Growing Ute II

You heal me with your presence like sweetgrass smoke

Foreword

Maik’ welcome to volume II of Growing Ute. As we move forward with our language and preservation work, we continue to embrace and strengthen our people, our way of life and our cultural traditions. The Ute language is a spoken language. As we embark on writing the language, we find many variances in the written form. Our focus is to increase the usage of speaking Ute among our people and awaken our cultural spirits so that we may continue passing all of our heritage to the next generation and those to come. I’m pleased to say volume I of Growing Ute won a silver and four gold Anthem Awards for global purpose driven work. Volume II celebrates our resiliency and recovery from covid and highlights our traditional cultural gatherings.

The Ute Mountain Ute Tribe’s Tiwahe Initiative, directed by Juanita PlentyHoles, has been working for three years to preserve and protect the Ute language. With funding from the United States Department of Interior, Bureau of Indian Affairs, as well as the Indian Economic Development Living Languages Grant Program. The Ute Mountain Ute Tribe has created an online Ute dictionary with both Android and Apple applications, an e-learning platform, award winning films and books. Visit GrowingUte.org

Let Your Spirit Sing

We’re all just trying to find out / where our stars are meant to live / in this sky wide life. Hold strong like corn connected to Earth. / We are bursts of spirit and light, / meant to fight the dark in this world. / Remember it’s okay to live and to learn, / to let go and cry. This world can push you down far, / but we always survive. / So let your spirit sing loud enough for / your ancestors to hear your light.

Igneous Poetry

Igneous poetry juts to the sky / Mother Earth’s ancient molten gift / birthed and hardened into a ridge line / a compass needle / showing us the way.

What makes a human heart / fall in love with a mountain so?

Wood and stone and feather / singing together to form this great song.

Altitude giving rise to diversity: / layers of life / attuned to different elevations / blend together through eco tones / birthing unique niches, / nooks where the butterfly fits / and takes flight. Altitude giving rise to snow caps / which give rise to streams / which give rise to life / which gives rise to love.

Slopes carving into the sky / an elevated home for Bear / to rest and harvest and birth / their families.

From these mountains we suckle the nourishment / borne of Creator’s majestic design. The world is tuned perfectly / before it can release / this symphony of life. We learned to respect / this attunement, / this balance / to support it / to protect it / to contribute to it.

Over time our arrogance was cut up / like a canyon cut open by mountain water. We learned the hard way / not to expect / but to respect / the generosity / of a mountain. Humility sparks a fire: / motivation to learn the language / of a mountain.

Only then can we write love letters she can clearly understand. / Letters not written on paper or in stone / but written into medicine bundles / offerings / written in the way smoke / curls up / into the sky.

Ephemeral poetry / etched into the air / by breath, / song, / punctuated by these pitiful, prayerful utterances.

It is enough, she says. / To give and receive with the Earth inside cycles of rain and snow. Some can hear the sound of eagle eggs hatching. / The crackle of good fire creeping along the ground, / which our ancestors applied to prevent catastrophic fire, / fires we applied to transform dead October grasses into life giving ash, / injected into meadow systems like a breath of life. / The deer will have food in the spring. / The deer who in turn gives his life so the people may live.

What could be more sacred than this?

This is how a human heart falls in love with a mountain. Those with eyes, they can see. / For those without, they will learn to see soon enough. / Their hubris gives rise to mistakes / which give rise to broken systems / which give rise to famine / which gives rise to wisdom.

Until then we will be singing our song / steady as we can; / in a blizzard of bullets / against our people / we will sing onward, / we will sing anyways, / as our ancestors have. The mountain teaches us that / from the fires a flower is born.

As We Bear Dance

Kicking up stardust as we Bear Dance. / Our heartbeat beads / threaded by drumsong / connect us to primordial times.

They are right here with us. / The Ancestors come in the lightning. / They come in the wind. / They come in the rain.

The roar of the growler. / The phosphoric chants of our men. / Buckskin rhythms beneath our feet.

Quantum physicists and mycologists / are beginning to catch up with our / electric science. / One part particle. / One part wave.

Tapping into the energy living inside us all. / Footsteps sending messages of relationship / to the underground networks of life. / Ions in the air catalyzed by compassion. / Prayers transmitted at the speed of light. / Through this dance we exist in two places at once. / The stars send their love to us at 3 million meters per second. / The perpetual motion of the cosmos expressed through our feet. Our minds unlock doorways to the spirit world / with the keys of reverence and reciprocity. / From the Milky Way we came. / To the Milky Way we will soon return.

For now, though, we are teaching the world about alchemy. / The missing variable in all your equations is Love. / We’ll help you understand how / the physical realm mixed with / the spirit of kindness / yields a world of beauty.

This dance is a love letter to our indispensable relative, the Bear. / We dance to teach the children to be humble before Creation. / To sense the subtle energies of the Spring morning air. / Come feel the things English doesn’t have words for, / such an impoverished language. As Greg Cajete says, / Remember what is important. / Remember what is sacred. / Remember what we stand for.

This is not just a dance. / This is our story written into the sand. / A living codex transcribed from the past into our present hands. / A standard curriculum encoded in the songs / in the smoke / in the ceremony of life / for the children today, / for the children yet to come.

The snow of our ancestors / doesn’t come now. The willow for baskets / harder and harder to find. I see chokecherry islands shrinking. / The piñon pines thirsty and dry. Our white brothers and sisters / tricked by Coyote / duped by their own greed / to walk off a cliff / and bringing everyone else / along with them. Many worlds have come and gone before. / The ruins of collapsed civilizations lay strewn all around Turtle Island. / They remind us of the times when we too walked off a cliff. /

When we too wanted to be masters of Creation, instead of children of Creation. Hubris cannot stand / on sacred ground / for long. It always eventually eats away at it’s own mother until it / eats itself. What the climate scientists don’t tell you, though, / is that there is life after death. They don’t tell you that sometimes catastrophe / is the only way humans / Learn. They don’t tell you / (they don’t understand) / that this is / Creator’s world. Creator holds it all in their great hands, / even our collapse.

When he has run out of places to run, / when the riverbeds are nothing but sand, / only then will the white man’s “civilization” / remember to cry, to care, and to pray again. Yes there is great suffering.

But the silver lining is this / eminent rebirth, / the soul’s long awaited exhalation / finally released / in these times of reckoning. The snow used to come. / It doesn’t come now.

Strong Medicine

Bear Root and Bergamot / Sumac and Sagebrush / Piñon and Ponderosa / Chokecherries and Buffalo Berries

Do you know their scent? / Do you know their properties? / Do you know their uses? / Do you know their Indian names?

Do you know how to speak to plants? / Do you know how to cook food?

I’ll give you a hint: / It has nothing to do with recipes / and everything to do with your intention, / the way you feel inside / as you stir the / pot, / your attitude.

You can find her in the higher altitudes / searching for a relative / who is also a remedy. Grandpa told her the / strongest medicines / are the ones / we prepare for others / with love in our / Hearts.

The People Grew Corn Here

The People grew corn here / for a thousand years straight. Positioned their fields / along the axis of humility. Aligned with stars and the solstice suns.

Catching the monsoon rains: / not just water flows down the hillside, / but life-giving minerals as well.

Never exhausted the soil.

Our relatives of the First Light, / the people of the east coast, / dipped their hands into estuaries / and pulled out an oyster / for three thousand years straight. These little oyster relatives, / tiny lungs of the water, / filtering the shorelines.

The white man came with his dredges and fences. / Now less than 1% of our famous oysters remain in the Chesapeake Bay.

The People of the Plains set gentle fire to the Earth each October. / Dead plant tissues transmuted into ash. / A holy offering / of phosphorus, nitrogen, and potassium / to the / hungry soil.

Echinacea seed pods broken open by fire. / Germinating in these fertile, ashy soils. Nutrient dense grasses. / Munchies for the bison / sprang up / in the wake of / our gentle embers.

They thought we followed the buffalo. / Little did they know the buffalo / followed our life-giving prairie fires.

Our relatives way to the south / where the giant rivers flow / bring ash and bio fuel and termite piles and ceramics / into city wide composting systems / to transmute nutrient-poor Amazonian soils / into rich, dark Earth.

From these Indigenous systems 60% of global food sources were born. / The tomatoes of Italian pizzas. / The potatoes of French fries. / The cacao of Belgian chocolate. / The maize of southern corn bread.

Master geneticists diversifying varieties. / Master ecologists augmenting habitat. / Master culinary artists sparking new proteins by blending juniper ash and bluecorn. / Master hydrologists transforming deserts into gardens.

But all along the secret of our mastery / was to know we are not the masters / of the sacred Earth, / the deepest genius of these civilizations / not lying in their gadgets / but in their hearts.

Evolution

Native Americans, / we weren’t just born / this cool. We had to earn it. / We had to learn it.

It was through hundreds of thousands of years of evolution / (not tens of thousands of years like archaeologists say) / that many of us came to a place of equilibrium.

We were / humming along, / many of us were, / for quite a long time / before our war-torn brothers and sisters / from across the sea / stepped onto the scene.

We made / devastating mistakes / of / slavery and caste systems / before Columbus was ever born. Devastating mistakes / of / arrogance and greed / against the Earth / before Erik Thorvaldssonever set sail.

We had our own / shameful periods of / empire. / Extraction of / blood and stone. Indeed it was only through the carnage and grief of patriarchy / that we learned the beauty and importance / of matrifocality.

It was through the shame of domination / that we decided to explore the sciences of equality. It was only through arrogance on the Earth / that we learned the seriousness of ecological reciprocity.

It was through the mental illness of selfishness / that we learned our truest self as generosity. It was only through the pain of war / that we learned the importance / of PEACE.

Roots So Deep

Nuche. The People. / Ndé. The People / Wintu. The People. / Diné. The People. Roots so deep / not even genocide / could stamp us out.

Not even diseases. / Not even massacres. / Not even death marches. / Not even child abuse. /

Not even laudanum. / Not even relocation. / Not even language prohibition. /

Not even 500 years of MMIW.

Nothing could stop her eagle plume / from bobbing in the sunshine today.

Nothing could stop her jingles / from ringing out with the beat today.

Nothing could stop him from / swaying like grass in the wind today.

Nothing could stop him from / counting coup in the arbor today.

We may have a few bruises. / A few rough edges. / But consider that the intended outcome was / complete annihilation. / Consider the largest and wealthiest army in the world / could not succeed in this.

We may have some battle scars. / Some of them on our skin. / Some of them in our psyche. In the face of hate we love / and shine with a rhythm / in our step, / and a prayer on our lips / for our children, / for the Earth, / and especially / for those who sought to extinguish us.

Well-Versed in Dirt

I II III

I remember my grand-mother was well-versed in dirt, the way the Earth clung to her hands as if it were a part of her. / We come from the Earth. So she tended the seeds / as living beings, planted her garden full of foods / traditional to the land and handled them with care. / Every tree, plant, or rock has a spirit, she said “hear it.” I listen. / When my mother says words are seeds and to be careful / of the words you say, I pray. For I know each seed / carries a story. / My mother taught me that water is the source / of all living things and to honor life like the circle / we sit in for ceremony. From the doorway in / to the doorway out, life is about all our relations. We were shaped by fire, made from lightning and / dirt-covered hands that know when to ignite healing.

”Food”

Food. / It’s a funny word.

Food. / It is an English word.

Food. / Denatured word.

Food. / In our language we call it tühkap(i).

Food is not an isolated noun. / It’s a verb. / It’s the cosmos in a seed. / It’s a web of relationships. / A dynamic set of complex and interrelated processes.

Food is in the clouds. / Food is in the tilt of the Earth at Spring time. / Food is in the language that teaches us how to plant. / Food is in the sunlight. / Food is the convergence of / DNA, rainfall, and love.

When I eat “food” I am ingesting the culmination of a million miracles.

Food is thus sacred. / Cycles of life and death. / Sun and breath. / Dry and wet. / Effort and rest. The deer gave his life so that the people could live. / Sounds cliché but / would you give your life / right now / so that I could / live?

Our relatives do this for us every day.

You Heal Me With Your Presence

I love you like I love my grandmother’s hands. like I love dirt roads under starlight. like I love water on sweat lodge rocks. like I love the first sprouts of corn seed. You make me happy like aunties laughing on the porch. like crispy fry bread on a July afternoon. like her smile flashing when she forgets to be shy. like a basketball swishing in the net. You heal me with your presence like sweetgrass smoke. with your dedication like a buffalo robe to lay on. with your love like the light of dawn. with your protection like a Ponderosa standing strong. Your words are chokecherry juice.

Your touch is buckskin.

Your mind is corn pollen. Your body is bear root.

You hold me like you hold an eagle feather. This is why I’ll love you forever.

We Shine

There is a light in the eyes of an Indigenous child. / A beautiful life once hidden from sight. / But now standing proud shining light onto lies. / They buried our children in unmarked graves, / Indian Boarding Schools where they claimed / to “save” the man by killing the “Indian” in us. / Pried our mouths open, and stole languages. / Claimed Manifest Destiny was heavenly / then prohibited our prayers.

But today we unearth what is truly holy. / Sage smoke got her lifted, can’t stop her. She’s gifted. / Overcame attempted genocide, keyword: attempted. / All these years of oppression, bring out your feathers and dust them. / The grace of our elders reminds us that love wins. / Love wins against hate embodied in those who called themselves free. / Then named us animals in the Doctrine of Discovery.

But you cannot discover a people who already exist. / And you cannot find something that was never lost. / When history is written by colonizers they are always the heroes. / So we re-write these books with the stories that we know. / They plundered our wealth and burned down our orchards. / Then turned around and labeled us impoverished and worthless. / Told us we were nothing and held us as captives. / When we’re the ones who gave the world corn, rubber and aspirin.

Boarding schools cut our hair, nuns had their whips cracking. / They came and went like lightning, but look who’s still standing. / Settler systems rise to power and then crumble. / Like a stone we remain because we‘re taught to stay humble. / We were called stupid and primitive by the world’s colonial forces. / But the world can thank our people for 60% of global food sources. We have always known who we are - / scientists, artists, astronomers, deserving of dignity. / Overseers of 80% of the world’s total biodiversity. / Across the land the prayers of Ancestors come to fruition. / Beautiful Indigenous minds working in unison towards the same vision. / Peeling off these labels, like a butterfly born of resilience. / We outstretch our wings, the world finally ready to embrace our brilliance.

Colonization proves that hurt people hurt people. / But healed people, heal people, and nourish the future. / We’re the seventh generation, we’re forgiving our abuser. / Breaking the cycles, and healing the tumors. / From Turtle Island to Abya Yala. / All our knowledge comes through her. / With feet on the land we honor our roots. / We stand here today calling out to Native Youth: / There’s a light in your eyes, walk tall and shine bright. / We’re not here to survive, no, it’s our time to thrive. / You shine like the sun, you are always enough. / The prayers that we make and the actions we take. / Will nourish our descendants, generations from today.

An Indigenous Girl Searching For Times Gone By

Here we are writing poems in English. / An Indigenous girl searching for times gone by. / Had to get a PhD just to be taken seriously in the world. / Digging in the archives of stories written about us by our torturers.

Listening to wax recordings of her great, great grandma. / The last speaker. She goes to the library.

It’s a forest where / everything is still enough / for her to hear / the books / of her ancestors / in the mist.

Some things can’t be found on Google. She puts tobacco down on the ground / and cries a prayer into the soil.

“Help me bring back all that was stolen.”

The air is so quiet it’s hard to imagine anyone heard her. She walks down the mountainside / back to her car with / just enough / gas to get / Home. The ground crunches beneath her feet / just like any other day. Little does she know the storm / of answers to her prayers is / welling on the horizon. From there a flurry of ideas / people / coincidences / opportunities / elders / long lost relatives /understandings / pop into her life.

Ten years later she’s a / leader / led by / the souls of / Ancestors.

All My Relations

We are all related and sometimes it takes a revolution to be awakened.

Presence: for our Ancestors

Thank you for the sacrifices you made, / when you did what you had to / to help us make it, here. Here we can use language, / tradition, dances, and food / to root us in ancestral power.

We offer up prayers for protection, / so that our people can always live / lives that are full. Our hearts sing the beats of drums, / united in rhythm as we dance around the circle / of the Creator's sacred arena called life.

We sing your songs until they become part of us. / We stand tall like juniper so our children know / what it means to reach towards the sun’s sweet nourishment. We know that all / our relations answer the call to dance proudly, / our gifts guiding the path we call presence.

To the Words I Do Not Yet Have

I want my ancestors’ language planted deep in my tongue / tied to mouth’s floor, a forest filled with my grandmothers / standing tall as redwood. Connected in Mother Earth’s roots, / my grandmothers sing songs only the land knows. My grandfathers’ prayers fly in on winds that carry / the wolves’ cries, the eagle’s whistle, and the water’s / drip that connects us to all living things.

I want my lips to taste this light that lives in my bones, / blood memory. I want to sing songs sacred enough / to bring all of our missing relatives home, / songs spirit-deep and strong enough to unearth / all our stolen children who died holding the prayers / and songs of our language in their mouths. Words became seeds / that sprouted a prayer that calls to us at dawn, / a song that speaks to us in the language of stars.

Publisher Chairman Heart and Ute Mountain Ute Tribe Council

Foreword Juanita PlentyHoles

Executive Producer Beverly Santicola

Contributors Thank you / to the Office of Indian Economic Development’s Living

Languages Grant Program for making this project possible / to Hope Moseley / to Antoinette Porambo / to Colleen Cuthair-Root / to Marie Heart / to Patrick Littlebear.

Poetry © Lyla June, used with permission | lylajune.com

Poetry © Tanaya Winder, used with permission | tanayawinder.com

Design & Creative Susanne Cerha | silo-design.com

Images & Creative A. Two Moons

Printer Hemlock Printers | hemlock.com

Fonts Neue Haas by linotype.com / Museo by exljbris.com / Quincy CF by connary.com

Copyright © 2023. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form including posting to the Internet, photocopying or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.