Memory of the Skin-people, Hubert Matiúwàa

© Translated by Paul M Worley and Melissa D Birkhofer

The yopes: Mbo xtá rída/Skin-people

During the Pre-hispanic period, the Mè’phàà language was known as Yopi, and its speakers were called Yopes or Tlapanecos, a name derived from the cacicazgo or chiefdom where they lived. Tlapaneco became the most important name for official histories, given that the name Yope became associated with a group of rebels whose Yopitzingo chiefdom was able to maintain its independence during the era of Mexica expansion and staged numerous bloody rebellions in the defense of its territory during the colonial period.

These cultures were named from how they were known: their economic activity, the characteristics of where they lived, and important events that happened to them. This is how they became toponyms that understand their territorialization. Following this logic, the place where the Yopes lived was called Yopitzingo, and Tlappan-Tlachinollan was where the Tlapanecos lived. 

In his Historia general de la Nueva España, Fray Bernardino de Sahagún states that the Tlapanecos and the Yopes are one in the same:

The Yopes and the Tlapenecos are from the region of Yopitzinco; they are called Yopes because their land is called Yopitzinco, but they are also referred to as Tlapanecos, which means, “rusted men,” because they are that color. Their idol is called Tótec Tlatlauhqui Tezcatlipuca, which means, “colored idol,” because the clothing it wears is red. The idol’s priests wear the same color, as does everyone else in the region. They in particular are rich, and speak a different language than the one spoken in México.  (Sahagún, 1830, p 135). 


En Mè’pàà, mbúinùù means “rust,” which is surely what they used to paint their faces, as in the representation of several Yope people seen in the Tudela Codex1. Painting one’s face also held a religious meaning, but we don’t know if this was widely practiced, as in the two volumes of the Azoyú Codex Tlapanec people are not represented as being painted. In other codices dealing with Nahua history, a mask covering one’s eyes symbolizes the morning star (Venus), which coincidentally is associated with the oldest lineage of Tlapanecos: “called Quahiscalera or Tlahuiscalera (lords of the “dawn” or “sunrise”) that probably goes back in timbrine to the rulers of Temixlican…that lineage adopted the name Temilitzin” (Dehouve Op. in Gutierrez and Brito, 2014, p. 36). 

Within this logic of naming according to “doing” or “being in a place,” the Yopes were known for rituals that were related to skin, which they performed in ceremonial centers they had established, such as Tehualco or “House of the Sacred Water,”2 where they performed rituals to Xtóaya’ “water skin,” one of the most important deities in their culture. Today Xtóaya’ symbolizes fertility and abundance, and rituals associated with her are related to the earth changing its skin, the dry season, and the rainy season. The dry season is represented by the deity Àkùùn èwè or “Lady Hunger,” who is expelled in a rite that consists of making a doll, binding its feet and hands, and taking it to the river, where it is drowned in the mouth of Xtóaya’. In the creation story, Xtóaya’ is who cared for and brought up À’khà “the sun” and Gùn’ “the moon,” who in turn generated the movement that gave rise to time and made life possible. Xtóaya’ also cures the sick, calms people’s tempers, and brings the rains for planting. The Xtámbaa “Skin of Earth” ceremonies are made to her. 

1 A pictographic manuscript made by Indigenous people in the Colonial Period during the 16th Century.
2 Today this is the most important archeological site in the state of Guerrero.

The contemporary Náhuatl word xipeua means “to peel” or “to skin,” and yopejtle or yopeuhtli means, “to remove.” We can thus infer that Yopitzingo, the town of the Yopes, is related to ceremonies of flaying.

It is feasible that the word “yopi” or “yopime” is a synonym of “xipe” (flayed) and that it is made from the contraction of the Mexican verb “yopehua,” which means “to skin something,” and which can be translated by those who have something flayed from them, i.e. the flayed. It is likely that the Mexica baptized populations in the South as the “Yopi,” those who “remove the skin,” and this may be one of the reasons why they have such respect for them, to the point that they feel that a marriage between their daughters and the Yopis elevates their social standing. (Vidal, 1987, p 11)

Historians mention that the origin story of the god Xipe Ttotec takes place in the territory of the Yope people and that he was worshiped in a number of different cultures, each one reinterpreting Xipe Totec according to its vision of being and doing in the world. For the Mè’phàà the skin is the heart of everything that exists.

However, the group that lives in what today is known as Tlapa de Comonfort, Guerrero, is known as Tlapanecos, a term that comes from Náhuatl. The root of the word has two possible interpretations: the first is that tla comes from tlalli or “earth,” pan is a locative indicating place, and neco, which translates as “dirty” (the origin of the word “neco” is related to chichimeco, which means dirty dog or painted dog); the second definition is that tlapan means “back,” with the word tlapaneco meaning “with a dirty back” or “burned back.” Both words were used and evolved as a pejorative way to refer to the Tlapanecos as “the people with painted faces,” “the people with dirty faces,” “those with filthy faces.” 

The ancient glyph for Tlapa appears on the obverse of folio 3 of the Azoyú Codex, with its toponym represented as a red circle that can be interpreted as “red earth” or “russet-colored earth.” One of the names by which Tlapa is known is “place of the red earth,” and can refer to the activity carried out by its inhabitants, that is, “the place of the dyers.”

In the Mè’phàà language Tlapa is known as A’phàà, a word associated with terms such as A’phàà or “wide” and màtha A’phàà or “wide river,” which can be the origin of this word given that Tlapa is crossed by two large rivers which are today known as the Tlapanec River and the Jale River. From this, we can deduce that the demonym of mbo mè’phàà “the one who is from Tlapa,” can mean, “people of the wide river,” which would be a name that reflects the characteristics of where they live. 

Linguists from the region affirm that mè’phàà may also be derived from the word mix’bàà, which they translate as “dirty,” “painted,” or “blackened,” a characterization of the Mè’phàà that appears in the majority of old documents and which, as previously stated, would correspond to the toponym Tlapa. In oral memory, it is said that the ancient Mè’phàà had the ability to pass through the earth itself. 

The three possible meanings of the word mè’phàà, whether “painted people,” “people who paint,” or “people of the large river,” correspond to the demonym of the place (Tlapa), which given its importance was applied to the people there, the same as Yopitzingo. Through our research here we propose that in the nickname “skin people” which is used for us Mè’phàà, the word xtá “skin” is the origin of the philosophy that unites all the dialectical variants of our language. 

In our region today the place where we live defines the dialectal variant of mè’phàà, as the people who create names for where they live, for example: mbo wí’ììn is the demonym of the municipality of Acatepec, with wí’ììn  meaning “place of reeds.” In Náhuatl, on the other hand, Acatepec means, “hill of the reeds.” People in the municipality of Tlacoapa call it mbo míwíí, which means, “place of chiles,” and which comes from the planting of chiles as an economic activity, such that the demonym corresponds to, “gente of the land of chiles.” In Náhuatl Tlacoapa means, “half of the great cliff,” tlajko-apan “half-canal,” or “place in the middle of the woods,” tlakotl-apan “stick-forest.” 

In the same way, Malinaltepec is where the mbo mañuwìín live, with mañuwìín meaning “place where cords are twisted,” making reference to an economic activity from the past, and so the demonym means, “people from the land of the twisted cord.” In Náhuatl Malinaltepec means, “twisted hill” or “twisted grass.” 

On the other hand, Tlapa has a long history of being under siege. Take the actions of the Mexica army in 1447, for example: 

After 1462, the state of things underwent a qualitative change, as it appears that its leaders negotiated a pact of cooperation with the Mexica, which avoided open war with the Triple Alliance for 25 years and helped double the size of Tlapa-Tlachinollan’s political space. Finally, owing to factional infighting and conflicts surrounding succession, Tlapa-Tlachinollan’s internal cohesion and political unity were weakened, and it was conquered militarily by the Mexica in 1486. (Gutiérrez and Brito, 2014, p. 27)


Following the death of the ruler “Rain” of Tlapa-Tlachinollan, who had diplomatic relations with the Mexica, in 1477, Mexica military incursions intensified. Sources such as the Tlapa-Tlachinollan codices indicate that the conquest of this territory was achieved in the year 7 Deer, or 1486. For their part, according to Sosa and Michel (2012), Mexica sources mention, “the sacrifice of Tlapaneco captives in the temple of Huitzilopochtli.” In addition, “The Annals of Cuauhtitlán state that on the date 7 Rabbit, said captives were taken during the conquest of Tlapa. The Mexica year 7 Rabbit would correspond to the Tlapaneco year 7 Deer or, as said before, 1486” (pg 14). 

Mè’phàà, Náhuatl, and Ñuu Savi cultures all converged in Tlapa, each one with its own political system, confronted by expansionist conflicts and constituting a “large, highly complex political unit […] that extended across some 4000 to 6000 square kilometers” (Gutiérrez and Brito, 2014, p. 27). At the time of the Mexica invasion, Tlapa could not unite politically and militarily to defend itself. By comparison, Yopitzingo was distinctly Mè’phàà and was able to remain an independent kingdom.

Illustration by Víctor Gally

The Yope, who from oral histories we have referred to as mbo xtá rídà or “skin people,” and the Tlapanecos or Mè’phàà from Tlapa, have diversified their forms of resistance, first in opposition to Nahua expansion and then in opposition to the Spanish: 

Ten years after the Conquest, the insurrection of the Tlapanecos certainly did not make life easy for the encomendero of Cacahuatepec, don Diego de Pardo. In March 1531 don Diego wrote to the México’s accountant, Rodrigo Albornoz, to inform him of the rebellion. When he asked the Tlapanecos, “Why they are doing so many terrible things,” “They responded by asking me why I asked them to say anything, that I didn’t know that they had never wanted to serve Moctezuma who was the great Lord of the Indians, so how could I expect them to now serve the Christians; they had always had wars, and they preferred to die in them and so show who they are.3

3 From a document found by Francisco del Paso y Troncoso in the Spanish archives. Published by the National Museum of México on the occasion of the First Congress of Mexican History in 1933. It can be found in Paso y Troncoso (1905) Suma de Visitas de los Pueblos, in Papeles de la Nueva España, Madrid, t.I.

According to the evidence found in the Azoyú codex, we can infer that the Mè’phàà had been engaged in a war of resistance to defend their territory well before the colonial period. There is a sustained memory of the invasion, and the terror and fear have passed from the Prehispanic period down to the present. The war now is for control of the territory on the part of narco-traffickers and extractivist multinationals. 

Knowing our history enables us to understand the relations of power that shaped the identity of our People, which is why we are invisibilized and denied by official history. Our history was stigmatized and an alternative narrative was created to divide the Tlapanecos and the Yopes, as if they were distinct cultures, erasing their past and negating the memory of their long history of resistance. 

When the priests came to evangelize our culture during the colonial period, the Mè’phàà People who did not convert to Christianity were called devils, cannibals, or people who skinned others, and for this reason, they were killed. Given that they continued their resistance, a narrative of hate was created around them, with the priests feeding this terror to prevent the distinct Mè’phàà communities from allying with one another, and under these Manichean tendencies, they marked the history of the Peoples who rebelled against evangelization. 

Memory of the Skin-people

In oral memory, they say that there existed the mbo xtá rídà (from the Mè’phàà: mbo “people,” xtà “skin,” ridáá “hanging” or “intertwined”), who spoke a variant of ancient Mè’phàà and had the ability to stretch out their skin. There are innumerable horror stories about them. For example, they say these people would ask to stay the night in someone’s house and would stretch out one of their ears to make their bed, stretch out the other for a blanket, and when the night was over they’d get up to steal children and eat them. 

Oral narratives exist for a reason and have a purpose: to turn memory into action. The hate towards the Yopes that was fomented ended up demonizing their rituals, in which they flayed their enemies in combat. Dressing themselves with that skin gave rise to a number of stories, stories that sought to colonize the collective imagination of the survivors of the town of Yopitzingo such that they would be persecuted and murdered by their own people. 

Today mining companies have an interest in the region where the Mè’phàà people live: 

Over the past few years, the territories of the Indigenous Peoples of the Mountains and Costa Choca in Guerrero have attracted the interest of the mining industry owing to the 42 mineral deposits found there. The Federal Government has granted around 38 different 50-year concessions to companies to undertake the exploration and exploitation of the Mountain region’s mineral wealth without taking into account the rights of the Nahua, the Mè’phàà, and the Na Savi. According to the mining titles 200,000 hectares have been given over to the mining industry, all of which are currently being explored. (Tlachinollan, 2017, p 6)

And even though some towns have sought relief from these activities, as in the case of San Miguel del Progreso,4 which was the first town to successfully defend itself against the mining industry in México, the problem continues as these mining concessions have not been definitively canceled.

4 For more information, see: Tlachinollan. (January 28, 2022). Informe. Júba wajín: Una batalla a cielo abierto en la Montaña de Guerrero por la defensa del territorio y la vida. 

As these mining projects are carried out,5 and as has happened in other parts of the state of Guerrero where the mining industry operates,6 they will displace the region’s inhabitants, introduce organized crime, prohibit forms of worship, agriculture, and hunting, all of which will end up impacting and destroying the knowledge and identity of our communal way of life. 

5 Tlachinollan. (28 de enero de 2022). Mapa de proyectos extractivos de minería en Guerrero y en la Costa-Montaña. 

6 Mining companies that operate in Guerrero are: Leagold, Gold Corp, Newmont, Minaurum Gold, Newmont Vedome Resources and Hochschild Mining, Torex Gold Resources. Considered until 2015, “The largest gold mine in Latin America and the foremost source of gold on a national level, it is located between the towns of Mezcla and Carrizalillo, Guerrero.” It is one of the zones with the highest rates of violent crime committed by gangs who coexist with the state-sponsored armed groups and are under the protection of the police. 

In 2012, on being confronted with the threats of extractivism and the sacking of natural resources, the Consejo Regional de Autoridades Agrarias en Defensa del Territorio (CRAADT; Regional Counsel of Agrarian Authorities in Defense of the Land) was formed in the Mè’phàà community of La Ciénaga, in the municipality of Malinaltepec, and is a model organization in the struggles for land in México. 

In the Mountains, you are constantly subjected to harassment by paramilitaries, the military, and criminal groups, who use violence to dispossess people of their land. These groups are employed by the mining companies to displace entire communities, sowing terror and death, so that they can finally take control of the territory. And even though in the Mountains, where Xtóayà’ lives, people continue to resist and control these groups of criminals (which exacerbates the violence along the border), we, the people who live here, ask ourselves, “for how much longer?”

We must add to this context the ruptures and violence that occur within communities, conflicts over boundary lines, violence, machismo, the inequality that gradually leads to femicide, and daily beatings that become embedded illnesses that end the lives of women. 

Similarly, the division caused by political parties generates ruptures in communal thought, as each party seeks power and seats in the assembly where relationships of friendship and camaraderie are controlled. This generates tears in the fabric of the community and therefore the common good, which prevents us from confronting collective problems and facilitates the dispossession of our lands and local knowledges. 

Illustration by Víctor Gally

We must rethink the relations of power and how we have normalized them within our communities. Our struggle to revindicate and defend our territory requires us to come together in the fact of communal social injustice. To do this, we must understand our history as much as possible and put the official story of colonization on trial, questioning the stories from oral memory to re-educate ourselves, bring evidence against, and denounce the local caciques who have corrupted the power within our communities. It is necessary for us to think from ourselves, as xtá “skin” who care about resolving the problems confronting our community.

Our ancestors survive in each one of us, in every action that we take to dignify life itself, the heart of the mbo xtá rídà still beats in the voices of the mountains, and in the histories of the many Peoples who continue to defend themselves against organized crime and extractivist industries. 

For more about Hubert Matiúwàa and the Skin-people

About the translators

Melissa D. Birkhofer is a settler scholar and Visiting Assistant Professor in the English Department at Appalachian State University where she teaches courses on Latinx and Indigenous Literatures. She co-authored the article “She Said That Saint Augustine is Worth Nothing Compared to her Homeland: Teresa Martín and the Méndez Cancio Account of La Tama (1600)” published in the North Carolina Literary Review with Paul M. Worley. Her article, “Toward a Feminist Latina Mode of Literary Analysis in Julia Alvarez’s How the García Girls Lost Their Accents,” was recently published in Convergences. She was the founding director of the Latinx Studies Program at Western Carolina U and is a co-director of the e-journal Label Me Latina/o

Paul M. Worley is the Chair of the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures at Appalachian State University. He is the author of Telling and Being Told: Storytelling and Cultural Control in Contemporary Yucatec Maya Literatures (2013; oral performances recorded as part of this book project are available at tsikbalichmaya.org), and with Rita M Palacios is co-author of Unwriting Maya Literature: Ts’íib as Recorded Knowledge (2019). He is a Fulbright Scholar, and 2018 winner of the Sturgis Leavitt Award from the Southeastern Council on Latin American Studies. In addition to his academic work, he has translated selected works by Indigenous authors such as Hubert Malina, Adriana López, and Ruperta Bautista, serves as editor-at-large for México for the journal of world literature in English translation, Asymptote, and as poetry editor for the North Dakota Quarterly.

El cómo del filosofar de la gente piel © Hubert Matiúwàa

Siwar Mayu, March 2024 ~

“The Yopes”, and “Memory of the Skin-people” © Translated by Paul M Worley and Melissa D Birkhofer

Seven poems, by Gloria Cáceres

From Musqu Awaqlla (2021), and Yuyaipa k’anchaqnin (2015) © Gloria Cáceres Vargas

Selection, and translation from Quechua © Fredy Amílcar Roncalla

If you prefer to read this as a PDF, click HERE

Gloria Cáceres Vargas is an Andean educator, narrator and poet. In Peru, she has worked as consultant for the Intercultural and Bilingual Education Office of the Ministery of Education, and as Dean of the Social Sciences and Humanities at Enrique Guzmán y Valle National University of Education. In Paris–France, she has offered Quechua courses at the National Institute of Languages and Civilizations (INALCO); as well as Spanish and Latin American civilization courses at the University of Paris 3 Nouvelle Sorbonne, and the University of Cergy-Pontoise. She has published Reqsinakusun (1996), Munakuwaptiykiqa (2009), Wiñay susqayki (2010), Yuyaypa k’anchaqnin / Fulgor de mis memorias (2015), and Musqu Awaqlla / Tejedora de Sueños (2021). She translated into Quechua Warma Kuyay and other stories (2011) by José María Arquedas. The following poems from her last two books were selected and translated from Quechua to English by Fredy Amílcar Roncalla. The eroticism of this poetry–attentive to the voices of the wind, the rain and the sacred mountains, Apus–empowers the voice and body of Andean women, and the richness of the Quechua language to sing them.

Puquy mitapa saqaqay rapinkuna

Puquy mitapa saqaqay rapinkuna
Vivaldipa musikanman
challpuykuwan.
Hanaq pachapa waqaynin chay puquy mitapi
maypi urmasqa rapikuna
llimpisqa pampata awanku
yupiyta chaskinanpaq.

Violinkunapa tunadanwan
sunquypa patpatninkunawanpas qispirimuni 

kuskasqa chakiywan tusunaypaq
chay llimpillasqa pampapi.
Sallqa sunquytaq
kuyakuyta munapayaspa
qiwiykachakun.
Hatunkaray tunada
puriykunata huk kitiman
pusaykun.
Chaypim arpapa violinpa
miski waqaynin
llaqtaypa uchuk paqchanpa
musikanwan musquchiwan.

Aysachakuq musikam,
Vivaldipa wata mit’ankunawan
yuyayniykiwanpas
musquchiwan,
karumanta hamuspa
ama waqaspalla, niñachay
sunquyta ninku.
Huk puquy mitapa rapinkuna, mawk’ayaspaña
wayrawan maymantachá hamunku.

Fall sounds

Gentle sounds of autumn
fill me with
Vivaldi’s music.
Falling leaves of celestial sounds
weave a colorful tapestry
for my steps.

This realm of color
is where my feet dance happily
following violin melodies
and my wild heart
yearns for love beat
by beat.
This great song
brings my path to realms
where sweet harp and violin notes1
remind me the sounds
of my town’s small waterfall.
That uplifting music
makes me dream about Vivaldi’s stations
while your distant memory
comes around and says
Don’t cry no more, dear.

Suddenly aged
the autumn leaves
travel with winds
from unknown places.

1 Most indigenous traditional music in Peru is played with harp and violin. It is also said that musicians learn their melodies in sacred waterfalls (translator’s note.)

Parapa sunqun tapsikun 

Parapa sunqun tapsikun
chillikukuna mana usyaq
llakinta takiptinku.
Parapa sunqun llakikun
pisqukuna qasikayta maskaspa
ripuptinku.

Parapa sunqun upallakun
timpupa marqankuna
mana llakikuspa muyuykachaptinku.
Parapa sunqun kusikun
killa hunt’api mana samaspa
tusuptinchik.

Ñuqataq, parapa sunqun kayta munani
qamwan musqukunaypaq.

The rain’s heart trembles

The rain’s heart trembles
when the crickets
sing their infinite despair.
The rain’s heart is saddened
when the birds leave
looking for peace.

The rain’s heart becomes silent
when the arms of time
turn around over and over.
The rain’s heart gets happy
when we dance under
the full moon.

And I want to be the rain’s heart
to dream about you.

Parapa llimpin

¿Ima llimpiyuqmi para qaraykiman chayaptin?
¿Ima llimpiyuqtaq ñuqapa qarayman chayakuptin?

¿Ima llimpiyuqtaq llimpikuna kachachaykunapas,
pukllaysapa kuyakuyninchik tinkuptinku?

Huk kutikunaqa parapas ninapas kanchik,
hukkunataq qawapayaq mancharisqa phuyukuna.

¿Ima llimpiyuqtaq pacha, para wayllukuptin
kuskachakuq kusikuynin tusuchiptin?

¿Ima llimpiyuqtaq mayu llapanta aytiptin
para mana riqsisqanman ayqikuptin?

Huk kutikuna wayrapi puqpu kani,
hukkunataq llimpipa llipipiqnin.

¿Ima llimpiyuqmi qiwa chaskiwaptinchik,
maypi kuyakuyninchik maytukuyta maskaptin?

¿Ima llimpiyuqtaq manchakuyniy munakuyniypas
kawsaypa k’anchaqnin wañukuchkaptin?

Huk kutikuna hanaq pacha uqhusqa ch’imsikunawan
rupayniykunata qasillachin.

Rainfall colors

What is the color of the rain when it reaches your skin?
And what color is it when it reaches mine?

What is the tonality when our sparks and color
get mixed in our playful loving encounters?

Sometimes we are rain and fire,
and some others shy clouds afar.

What is earth’s color and the loving rain
when they dance their encounter happily?

What is the color of the river that cleans everything
after the rain leaves to unknown places?

Sometimes I am an air bubble,
and some others a spark of color.

What is the color of the foliage that welcomes us
when our passion seeks shelter?

What is the color of my fears and tribulations
when the light of life fades away?

Sometimes the universe calms my fire
with subtle humid gestures.

Now the rain has arrived dressed in light
illuminating my solid shadow
and bringing the messages of the Apus.2

Infinite rain of color!
Your heart is the color of the one who loves you,
generous and beloved rain.

2 Apu refers to the local gods, mostly guardian mountains (translator’s note.)

¿Pitaq kani?

k’anchaptin llantuyta maskakuni
qawarikuspa k’atatani
ch’in niqpi sunquykita
uyarini.

Intipa sunkanpi
musquyniy k’añakun.
Hanaq pachapa llimpi uchpakuna
tuta cayanankama mayt’uykuwan.

Urqukunapa kallpan
mana llakikuspa saqiwan.
kachiyuq wiqiywan
chinkaq yupiykunata aytini.

Mana usyaq kusikuywan
tusustin suyayki.

Yachankiñachu kunan
¿pitaq kani?

Who am I?

I look for my shadow when the light shines,
and tremble seeing myself.
I hear your heart
silently.

My dreams burn
in the sun.
Colorful ashes in the sky
cover me until nightfall.

The power of the mountains
depart mercilessly.
I rinse my lost steps
with salty tears.

I am waiting for you with a dance of infinite joy.

Now, do you know who I am?

Muskakuptiyki

Muskakuptiyki
mayuqa karunchakuspa
qasilla tukuq
sunquykihina.

Ichaqa chayqa
maqanakuyllam,
munakusqaykipi
munakusqaywan.

Mana imanaykiqa
manañam tapsiwanchu.
Chayqa chipayllam
mallkuchiwanaykipaq.

When I look for you

When I look for you
the distant river becomes quiet
just like your heart.

That is just
a contest
between you
and my desire.

Your indifference
no longer bothers me.
It’s just a trick
to make me want you.

¿Chaypiraqchu kachkanki?

Sichus takyi manaña
iñiq sunquykita takinchu,
¡imanasaqma!
Qamqa, huk wayllukunawan.
Ñuqataq, kaypi, qunqayniykiwan…

Mayuhinam kawsay
richkan patpatyastin
sapa muyuriyninpi
K’iriykunata hamp’istin.

¿Chaypiraqchu kachkanki?
Manañam uyariykichu.

¿Ichapas pasapuniña
huk tiqsi-pachaqunaman?

Are you still there?

If my voice no longer
sings to your heart,
What am I to do?
You have other loves
And me, here, forgotten.

My life flows
like a river
trembling in each meander
and healing my wounds.

Are you still there?
I no longer hear you.

Perhaps I have departed
to other realms.

Kaypiraqmi Kachkani

Kaypiraqmi kachkani
Apukunata suyastin.
Karumantam hamuchkanku
sayk’usqa, maqanakusqnmanta.

Takanakusqakum
musqunchikrayku
wawanchikrayku
qichusqa yuyayninchikrayku.

Ichapas nimuwanman
takiy kallpachasqankuta
ichapas munachiwanman
kuyakuq puka rosas waytata.

Tiqsimuyu patanpi
wiñay unanchayninta suyani.

¡Kusikuyllam!

I am still here

I am still here
waiting for the Gods.
They are coming from afar
tired of fighting each other.
They fought
for our dreams
our children
and our dispossessed memory.

Maybe they can tell
if my singing makes them stronger.
Maybe they could make me want
a loving red rose flower.

At the outer limits of the world
I wait for their eternal mandate.

Happily!

For more about Gloria Cáceres Vargas

The translator

Fredy A. Roncalla was born in Chalhuanca, Apurimac, Peru in 1953. He has studied linguistics and literature, in addition to a long journey in Andean Studies, with a special focus on aesthetic elements. He is also a handcraft artist who works with recycled materials. He has published poetry and essays in diverse online and printed publications. He is the author of Canto de pájaro o invocación a la palabra (Buffon Press, 1984); Escritos Mitimaes: hacia una poética andina postmoderna (Barro Editorial Press, 1998); Hawansuyo Ukun words (Hawansuyo/Pakarina Ediciones, 2015); and Revelación en la senda del manzanar: Homenaje a Juan Ramírez Ruiz (Hawansuyo/ Pakarina, 2016). He is currently working on Llapan llaqtan: narrativa y poesía trilingüe/ Llapan llaqtan: trilingual poetry. His trans-Andean projects can be foundin the virtual ayllu: Hawansuyo Peruvian Bookstore, Churoncalla.com, y Hawansuyo.blogspot.com

From Musqu Awaqlla (2021), and Yuyaipa k’anchaqnin (2015) © Gloria Cáceres Vargas

Selection, and translation from Quechua © Fredy Amílcar Roncalla ~

Siwar Mayu, January 2024

“Dance is My Vocabulary”, Barbara Kaneratonni Diabo

“La danza es mi vocabulario”, Barbara Kaneratonni Diabo © 

Juan G. Sánchez Martínez

Translated from Spanish © Jocelyn Montalban

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Barbara Kaneratonni Diabo is part of the Kanienkeha:ka nation (Mohawk), and the Kahnawake community, located close to what is today known as Montreal, across the Kaniatarowanenneh river (the big waterway), commonly known by its colonial name “St. Lawrence River.” Barbara is a choreographer, dancer, and director of the A’nó:wara Dance Theatre, where she creates experimental pieces that fuse Indigenous perspectives on Canadian history with powwow and Haudenosaunee dances, contemporary dance, and diverse dance styles such as hip-hop, and ballet. Barbara studied theatre at Concordia University and at the Native Theatre School. In 2015, she was one of eight dancers invited to participate in the first hoop dance competition, as a part of the Gathering of Nations in New Mexico, the largest powwow in all of Turtle Island (North America.) Barbara also collaborates with various organizations, including La Danse sur les routes du Québec and Indigenous Performing Arts Alliance, with whom she facilitates intercultural educational spaces and supports Indigenous artists across all of Canada. 

I met Barbara in the Longhouse of Kahnawake in the summer of 2023, while participating in an intercultural gathering with Kanienkeha:ka artists and educators. As part of the guest speakers, Barbara shared one of her hoop dances as well as a short-movie: Smudge, Dancing the Land. In the fall, we met again–this time virtually–to talk a little bit about her perspective on dance, so we could share her experiences with the Siwar Mayu project:

“…dance can touch people on many levels, not just on an intellectual level, you know, as reading an article. It also can touch people on emotional levels. And maybe you can even say spiritual levels (…) Dance is my vocabulary, the vocabulary where I am very comfortable, so the more words, the more moves that I know, and the better I can express things. These different vocabularies can be read by more people as well, you know. So that’s why I like to mix a lot of styles…”

Barbara Kaneratonni Diabo

As we can experience in her 2017 McGill University performance (see above), coordination and technique converge with color and beat in the hoop dance, all together in the midst of a circular movement of both body and story. Before her performance in Kahnawake, Barbara warned us that everybody in the audience would likely weave a different story throughout the dance, or at least would identify different beings or scenes from the natural world. Indeed, hoop dance is highly narrative, and allows simultaneous times and spaces: a butterfly, a canoe, a harvest, a mother carrying her daughter. In this thought-provoking space, there is a connection with the ancestors and with the land, but–as Barbara clarified to me–in the moment of a performance before a cross-cultural audience, her intention distances from the ceremony, although it is inevitable that some aspects of the ceremony slip through her performance. 

“I have encountered people who would like to keep powwow dance separate from other kinds of dance, and I respect that. To me, there is a value in keeping a more pure form. I also think it’s important to evolve because I think all these dances came from their environment at the time. And, you know, where did that time start? Where did that time end? Is it just a glimpse of a 100 years or a glimpse of 500 years? Who knows, right? We don’t know. So to me, we’re just continuing what we’ve always done, which is creating our dances from our environment in our experience as Indigenous people.”

Barbara Kaneratonni Diabo

Through the transformation of Indigenous cultural expressions, new generations may find an art form which they can identify with, and then receive “tradition” from this dynamic environment. Furthermore, Barbara’s dance is a powerful tool to break stereotypes that classify “Indigenous art” as “folklore,” since these dances are, at the same time, ancestral and contemporary. This aspect is clear in the short-movie Smudge.

Choreographer and dancer: Barbara Kaneratonni Diabo. Director: Pepper O’Bomsawin.
Music: “New Women Song” by Cris Derksen featuring Jennifer Kreisberg.
Dancer and additional choreography: Marshall Kahente Diabo.
Director of photography and promo photo: François Léger Savard. Editor and colorist: Eric Morel.

In the middle of the global pandemic, during the time of social distancing, Barbara had an idea for Smudge, a piece in-between film, dance, and intergenerational healing. While walking in the forest behind her house, she felt the need to dance with the land and to reconnect with the trees and insects through movement and her body. One location of Smudge is that forest. The other location is the McCord Stewart Museum and its “Wearing Our Identity” exhibition, on which Marshall Kahente Diabo, Barbara’s son, tries to reconnect with the pieces and regalia exhibited, out of reach on the other side of the glass showcases. 

“… one of the themes around this film is that when our culture isn’t accessible to us, when the land is no longer accessible to us, what do our beliefs, practices, and ceremonies mean? If you can’t access that, you know, you can go through emotions. But what does that mean? And so to have our clothing, our culture behind glass cases, inside, not outside, I found that was the perfect location.”

Barbara Kaneratonni Diabo

The contrast between the museum and the forest, the son and his mother, the inside and the outside, oblivion and memory, is powerful. Despite this apparent contradiction, both dancers communicate with each other through dance, and build an intergenerational vision: perhaps the certainty that we are all one with nature, and that everything is in a state of movement, the sap of a tree, traditional practices, atoms–as Barbara reminded me. At the end of our short interview, I asked Barbara if she had any advice for the young artists who may one day read this text. In response she said: 

“…we’re all born with gifts, and we’re on a journey to discover what our gifts are. So just be your authentic self, and there is a place, an important place for you.”

Barbara Kaneratonni Diabo

¡Fie Nzhinga, Barbara! Thank you. 

For more about Barbara Kaneratonni Diabo

For more about Juan G.  Sánchez Martínez

Juan Guillermo Sánchez Martínez was born in Bakatá/Bogotá, in the Colombian Andes. He coordinates the online multilingual anthology and exhibition Siwar Mayu, A River of Hummingbirds. He has published the following books of poetry: Uranio (2023), Bejuco (2021), Salvia (2014), Río (2010), and Altamar, awarded with the National Prize in Colombia in 2016 (University of Antioquia). He is the author of Memoria e invención en la poesía de Humberto Ak’abal (Abya-Yala, 2012). In 2019, he co-edited the volume Muyurina y el presente profundo with Quechua writer Fredy Roncalla (Pakarina/Hawansuyo), and he is currently co-editing Abiayalan Pluriverses. Bridging Indigenous Studies and Hispanic Studies with Gloria E. Chacón and Lauren Beck (Amherst College, 2024). He is an Associate Professor in the Department of Indigenous Learning at Lakehead University (Thunder Bay, Canada). 

The translator

Jocelyn Montalban was born in Ontario, Canada, where she currently lives. Her parents immigrated to Canada from Guatemala City in 1997. In 2023, she obtained a Bachelor’s Degree in Criminology from Lakehead University (Ontario, Canada). She is currently studying to obtain a Master’s degree in Social Justice. Her research focuses on Indigenous issues in Canada. In her free time you can find her traveling or hiking in the mountains.

“La danza es mi vocabulario”, Barbara Kaneratonni Diabo © Juan G. Sánchez Martínez

Translated by Jocelyn Montalban ~ Siwar Mayu, January 2024

Tobacco Blood. Javier Jayali

Sangre de tabaco © Javier Jayali. Común presencia, 2023
Tobacco Blood © Lorrie Lowenfield Jayne

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Javier Jayali is originally from Cota (Kundurmarka, Colombia). He is a writer and an educator of literature and orality. He studied Literature at the National University of Colombia. For years, he directed the creative writing workshop Tejedores de historias (Story Weavers) at the Public Library of Cota, from which he published the poetic anthologies Cota se cuenta en copla (2020), Cuerpos y palabras (2021) and Senderos, resiliencias y otros espejos (2022.) Since 2018, he coordinates Fiba we, a research and pedagogy traditional lodge for community practices. He is the founder of the Cota Literature Network (2020-2023), as well as the Andean music collective Sikuris del Majuy (2018-2023.) He is a farmer, cultural organizer, and community leader. The following poems were selected from his book Sangre de Tabaco, a unique volume in the recent literature produced in Bakatá/Bogotá, the fertile valley of the condors, the ancestral Muisca territory.

Kusmuy (House of Thought)

Storm
rain
animal
everything has its place and desire
its movement and word
in the house of thought.
Mourning
healing
sickness
all has its story, its pattern
–echo–
its purge for life and a right to silence.
Everything has its limit too
invincible aloneness, confusion
impossible understanding.
Somewhere someone seeks
reparation
reconciliation and a place,
common lineage in the countryside
a lane on the path and the nearness of the hillside.
Someone seeks to exist
seeks their spiritual name
their fish or worm clan
and a sense of their abyss.
Someone seeks a home for their visions
a divining rod for their intuition.
Everything seeks the secret forge
to display their courtship
and their shroud,
the feverish balm
to dance their first dance,
the fertile corner
to share isolation.

There is an open door
the wood spreads out its arms
and the homefire beats like the tongue of a drum:
Welcome, welcome,
to this chink in the finite
though standing so alone
a straw peaked roof on stilts
has been for many dreams
a compendium of the cosmos
a breviary of the dawn
and a library of fires.
The house of thought is open.

Hoska (Rapé)

Be calm
tobacco carries the hummingbird spirit
comes close with its sifted song and pow-
dery feather.
Crosses your nostrils like a gust and aurora
brings present
–echo, buzz–
the beat of its wings pollinates the mind.
Runs through the brain
tames the voices
who lie in wait like angels
and the past eases
and the future awaits.
From its emptiness a crevice greens.
The body feels its own time,
clean.

Walking Seated

The tree trunk
my ancestor
whose dream is a place
to go forward sitting.

With my body seated
and my mind walking
I am a a vein of the tree
an appendix of the earth.
And I am
with poporo
with mochila and sash
and spindle in my hand
–and without these things–
with a brilliant breast
collecting stars and silences.

I am also
with my splintered glance
legs bound with veins
tongue forged
with a wrinkled sadness
and fury;
I am upon a ceremonial stool
(an extension of flesh)
heart seated deeply
blood flowing
in front of a fire.

Whole or in pieces
everything and all am I
if I have space to speak
to confide or be silent
strike a chord or call out
because I have body and place
my soul, a seat.

I am, perhaps,
–upon a cosmic stool for musing
drawing on tobacco
telling a tale
or suffering–
vestige of the tree
action springing from thought.

Gorge

For a long time he tended
a rotten fire
stoked
at his walls
a flaming tuber
death sun
that devours amygdalas
and aborts the wind.
There
within the bloodstained veins
the word
the pyrite word
the obsidian word
the magma word.
The word?
–timid, teimid, tamid–
a fossil preserved
in volcanic urns.
He waited a long time
like a star
that burns as it dies
and as it dies, it names.
In this way the forest birthed the word,
unconscious, crestfallen.
The gorge
was once crater,
laid out and defeated
to whom the hummingbird
offered tobacco seed, tobacco dust
medicine from air
balm from the word.

Flames of fire
now blanket the volcano.

Canopy of Birds

I have in my vertebrae
a canopy filled with birds
who nest and forage
whose songs are presences,
lucid or terrible.

They later throng to my breast
sometimes all of them
sometimes none
and these ones,
these who don’t emerge
who do not migrate through the veins,
or are more like fruits of the tree,
or abstracts,
they also sicken.

Suspended in air
many have died
tremulous with hope;
some others persisted
their feathers turn to air
their latency, idea.

Always, they hope
that from my mouth will stretch forth
the ancient heavenly vine
that binds time to the world;
perhaps a question, a response,
a page and a pen,
a couplet,
a whistle from the wooden flute.
Always…
The juices from the coca and tobacco
show the way and free them..

The Rock of Confession

On the mountain, first and foremost, permission
with a barefoot soul, without notions imposed.
I offer yarn and corn husks, I remember the path.
I seek the rock of confession.
I speak with her:
like the primate who only recently descended from the tree
but also like the spores on the fern.
And I come again, as I have come before
I come to surrender, to feed the mountains
and return to the world weightless.
I want to descend lighter,
walking seated, with an empty mochila,
I return.

The andean chameleon glides between the cracks.
The highland eagle passes before the rock.

Fire Dream

Dreaming displays
remains
of those things that have not yet happened
of that which has not yet been
named
and yet exists.

Smoke seems like
the fire’s dream,
the fire dreams.
He dreams of an open house
of hands spread with sandy clay
of ears of corn
and owls
and Andean colored flags at dusk.

If there are words, the fire rests.
If silence, he dances.

The questions seem to be
the dream of thought,
Thought dreams:
“Which dream do I need?
The tall flame that kindles or frees?
The medium flame that observes and contains
or that slow one that gives out?
The ember that subdues yearning to lethargy
or that one there that calms the suns at the dying of night?

Awaken
smoke embraces the rays of light.
The fire dreams
the dream of the ancient one:
“another existence exists.“

Equinox

The sowing season arrives
and the seed falls from the water.
The fist of the universe opens
the rain returns with its outstretched palm.
We put on the plumage of birds
and wait to be born anew.
The sun will wait for us
as it highlights its eternal analemma.
We will be there
and we will know that we’ve said what we never wanted
to say
that we have been unjust with the living
that we have postponed the postponed
that we have seen the river paved over
that our eyes are worn out-diminished.

We have waited for the new sun.
The day lasts as long as the night
and the awakening as long as our fears.
We will make a cosmic contract
and a sowing of purpose:
we’ll ask the voices in our minds to rest
give ourselves time and discipline
consume what is necessary.
We will sink our hands in the ground.
We’ll make an offering.
The equinox sun will watch us be born.
Thank-you.

Mochila

The cord and the placenta
that some sowed and buried
that were robbed from us or that we lost
becomes visible with the thread in our hands
a thread that creates its history of itself
like the ring of a tree
like the myth
like the story of country folk.

The threads and color
knot together
to make a mochila
weave the visible
the memories and the tangible.
Moving inward they weave emptiness
space and form
the invisible:
a grave in the earth
memory to remember
and a query:
What do you want to carry and how much can you bear?
to go through the world
without origin?
The mochila is a placenta
united to its umbilical cord.

For more about Javier Jayali 

About the translator

Lorrie Jayne, a collaborator in Siwar Mayu, teaches Spanish, Portuguese, and Personal Narrative in the Languages and Literatures Department at the University of North Carolina Asheville (USA). She lives with her husband and daughters in the Appalachian Mountains where she enjoys plants, people, and poetry.

Sangre de tabaco © Javier Jayali ~ Siwar Mayu, December 2023

Tobacco Blood © Lorrie Jayne

Sky Woman Story. Kahente Horn-Miller

Sky Woman’s Great Granddaughters: A Narrative Inquiry Into Kanienkehaka Women’s Identity © Kahente Horn-Miller, 2009.

If you prefer to read this as a PDF, click here

Kahente Horn-Miller is of Akskare:wake (Bear Clan) descent from the Kanien:keha’ka (Mohawk) Indigenous community of Kahnawake, a First Nations reserve located near the city of Montreal, on the banks of the Kaniatarowanenneh (great waterway) known since colonization as the St. Lawrence River. Horn-Miller is an associate professor at Carleton University’s School of Indigenous and Canadian Studies, in Ottawa, Ontario, in the Algonquin Territories, where she is also the first Assistant Vice-president, Indigenous Initiatives. Horn-Miller is a collaborative artist who presented an exhibition entitled “My Mom, Kahntinetha Horn, the ‘Military Mohawk Princess'” at an Ottawa gallery in 2018. 

Horn-Miller’s Sky Woman story is a first-person version of a creation story that has many earlier versions, but never in the first person. This tale, part of the oral literature of the Indigenous people of Abya Yala, is the story of the genesis of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) people. Horn-Miller says that her version came to her suddenly in an intimate moment with her daughter, and she felt a compelling need to write it down. The Sky Woman Story is also part of her PhD thesis (Concordia University, Montreal, Canada, 2009). When presenting her version of the story, Horn-Miller’s performance is quite striking.

~~~

Sky Woman’s Story

I am the daughter of the Great Spirit. I am Sky Woman. I was born in the Sky World far above the earth at the beginning of time many centuries ago. As a child I was known as Mature Flowers. I was born with the caul covering my face, which made me very special to my people, the Sky Dwellers. I was expected to do great things. My people believed that I had been born by the way of the spirits and not through a physical act. After my birth I was put into protective seclusion by my mother so that I would grow strong and focused. They call this being hidden under the husk, referring to the protective husk surrounding a cob of corn. My uncle, my mother’s brother, was given the duty to advise me and prepare me for adulthood. When he died his body was put at the top of the Great White Pine tree, where he continued to keep a protective watch over me. When I needed his guidance I would call his name three times and climb to the top of the tree and we would talk.

My life in the Sky World was happy. I remember that there was always enough food to eat and no one ever got sick. There was no jealousy or hatred. Every person I knew had special talents and gifts that were nurtured and used for the good existence of everyone. When I and my brothers and sisters were young my mother would carry her babies on her back in a cradle board and hang it in a tree as she and my father worked alongside the men and women of the Sky World cultivating the corn, beans and squash. When I was strong enough, I began to work in the gardens with everyone else. I learned from all the women, and whom I called ‘mother’. I would also help my mothers and sisters in the preparation of the foods. I never wanted for anything. Everything was provided for us to survive. It is said that all the plants and animals that exist on the earth are the same as the ones that exist in the Sky World.

One day, everyone in the Sky World was summoned by The Keeper of the Celestial Tree or Tree of Light by a messenger who came to the people. When the people went to see him, they were told that a dream needed to be deciphered before the flowers on the tree stopped blooming forever. If this were to happen, there would be darkness that would disrupt creation in the Sky World. After this event great calamity and hardship would come and things would change forever. The meaning of the dream, it was told, would have an effect on everyone in the Sky World. Many people tried to interpret the dream but failed. The Keeper tossed them into a hole near his tree that led to the world below where they were transformed into new beings. My mother went to the council but didn’t bring me as I had asked. As a young adult, I was too distraught at having to be involved in such a great responsibility as dream interpretation. I wanted so desperately to be a child for much longer. I went instead to see Uncle at the top of the Great White Pine.

I walked through the forest, watching the light and shadows through the trees as I thought about the dream and the council. When I arrived, I slowly climbed the Great White Pine. To reach the top took all my strength. I pulled myself up onto one of the topmost branches and I saw Uncle lying there.

“Uncle,” I asked. “What should I do? A very important meeting has been called. The Keeper has asked the People to help him interpret an important dream. I don’t want to be burdened by such seriousness. I am just a child.”

“It is almost time for you to fulfill your destiny,” he told me. “You are almost old enough, you are almost strong enough and you are certainly wise beyond your years. Soon, you will be asked to go to the Keeper of the Tree of Light. When you go, tell him who you are and that you have come to help him. Tell him you have the power to bring new life to the blossoms that light up the Sky World.”

Uncle instructed me that the Keeper and I would look over the things that had been thrown out of the Sky World and were coming to life in the world below. Uncle cautioned me closely.

“Do not sleep on any mat he offers you.”

I looked at Uncle with questioning eyes, but I nodded my head in agreement. Little did I know that once the creative process began, things would change in the Sky World and the world below—Light would dim in the Sky World as light grew below. Only when light began to dim below, then the light would renew itself in the Sky World, which I couldn’t understand. Uncle told me of many other things that would occur when I went to see The Keeper. I listened closely because I trusted and loved Uncle.

This story I am telling you is one that comes from my long memory, the memories of my children, and the collective memories of my many great granddaughters. I can look back on my life and see it with such clarity, as if it happened yesterday. The memories are vivid and still very much alive, kept in the minds and hearts of my descendants. Through them, I pass on my knowledge.

As I climbed down the Great White Pine and walked away back to my lodge, I felt calm for the first time. Shortly after I arrived home, Mother came back from the council.

“We were not able to help The Keeper,” she told me. “So those of us who were left, we talked amongst ourselves. Daughter, we all know you are meant to do something special. People of the Sky World have counseled and we agree that when you are old enough, you are to go to The Keeper of the Tree of Light to help him interpret his dream so that balance and light will remain in the Sky World.” 

I looked at her with wondering eyes but I didn’t question her. Uncle had prepared me for this.

When I was old enough a messenger came from The Keeper, a feast was to be given and I was invited. I went to see the Keeper of the Tree of Light as instructed.

“Who are you?” he asked. “What are you doing? Why are you doing that?”

“I am the girl they call Mature Flowers. I have come to help you as Uncle instructed me.”

I continued.

“I heard you were giving a feast.”

The Keeper seemed to know me as though he had been expecting me. I was surprised when he told me that I was the reason for the feast. He looked at me and smiled.

“You were born with a great gift. You are the Sky World’s only hope of keeping the Tree of Light lit.”

As he said these words, he pointed to the blossoms on the Tree of Light. I looked at them closely, cradling one in my palm. I saw that their beauty and light was dimming. The Tree was beginning to die. I felt saddened by their dimming beauty. I had tears in my eyes.

“How is it that I can help you?”

The Keeper told me to prepare for the feast some mush made from chestnuts that we would eat together. As I was cooking the mush it sputtered and stuck to my body, burning me. I didn’t cry out but whimpered under my breath in pain. My breath came in small short gasps as the white hot searing pain of the burning mush brought tears to my eyes. I held back my tears and continued to push the air through my teeth as I worked to prepare the mush. When it was finished I called out that the mush was ready. When The Keeper saw me, he was shocked to see my burned body.

“The mush sputtered and burned me. I am in pain.”

The Keeper immediately called out two white dogs that came forward and licked the mush from my body. As the dogs’ tongues cleansed my body I remained motionless and didn’t wince. With the dogs’ saliva coating my burned flesh, I began to feel less pain and my skin began to heal quickly. Their work brought me peace.

When I was well enough, I brought the mush into The Keeper’s lodge and we sat to eat. We ate. As we ate, The Keeper spoke:

“Many people are on their way to play a game called The Little Brother of War.”

“The game will divert my mind from the problems at hand. I will ask that you not speak to anyone who comes to play or to watch the game. If you do this then you can stay.”

I agreed to his request. We finished our food and walked to a clearing a short distance away. As we walked I could hear the voices of the men calling to each other over the field. As the game went on, many of my people came up to speak to me but I remained silent as requested. It was hard for me to do.

After a while, The Keeper asked me to go to the stream and get him some water. I found the stream and crouched at the shore as I filled a wooden bowl. I stood up and as I turned a player came up to me and asked me for a drink. Naturally, I replied that he could have some. Suddenly a cold feeling came over me. I realized that I had broken The Keeper’s request that I not speak to anyone. I refilled the bowl and headed back to The Keeper. He was angry with me for disobeying his request and he sent me back to my mother with instructions.

For more about Kahente Horn-Miller

Sky Woman’s Great Granddaughters: A Narrative Inquiry Into Kanienkehaka Women’s Identity 

© Kahente Horn-Miller, 2009 ~ Siwar Mayu, November 2023

Tuuch, óol, and poetry. Pedro Uc

El ombligo maya, óol, and original poems © Pedro Uc

Selection and translation from Spanish © Melissa Birkhofer and Paul Worley

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It is with great enthusiasm that we present this selection of story-essays, and poems by Pedro Uc. As a bilingual writer (Yucatec Maya, and Spanish), Pedro’s translations blurs the boundaries between literary genres and philosophy. In translating word/worlds such as “óol” or “tuuch”, this literature builds a linguistic bridge between two ways of being-in-the-world. By searching for the right expression in European languages to explain ancestral words, Pedro Uc delves into analogies, poetic images, and expands the perception of the reader. The following selection opens with a story-essay about the tuuch, the belly button, the connection of the newborn with the earth; it follows by a “poetic-intercultural glossary” around the óol, being-spirit; and closes with a selection of poetry. 

Siwar Mayu is grateful to the author and the translators for their generosity!

The Maya Belly Button

He cannot control his searching hands, his fingers, nor the threads of the palm as he makes a traditional hat, weaving them together. His feet seem to command him to walk deep into the forest despite how difficult it is. He’s unable to firmly stand on the ground, his eyes are like a pair of guardians in the mooy1, the sacred precinct of the midwife who, with such mastery, and so delicately, takes a piece of warmed cotton and rubs around the belly button of the newborn who in turn seems to appreciate this little bit of warmth around where his life began. The young farmer is a father for the first time, nine long days seemed even longer to wait for one of the most important sowings of his life, the tuuch2 of his recently born son; the knowing look in the gaze of his wife who is a new mother is no small thing. Words seem unnecessary, as their faces speak during the rite of póok tuuch3 held by the Chiich4. All their family, friends, and neighbors know that the ceremony has started and will take a few days. Meanwhile, the aromatic herbs prepare to purify the road that Yuum iik’5 begins to signal the great encounter with Yuum K’áax6 y Yuum Cháak7. Today is the great day where we plant the mystery of life, where we plant the connection with the night so it can dawn.

Jpiil, as they called Felipe in his community, was ready to receive the tuuch of his first son from the hands of Chiich, the grandmother, so he could take it to Yuum K’áax. His parents told him that his own umbilical cord lay in the basin of a cenote, under a huge ceiba tree that seems to be the grandmother of the great jungle. Today it is a place known as a sanctuary where people can carry out ceremonies connected to the life of the milpa.

Our grandmothers and grandfathers say that Mayas like them cannot understand life without the forest, without the cenotes, without the plants, without the rain, without the wind, and without the land, because Maya women and men are born from the land, they are like the trees. The forest is a community, the old trees are the grandparents, but the children and grandchildren are also there, even the newly born. That’s why it is inevitable that we should plant the táab8 that connects human beings with the forest, the wind, and the water. U táabil u tuuch chan paale’ tu ts’u k’áax unaj u bisa’al mukbil ti’al u p’éelili’ital tu ka’téen yéetel le kuxtalilo’9, is how the nojoch wíinik10, the eldest women and men advised us. Once cut from the body, the child’s umbilical cord should be taken immediately to the heart of the forest to the Yuumtsil. It should then be left there to recover its connection with life, so that the new child can be one with the forest, with the milpa, with the water, with the land, and with the wind. 

1 Corner of the house
2 Umbilical cord
3 Warmed umbilical cord
4 Grandmother
5 Father-creator wind
6 Father-creator forest
7 Father-creator rain
8 Cord
9 The child 's umbilical cord should be buried deep in the heart of the jungle so that it can once again be one with life. 
10 Older person who is morally responsible

This is the part of lived Maya spirituality that has been dimmed via colonization today, though it remains alive and even in good health in some communities. Among Maya families, the midwife or even the new mother gives recently born girls and boys the póokbil tuuch between the first three and nine days of life, until the child’s little umbilical cord falls off. It is then carefully wrapped in a piece of cloth, in a banana leaf, in a jolo’och11, or in a bit of cotton and carried off by the father or grandfather to the oldest part of the forest to be planted, maybe at the mouth of a cenote, under a ceiba, or another similarly symbolic tree. 

The point of that rite is to connect the newly born child with nature, with the earth, so that it is never fooled, so that it is never wounded, so that it is never abandoned, so that it is never sold, but lived in and with, so that it is respected, cared for, caressed, and to live communally with her. The child whose tuuch has been planted is naturalized in the territory, is received by Yuum K’áax, by Yuum iik’ and by Yuum Cháak, the child’s flesh is made of corn and its óol is its memory. It will grow under the rain, it will rise up like the wind, it will remain firm like the great ceiba, the great grandmother, which is also a táabil tuuch of the community that has been planted by the Yuumtsil to be the midwife of Maya families, who receives in her lap the grandchildren who arrive like seeds planted among her enormous roots where she broods over them like a hen caring for her chicks under her wings.

The colony has created a new version of this celebration, as has always been the case with strategies of “evangelization,” destroying what is original and building its temple, its theories, its beliefs, its interpretations from the rubble. It affirms that when the child’s umbilical cord is carried off and left in the forest, doing so combats any fear the child might have of bad spirits, monsters who live in the forest. Doing so confronts ghosts and evil winds. 

11 Corn husk

There is nothing more false or violent than this story, as planting the newborn’s táab tuuch in the forest has nothing to do with avoiding fear, but quite the opposite, it is done to reconnect the child with the earth and nature, to make the child a sibling of the birds, the animals, the trees, the water, the night and its knowing silence. Some families plant a girl’s táabil tuuch underneath the ashes of their hearth to reconnect her with the fire, tortillas, food, firewood, the three stones that are the fire’s home. The táabil tuuch is the cord of life, it is the kuxa’an suum12 with which human life is tied to non-humans and the spiritual, it is the union of the particular with the whole and the whole with the particular, and parallels how Maya language itself is born from a discourse that communicates with everything that inhabits our house which is the forest, the milpa, and the land. This is why land is neither sold nor rented, it is the house of our táabil k tuuch, our kuxa’an suum.

The umbilical cord is something the Xtáab shares with us, it is the cord of the Xtáabwáay13,  or the cord of mystery, of the transcendence of life through death, of the satunsat14, of the dark, of the night, where life and light itself, according to the Popol Vuj15 is born, it is where you have contact. This is why many times the newborn’s tuuch is given to a hunter, as someone who can go to the oldest, most mature, purest part of the forest,  as he knows the trails of Yuum iik’ and the house of Yuum Cháak in the heart of Yuum K’áax, he takes it upon himself to carry that kuxa’an suum to plant it in the forest, deep in the jungle, tu ts’u’ k’áax16, and so he finds in the energy of his óol17 a new path to arrive even to the child’s puksi’ik’18 and place it in the same temple of the community of men and women who are made of corn.

The words that the one who sows the cord says to the Yuumtsil19 on burying the táabil tuuch are part of the sujuyt’aan20, the words which should only be spoken when you are making an arrangement with the Yuumtsil, and in this particular case with the Xtáab who is the grandmother who provides the cord with which the child’s tuuch is woven, the man or woman who opens a little hole in the earth in which to place the cord, calling on our father and mother creators so that the “winds” know and recognize the newborn as it is no longer attached to its mother and has been temporarily disconnected from the Yuumtsil, now returning like a seed so that in its heart can be born the promise to care for the land and be cared for by the land through a perfect connection through the kuxa’an suum

12 Living cord
13 Mystery mother-creator
14 Labyrinth or Xibalbaj.
15 Sacred Maya text
16 Heart of the forest
17 Being-spirit
18 Heart
19 Father-creator
20 Pure speech

It takes between three and nine days for the táabil tuuch to fall off of the child’s body. Jpiil was desperate, unable to wait much longer to reconnect his son with the mother ceiba, with the spirit of nature, with the song of the birds, and with the dignified strength that the animals of the forest possess. Only when that cord has been planted can he return to the peace of the family, which is why they firmly say among themselves as part of their testimony that a special breeze enters the farthest corners of the house’s mooy where the child has been enveloped in the hammock to be embraced and nursed by Xtáab as a sign of this connection. 

Where is the tábil u tuuch of those who sell the land? The women and men of corn ask, are these not the same ones who lost their tuuch in a political party? Did they leave it in a textile factory? Did a strange colonial faith take it from them? The poorly named Maya train has been dug into Maya lands to unearth and destroy this cord of life, it has stretched out its criminal rails, it has grabbed the cord of life of many Maya communities and stripped them of their táab, and in front of our protests, every turn of its wheels seems to say, “it’s useless, it’s useless, it’s useless.” 

The ashes of the kitchen’s hearth are empty, the ceiba’s roots that were woven with the táabil tuuch or kuxa’an suum of Maya children have been profaned in many communities that have been flattened by the train’s left wheel. However, some milpas are beginning to spring up, it has been a year of abundant rain, the cicada has not stopped its ik’ilt’aan21, the fireflies remind us with their lights how to make a brighter light as they look for us, find us, and as we create community again. The sakbej22 that plows through the firmament is full of stars, a táabil tuuch that we see in the sky. 

21 Poetry
22 White road-the Milky Way

~~~

ÓOL

The following terms such as Che’ óol, P’éek óol, Jáak’ óol, Ja’ak’saj óol, Náaysaj óol, Sa’ak’ óol, Ma’ak’ óol, Tooj óol, Yaj óol, Ok’om óol, Saatal óol, Chokoj óol, Síis óol y Ki’imak óol are commonly heard in the everyday tsikbal or conversations in communities in the Maya territory of the Yucatán Peninsula. Take note of the constant presence of the sound óol at the end of each of these terms in the list, which could even be much longer. Here óol is a kind of signal or warning about the kuuch or weight of this ancient word, as the nojoch wíinik call it. 

Today the Maya language is seen as diminished, as having receded before the dominant language, but this is not an issue of the present. Rather, this is the result of 500 years of colonization, evangelization, and persecution of Maya language and culture. In this colonizing context, we see ourselves challenged to decolonize the Maya language, doing archeological work on our knowledge and our words, removing the rubble of history to find not only the material vestiges but also the linguistic monuments, like óol, which the colony has disguised as meaning “soul.” This current essay is a small step towards an archeology of these words and their decolonization. 

Óol is one of those so-called untranslatable words that you cannot render into Spanish because it seems the concept of óol does notexist in the dominant language. Some fall into flippantly affirming that it means “spirit,” others have said it means “soul”; in doing so they would cover it with the shade of evangelical Christianity, and certainly one has nothing to do with the other. The thought here comes straight from the Maya heart, and itself can be understood, depending on the context, as mood, energy, being, origin, identity, sprout, emotion, strength, beginning, health, etc. When placed at the beginning or end of another word as in the list above, it helps to specify the sense in which it’s being used. It is not limited to that, however, but rather opens onto extensive symbolic, political, psychological, spiritual, or philosophical planes. I’ll briefly comment on the meaning of each of these thoughts without any intention of exhausting its kuuch, that is, to illustrate its meaning but not limit it, although I believe this will be very difficult to do, at least for a single person, no matter their knowledge of Maya language and culture, given that these knowledges are by necessity built in community. 

Sometimes you may hear someone say, óol pichi’ woye’ (this place smells like guayaba). The meaning of óol in this case is aroma, smell. Rather it should be understood along the lines of, “this place has the essence of guayaba.” When you hear óol in chukej, conventionally, óol in this case is understood as “almost,” “at the point of…,” as in “I was about to trap it,” but what it really means is, “I pursued its being.” As you can notice, to pursue the óol is an emotional challenge, and in my reflections here I will give you a brief tour through a few words that can help you understand the depth and breadth of this thought. 

Che’ óol is a word that is normally understood as meaning raw, unripe, not full, smelling of immaturity, or rough; but it’s when we want to refer to something in its natural or primitive state, without having been touched but not yet ripe, we see that this expression is possibly derived from the story of the second creation of the men of che’ or wood in the Popol Vuj. So “che’ óol” has the essence of wood, from this frustrated or unfulfilled creation, which can also be seen as immature and primitive. Maybe that’s why when we say che’che’ (wood wood), which is usually translated as raw, we are also describing something that is not just raw, uncooked, or immature, but is also very simple, common, basic, or primitive that it could have become qualitatively valuable but has not or has simply stopped developing. Che’ óol is something insipid, without aroma, flavor, or a refined essence. Rather, at its core it is ordinary, rustic, and crude. 

P’éek óol, is generally translated as hate, but is better understood as rejection, revulsion, or scorn, p’eek meaning not accepting or discomfort, that is, its essence has to do with being unsociable, disagreeable, intolerable.

Jáak’ óol is commonly translated as fright, but I have to clarify that the general translation we have today from Maya to Spanish is crossed with a colonial spirit that restrains it, fences it in, diminishes it, and limits it to its more pragmatic aspects to remove the philosophical, symbolic, artistic, and spiritual strength and power from these words. Fear of losing the language of conquest led the first translators to deny the spiritual or political sense that our Maya words have. Jáak’ óol also means admiration, recognition, it’s the capacity to be shocked by reality, it is a philosophical posture, the product of deep observation, if anyone wants to make a more literal translation, it would be waking up one’s being, waking the soul, activating who I am, shifting my attention, warning of risk, putting my being before reality, among many other possible ways of understanding jáak’ óol.

Ja’ak’saj óol is a noun, the being that causes a certain reaction of shock, admiration, or fear. In general, this term refers to invisible beings given how its meaning has been diminished, but its kuuch encompasses everything, material or immaterial, that is capable of causing shock, admiration, or moving the most basic emotions of humans, animals, and even birds. A  Ja’ak’saj óol can be in a cave, in the dark, in the jungle, in the darkest night, in the body of an animal or a person, and is not only related to what is seen as “negative.” It is also present in the plain light of day, in plazas, on the streets, in schools, in meetings, in art, in science, in one’s thoughts and common places. For example, in my community there is a cenote called Xjáak’saj óol, not because it is threatening or causes fear, but because it is home to a natural phenomenon you do not find in other cenotes: there you can hear space sounds or something that sounds like enormous birds among other things that generate shock and admiration. 

Náaysaj óol, is regularly translated as “neglect, betray, and distract” but has more to do with dreaming beautifully. The term náay has to do with dreaming beautiful, happy, or agreeable things, so Náaysaj óol is the creation of a delightful fragment in the middle of a danger, exhaustion, or a routine. It’s also similar to having fun. When children are bored in the company of adults, it’s recommended that you make them a náaysaj óol.When someone creates a work of art outside of their daily work in Maya you say, táan u náaysik u yóol. It also means creating good dreams for the óol, it is planning, proposing, projecting, it is describing the future because it is already passed, it is like when we look at millions of butterflies going South, we do not guess they leave because of the rain, it is the past that shows us the future, it is a náaysaj óol, it is an awakening of sensibility, intelligence, creativity. 

Sa’ak’ óol is conventionally or colonially translated as activism when applied to a person, when they are called activist or hard working. It is possible that the word comes from saak’  which translates more or less as unease, but what it really means is restless or enterprising. Maybe it also comes from Sáak’, which is the name of the locust, an insect that never stops or rests from the time the sun rises. It’s always flying about and always eating. If this is the case, sa’ak’ óol would be like a visionary person, lively, energetic, active, with both personal and community-oriented initiative. For example, Jsa’ak’ óol is a person who is not content to plant common seeds like corn, beans, and squash in their milpa, and so plants a number of different seeds, up to sixty kinds in a single field. They might also plant fruit trees at home, have a job not directly associated with the milpa, actively participate in the organization of their community, and always be generous with people who need their advice or support with difficult situations in the community. We cannot limit the word Sa’ak’ óol to simply activity, as it connotes movement, dynamism, implies having a broad perspective, being uncomfortable with tedium, with routine, with things as they are, and with the leisure that so damages the youth of today who are abandoned to an educational system that does not educate, but limits creativity and sa’ak’ óol. In our territory there are towns named for the importance of living water such as Sa’ak’ óol ja’, which out of sheer laziness has been written down as Sacola by colonial forces that, intentionally or not, have rendered such meaningful names ridiculous.  Sa’ak’ óol ja’ is water in a state of permanent movement, creative water, active water, uneasy water, stunning water that excites, that loosens inhibitions, that raises the spirit, that warms you. In some Maya communities people with these characteristics are nicknamed, Sa’ak’ óol Ja’.

Ma’ak’ óol, is a word that has been translated more or less as lazy or idle, although it literally would be, “without spirit, without breath, without being.” It applies to people who are conformist, trivial, unpleasant or not critical. It ks a strong expression, because its equivalent is “to not exist”; it can be understood as without existence, as óol is existence or essence, such that ma’ak’ óol is someone who has no existence, is a being without being. It is a negation of something fundamental, like not caring if it is raining or the sun is shining, if the oceans part or if it is lightning, if it is sunset or dawn, nothing can make them change their “affected existence.” These people are not capable of thinking for themselves, they live far outside of the life of the community. People who no longer hold corn in their hearts are ma’ak’ óol, they are like malleable objects who seem to always be waiting for handouts. Even so, they are not even capable of waiting, given that waiting is too much for their frivolity. In lively Maya communities, a ma’ak’ óol is looked down upon, is someone who causes worry, and is the subject of community meetings and family discussions where people debate how to wake them up. Every time a young person is incapable of being moved by reality, they are seen as a waste, and people look for alternate means to breathe life into them, to wake up their óol.

Tooj óol: While this can be translated as physical health, it goes well beyond this limited sense, and in reality does not simply refer to the physical body but to that entity which we call óol. Tooj literally means without curves, straight, a straight line, a path in which there are no accidents, potholes, deviations, or mud. This is why, according to Maya thought, something that is in prime condition enjoys balance and has nothing out of place; this is how health is understood in Maya thought, as what really gets sick is the óol and this is expressed through the physical body, in the flesh which is a kind of blanket that dresses and protects the óol. A person in a state of tooj is one who is healthy on at least three plains: physically, morally, and socially. A ma’ak’ óol, for example, cannot be tooj óolal. People who are tooj óolal promote good health and a good diet, as well as what is uts, what is ki’, what is  ma’alob, what is tooj in what we would refer to in Spanish as the sphere of morality. They are also promoters of tsikbal, péektsil, payalchi’, k’áatchi’, k’uben t’aan, ki’iki’t’aan, and tsolxikin among other celebrations and festivals of the word. Perhaps this is why our greetings go beyond “good morning, good afternoon, and good evening,” and have a direct connection to health. We say, “bix a wanil” or “bix a beel” because we always want to know how the human, spiritual, and communal state of the person is. And it should always be tooj óol.

Yaj óol: is usually translated as sadness, which is relatively accurate. However, it goes beyond this quick translation. Yaj is a word that is used when someone has a wound on their body or skin, or when they have an infection, and there are other words used to describe pain. In this case, when we say yaj and it is accompanied by óol, we are saying that one’s óol is hurt in their body or has been polluted or has an infection. From there it can be translated as “to miss,” and it is common to hear a mother whose child has migrated to another country say, “in yaj óoltik un waal,” “I’m suffering from a wound in my óol,” meaning “I’m sad,” “I’m missing someone,” or “My wounded óol pains me.” You say all of this and more through the expression yaj óol. When people fall out of love, there is a death or a loss in the family there is yaj óol, a strange pain that is not in the body’s flesh but in the óol, which is a person’s true being or essence. 

Ok’om óol: This thought refers to a condition of permanent or chronic sadness; it is like saying, my being is continually sobbing, it cannot stop crying. When someone’s life is upset by a pain that could be the loss of a loved one, the loss of a crop due to a chance event or something sinister like a prolonged drought, being consumed by locusts, or being hit by a hurricane when things are just starting to sprout, then you experience ok’om óol, a sadness or permanent pain in which you lose your appetite, your happiness, creativity, and many times even your hope. Ok’om is a word of profound meaning, as it does not describe just any sadness, as it is not fleeting or ephemeral. It is not light, and means one’s essence has been impacted for a long time, and may not recover.

Saatal óol: Although this is regularly translated as crazy, in reality it is much more than that, and better applies to a person who has fainted because of epilepsy, or has been left immobile because they’ve been hit, or fallen. A saatal óol is someone who is confused and unmoored in their life, in their decision-making, someone who is intentionally irresponsible in situations that demand seriousness, being forthright, and clear. It also applies metaphorically to a person who uses a lot of humor when they talk and sarcastically laughs at reality, mostly at the people around them. The word also applies in terms of health, humor, art, ethics, and uncertainty. To me, reducing its meaning to crazy imposes an impoverished, colonial interpretation of the word’s true meaning.

Chokoj óol: This is one of the most common expressions in the daily life of a Maya community and derives its importance from many of the activities that people carry out during the day and even at night. It can be translated as the warm state in which a person finds themselves, and literally means, “hot being.” For example, when a child wakes up and is not permitted to get up and leave the house immediately, but has to sit and cool off for at least ten or fifteen minutes, as they run the risk of being hit by the cool morning air and getting sick because they are in a state of chokoj óol, that is, they are hot. After each activity, including sex, at home or in the milpa, a person enters into a state of chokoj óol, and if they go out and are hit by the cool wind they can fall ill because the two most important states in life, hot and cold, are opposites. If a person comes into contact with these their óol is directly impacted as they generate an imbalance and so the person gets sick. This is why it is important for the person to wait for their chokoj or heat to diminish and balance out with the temperature of the weather before they undertake another activity related to the cold. Chokoj óol usually only applies to health, although metaphorically it can be used to refer to someone who speaks illogically or fallaciously, nonsensically, or overly idealistically. 

Síis óol: This word applies to a coolness in the environment, but it goes beyond this common usage, as it also describes the ideal state of a person in which they can undertake any kind of activity without there being any risk to their health or, better said, their óol. In general people who wake up after having slept all night, have just arrived from the milpa, have finished making tortillas, etc., are in a state of chokoj óol. As such they need to refresh themselves or to find their equilibrium before undertaking a different activity in which they need to be cooler, or choj óol, such as bathing themselves with cold water or drinking ice water. We say, unaj u síiskuntik u yóol, so that they are not impacted by the violent collision of hot and cold. It can also be used to talk about homosexuality, as you say that someone is a Jsíis óol, or a person who typically has a cold óol, that is passive and without a more masculine aggression. This does not imply that this person is bad or contemptible, it simply means that this is how they are, their state of being is different. It is not a disadvantage or something to correct. Síis óol is fundamentally an expression used in the context of health and is the counterpart of chokoj óol. The two must be coordinated for one to have equilibrium and good health.

Oksaj óol: The word meaning “to believe” in Maya was so dangerous to the colony that people tried to minimize it to the point that it almost disappeared. People Mayanized Spanish, such that most of us who speak Maya today use the term kréex (note: from “creer” in Spanish) to refer to the verb “to believe.” Of course, this is not Maya, but the mayanization of creer. The colonizer wanted to make sure that Maya people believed in his dogma like he did, and could not take a chance that something of such relevance for the control of people’s minds would function even better than a chain in his hands or a gallows to control the recently conquered Indians, could be left unchecked. Belief is very important, which is why it was necessary for people to stop believing in what is Maya and to begin to believe in the “values” of the colony. As Javier Sicilia has said, “Perversion begins through language. Once normalized, then a perversion of acts will be seen as normal, and people will not even blush before the horror.” Memory, however, is unconquerable, is rebellious, it resists. Our ancestors guarded the scraps of this word, but with the full weight of the concept and its full meaning, bestowing upon us oksaj óol as it is registered in the Cordemex dictionary. Today many of our elders when they feel they are being questioned unsheath their memory and show us their lightning-sharp oksaj óol. This word can be literally translated as placing the óol, accepting what is in front of you as valid, sharing in a sense of equality, making what is not ours ours again as they say in Spanish, interiorizing something but not as something artificial but like the graft of one plant with another so that they are a single life. Therein lies this term’s danger insofar as it encompasses a way to live one’s life, signifying a so-called “buen vivir.” One doesn’t believe just anything, first, the thing must be believable, at the least it has to be ontologically real, evidence must be present. Evangelization has dogma at its core, and it is only believed through sword and flame. When these are withdrawn, that faith trickles away with the blood running out from our Maya óol. This is why today many Indigenous communities carry a Catholic image in their processions, but the óol of that image is the Maya face of the creating Mother or Father. This is why Landa held his auto dá fe. He was a coward, insecure, dogmatic. He did not learn that the Christian faith proposes a way of life, but rather found religion, political and economic power, the anti-Gospel. He did not want to take any chances with oksaj óol, and preferred to listen to the kréex. Today oksaj óol as a Maya word, as Maya thought, as a Maya heart, enjoys good health, has started to emerge from the caves, from under rocks, from cenotes, from the forest and from the songs of birds like the Xk’ook’

K’áat óol: This word translates as plea. While this is a decent translation, I think that the word’s kuuch is not fully present in Spanish. If it is translated, it is only partial, and the word loses its strength. K’áat is to ask for, but not just anything. Here, what’s being requested is the óol, the being, the will. This thought applies when among the Maya someone asks for something of great importance, something transcendent. It is common only in the ik’ilt’aan said by the Jmeen to the Yuumtsil when he presents them with an offering or celebrates a ritual. What is being asked for is not just any favor, it is not an object, but the total will of someone in such a way that what they can give is not in itself what is being asked for, but his or her very being. In fulfilling or consenting to this request, everything else one could give is of lesser value, because he has given to the petitioner what he has asked for, and he has asked for his óol. 

Alab óol: I’m unsure exactly what the word alab means. Maybe it comes from a lost root or maybe it has been mutilated via processes of colonization. Current thought would hold that it means “hope,” which is no small thing, and what Maya culture understands by this word is the possibility that someone is favored and feels accompanied by another being, or hoping that someone perceives their potential. While it is common to see children as our alab óol because of all the collaborative activities and help they give us at home, when they are older and they are the new roofbeams of the house, this term does not stop applying to them. This line of thought is used a lot within families and the collaborative relationship that a Maya person has with the Yuumtsil, and it is common to hear a farming family say that Yuum Cháak, Yuum iik’, and Yuum K’áax are their alab óolal. It is a word that is slowly losing its way among the Maya People, given that the People are slowly losing their hope as a culture and a nation. 500 years of conquest and colonization have weakened the People’s alab óol, but today we are gathering up its fragments that have been scattered across the hot dust, like hoping for the first rains of the season.  Yaan u alab óol le alab óol ti’ Yuum Cháako’.

Ts’íib óol: This word has a very heavy meaning, literally meaning “to write the óol.” It is usually translated as “desire,” but as you can see, ts’íib óol is a much more powerful image, it is the attitude of someone who hopes to write about their own óol. We are all writers, we all desire. To the extent that we keep desiring, we fill the white pages of our future history, even if this sounds paradoxical. Desiring is writing on our being, on our spirit, on our energy, on our emotions, on our dreams. on our will. What is desired is not something trivial, superfluous, tasteless, or ephemeral. Rather, what is desired or written is transcendent, stunning, perennial, ubiquitous, powerful, and above all communitarian. The Maya ts’íib óol is only found in those expressions, acts, and sounds that add to life, writing on the óol is to trace a road, to rehabilitate our path, to create community, it’s learning from the animals with their feet on the ground, their óol, from the birds who call to Yuum iik’ every sunrise and sunset, it’s helping Yuum Cháak paint the rainbow.

Ki’imak óol: This is perhaps the most commonly said, commonly heard, and most circulated expression in Maya communities. Although it literally translates as happiness or felicity, it communicates much more than that. It is derived from the word ki’, which means delicious, agreeable, and pleasant. I’m not sure if the suffix mak comes from mak meaning “cover” or máak meaning person. Perhaps it refers to what one is doing or the condition in which a particular being is found. What we Mayas understand by this expression is that someone with ki’imak óol is in perfect harmony with life, with nature, with their community, and with their own body. It’s what we say when we are healthy. It’s not limited to an action like laughing or dancing, its scope is a form of life, which when we greet someone at any time of day we ask about their óol, “bix a wanil” is what we immediately ask. If they are in balance they respond, “jach ma’alob, ki’imak in wóol.” If they are sick or have personal problems or problems with the community they say, “ma’ jach ma’alobi’, ma’ jach tooj in wóoli’.” Ki’mak óol is not just a state of being, it is equilibrium, it is peace, it is the responsibility one assumes, it is the correct answer to the question, it is the fulfillment of a mission, it is harmony in one’s home, with the community and the environment, but principally with the Yuumtsilo’ob that create the setting in which ki’imak óolal is possible. 

The colonization of the Maya language consists of trapping and tying up its óol. The conquistador did not try to disappear its sounds, but rather to break the meanings it contains, like what happens today with cell phones when you change their internal chips: they lose their identity despite the fact they appear to be the same. A Maya language that consists of an empty body only serves to promote tourism, to put people who stammer on display. Academies offered by the oppressor are not schools but mausoleums, and they are of no use to those of us who are in the process of revindicating the Maya óol. We must change the paths of  Yuum iik’Yuum Cháak, and Yuum K’áax so that in the midst of this darkness they can revive the óol of our Maya language in which justice, the arts, politics, and above all philosophy and thought, or better, óol itself, can sprout again. Only in this way can our communication with the onomatopoeic words of Xk’oo’ok’ and Yuum Báalam be re-established. 

Here are a few more words in which óol appears:  K’áaj óol, Jóomsaj óol, Péek óol, Xul óol, Nak óol.

~~~

Junkóots


Máax ku yok’ol
tu tikin ja’il u yich ts’uju’uy,
te’el ku bin u júutul yóok’ol cháaltun
tu’ux ma’ tu jóok’ol u mootse’.


U polokil
u wi’ijil mejen j ma’na’ paalal.


To’ok ti’ob tumen ts’u’util
u ki’ichpamil u na’,
okla’ab ti’ob tumen tuus
u mu’uk’a’anil u k’ab u yuum.


Tu ka’analkabil yicho’ob ku jojopaankil le junkóots ts’íiba’:
“In yuum,
ba’axten mix juntéen ok’olnak a wich,
ma’tech wáa a wi’ijtal beyo’one’
wa tikin u ja’il a wich beey ts’uju’uye’.


Ba’ale’ bix jach xáanchajak u yáalal,
bíin a k’a’as le ken ku’upuk u yiik’ maya t’aan.

Fragment

Who weeps in the  ts’uju’uy’s23

dry tears? 

A drop roll across a stone slab

where it will never take root.

It’s the hungry

obesity of a motherless child.

Snatched up by indifference,

a mother’s kindness,

hidden behind a lie

the thighs of a weakened father.

From the corner of his eyes, a fragment pours out:

“Lord,

Why do your eyes never fill with tears?

How do you satisfy your hunger?

Or do you just not have tears like the ts’uju’uy?

I hope that drop doesn’t take much longer,

that it at least arrives before the Maya wind.”

23 A thrush-like bird

Náay in lu’umil


Ta paten tu yáam u k’ab juntúl xlóobayeen
ku tsolik u k’u’il u paktal beey yúuyume’.
Tu muuk’ u yóol juntúul xiib ta pulaj wenlil ti’e’
ta sakankuuntaj in wíinklil,
beey máax wi’ij ku máan tu yich jump’éel péenkuche’.


Bejla’e’ chéen p’iis u yokol in wenele’
ku t’a’ajtal in wook,
ku meyaaj in k’ab,
ku suut in wóol,
ku jóok’ol tsikbal in piixan.


Yaan máaxe’ sáansamal áak’ab u kíimil
le ken lóocha’ak tumen u k’aan,
ma’ teen yuumil le su’tsilil je’elo’,
in lu’umile’ in náay
mix bik’in bíin in p’at tu k’ab j táanxlil.

Dreams

You shaped me in a young hand, 

like yúuya brooding over her dreams. 

You loved my body

with the strength of a man bewitched

like hunger for a warm tortilla.

Now, as I’m taken over by sleep,

my feet regain their life, 

my hands work, 

I recover my senses,

my soul unleashes its words.

There are those who die every night

when their hammock whispers to them,

but I don’t suffer that shame, 

dreams are my territory,

and it will never be held under another’s pen.

J Kolnáal


Ta wiiche’ j maya kolnáal,
ma’ chéen je’el ba’axak u yichaankil ja’abine’,
wa kokojkil yéetel u yiche’
táan u wojik u kúunche’il a naal,
wa loba’an yéetel u le’e’,
ma’ táan u yelel ma’alob a kool,
wa ma’ piim u yiche’,
ma’ táan a najmatik a kool.


U yichaankil ja’abin tu ts’u’ yáaxk’iine’,
ma’ chéen u t’aan u mu’uk’a’anil u yóoli’
u yaayan Yumtsilo’ob ti’ teech j maya kolkaab.


Ta xikine’ j maya kolkaab,
ma’ chéen je’el ba’ax u yok’ol ts’uju’uye’,
wa yaayaj ok’ol ku beetike’,
ts’o’ok u yajtal yáaxk’iin tu yich,
wa láalaj súutuk u yok’ole’,
táan u péeksik Yuum Cháak.


Wa ma’ tóoknakeche’ j maya kolkaab,
t’ab a taajche’,
u yok’ol ts’uju’uy tu ts’u’ yáaxk’iine’,
ma’ chéen u yaayaj óolalil u tiknil u ja’il u yichi’,
u yaayan Yuumtsilo’ob ti’ teech, j maya kolkaab.

Farmer

In your eyes, Maya farmer,

the ja’abin’s fruit isn’t boring,

if it is abundant,

it sketches out your granary,

if its leaves are sad,

your milpa will not burn well, 

if its fruit is scarce, 

you won’t have a milpa at all.

During times of drought the fruit of the ja’abin

isn’t just a sign of its spirit, 

it’s the voices of the Gods speaking to you. 

The cry of the ts’uju’uy isn’t boring

to the ears of a Maya farmer,

if it holds a lot of pain, 

the drought has wounded its eyes

if its cry is intermittent

it is preparing for rain, 

if you have not prepared your milpa

you need to light your torch. 

In times of drought the ts’uju’uy’s cry

is not just the dryness of its tears,

it’s the voices of the Gods warning you, Maya farmer.

Sujuy siip


Ba’ax bíin k kóoyt ti’ teech Yuumtsil
wa ts’o’ok u kiinsa’al u yóol k ixi’imil.


K o’och sa’e’ yéetel glifosato ch’ujukkinta’an,
k o’och iswaaje’ máaskab pak’achtik,
k o’och kaabe’ chuja’an u pu’uch tumen táanxelil mola’ay,
u le’ ja’ase’ petrolizarta’an,
le turix kanáantik ka’ach le ts’ono’oto’
k’e’exo’ob yéetel u dronil kinsajtáambal,
x nuk ya’axche’e’ jo’ok tak u moots
ti’al u pa’ak’al jump’éel máaskab j okol iik’,
aj k’iino’obe’ chéen chak pol ch’oomo’ob
yáax talik xkíim ba’alil.


Ba’ale’ woy yaan a ka’anche’ile’,
u nukuch mu’uk’a’an máaskabil le museo’
ma’ tun tsa’ayal yéetel u k’olopil k ja’abinil,
ts’o’okole’ k sujuy siipe’ yaan u ka’ ch’a’ik u yóol.

Offering to the Lords of the Forest

What can we offer to you, Lords of the Forest,

if our corn is GMO?

Our atole is sweetened with glyphosate,

our iswaaj is of industrial plastic,

our honey bears the seal of a strange foundation,

our banana leaves are full of oil,

if the fireflies that guarded our cenotes

have been replaced by military drones,

if mother ceiba was worn out

by a metallic conquistador of wind,

the “aj k’iin” are truly red-headed vultures

that announce the first news of death. 

But we are left with your altar,

the metallic structure of a museum 

will bow before the thighs of the ja’abin,

and our offering will recover its Maya strength.

Maya kaaj


Xik’nal u bin u t’áalal a wook ta lu’umil,
beey u ts’íibtik u k’ajlay a ch’i’ibal.


Sáansamal u máan u yich Yuum K’iin
ti’al u mol u tsikbalil u nojbe’enil a nooli’.


Yáanal u bo’oy xya’axche’ ka ts’apik
u tsolxikin u j chak wíinikil lak’iin.


Yuum Kíimil kaláantik ma’ u la’abal
u juum u k’aayalilo’ob u ik’ilt’aan a chiich.


U xunáanil áak’ab jit’ik u muumum xa’anil
u póopil a jayk’iintik u yi’inajil a t’aan.


Tu ts’u’ u noj k’áaxilo’ob a na’ate’
ti’ ku yets’tal u koolil u yi’inajil a t’aani’.

Maya Town

Your feet fly across the earth,

which is how the memory of your lineage is written. 

The sun’s eyes walk every day

to harvest your grandfather’s history.

Under the ceiba, you gather the words

of the red man born in the east.

The guardian of death protects

your grandmother’s epic song from waste. 

The sentinel of night weaves a petate

for maturing the seeds of your words from young palm leaves.

In the middle of your wisdom’s tall jungle

sits the corn of your tongue.

Ik’ilt’aan


Ik’ilt’aane’ ma’ jobon chuun che’i’,
u t’a’ajil u yóol a na’at j Meen,
u k’aayil a wéensik Yuum iik’,
u xuuxubil a táabsik xaman,
u kilim a péeksik nojolil cháak.


Ik’ilt’aane’ ma’ u juum u jéek’el k’abche’i’,
u joma’il u yi’inajil a ts’íib aj its’at,
u páawo’il wooj ka k’eyemkuuntik,
u táabil u kuuch a aa’al t’an,
u chúujil u síisis ja’il a paak’al.


Ik’ilt’aane’ ma’ u yéets’ tusbe’eni’,
u suumil u xanabk’éwelil
a xíimbatik u jolbeel a wook,
u j bobat t’aanil u péektsil u ch’i’ich’iyaankil
u tomojchi’ a xtakaay wíinikil.

The Wind’s Voice

The wind’s voice isn’t a hollow trunk: 

it’s the vitality of your knowledge, j Meen, 

it’s the song you carry to Yuum Iik’, 

it’s the whistling you use to enchant the north,

it’s the thunder you use to bring down the south rains.

The wind’s voice isn’t the crack of a falling branch:

it’s the joma’ of your words’ seeds,

it’s the colorful sabucán of your pozole,

it’s the mecapal used to carry your words,
it’s the gourd of cold water of your planting. 

The wind’s voice isn’t a false echo: 

it’s the cord on your sandals

you use to make your path as you walk

it’s the prophetic word of good news, 

it’s the omen in the xtakaay’s call.

Glossary

  • Aj k’iin: Maya priest
  • Aj Meen: priest or Maya healer
  • Iswaaj: tortilla of green or tender corn
  • Ja’abin: kind of tree that functions as an agricultural calendar
  • Joma’: kind of gourd cup used to offer pozole
  • Ts’uju’uy: a very skinny thrush
  • Xtakaay: a yellow bird said to alert you of things
  • Yuum: guardian
  • Yuum Iik’: guardian of the wind
  • Yúuya: golden oriole

For more about Pedro Uc

About the translators

Melissa D. Birkhofer is a settler scholar and Visiting Assistant Professor in the English Department at Appalachian State University where she teaches courses on Latinx and Indigenous Literatures. She co-authored the article “She Said That Saint Augustine is Worth Nothing Compared to her Homeland: Teresa Martín and the Méndez Cancio Account of La Tama (1600)” published in the North Carolina Literary Review with Paul M. Worley. Her article, “Toward a Feminist Latina Mode of Literary Analysis in Julia Alvarez’s How the García Girls Lost Their Accents,” was recently published in Convergences. She was the founding director of the Latinx Studies Program at Western Carolina U and is a co-director of the e-journal Label Me Latina/o

Paul M. Worley is the Chair of the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures at Appalachian State University. He is the author of Telling and Being Told: Storytelling and Cultural Control in Contemporary Yucatec Maya Literatures (2013; oral performances recorded as part of this book project are available at tsikbalichmaya.org), and with Rita M Palacios is co-author of Unwriting Maya Literature: Ts’íib as Recorded Knowledge (2019). He is a Fulbright Scholar, and 2018 winner of the Sturgis Leavitt Award from the Southeastern Council on Latin American Studies. In addition to his academic work, he has translated selected works by Indigenous authors such as Hubert Malina, Adriana López, and Ruperta Bautista, serves as editor-at-large for México for the journal of world literature in English translation, Asymptote, and as poetry editor for the North Dakota Quarterly.

El ombligo maya, óol, and original poems © Pedro Uc ~ Siwar Mayu, November 2023

Selection and translation from Spanish © Melissa Birkhofer y Paul Worley


The Memory of Plants in Three Poems of Gloria Mendoza Borda

Dulce naranja dulce luna © Gloria Mendoza Borda

Introduction, selection and translation from Spanish © Andrea Echeverría

If you prefer to read this as a PDF, click here

Gloria Mendoza Borda (1948) is a renowned Peruvian poet from Puno who currently resides in Arequipa. She joined the Carlos Oquendo de Amat Group in the 1960s and has published Wilayar (1971), Los grillos tomaron tu cimbre (1972), Lugares que tus ojos ignoran (1985), El legendario lobo (1997), La danza de las balsas (1998), Dulce naranja dulce luna (2001), Mujer, mapa de música (2004), Q’antati deshojando margaritas (2006), Desde la montaña grito tu nombre(2013), Amtasiña (2013), and Mi abuela, mi patria (2018). In the three poems below, included in Dulce naranja dulce luna (2001), Mendoza represents how plants communicate their memory. Three of them: the cherry tree, the avocado tree and the honeysuckle. These texts provide an ecological vision based on Quechua-Aymara forms of knowledge that transcend the anthropocentric perspective. To initially approach these poems, perhaps the best thing to do is to ask yourself: what do these plants communicate? What vision do they convey about the passage of time? What forms part of their memory? I invite you to read these poems within the historical framework of the political violence that affected all of Peru, and especially provincial cities and rural communities in Peru during the Conflicto Armado Interno (1980-2000). As you will notice, these plants cry and suffer the passage of time, nostalgically remember the past, and communicate their experience about traumatic episodes that happened in this context.

~~~

The Cries of the Cherry Tree

I am the old cherry tree

who saw them grow

as artists

I also knew how to be an artist

I also knew how to be a river

phosphorescent birds

would stay in my currents  

they made nests with dazzling weeds 

and they sang to life

my roots

keep moving forward

through the underground

I cry in the name of mother earth

in the skin of the boys

suffering

the desolation of the courtyard

I cry

on the posters

that they hung

on my mutilated arms

“Protest against the Cherry Tree’s Death”

I cry

because I don’t know the reason

why did they destroy my branches

I cry

in the name of the white doves

(those who came from the Plaza Mayor

they will no longer be able to shelter from the sun

under my shade)

I cry

because the sound of the boys’ pan flutes and guitars

stayed in me

they played in my lap

during the sunsets

however

I exist 

in our memory

I exist

I am the invisible cherry tree

that keeps them company

my fruits used to adorn

girls’ heads

that took shelter

in my skirts

why did the ax become enraged

with my silence?

from my invisible image

I predict life

I light the fire

my currents grow

I also feel bird 

I also feel man

I also feel artist

I also feel river.

Listen to Gloria Mendoza reading her poetry in Spanish

Looking for the Avocado’s Path

In these times

I did not bear fruit

it’s true

but my leafy green inspired

announced a time of hope

I tried to get closer to the sky

I walked more than a hundred years

downward

towards the immensity

I flourished on the cliffs of silence

only the trace of my forms remained

the semi-destroyed sculpture

looking for my lost path

and the dismayed look

of my friends

I am the result

of changes and death.

The Honeysuckle’s Agony

Mother and lady

centennial

I cry my green agony

drunken my flower

numbs

the morning 

I scream

I implore

they don’t listen to me

I sing in the language of the green

dry

and weak

my skin 

in other times

my fruit was honey

as a child

the sculptor Jorge Mendoza

took one of my branches

and soon

ran with my scent

looking for his mother

I was born

before all of you

‘the house of art’

came later

in my roots

lives the story

of men

that passed through

and left

I still exist

a cable

covers my fingers

crosses my feet

I hope the crows

don’t eat my leaves

in each contour

of my path

there is a wire

at each knot

I break and twist

I look at the blue sky

the song of birds

accompany my green symphony

wild dance

my heart

the wound

it won’t let me walk

a terrifying shadow

covers my eyes

from the sun

A white dove

drinks water

in the pool

in the well

the mirror

of my image

the water

doesn’t reach

my insides

I’m hung

from the throat

imprisoned

forgotten

mutilated

nightfalled

hanged

scrawny

stretched

withered

disoriented

scared

threatened

bitten

without truce

oh perfection

I cry my green

from so much spiraling

death stalks me

but does not find me

here I am friends

rooted

ancient

lonely

silent witness

youthful dreams

students go on strike

for struggles and triumphs

for permanent creation

for happiness

alone

I cry

my green agony

hungry

imprisoned

centennial.

For more about Gloria Mendoza

About the translator

Andrea Echeverría Langsdorf is an Associate Professor at Wake Forest University. She earned her doctoral degree in Latin American Literature and Cultural Studies at Georgetown University. She is the author of Yeyipun en la ciudad. Representación ritual y memoria en la poesía mapuche (Editorial Universidad de Guadalajara, 2021) and El despertar de los awquis: migración y utopía en la poesía de Boris Espezúa y Gloria Mendoza (Paracaídas Editores & UNMSM, 2016), as well as of several academic articles published in journals such as Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies, Latin American Research Review and the Canadian Journal of Hispanic Studies. She is currently working on a book that studies Mapuche visual art.

Dulce naranja dulce luna © Gloria Mendoza Borda

~ Siwar Mayu, October 2023

Introduction, selection and translation © Andrea Echeverría


Ponca Lunch Hour Poems – Cliff Taylor

Ponca Lunch Hour Poems © Cliff Taylor

If you prefer to read this as a PDF, click here

Unforgettable characters, enlightened by random revelations, cross the coffeeshop, the sidewalk, the freeway while Cliff Taylor records them through narrative-verses and laughter in his Ponca Lunch Hour Poems zine. In the first page of this zine, hand written, we read:

I wrote these poems in the Spring of 2019, after my girlfriends and I moved to Astoria, Oregon.  Some I wrote at work, some at the coffee shop before work, some in Tokyo, some while traveling back. I am a Ponca Indian so a lot of them are about my tribe, our people, how we see and experience the world. I am also into comic books, horror movies, and just everything to do with art: so expect to find some of that in here too. I would love for some of these poems to become your friends on an unexpected day or night as you’re busy doing your thing or taking a well-deserved break. I hope you like them.

Thanks, Cliff. 

Busu

It took us three months and a total of two cars to 

drive across the country and move from New Orleans 

to Astoria, Oregon, a city neither of us had ever 

actually been before. It was epic, unforgettable, 

exhausting. Our second day here, while I was on 

the sidewalk outside the coffee shop smoking, a big 

tattooed dude walked up to me and asked, surprising 

me like birdshit in my eye, “Your name wouldn’t 

happen to be Cliff would it?” i rocked back; how 

could anyone here know me, let alone this guy?

Then I flashed: I remembered this guy from high 

school, he was a classmate, a punker and skateboarder, 

20 years ago back in Columbus, Nebraska. “Ken?”

I asked back. “Ken —?” It was him; he owned 

the three stool walk-up noodle shop two doors

down from the coffee shop. Having not crossed  

paths in 20 years, he recognized me. I pointed 

to our packed car and told him that we’d just moved 

here, yesterday. “Welcome to Astoria,” he said, 

friendly as I remembered, “This is maybe one of 

the most beautiful places in the country. Glad you’re 

Here.” We talked and smoked and I was kind of stunned, 

dazed, transported into the surreal nature of the mystery 

of why we’d come here, to Astoria, this place we’d never 

been before. My ancient past had sent a messenger 

to welcome us to our freshest chapter, to shake our 

hand in the middle of this great unknown. For the 

rest of the day I was speechless with the magic of it 

all, a cheetah wandering a woodsy wonderland, an 

Indian in full regalia on Ray Bradbury’s sweet Mars. 

We’d been delivered to the right stretch of earth;

We were drinking our coffee right where we were 

meant to. Miraculously, we’d arrived.

.

Cliff Senior

I wish I remembered more stories 

from my grandpa (who doesn’t, I guess).

My mom would often comment on how 

he talked so quietly you could barely

hear him. My little brother spent 

more time with him that I did, as he lived with him for awhile when 

he got out of juvenile detention; he 

has some good stories and they’re 

all new to me. Sometimes at my 

gas station Indians I didn’t know 

would come in, learn who I was, 

and tell me stories about my 

grandpa’s house back in the day;

“There was always a big pot of 

soup on,” they’d say; “He was 

always feeding everyone who stopped 

in”. I remember visiting him on 

my way up to Sundance, hanging 

out with him in his bedroom 

when he was on oxygen. He sat 

up and lit himself a cigarette, 

handed me one when I asked for 

One. He was on his way out; this 

was the kind of smoke you couldn’t 

regret. “So what are they gonna 

do, pierce your nipples?” he asked.

Yeah, something like that,” I 

said, smiling. I wonder what 

story my grandpa would share 

if he heard me read this poem. 

I wonder what he would share 

if he could only share just 

one. Grandpa? You’re up. 

Relic-worker

I talk with this elder who has diagrammed, 

mapped, and database every earth-mound in 

America. It’s staggering. There are shapes 

of every imaginable variety. It’s been his 

 life’s work. He hands me the zip drive with 

everything on it. “It’s yours now,” he says. 

“When I was young I was told that this 

was my calling. When I got old they told 

me that it would be the next person’s calling 

to know what to do with it.” I drive along 

the coast with my two dogs, heading towards 

a thunderbird’s mound in Oregon; its eye 

is a somewhat well-known mountaintop. 

“I guess it’s our turn now,” I tell the dogs, 

ocean visible through the open window. 

“Let’s go see what this thunderbird has 

to say.” 

Signals and cages in the Seattle Art Museum

I had just hopped off the Greyhound 

and, walking around, I bumped into 

the Seattle Art Museum and saw that 

there was Indigenous exhibit.

I wandered in, began to ascend the 

Stairs. Then, like an out-of-the-

blue gunshot in the YMCA, I was 

hit by this grief of the spirits, brought

to the verge of tears. I kept it 

together, proceeded forward, went 

into the exhibit. A few minutes 

in I heard the spirits tell me to 

sing a song for all the spirits that 

were boxed inside this place, 

enmeshed with the displayed objects 

and unseen. I was young, too nervous 

to upset all of the interested browsing 

that was going on; I was asked but 

not strong enough to do so. I saw 

the living shamans’ rattles, ornate 

paraphernalia and utensils, big hides 

and pots that were so potently 

not inanimate. Half of me was a museum-goer, 

half of me was a Sundancer seeing everything 

with ceremony eyes. When I left 

I thought, Someday I’ll write about this.

Wandering aimlessly down the street, 

I thought, People should know what 

Indians experience when they encounter 

their stuff still being held hostage. 

We took him back to our place so he could shower

This was in Standing Rock when all the shit 

was going on. He tells us about all sorts 

of stuff that I don’t think most anybody 

would believe. Prophecy. A multi-dimensional 

 coded mythology. What he was told on the 

hill. His grandma feeding little people who 

came to her windowsill. A cave in the Andes 

where leaders from all over the Western Hemisphere 

deposited objects for a future Age which is 

taking place right now; the objects he saw 

in the cave, what he came back with.  Unbelievable 

stuff; but there are spirits in the car with us 

as we drive him to the casino and so I’m paying 

real close attention to everything he says.  We 

drop him off and the night is cinematic, hyper-

real; everything on fire with meaning; tomorrow 

we’re going to ceremony and I can only imagine 

what the spirits are going to say about all 

this. I get out of the car and shake his 

hand, give him a copy of my little book. 

“I’ll pray you find those things you’re looking 

for,” I say. “I’ll see you around, brother.”

100 years of visionary memories

I remember literally staggering out 

from behind my gas station’s counter 

and falling to my knees after having 

finished Gabriel García Márquez’s 

One Hundred Years of Solitude. It was 

almost 4 AM, my morning customers 

were about to start coming in. The 

masterpiece had slayed me, had rocked 

me; this was what literature’s true 

greatness and power felt like. 10 

years later I still find myself 

thinking what I thought when 

I rose from my knees and just stood 

there looking out into the mystical 

Nebraska dark: now all I need 

to do is write a Native book like 

that, a world-changer like that, 

and that shouldn’t be too hard, 

should it? It’s doable, right?

Myron

I helped this old man, Myron Longsoldier, 

with his sweat for 13 years; from age 22 

to 35. I’d get off work at 7 AM, go home 

and sleep for an hour, and then drive out 

to the sweat and get the fire started. I learned 

what humility was from him; it was a quality 

of the heart; it had a palpable, tangible 

texture. Myron grew up speaking Lakota, 

had gone to prison, was an ex-alcoholic, 

a Sundancer, a leader in the community.

He’s retired now, is on oxygen, can no 

longer pour sweats. When I post about 

going to Tokio he comments that I better 

wear my best Indian clothes that I got and 

to give em’ hell, whatever that means. Once 

as he was praying with the first seven stones

I saw all of his prayers coming out of him, 

like a big twisting smoke coming out of his 

face and front; animated energy traveling 

up. I think of him while facing the shelves 

on a quiet Thursday evening, turning and 

stacking the cans to get them just right. All 

these ones I ‘ve known, I think; May I please 

never forget them. 

My Tokyo Lightning Book 

I picture myself writing a book about 

everything that happened in Tokyo. I’ll 

illustrate it with drawings of the city, the 

people I met, the beings I saw; and all 

the images will crackle and shimmer. Every 

full moon the book will grow hair and 

transport you into a real single moment 

for as long as you’d like; you, Liv, and the 

Bigfoot who came with me; dancing 

joyfully for Nipsey; the romance of standing 

on the train with your partner on the other 

side of the planet. Cool older folks 

will give it away on Halloween.  Daring 

souls who wander into caves will find 

it mysteriously on their person when they 

reemerge. It will spread the word on 

how to equip and prepare oneself for 

participating in large-scale ceremonial 

work purposed towards the healing of 

countries, cultures, and time; with a 

detailed account of Fukushima, WWII, 

and what happened with the 40 or so of us 

during our ritual. It will fit in your pocket, 

like The Little Prince. It will function as 

the perfect leveling-up gift between friends 

transitioning into lovers, or allies, or mates 

for life. It will be code in Japan for 

someone who travels with the medicine 

that the Gods and Goddesses wish to see 

flower again. It will be a shrine for the 

little people, the Other World. And 

When people read for a second time 

another copy will appear on a swan’s 

back and right before that swan dives 

a child will see it and know that 

somehow they have to save it. 

For more about Cliff Taylor

Ponca Lunch Hour Poems © Cliff Taylor

~ Siwar Mayu, September 2023


Wallmapu ñi tukulpazungu, mapuzungun witrapuratungey / Memories from Wallmapu, the Mapuzungun Rises

© Piam told by Cornelio Puelman in 1987 

© Introduction and translation from Mapuzungun by Sandro Rivas Pichicura and Violeta Percia. 

© Pictures Violeta Percia

© Translation from Spanish by Lorrie Jayne and Juan G. Sánchez Martínez

If you prefer to read this as a PDF, click here

Piam are the stories that are passed from generation to generation, and reveal meaningful events in the Mapuche’s history. Many of the piam happened in the historical time of the persecution and genocide of Mapuche families during the so called “conquest of the desert,”perpetrated by the Argentine nation-state between 1878 and 1885. Piam are a type of counter-history and counter-memory that stand counter to the official history of that invasion and colonization of Puelmapu, Eastern Wallmapu, Mapuche ancestral territory, in what is now known as Argentine Patagonia.

Unlike academic and well-documented studies that confirm state terrorism in Argentina, piam, as oral histories, are passed from generation to generation, or are recorded, and they reconstruct a specific time. Here we offer one of these piam, transcribed for us to counter forgetfulness. As they are told to us and as we hear the piam, we believe it: we don’t need to verify it because we know that it happened in this way and it is in the collective memory of our people.

Although they seem like stories from a remote past, they are current for today’s generations. They are revitalized in every new gathering, because the signs of those events are part of a symbolic and effective violence that renews the invasion daily. For instance, in the Villa Llanquin rural elementary school, there is a human skull on display in a glass case. Until recently the skull had a sign that said “head of an Indian.” Another example is that a lake, a city in Patagonia, a train line, and many streets and parks are named after Julio Roca, the Argentinian Minister of War, who led the invasion of Wallmapu, and who continues representing Argentinian society. Furthermore, there are several equestrian statues of Roca in uniform throughout the country, one which is even located in the Civic Center of Furilofche City–an emblem of the power that is exercised today against the Mapuche nation in their own territory.

The following piam, told by Cornelio Puelman, was told to him by his grandfather, who belonged to the generation that witnessed the beginning of the end of that ancestral world that was once still free and autonomous. Puelman belongs to the generation of grandfathers and grandmothers, chachay ka pu papay, who left this world around 2011. Daughters and sons, nephews and nieces of Puelman’s generation are now mothers and grandmothers, fathers and grandfathers of the generation who are revitalizing the language, the land and the memory, and who are speaking Mapuzungun, a language that suffered from the Argentinian policies of the silencing and prohibition of Indigenous languages. 

The story that Cornelio Puelman is telling us is not an isolated one. Stories like these have been heard in many places, such as among the Rankülche in the Province of Buenos Aires, or in the Pewenche areas, as well as in other regions of Wallmapu where people witnessed similar events.

These stories are told in Mapuzungun with the grammatical suffix “em” or “yem”, which is used to report something that is old or that is no longer here. It also carries a connotation of sadness and nostalgia for that world that is gone. It is customary in  Mapuche philosophy to reflect upon the kuifike che yem, because Mapuche thought is always thinking toward the past, on what the ancestors would have done if they were here in the present. This is a way for the ancestors to continue speaking to the present, so that the past returns and the circle closes. This is why it is important to rescue this piam. 

PUELMAN CORNELIO ÑI NGÜTRAN ~ English version below

Feychi zungu ta mülele faw mu, fey mu ta müley ta tufa zungu. Fechi zugu ta mülele, inche ta laku zuam ta ngülam ta tufi. Ngey mapu em ta tufa mo, inchiñ ta kupay ta winka chew weshake kuzaw ta kupay. Müley ta kulliñ. Inche ta mülen…, inche ta ngen mapu, fey entuy taiñ paisano em. Inche ta nielay ta fey paisano em. Inche ta feychi zungu, ta niey ta tio em. Kupaygün kupay winga inche nga entunge mapu pi em,  entunge mapu.

Fey miawngey mapu em, pia em, winka. Tüfa mari kiñe tripantu nien, mari küla tripantu, miawunge mapuzuam. Entuy mapun tiewtüfa kangelu mapu tati.

Consejalu ka winka entungeiñ mapu em. Ka winka mapuche tiew mülele, küme rüpü tüfaw pülle, inche feychi kampu, inche ta rangi pingey mu, tüfaw mu ta entungen, piam . Fey mo ta inche ta em.

Amuen tüfy ta tüfachi tüken ta tüfy, ta tüfachi mapu, fewla tañi mapu nien. Tükulen fewla ngülam müten kampu ta tafy, anay. Femgechi ta conseja ñi ta che, fey ta consejo feyta küme amuy ka. Consejaniele che inchiñ taiñ paisano em. Kiñe ta ka pülle amuy ka anüy ta kay müley pu che. Fey mu ta inchiñ ta winka ta kiñer, pim, pülle ta winka. Kom fey mincheawchi amuley, fey mu ta winka awüwün ta kelluy ta tüfey.

Así es.. unos con otros los winka no se tratan de joder. El paisano trata de joder al que está bien, trata de joderlo. El winka no, el winka se ayudan unos con otros, al jodido lo ayuda, por eso levanta, y nosotros no. 

Felelay pues… felelay, felelay.  

Inchiñ müley ta tüfey. Ilkungey feyta müley ta che ta tüfey. Feychi wule ta trawayu kom ta kiñelzungu pülle kom fey pülle. No, trawayu inche kupalan, inche amulan, well weza zomo, tiew weza ka mo ngelay ko ka tiew nielu lelfun mew. Fey mu ta tripalay fey. Kiñelzungu ta pilen, fey kiñelzungu, ¡ta müley fey! –¿Amuay pülle? –¿Amuayu? –¡Amuaiñ! 

Fütra kuifi ta müley pichi paw llazkünun ta tüfi. Fey mu ta tripalay ti pu che. Inchiñ taiñ mapuche ngeiñ ta tüfa. Kom ta feychi kiñelzungun ta nielay. Kiñe ta kay zungunge kangentuy ta ka zungu ka rakizuam müley. Fey mu ta inchiñ küme kuzawlaiñ. Küme kuzawlaiñ.

Kufikeche…

Kuifikeche müna malleo, kelluy, kelluwiñ; fotüm, ñawe, malle kiñelzungu, pi. Itrokom feley ta tüfy. 

[…] Antiguamente estaban todos unidos, todos unido. ¿No ve? Hoy estábamos conversando cuando yo tuve conocimiento tendría unos 10 años, 11. 

Pütuiñ may, ngolliiñ, zunguiñ. Peleao, peleao may tati peleolaiñ tati. Küme nguntrankaygün, tayültuku faw, tayültuygün, ngollygün, ulkantuygün, paylanaygün, pero weza zungulay. Fewla, kiñentuku pichikeche, pichikeche wüneltun me quieren pelear. Fey winkangefuy ta tüfey. Eso ha sido antes así.

Kuifikeche müley inche ñi fütra laku em nomen nga cruzafiy, rumen nga trentrenün zafiy, pi. Chew wefürpun pun gelle fulle, epu gelle fulle. Tripay nga lewfun mo nga amuaygün kiñe ngillañ engu. Kintuy nga chew müley rume nentuy sale fey mu tüfay müley pi, fey mu akufuy ñi puwükey.

Inche nga pikey ñi fütra laku em. Puwi nga winka nga inawlfiy katan ñi kawell pi, mollfunkawell mu nga bebiiñ. Müley nga la kulliñtufuy iloentufiy fey ñi fütra laku em zomo nga kütrangeiñ, fütra nga kütrangeiñ laku em tañi kushe laku em. Femgechi nga rupay pikey fütrakeche. Fewla nga ngtrumka mu ngelelle nge che koilaniefige “inche pelafi koila tati”, pingen tati. Así fuy.

Yo digo así fu. Son mentiras, dicen, yo no lo he visto. Pero uno que ha conversado está como un libro abierto, mi hijo. Clarooo… eso contaban los antiguos, que sufrían tanto, comían caballo muerto, punzaban su caballo. Si iban diez personas, diez kawell punzan, y si no, no alcanza la sangre. Mollfüñ kawell para matar el hambre. Si estaban sin comer, ellos, van dos, tres días, si no matan ningún bicho tienen que punzar el caballo. Punzan al lado de la vena. Si lo punzan del guargüero por lo menos cuatro litros de sangre sale. Ahí van tomando en jarro, sal y sangre, sal y sangre.

Pasaban tanto hambre porque tenían que andar disparando. Disparaban cuando vino este… ¿Cómo es que se llamaba el que vino a acaparar el país acá? ¿Los españoles? ¿Colón…? ¿Cristóbal Colón no es? …No, Roca, cuando vino ese.

Ka müna weshaley winka.

Una vuelta creo que kuifikeche piam müleygün, müley ta wütan, wütan ta müley. Amuaiñ fey mu winka nga müley fey mu, inche nga lay nga ñi pu che, pi. Nga kasike amuaiñ nga ñi kasike kechu mari …kechu pataka …kechu waranka wentru, piafi em. Kechu waranka wentru, piam,langümeymu, piam. 

Tranawüftuy nagtuy, nagüntun, nagentual. ¿Chumafungechi? Trafyeymu lanza mu trawil mu.  ¿Chumafuy? Traka mu müley tralkatuy. Kechu waranka piam lay.

Cinco mil personas le mataron al cacique. Murieron, dicen. Que le dijeron un wütan, wütan antes de ir hubo, un wütan. Y wütan es cuando le late un brazo o le late donde quiera, y le va ir mal, no, no vaya. No, voy ir nomas. Voy a atropellar a los winka, decía. ¿Que van a hacer con los Remington de los winka? Los agarraron en fila, así los mataron. Caían como pajaritos. ¿Y las lanzas y las trawilche, qué van a hacer los paisanos? Cinco mil mataron, dicen, volvió con mil. Seis mil personas, creo que atropellaron. ¿Qué va a hacer con el winka?

Wütan mu piam mu. Müley ta müley ta zugun wentru zomo fey zugunge. ¿Chumngechi amuan ta tüfa? ¿Küme amuan ka weza amuan? Weza amuaiñ, pita, weza wütan. Weza amuaiñ. No, amuan müten. La wütantufe le había dicho, la adivina ya le ha dicho que le va a ir mal. ¿Y usted cómo sabe?, dice el lonko. Venían por él. Si yo tengo un wütan, zugun wütan, zungulu wütan ¿küpaley winka? Küpaley. Wütan ta tüfy, küpay nga tiew. ¿Chew küpaley winka? ¿Küpay winka? Küpaley ta winka ta tüfa. 

¿Mirador pürayaiñ? May, püray mirador. Püraaiñ mirador piam. Resultó ser un mirador, para el sur. Püray nga, piaeymu. Küpaley winka püralu winka tüfa mu imulüy kümey kura kay lamngümaiñ winka. 

Küpay, piam mu. Küpaley, piam mu. Küpaley, piam mu, pu winka. Küpaley winka. Itrokom kelü rangiñ, kelü rangiñ. Tiew faw küpaley tati. Püraley ñi kiñelke pu che, los matan. Kansau pi ta winka, müna kansau. Katripel, katripeliel lanza mu, winka piwke lanza mu. Püraiñ. Rupay winka. Rupalu winka, si disparalew kawellun wiñotuy. Volvieron para atrás otra vez, en el mirador.

Antiguamente, eh, cuando andaban disparando de la expedición, subieron para el cerro y dice que si llegan a subir vamos a hacer rodar una piedra desde allá arriba. Van a pasar, llevando caballos, gente, y cuántos. Püraley winka, püraley antü. Pülle nga ta antü ta purraygün lamgümfiy. 

Si llega la hora suben. Todos no van morir, algunos dos, tres pueden subir allá, los matan a esa gente, van a salir disparando. Püra antüley che. Chumgechi nge montuy. Montuy. Feychi zapiley. 

THE NARRATION OF CORNELIO PUELMAN

If we were to talk about this matter that we are dealing with here. If we were to talk about this topic, my grandfather would give me this advice. We were the keepers of this land before, but the winka [non-Mapuche] brought bad works wherever he settled. Before there were animals. And being here…, and being from this land, the winka took the land from the Mapuche, as we were here and of this place. Those things didn’t happen among us. That was how my late uncle told me. They arrived, the winka, and although we were from here they took the land from us–they say–that’s how they took the territory from us.

The old ones used to say that the winka were trying to get land. I was eleven years old, I was thirteen, and they, the winka, were going around with the intention of taking land. They took away our rights to our land and to other lands as well.

The winka had been instructed to take away the old lands from us. Also the winka took the land of those Mapuche who had been on the good path, or that field in the middle. I remember those sad memories.

When I first came to this land where I am now, I planted this. Now I have this land. I only have this advice about the land: sow, friend. This is how people used to be counselled, so you will continue to be fine following this advice. The old Mapuche used to counsel us in this way. Some of them went and settled near the winka, and there were all the people. It is said, then, that we and the winka began to be together. The winka all went one on top of the other, so if a winka is harmed by himself or by others, they help each other, that’s what they do.

That’s how it is… the winka don’t try to screw one another. The paisano tries to screw someone who is doing well, they try to mess him up. The winka, no, the winka help one another, they help the one who is screwed, this is why they go forward, and we don’t. This isn’t any good…. It’s not good, no good at all.

We live in this way. There are folks that get angry, folks that are just like that. If someone says:

“Tomorrow we’ll get together to address the same question-united- one with another.”  

“No, I’m not going to get together, I’m not going… suddenly my wife is sick, the one from over yonder is still ill: I don’t have water.” 

So the matter never comes out. I would like to bring these things out all together, united. In this way, if someone says, “Let’s meet over there?” Everyone answers, “Come on! Let’s go!”

In former times, we nearly grieved over these things. Now these folks don’t come out. We are Mapuche here. We no longer have matters that we work on all together. When there is a concern, it is not like it was before, things are different, it’s another kind of thinking. So we don’t do good work, we don’t work well.

The old folks. The elders, those who came before, cousins, uncles, helped one another, we helped ourselves together. The sons, the daughters, my uncle, they walked all together as if they were one, they say. All of them! That’s how.

Yes, that’s how. Because before, I was already forty, and even so my deceased father told us what to do as if we were children. “Do this!”, he ordered, and I did it.  He wasn’t my father, he was my uncle. And today a fifteen year old son, what does he do? If he wants to do something, he does it, if he doesn’t want to, he doesn’t do anything. How are things going to go well in this way, my Friend? It’s because of that that it goes so badly.

…In the olden days, they were all united, all united. Can’t you see? What we just said, when I would have had understanding, I would have been ten or eleven. Sure, we drank before, we got drunk, we talked. But fight? Fight amongst ourselves? No, no, we never fought. We had good conversations, then we’d start the tayül, sing the tayül, sing romanceadas, and rest.1 But there weren’t any problems. Nowadays the kids drink and the first thing they want to do is fight. This comes from the winka. That’s how it was before.

1 The tayül is a ceremonial and sacred song. Every element of nature has a sacred song: the lake, the river, the rain. People also have a tayül. The romanceadas are spontaneous songs that relate to or narrate everyday  situations and are told in a sharing and funny way. Sometimes they are sung in counterpoint. There are many kinds of songs about a diverse range of situations that are sung as romanceadas. 

(Puelman now tells what the violent occupation of the territory was like and about the stalking and persecution of families during the invasion of the Wallmapu. He also tells the stories that he has heard from his elders.)

His brother-in-law was who crossed my great-grandfather over to the other side of the river with just enough to cure him, the elders say. Even though it was night, and they were two, they crossed to the other side. They came out of the river, and he and his brother-in-law went on together. They looked for any way out,  this way, they said; that’s how they got there.2

2 For the Mapuche worldview, rivers should not be crossed at night. The situation of persecution described is so desperate that it forces them to transgress that rule.

That’s how my deceased grandfather told it. Then, later, the winka arrived there. They told of times when they were being persecuted, and they pierced their horses, they, my grandfather and his wife, found dead animals and ate their flesh. These things suffered. Many torments were set upon my deceased grandfather and paternal grandmother. In this way they got on, this is how I was told the elders survived. Even though I tell it now, people say that I am lying. “I didn’t see that,” they say ”It’s a lie.”

I tell this story and they say, “They’re lies, I’ve never seen it.” But those who have spoken are like an open book, my Son. That’s what the old folks said, that they suffered so much, ate dead horses, pierced the flesh of their own horses. Ten people would go and pierce ten horses, if they hadn’t, they couldn’t have reached enough blood. They drank their horses blood to stave their own hunger. If they didn’t eat for two, three days, and they didn’t kill any other animal, they had to pierce the horse. It is pierced on one side of the vein. If the horse is pierced by the guargüero, you get at least four liters of blood. Right there they drink from a jug: salt and blood, salt and blood.

They suffered so much hunger because they had to shoot as they went. They had to flee, escaping when the… what was he called, the one who came to devour the Mapuche nation here? The Spanish? Columbus? Was it Christopher Colombus? No, Roca, Roca it was . That winka was real bad.

One time I think that the older one, they say, who had a presentiment, a hunch, there was a wütan, when a part of a muscle pulsates.3

3 The wütan is a pulse in the muscle that is interpreted as a premonition, a sign. Having a pulsing beat on the left side of the body is considered a bad omen.

“Let’s go then, because the winka, who killed my people are here,” said the Ionko. “Let’s go,” said the chief, “with 50…500…5000 men,” the grand Ionko said. They say they killed 5000 men.

One after another they lined them up on their knees and shot them down, downhill. What were we going to do? They went with lances and trawils.4 What were they going to do? The winka were armed and they fired. They say they killed 5000 men.

4 The trawil is a weapon with a single stone that has a slot in the middle where a rhea or choyke tendon is tied.

They said that he had a feeling, a hunch; he felt a wütan before going. And the wütan is when you feel a pulse in your arm, or a pulse anywhere, and it lets you know that things are going to go badly for you, so don’t go. 

“No, I’m just going to go,” they say the Ionko said. “I’m going to trample the winka,” he said. 

But what were they supposed to do against the winka’s Remingtons? They lined them up. That’s how they killed them. They felt like little birds. With lances and trawilche? What were our countrymen going to do? They say they killed 5000. He came back with a thousand. I think they killed 5 thousand. What could they do against the winka?

They said that he had a feeling, a hunch. The chief brought this news to the community, and they discussed: “What do we do with this? Are we going to do well or are we going to do badly?”. 

“It’s going to be bad for us. That hunch is bad presage, it’s going to be bad for us”, they told him. 

The wütantufe, the one who interpreted the sign, had already told the lonko that it was gonna go badly. 

“And you, how do you know?”, they say the Ionko demanded. “If I have a feeling, the feeling, what the pulsing says is that the winka is coming?”

“Yes, they are coming. This presentiment is that they are approaching from over there?”

“Where are they arriving? Are they coming here?”

“Yes they are arriving,” the wütantufe told him.

[In another persecution that the Mapuche families suffered on the prairie it is told that they said]

“Should we climb up to the lookout?” 

“Yes, let’s climb up to the lookout.” “Let’s climb on up!” they say they said. 

It just so happened that there was a lookout, to the South. 

“Climb up!” they shouted. “When the winka arrive and are climbing up we’ll roll down a hefty rock, that’s how we’ll kill the winka.” 

[He sings] “They’re coming, they say they said/ They’re approaching, they say./ The winka, they’re arriving, they kept on saying/ The Winka comes.” 

Half the people were covered in blood. Here they come! They climbed on up. Those that climb up are killed. They say that the winka were tired, very tired. With their spears they went for their necks and their hearts. That’s how it happened for the winka that climbed up. When the winka passed through, they had to run away, they returned riding. They retreated again, in the lookout.

Long ago, when they were fleeing from the expedition, they climbed into the hills. It is told that they said if they manage to climb after us let’s roll a good-sized rock from above. They’re likely to go by with horses, people, everything. And if the winka should come up, their hour has arrived. If that day arrives when they come up, they’ll kill them.

If they go up once they reach the lookout, not all will die, some, those who go up. Two, maybe three, will keep on climbing, they’ll be killed, they’ll be the ones to be killed, shot. That’s how it went at that time, that’s how the Mapuche people saved themselves. That is how they freed themselves. That was the way they took care of themselves.

FOR MORE ABOUT THE STORYTELLER AND THE TRANSLATORS

Cornelio Puelman is Teodora Puelman’s brother. His mother was a machi, that is, a traditional Mapuche healer. He lived in the area of Fütra waw, fütra lelfun mew, in a rural area located in the prairies, near Comayo, Puelmapu, today the Province of Río Negro, in the so-called Argentine Patagonia. He belongs to the generation of grandfathers and grandmothers who left in the 2000s. Many of his great-nephews and his descendants continue to live in that area known as Línea Sur. They are reclaiming their Mapuche identity and the Mapuzungun after years of “shaming policies.”

Sandro Rivas Pichicura was born in Furilofche, Nawel wapi lafken mapu mew, in Puelmapu, also known in Spanish as Bariloche, Province of Río Negro, in Argentine Patagonia. His father was born in Fütra ruiñ, Cabestro Quemado. His mother was born in Pilawe. Both–Fütra ruiñ and Pilawe–are located in the rural area of the great prairie of the so-called Línea Sur. He has been a member of different Mapuche organizations and is currently an activist for the revitalization of the Mapuzugun. He teaches Mapuzungun at the Highschool Level and works in different linguistic revitalization projects. He has worked as a radio communicator and has participated cultural innitiatives, such as the microdocumentaries Mapuzungun. El habla de la Tierra.

Violeta Percia was born in Buenos Aires. She currently lives in Nawel wapi lafken mapu mew. She is a poet, audio-visual artist, and scholar. She works as a professor of Literary and Comparative Studies at the University of Buenos Aires. She studied film at the Cuban EICTV Alternative Cinema. She recently translated and wrote the introduction of I Am a Damned Savage, by the Innu writer An Antane Kapesh (2023). She also has published Ideorrealidades. Poemas y papeles dispersos de la obra futura de Saint-Pol-Roux (2013); El narcisismo del arte contemporáneo de A. Troyas y V. Arrault  (2020), the poetry books Clínica enferma (Buenos Aires, 2003), and Poesía del Tanti Rao (Mexico DF, 2019); and the novel Como nubes (Córdoba, 2021).

Memories from Wallmapu, the Mapuzungun Rises © Piam told by Cornelio Puelman in 1987

© Introduction and translation from Mapuzungun by Sandro Rivas Pichicura y Violeta Percia

© Pictures by Violeta Percia


© Translation from Spanish by Lorrie Jayne y Juan G. Sánchez Martínez ~ Siwar Mayu. September 2023

indinawemaaganidog / all of my relatives

“indinawemaaganidog / all of my relatives” from Islands of Decolonial Love. Copyright © Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, 2013. [ARP Books, Winnipeg]

If you prefer to read in PDF, please CLICK HERE

From the counter-cover of the book:

“Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s lovingly drawn characters work hard to preserve their innocence in a world where irony and cynicism would be easier. They spend a lot of time travelling: on land, on the water, through space and time–in cars, trucks, fishing boats, canoes, and in their minds: between bars, forests, reservations, curling rings, kitchens, lakes, and highways. These exquisitely rendered journeys become symbols for our desire to understand and never stop learning, no matter the cost. There is heartbreak here but also many moments of fleeting grace, and a wry humor that promises to keep us safe” 

–Ursula Pflug

“indinawemaaganidog / all of my relatives”

i am standing on the wharf in cap saint louis just wondering, when a guy i’ve never met shows up. you should know i make it a policy not to talk to people unless absolutely necessary which is judgmental and damaged and yes i miss out on possibility, but at the same time tricky people do manage on occasion to penetrate my aural perimeter. it all works out in the end. sort of. 

so etienne shows up and says allo and obviously he knows i’m not suppose to be there so i’m suspicious of what he wants. i tell him i want to see the seal colony even though that’s not what i want and that’s not what i am looking for. he immediately says he’ll take me. i ask how much. he says for free. 

fine. 

nothing in life is free. the best things in life are free. there is no such thing as a free lunch. 

we walk down the dock and he offers his hand so i can step down onto the deck of the boat. of course i refuse and step down onto stacked broken plastic bins on my own because we need to get a few things straight right from the beginning and this is one of them. 

he starts the engine and i’m in the back with the gear so we can’t talk. it’s sunny and it’s windy and it’s perfect and as we drive away from the shore i think about dexter and all the possible scenarios. he interrupts, offering me a coors light iced tea and i take one on impulsive even though it’s only ten thirty in the morning and coors light is always gross. Suddenly we’re a mile off shore in the atlantic. 

we drive past a kayaker and kumbaya plays in my head and i stand up and wave like a happy person so he’ll remember me when the cops question him later. 

it’s only a few more minutes to the seals which are herded on a sand bar so they can catch the fish moving into the river with big tides. we get close and they stampede into the sea reminding me of dogs and sheep and buffalo and etienne ask me if i want to go farther. 

with the same impulse as the coors light iced tea, i say yes and he says he knows this place where there is a school of mackerel. we could fish because last night he was there and he caught a thousand pounds just jigging for them. i decide he is mi’kmaq because he could be and even though that probably means nothing it makes me feel less nervous. 

on the way to the mackerel, etienne tells me how the feds kicked his family out of the park and paid them three hundred and fifty bucks for their land in 1968 and then they bulldozed the house. i tell etienne that i know how that feels but i don’t think he believes me because he thinks i’m from toronto and i’m rich and judgmental and full of shit because that’s what people think when you say the word “ontario”.

etienne gets out the lines and in two minutes we know we’re on the school because we’re pulling in mackerel easy. he watches as i hold the hook and snap the fish into the garbage pail, which is my reveal. it’s sunny and it’s windy and it’s perfect and the arms of the day are wide open and no one has to be anywhere. i see a northern gannet and i love gannets because they can disconnect their wings before they plummet into the sea after a fish. imagine disconnecting a body part! the gannet swims over to the boat smelling the fish blood and etienne hands the gannet a fish and says “the bird is my family, all of this, the fish, the seals, the water–this is my family,” which is his reveal. 

our eyes meet because now he has my attention. i walk over and hug him and he is the kind of person that can give and receive a real hug and i’m not one of those people because my alarm system goes off when people touch me and i freeze up and shut down. this time that doesn’t happen. i decide to kiss him and it’s perfect and easy and we make out void of awkwardness but with a clearly defined beginning and a clearly defined ending. then he drives back to shore while i gut the fish in the back of the boat using his terrifyingly sharp knife, feeding the guts to the gulls and the gannets. he drops me off on the dock. we thank each other. we say goodbye and i pay attention to each step, instead of looking back. 

~~~

Watch ↳ here Leanne Betasamisake Simpson performing “Islands of Decolonial Love”

For more about Leanne Betasamisake Simpson and her art

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson is a renowned Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg scholar, writer and artist, who has been widely recognized as one of the most compelling Indigenous voices of her generation. Her work breaks open the intersections between politics,  story and song—bringing audiences into a rich and layered world of sound, light, and sovereign creativity.

“indinawemaaganidog / all of my relatives” from Islands of Decolonial Love. © Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, 2013. [ARP Books, Winnipeg]

~ Siwar Mayu, July 2023

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