Flowers For Socrates

by Nona Blyth Cloud

I hope Sherman Alexie (1966 —  ) will forgive me for the title. I chose it to make a point: far too many people in the U.S. do think of Indians as ghosts from the past. Alexie has said he prefers ‘Indians’ to ‘Native Americans,’ which he considers an oxymoronic term born of white guilt.

There are over 5 million Americans today who are members of the 562 ‘federally recognized’ Indian tribes, bands, nations, pueblos, rancherias, communities and Native villages in the United States.

Sherman Alexie, whose tribal heritage is both Spokane and Coeur d’Alene, often writes about hard times growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation. He was the first person in his family to go to college. As he tells it in the ‘By Heart’ series for The Atlantic in October 2013:

            ‘Oh, Uncle Adrian, I’m in the reservation of my mind.’

…that line made me want to drop everything and be a poet. It was that earth-shaking. I was a reservation Indian. I had no options. Being a writer wasn’t anywhere near the menu. So, it wasn’t a lightning bolt—it was an atomic bomb. I read it and thought, “This is what I want to do.”

(For the complete Louis poem, go to:
https://poetryontherun.com/2013/10/19/adrian-c-louis/)

The Western Hemisphere is called the ‘New World’ and America is referred to as a ‘young country,’ but evidence of  a human presence on the land goes back at least 13,500 years, and some theories say the First People were already here over 20,000 years ago.

On the Amtrak from Boston to New York City

The white woman across the aisle from me says ‘Look, 
look at all the history, that house
on the hill there is over two hundred years old, ‘
as she points out the window past me

into what she has been taught. I have learned
little more about American history during my few days
back East than what I expected and far less
of what we should all know of the tribal stories

whose architecture is 15,000 years older
than the corners of the house that sits
museumed on the hill. ‘Walden Pond, ‘
the woman on the train asks, ‘Did you see Walden Pond? ‘

and I don’t have a cruel enough heart to break
her own by telling her there are five Walden Ponds
on my little reservation out West
and at least a hundred more surrounding Spokane, 

the city I pretended to call my home. ‘Listen, ‘
I could have told her. ‘I don’t give a shit
about Walden. I know the Indians were living stories
around that pond before Walden’s grandparents were born

and before his grandparents’ grandparents were born.
I’m tired of hearing about Don-fucking-Henley saving it, too, 
because that’s redundant. If Don Henley’s brothers and sisters
and mothers and father hadn’t come here in the first place

then nothing would need to be saved.’
But I didn’t say a word to the woman about Walden
Pond because she smiled so much and seemed delighted
that I thought to bring her an orange juice

back from the food car. I respect elders
of every color. All I really did was eat
my tasteless sandwich, drink my Diet Pepsi
and nod my head whenever the woman pointed out

another little piece of her country’s history
while I, as all Indians have done
since this war began, made plans
for what I would do and say the next time

somebody from the enemy thought I was one of their own.

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