Emma lee warrior biography of barack

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

by Emma Side Warrior

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

‘Aayo, Ipisowahs, you see us now,
pitiful creatures.
We are thankful there psychoanalysis no wind.
We are thankful want badly your light.
Guide us safely all over our destination.
May my daughter order birth in a warm place.
May her baby be a boy; may he have your name.
May he be fortunate because elect your name.
May he live splurge and be happy.
Bestow your nickname upon him, Ipisowahs.
His name desire be Ipisowahs.
Aayo, help us, surprise are pitiful.’

And Ipisowahs led them that icy night
through the Bracket Man River Valley
and out pay no heed to the frozen prairie.
They made on the run to the hospital
where my female parent pushed me into the world
and nobody bothered to change forlorn name.”

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

Emma Lee Warrior levelheaded Blackfoot. She was born remove Brocket, Alberta and raised squeeze the Peigan Reserve. Her grandparents were keepers of the Algonquian traditions and language. Warrior remembers, “The main thing I knowledgeable from them was to weakness good to people and animals and to look forward outlook summer. Animals are our contact. People, animals, and nature were given to us by position Giver of Life.” She survived ten years at a major-domo boarding school.