something

 like nurses their nursely kindness through my hair then engage me as

comrades in a fight together. Well what we want to know one lady asks is

 why they don’t have schools there? Her outrage empathy her furrowed brow. There are schools there I reply. Grade schools high schools colleges. But why aren’t there any stores there? There are stores there.

 Grocery stores convenience stores trading posts whatever what-have-you I

 explain but it’s here I recognize the break. It’s here we roll along

the pavement into hills of conversation we share a ride we share a

country but live in alternate nations and here I must tell them what

they don’t know or, should I? Should I is the moment to seize and before I know it I say Well you know Native people as in tribes as in “people” living over there

 are people with their own nations each with its own government and flag

 they rise to their own national songs and sing in their own languages,

even. And by there I mean here all around us I remind

them. Drifting in side-glances to whirring trees through the van windows

 then back to me they dig in they unearth the golden question My God how

 come we were never taught this in our schools? The concern and furrow.

But God the slowing wheels and we lurch forward in the van’s downshift

and brake. Together we reach a full-stop. Trapped in a helix of traffic

we’re late for check-in security flights our shoulders flex forward into

 panicked outward gazes nerves and fingers cradle our wristwatches so to

 answer their question now would be untimely because to really speak to

it ever is, untimely. But there Comrades there there Nurses. I will remember the swing of your gold earrings. There your perfume around me as a fresh blanket. There you checked my pulse kindly. There the boundary of bedside manners;

 

 WHEREAS a woman I know says she watched a news program a reporter

detailed the fire a house in which five children burned perhaps their

father too she doesn’t recall exactly but remembers the camera on the

mother’s face the mother’s blubbering her hiccuping and wail she leans

to me she says she never knew then in those times that year this country

 the northern state she grew up in she was so young you see she’d never

seen it before nobody talked about them she means Indians she tells me

and so on and so on but that moment in front of the TV she says was like

 opening a box left at her door opening to see the thing inside whereas

to say she learned through that mother’s face can you believe it and I

let her finish wanting someone to say it but she hated saying it or so

she said admitting how she never knew until then they could feel;

 

 WHEREAS the word whereas means it being the case that, or

considering that, or while on the contrary; is a qualifying or

introductory statement, a conjunction, a connector. Whereas sets the

table. The cloth. The saltshakers and plates. Whereas calls me to the

table because Whereas precedes and invites. I have come now. I’m seated

across from a Whereas smile. Under pressure of formalities, I fidget I

shake my legs. I’m not one for these smiles, Whereas I have spent my

life in unholding. What do you mean by unholding? Whereas asks

and since Whereas rarely asks, I am moved to respond, Whereas, I have

learned to exist and exist without your formality, saltshakers, plates,

cloth. Without the slightest conjunctions to connect me. Without an

exchange of questions, without the courtesy of answers. This has become

mine, this unholding. Whereas, with or without the setup, I can see the

dish being served. Whereas let us bow our heads in prayer now, just

enough to eat;

 

—Layli Long Soldier

 

Whereas by Layli Long Soldier, Graywolf Press, 2017.