It's like this, living is like a diamond or how they cut really fine stones. There are not just two sides but there are so many and they all make up … - Joy Harjo

AN AMERICAN SUNRISE We were running out of breath, as we ran out to meet ourselves, We Were surfacing the edge of our ancestors’ fights, and ready to Strike It was difficult to lose days in the Indian bar if you were Straight. Easy if you played pool and drank to remember to forget. We Made plans to be professional — and did. And some of us could Sing When we drove to the edge of the mountains, with a drum. We Made sense of our beautiful crazed lives under the starry stars. Sin Was invented by the Christians, as was the Devil, we sang. We Were the heathens, but needed to be saved from them: Thin Chance. We knew we were all related in this story, a little Gin Will clarify the dark, and make us all feel like dancing. We Had something to do with the origins of blues and jazz I argued with the music as I filled the jukebox with dimes in June, Forty years later and we still want justice. We are still America. We.

what happens in this country is that Natives are — our stories, our presence has basically been disappeared from the American story because if it’s true — if it’s true that we’re still here, and if it’s true that what did happen was, you know, was grand theft and massacre — then there’s something inherently broken with the story that needs to be repaired. The other thing, too, is that we are here. And yet, people expect us to be in our traditional outfits, if we’re recognized. They don’t recognize us unless we’re mascots or we’re wearing our traditional outfits.

Pass this love on, he'd say.
It knows how to bend and will never break.
It's the only thing with a give and take,
The more it's used the more it makes.

That love is the bridge that will cross the river home.
He'd be standing in the dark with no one listening.
How time blows steadily through the city, the trees.
Sing to this earth, sing, he sang.