by Ron Riekki
Above: Nils-Aslak Valkeapää, known as Áillohaš in the Northern Sámi language (23 March 1943–26 November 2001), was a Finnish Sámi writer, musician and artist.
“I am not saving my life for the future”
—Nils-Aslak Valkeapää, Trekways of the Wind
Tomorrow I go in front of a board
to speak on the allegations that I
was “speaking of native issues too
frequently in class.” When I heard
these allegations, no, this allegation,
no, this pissing-on-a-bonfire, I had
the revelation of being had. I had,
yes, in class, spoke of indigenous
issues, not realizing it’s a crime,
but I am guilty of being native, of
being Sámi, of being Karjalaiset,
of being of a background where I
hear, here, “I’ve never heard of
that.” The that falling flat. And
it’s a board of seven people. And
it makes me think of the time in
Berkeley, where I was walking
down the street and saw a black
man, around 70 years old, peace-
fully being drunk, on a bench,
buzzed, yes, eyes red, yes, and
leaving the world alone, then
a police car drove up and an
officer asked the man some-
thing and he said something
and another cop car pulled up
and another cop got out and
another cop car pulled up and
more police got out and then
a van pulled up, a cop van,
a SWAT team reaction for
this septuagenarian swept up
so quickly into the back of
the swallowing vehicles, all
painted black, as if to mock,
as if to mask them in night
where the body was taken
and I stood there and realized
how there is the centrality of
overreaction, of SWAT-style
action movie hyperbole where,
in the end, there is the pairing
of kissing the woman while
killing the man who didn’t
matter, the man who was
reduced to villain and a woman
seduced by cliché and audiences
in the dark, snoring. And a First
Nation playwright in Montreal
told me that Hollywood cinema
is all about conflict, that they
love conflict, because colonialism
is hearted in conflict, but native
playwriting and screenwriting and
story is about community, not con-
flict, not the incarceration of their
films, but instead about connection,
and he said that there was a reading
where afterwards a white man
raised his hand and said he’d have
to be honest and he said the play
was boring, and behind him was
a group of Anishinaabe who were
all in tears, their sleeves filled
with tears, and this man was
bored. And tomorrow I don’t know
if I am getting kicked out of college
or if I’m getting killed out of college
or if I’m getting left in decorticate
position, funeraled, how I was told
that I was not only speaking too
much about native issues, but I was
being too “aggressive” with how I
was talking about native issues and
an elder, Red Pipe Woman, on
the phone told me, “Oh, let me get this
straight: a native person is being
told they are ‘aggressive.’ They’re
telling you that you’re being ‘savage’
by speaking of native issues.” And
our laughter was as normal as all
the tall clouds above, and our laughter
was sky-deep, and our laughter was tears,
and the grey clouds were coming and
I love walking in the rain and I walked
home and I wondered if tomorrow
they were going to try to destroy me
and tomorrow I am going to find out.
And tomorrow I am going to find out.
And I will live even if they kill me.
Ron Riekki co-edited Undocumented: Great Lakes Poets Laureate on Social Justice (Michigan State University Press).