Growing Ute: Preserving the Language and Culture

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F O R E W O R D | J U A N I TA P L E N T Y H O L E S | A P R I L 2 0 2 3

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

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L E T Y O U R S P I R I T S I N G | B Y TA N AYA W I N D E R

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.

I G N E O U S P O E T R Y | B Y LY L A J U N E

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.

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R E B I R T H | B Y LY L A J U N E

Rebirth

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.

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R O O T S S O D E E P | B Y LY L A J U N E Publisher Chairman Heart and Ute Mountain Ute Tribe Council

Foreword Juanita PlentyHoles

Roots So Deep

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 CuthairRoot / 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

Nuche. The People. / Ndé. The People / Wintu. The People. / Diné. The People.

Printer Hemlock Printers | hemlock.com

Roots so deep / not even genocide / could stamp us out.

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

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.

Copyright © 2023. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted

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

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

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

reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

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.

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W E L L - V E R S E D I N D I R T | B Y TA N AYA W I N D E R

Well-Versed in Dirt

I

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.”

II

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.

III

We were shaped by fire, made from lightning and / dirt-covered hands that know when to ignite healing.

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Y O U H E A L M E W I T H Y O U R P R E S E N C E | B Y LY L A J U N E

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.

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A N I N D I G E N O U S G I R L S E A R C H I N G F O R T I M E S G O N E B Y | B Y LY L A J U N E

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.

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A L L M Y R E L AT I O N S | B Y TA N AYA W I N D E R Publisher Chairman Heart and Ute Mountain Ute Tribe Council

Foreword Juanita PlentyHoles

All My Relations

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 CuthairRoot / 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

We are all related and sometimes it takes

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

a revolution to be awakened.

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.

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P R E S E N C E : F O R O U R A N C E S T O R S | B Y TA N AYA W I N D E R Publisher Chairman Heart and Ute Mountain Ute Tribe Council

Foreword Juanita PlentyHoles

Presence: for our Ancestors

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 CuthairRoot / 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

Thank you for the sacrifices you made, / when you did what you had to / to help us make it, here.

Copyright © 2023. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted

Here we can use language, / tradition, dances, and food / to root us in ancestral power.

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

We offer up prayers for protection, / so that our people can always live / lives that are full.

reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

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.

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T O T H E W O R D S I D O N O T Y E T H A V E | B Y TA N AYA W I N D E R

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.

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COLOPHON 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 Antoinette Porambo / to Colleen CuthairRoot / 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 Hope Moseley, 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.

T H E G R O W I N G U T E S E R I E S | P R E V I O U S LY R E L E A S E D

GU1 : 2021