Feel the heat
Writings, photos illuminate the literary contributions of Native Americans
“Tending the Fire — Native Voices & Portraits” takes a dual approach.
One aspect is visual, a gallery of Christopher Felver’s striking black-and-white portraits that captures the beauty of the individual subjects, all 95 of them. Brief biographical sketches tell you who these subjects are.
Complementing the photos is the written word — black letters on white background on pages facing the images. The text, written by the photographed subjects, represents the “voices” of the book’s subtitle.
In the book’s foreword, Acoma Pueblo poet Simon Ortiz, a professor at Arizona State University, calls those words “jottings.” Most are printed or written in pen or pencil in the hand of the subjects.
The jottings are mostly poems, some stories, but also remembrances, a script excerpt, a manifesto, a journal entry, a copy of a letter, a reprint of a dedication of a book.
They give the reader a taste of the writers’ creativity and passion even if narrowed by space — a single page. But the jottings do give recognition to the sometimes overlooked literary contributions of Native Americans.
They should be considered an open, if unstated, invitation for the reader to further explore Native literature.
Several personal favorite jottings come to mind.
On his facing page, Ortiz’s untitled contribution begins with this poetic declaration: “Stories and poems. Poems and stories./This is what my life is everywhere I go.”
Another jotting is by Chickasaw poet-novelist Linda Hogan.
On her facing page is the short poem “The Buffalo”: “This morning I woke to find the small bison/out behind the wild horses./It was eating the long blades of grass./Blades./I worried about its tongue./Then I thought it wanted to speak./ Old mother stood behind me./She said it wanted to tell us/about the long great … absence.”
Hogan also wrote the book’s introduction. In it, she says Native people have had a millenniums-long tradition of writing that goes beyond ink on paper to encompass literature that has been “carved in wood, stone, writing on birch bark with quills or pine needles — as well as many kinds of written materials.”
Among the other gallery subjects are a number of famous Native Americans. They include novelist-poet Louise Erdrich, who is on the book’s front cover, poet-musician-writer Joy Harjo, poet-playwright Ishmael Reed, the late poet-musician John Trudell, the late stand-up comedian-actor-writer Charlie Hill, activists Dennis Banks and Russell Means, jazz musician-poet Cecil Taylor, novelist Sherman Alexie and the late actor-musician-activist Floyd “Red Crow” Westerman. The book is dedicated to Westerman.
Besides Ortiz, other New Mexicans are gallery subjects — the late feminist poetnovelist Paula Gunn Allen, poet Crisosto Apache, poet Jimmy Santiago Baca, photographer Lee Marmon, novelist N. Scott Momaday, novelist-storyteller Leslie Marmon Silko, poet Luci Tapahonso and writer-literary critic Gerald Vizenor.
Many young Native writers, like Apache and Nazbah Tom, are also spotlighted in the book.
The book also contains an interview Felver conducted with Mary Jean Robertson, a gallery subject and host of “Voices of the Native Nation,” the longest-running Native radio program in the country.
Felver’s photographs ought to be reformatted and presented as a museum exhibit.