The Future Lives in Our Bodies: Indigeneity and Disability Justice Zine

THE FUTURE LIVES IN OUR BODIES

Indigeneity and Disability Justice

Cover Credit: Artwork “Accessibility is Traditional” by Johnnie Jae (Otoe-Missouria/Choctaw).

“Accessibility is Traditional” features a disabled Native woman in a wheelchair, wearing traditional regalia and hoop dancing on Blue gradient background with a thin white floral geometric pattern.

THE FUTURE LIVES IN OUR BODIES

Indigeneity and Disability

What IS Disability Justice?

Amber McCrary

According to Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, “ Disability justice centers “disabled people of color, immigrants with disabilities, queers with disabilities, trans and gender non-conforming people with disabilities, people with disabilities who are houseless, people with disabilities who are incarcerated, people with disabilities who have had their ancestral lands stolen, amongst others.”

The term was initially coined by queer, disabled women of color in the Bay Area in 2005 by Patty Berne, Mia Mingus and Stacey Milburn. These women would eventually form Sins Invalid, where they defined Disability Justice through ten key principles. The ten key principles consisted of intersectionality, leadership by those most affected, anti-capitalism, solidarity across different activist causes and movements, recognizing people as whole people, sustainability, solidarity across different disabilities, interdependence, collective access, and collective liberation.

The Indigeneity and Disability Justice Zine is deeply connected to the vision and dreams of what disability justice is. “When we look at disability justice work, it becomes impossible to look at disability and not examine how colonialism created it. We cannot comprehend ableism without grasping its interrelations with heteropatriarchy, white supremacy, colonialism and capitalism. Each system benefits from extracting profits and status from the subjugated ‘other’ 500 + years of violence against black and brown communities includes 500+ years of bodies and minds deemed ‘dangerous’ by being non-normative” (Piepzna-Samarasinha). Continued…

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As Johnnie Jae and I were putting this zine together, we started talking about our own disabilities hidden and seen. I have recently started to become more vocal about my own disabilities and felt a sense of relief talking and learning from Johnnie. We discussed how colonization and certain tribal policies have created a deep ableism within Indian country. On top of that we discussed the stigma of talking about our mental health and disabilities that keep conversations like this hidden in many Native communities.

When I was growing up, my own struggles with mental health and body health kept me bed ridden for a majority of my life. But I was always told, “You are being lazy!” or “Don’t be lazy!” which is very much a Navajo mentality and a big contributor to never taking it “easy” on myself.

But after reading Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinh’s Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice, I learned you can create revolutions from bed, you don’t need to be working your body to the ground (especially disabled QTBIPOC bodies) or you can form Care Collectives in your cities with other disabled QTBIPOC folks who help one another. I know talking to my family about how white supremacy contributes to an ableist culture would go completely over their heads. BUT I do know they will read these beautiful poems by our disabled Indigenous relatives and see the images created by a talented disabled Native artist and will relate and understand the pain many of us have endured in Native country. Many of us in Indian Country are still in survival mode and surviving is all we can do for now, but for those with a voice, gumption, and a dream we can all work together to listen and help our disabled Native relatives.

Piepzna-Samarasinha, Leah Lakshmi. Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice. Vancouver BC,

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Writing Disability Justice from the Different Histories of Native Nations

Kimberly Blaeser, Founding Director of In-Na-Po

CONTENTS What is Disability Justice?

Amber McCrary...............2 Foreward by Kimberly Blaeser.............................4 My Body Is An Ill-Fitting Costume Rachel Johnson...............6 Excerpt From Long Covid Recovery Chasity Salvador.............7 Definition of Palo Santo Scott Bentley...................9 To My Unborn Daughter Delaney Olmo................10 Once The Burial Ends Delaney Olmo................11

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How do we understand our disabled relatives in Indigenous communities? How do we trace the impact of intergenerational harm from settler colonialism? With the creation of Indigeneity and Disability Justice Zine, The Future Lives In Our Bodies: Indigeneity and Disability Justice, Indigenous Nations Poets begins an exploration of these questions.

In-Na-Po is honored to be participating in the 2022 Poetry Coalition programming initiative around the theme “The future lives in our bodies: Poetry & Disability Justice.” The line “The future lives in our bodies” is taken from the poem “Femme Futures”

by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha. The aim of the member programs is to demonstrate how poetry can inspire questions in their communities about disability justice and spark increased engagement with this important theme.

In-Na-Po, in partnership with Abalone Mountain Press, issued a call for submissions, inviting Indigenous writers and artists for work that considers this important question: “What does disability justice look like for Indigenous communities?” Representatives from In-Na-Po including Jake Skeets, Janet McAdams, Cedar Sigo, Jennifer Foerester, Arielle Taitano Lowe, LeAnne Howe, and I collaborated with Amber McCrary and Johnnie Jae in the zine-making process.

The CDC describes a disability as “any condition of the body or mind (impairment) that makes it more difficult for the person with the condition to do

certain activities (activity limitation) and interact with the world around them (participation restrictions).” Given the enduring history of colonization and genocide in Indigenous communities, In-Na-Po together with the partners and editors of the zine wanted to create a space where Native writers and artists could offer their own characterization of unique conditions that “impair,” “limit,” or “restrict” Indigenous individuals or communities. We invited creative work that investigates broader factors potentially involved in the conversation around disability including the consequences of intergenerational trauma, environmental contamination, and food risks for Native Nations. We also wanted to feature personal, familial, or tribal stories that explore what disability justice might look like today in Indian America.

CONTENTS Never Forget the Stolen Delaney Olmo.............12 The Soul Returns A New Body, Like a Lunar Spell Delaney Olmo.............13 Bullet Journal Entry Tamika Gauronskas.....14 Excerpt from Long Covid Recovery Chasity Salvador..........15 Learning How To Accept Care Gillian Joseph..............16

In-Na-Po and Abalone Mountain Press express our gratitude to all who allowed us the privilege of reading and viewing their work, and hope the writing and art included here will seed further opportunities for Indigenous differently-abled creative writers and art-makers. Our sincere gratitude to the Poetry Coalition for collaboration and programming funds and to our fiscal sponsor Woodland Pattern Book Center. Publication of this zine is made possible in part by grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Ford Foundation which were secured by the Academy of American Poets.

High Priestess Jessica Mehta...............17

Kimberly Blaeser, Founding Director of In-Na-Po

Medicine Me Joaquín Lara Midkiff....26

The Hanged Man Jessica Mehta...............18 Temperance Jessica Mehta...............19 Erupture Adrienne Leddy............20 Trauma’s A Trickster Christina Gilley............22

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My Body is an Ill-fitting Costume Rachel Johnson

I. Three sizes too large— Sometimes, lulled

by Southern Comfort, liquid sunlight, I try to disassemble myself—Later when smokemist clears, they thread the skin back together— I shrug into

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my suit, a delicate, raindrenched hide,

I am an outsider inside my own body—

and escape through a sliver of moonlight—

III. For Fibromyalgia It’s ironic that I once believed I was defined by anguish and pain. Then, my body, rickety carriage for my soul, broke and reframed itself to fit those beliefs—Now, fire

burns low, cooking marrow and searing joints,

and ignites along silver charcoal-dust nerves

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the seed listened when it blessed my family with a thousand of seed while I processed it, my never ending tears mixed in with its color made a seizable maroon mirage you can’t have food sovereignty without seed sovereignty is the work I do you can’t have body sovereignty without healing sovereignty is the work I am - Chasity Salvador, excerpt from Long Covid Recovery

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Form after “Definition of Funk” from Too Much Midnight

by Krista Franklin

Definition of Palo Santo Scott Bentley

Santo as in saint, or saint-like, as in holy. Palo as in stick, club, wood, or staff.

As in a stick of wood from a wild tree. As in fallen branches and twigs gifted by trees to us. As in medicine. As in smudging. As in ceremonial cleansing, sacred rituals. As in to aid the journey of souls into the afterlife. As in outlawed rituals.

As in the sticks or clubs padres used to whip their god into the blood of neophytes. As in carvings made by woodworkers and brujos. As in the silty, sugary aroma of pine, citrus, spice, and woodsmoke. As in an ingredient in fragrance, incense, candles, colognes. As in consumer products and corporate industrialization. As in aisle A56 at Target. As in sticks on Amazon, Etsy, Anthropologie.

As in directions: “hold the stick downward at a 45-degree angle and light with a candle, lighter, or match and let the stick burn for 30 seconds before blowing out the flame, placing the stick in a heatproof dish to let it burn.” As in colonial appropriation. As in illegally harvested wood buried under bananas and lemons. As in deforestation and climate devastation. As in the sharp, jagged teeth of saws, the cold, edged blade of machetes cutting away at flesh, harvesting the treed heart.

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To My Unborn Daughter Delaney Olmo

Confide in the skin of a grieving corn snake, beneath meadowed plots still existing beyond sho’ohdihi snarls from the mountain lion will yield the crevicing valley below.

Stand above the echoing canyon, release your medicine surrounding your circled aging hands, arrange te’he until loose braids are fastened

As the wind yearns for salted roots, demonstrating prayers for the future you once lost, of a child you never will know—still you dream her face.

Small bark-colored eyes and her fathers’ unruly hair. In secret, you tell the gods of your contempt for stealing her fire before you readied her first nested home—kolomalli.

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Once the Burial Ends Delaney Olmo

Swoon death’s brittle arms release the autumn leaves Claim the wind to those silkened goodnight lashes, Until your dream woman is willingly grimaced into her Final earth bed, forgive your last weakness as disdain Will only become interference to the earthly perennial storm, Collect Songs in broken lidded jars, space no longer existing— Fingers releasing her dancing moonlit skin before fire steals Her spirit into the ornate mouth of marigold and crimson stars.

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Never Forget the Stolen Delaney Olmo

Coliseum’s seat twilighted memory extraction configured, bezel the fault of aches: treaties a series of broken Homesteads: thistle wet, peeling dirt swallowing toppled skeletons.

Stealing our names: banish customs inherited by ancestral clans over thinning mountains: Now endure.

Do you seed genetic mourning?

Creator always rebels against brethren forged from his rib cage.

Waging oceans still unaware.

Protect su nu nu’ whispering soil, or hanging around an elder’s palms.

We consult with the sun deities humming ceremonial borrowed song words to translate loneliness.

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The Soul Returns a New Body, Like a Lunar Spell Delaney Olmo

Miss your old life but try not to forget.

Throat is infected importing a language imposed on this pale tongue.

Wake up and inhabit this.

Follow clay worlds that are barely recognizable. Mourn the people who died, appoint deer dancers to occupy discovered feathers sold in giftshops.

Reduce the land to property consumed and women living freely is not allowed. those castles are small, but their wills are traced back to all their descendants.

Remind the sick living spirited people this way is the only way. I try to find ways other to exist, I’m excluded into undesirable molds that do not fit my body.

I think about these memories embedded early on, the comments of my lineage, my mother’s people, this blood, being pale while Indigenous, while this human.

And some say my portrait is not enough when I’m light like my father with a Pomo hair and eyes. They say I don’t look ‘enough blooded’ or like any of their colonizers.

Tomorrow, ask Creator to loan me a body like the one I had in dreams, the woman I was before being consumed and placed into a Western world; I find myself no space.

Banish unwanted presence. Open the windows, and peer onto the moon, shaded by its evening skin, and with such privacy I can finally hover in and annually orbit.

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Bullet Journal Entry Tamika Gauronskas

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“grief. loss. youth.

I feel it in my chest. grief are mountains and mountains have names to them.”

-Chasity Salvador, excerpt from Long Covid Recovery

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High Priestess Jessica Mehta

Lady, let me look between your folds, delve into the deep of those hidden waters.

That serpent-fruit split like tongues, like teeth— all your paradise for this knowing … eat with me from your plane of mars, paper wasps burrowed to cardinal center. A prison of starvation is nothing, nothing, a pittance to bow like a beast below pale and lonely moons.

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The Hanged Man Jessica Mehta

Nooses hang loose deep in the Bad lands. Use them, Tall Man urges. Lynchings upended and treaties denied, we are no longer killing Indians, saving men. Our children are both: prisoner and executioner.

Beetling like ornaments on branches, these halos are head cages, crushers gilded in fool’s gold. Contagion does occur 1 here, even below the halcyon skies & enameled plains2 of your so-called milk and honey. This is not your Israel, we are not your converts, lost tribes for saving. We are the enlightened—suspended in ancestors’ arms, well fed & full, hung sure on good medicine.

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Temperance Jessica Mehta

These wings are ablaze, prepped for flight—not every Phoenix is built of empty bones. We’re covert, down under feathers. I wish, Iris, to bloom from end to end, to drink of your cup as you empty your salt self into me. I once saw a lake so pre-contact clear its stones shone, cut like teeth. We filter our own sustenance, wring out the wrong to conjure something potable. With our backs to the sun, Icarus denied, our span stretches black as Birdashes 3 at our feet. There is no other like me—will not be for half a millennium more. Drink of this, my flowing self, the teal that tames the flames, the only thing keeping my inferno from terrible combustion.

1“Contagion does occur with teenagers” is what Stephanie Schweitzer Dixon of the Front Porch Coalition said regarding the mass suicides of young people living on the Pine Ridge reservation of South Dakota.

2“Halcyon skies” and “enameled plains” were the words used in Katharine Lee Bates’s original poem “America the Beautiful” (1893) before it was changed to the more well-known song lyrics “spacious skies” and “fruited plains” in 1904/1911.

3“Birdash” is one of many derivatives of the term “Berdache,” which was used to describe Two-Spirit Natives. By Will Roscoe in his “Bibliography of Berdache and Alternative Gender Roles Among North American Indians” (1987).

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Erupture

Adrienne Leddy

My body cracks, splits, ruptures, A bleeding daily rebirth.

My land is my body is carved out from seismic churning And a deep, aching pain Echoing over millennia.

Ripping itself open and gives way to: Nothing.

Our creation from darkness, life through death, Molded from red earth and saltwater And a deeply aching grief which gave us our first breaths.

My strong people hardened by clay And born to withstand the centuries.

So – While I lay here broken and shattered, My pieces laid out on my bed, Carefully wetting my shards of clay to get back to something I can recognize,

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I ask myself: Did Fu’una mold me wrong?

Is it a mistake that leaves my red earth cracking, splitting, rupturing?

Am I still split like our mountains,

do I need a millennia more to form beautiful?

These questions when I’m once again decaying alone with a heating pad Like amot of ancestors’ hot oil massaged in skin Unknowingly sculpting my own urban tradition...

And I remember.

No, this can’t be a mistake...

This pain can raise mountains and draw rainbows in the sky.

This lonely island, one I’m sure I’ll die on, Lies surrounded by my relatives in the ocean of our ancestors.

And this insurmountable grief is a wave that breathes life back to me.

About: Our creation story is of the siblings Puntan and Fu’una whose lives were sacrificed to create life.

Through their loss came all of us as Chamorro people, and in processing the harsh reality of chronic pain I find comfort in relating my own journey to our creation story, and a renewed love for my body despite the pain it can bring me.

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Christina Gilley

TRAUMA’S A TRICKSTER 22

A trickster sneaking around in the dark Stealing joy & happiness, it tears all of the good apart Overwhelms with despair, negativity & ownerships of blames Towards your own self Towards everything Like a reflection, a mirror of shames Anxiety filters in, “hey let’s get into this game” Like a thief into the night Coveting & projecting Wins & Failures with delight The hearts now thumping The beats are misaligned Breathe,steady - breathe My minds chatter speaks “Leave it all behind... “ Yet how can I? When it’s shaped my very life?

Created the monsters,I carry inside The shakiness ,tunnel vision & near blind-sight!

Fear is a feeding bottomless pit That controls my tarnished outlook On every aspect Reporting back to me Of why I should never trust...

Instead take flight or stay inside Designed to make one feel absolutely stuck At times, drained or lifeless Without no one to love, Including that, for myself “Whoa, when did I adopt this?”

Hold in balance, the slow steady steps Often stopped in its irradiated tracks Heck, I’m Reminding myself Of everything I believed, I lacked No!! I scream, I’m not looking back!!

Yesterday’s bitterness is now sweetly gone Tomorrow’s a cultivated chartered journey Unexplored, I’ll book my way onwards & beyond More than I expected, & how did I ever get here?

While traumas trickster games Had me locked in for years If only I could just get a little further along Take the courage to begin today A new way of challenging my adopted perspectives To stand tall, in the resolution of my self destruction’s The conflicting fire that rages to the ground If only I could just get a little further along Take the courage to begin today A new way of challenging my adopted perspectives To stand tall, in the resolution of my self destruction’s The conflicting fire that rages to the ground My inner self roars, I scream all around!

“Trauma, Anxiety and Fear!

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You are all demoralizing liars!

You are not wanted here!

Leave me alone, & let me be The trickster master of stealing my dreams Trauma,you bastard trickster You’re everything, I will, one day beat!”

Free from the grips of your strangulation You gloated to have defeated all of me Within your triangulation!

“Go back to your den Of absolute misery of shit, I repeat your fathom words “You’re nothing You’re not even worth it!!”

How does that feel?

Does it churn your guts, twisted or bent?

Does it tear you up inside?

Like it did,when I once took it all in?

Today’s a new day I’m built for this charade Fearlessly walking Into & from your parade!

Face me, you spineless glory of sins!

I’ll remind you of all that I am You took like a coward,with a shady grin For I am nothing, in the image You conformed of me Instead -” I am everything!”

I scream wholeheartedly!

You wanted to believe That you could break me down Spiraling like your drunken clown All in one great performance & circus act

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Yet you’ve forgotten I’m everything you lack!!

Compassionate,caring, kind, unselfish,filled with moral empathy, I have decided, I’m just not your type, you see?

I’ll never be matched to your Souls void of loveless,dark & empty!!

Thirsting on my love That’s the kind of thing, you feared most of Ahhhh, I found your weakness Like you’ve played on mine Better yet, best to leave it all behind...

Traumas a trickster It steals every sparkling light, Covers it’s unmapped tracks Like a haughty self entitled knight Armored, thick skinned..

A mere empty shell..

I’ll be more than any of those things I know damn well, I will For I am filled with a fiery light Of a true heart & a gentle insight With a destination of cultivated self love My swaying sword will rise far above!

I Will be your greatest fight !!

Challenged, defeated I stare your beast down within your eyes You see, you’ll never own The immeasurable good, I have in me!!

I win!

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Medicine Me

Joaquín Lara Midkiff

Come in Speaks woman me Blue white body right Sit down Says the woman Crimson pools the vial Don’t move Sighs the woman Ink bleeds the paper Go ahead Points the woman Handy eyes pushed shut Be free Speaks woman me Down isles of immortality

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Come in Speaks father me Earth skin sit site Sit down Gestures father me Air the throaty hide Don’t move Breathes father me Rock the rainy vapor Go ahead Offers father me Grass tufts finger tug Be free Speaks father me Sky high hummingbird see

Want To Learn More About

Y T I L I B A DIS ?

E C I T S JU For more information on disability justice resources and readings go to: https://projectlets.org/disability-justice

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