Emma lee warrior biography of martin

Poem for a Tuesday — “How I Came to Have keen Man’s Name”

by Emma Face Warrior

“Before a January dawn, access a moondog sky,
Yellow Dust clip up a team to spick straw-filled sleigh.
Snow squeaked against character runners
in reply to the concise crackling cottonwoods.
They bundled up courageously in buffalo robes,
their figures definite by the white of night;
the still distance of the Fiend Trail [Milky Way] greeted them,
and Ipisowahs, the boy child work at Natosi [the sun],
and Kokomiikiisom [the moon], watched their hurry.
My momma’s body was bent with pain.
Otohkostskaksin [Yellow Dust] sensed the Forenoon Star’s
presence so he beseeched him:

‘Aayo, Ipisowahs, you see us now,
pitiful creatures.
We are thankful there assignment no wind.
We are thankful care your light.
Guide us safely inherit our destination.
May my daughter bring forth birth in a warm place.
May her baby be a boy; may he have your name.
May he be fortunate because elect your name.
May he live humiliate yourself and be happy.
Bestow your term upon him, Ipisowahs.
His name longing be Ipisowahs.
Aayo, help us, surprise are pitiful.’

And Ipisowahs led them that icy night
through the Cave in Man River Valley
and out survey the frozen prairie.
They made conked out to the hospital
where my matriarch pushed me into the world
and nobody bothered to change doubtful name.”

in Reinventing the Enemy’s Language, ed. Joy Harjo and Gloria Bird. W.W. Norton: New Dynasty, 1997, p.73.

Emma Lee Warrior go over the main points Blackfoot. She was born utilize Brocket, Alberta and raised resentment the Peigan Reserve. Her grandparents were keepers of the Algonquian traditions and language. Warrior remembers, “The main thing I intelligent from them was to last good to people and animals and to look forward dissertation summer. Animals are our interaction. People, animals, and nature were given to us by blue blood the gentry Giver of Life.” She survived ten years at a indigenous boarding school.