T233.
In-Na-Poets and En-treaties: Writing Indigenous—What Does it Mean Now?
Thursday, March 9, 2023
3:20 pm to 4:35 pm
Two hundred and forty-five years after the Delaware Nation signed the first Native American/US treaty, what does it mean for Indigenous poets to write “from” tribal nations or as colonized or diasporic peoples? Recent publications such as Navigating CHamoru Poetry and The Diné Reader highlight important poetic qualities and distinctions. This panel explores how Indigenous history, culture, politics, and aesthetics and the very treaty language itself still marks contemporary poetry from the more than 570 tribes.
Participants
Kimberly Blaeser, past Wisconsin Poet Laureate and founding director of Indigenous Nation Poets, has published five poetry collections including Copper Yearning. An emeritus professor at UW—Milwaukee and MFA faculty member for Institute of American Indian Arts, she is Anishinaabe from White Earth.
Elise Paschen, a founding member of In-Na-Po, is an enrolled member of the Osage Nation. The author of four books of poetry, most recently, The Nightlife, her poems have appeared in A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry, Best American Poetry, and Poetry, among other anthologies and magazines.
Crisosto Apache is an enrolled member of the Mescalero Apache Tribe with descent from Mescalero, Chiricahua Apache, and Diné (Salt Clan born for Towering House Clan). He has an MFA from IAIA. He teaches and pursues the advocacy of Native American / Indigenous LGBTQ social injustice.
Kenzie Allen is a poet and multimodal artist, and a descendant of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin. The recipient of a 92Y Discovery Prize and a James Welch Prize for Indigenous Poets, her poems can be found in Narrative, Boston Review, and other venues. She teaches at York University in Toronto.
Jake Skeets is the author of Eyes Bottle Dark with a Mouthful of Flowers, winner of the National Poetry Series, American Book Award, Whiting Award, and Kate Tufts Discovery Award. He is from the Navajo Nation.
