I’m a former Kansas poet laureate and fifth generation Kansan. I am proud of my Lenape (Delaware) heritage. Vietnam was a tragic time for the large number of Indigenous Americans and their families. They followed traditions of protecting their beloved land and families. Some had ceremonies for returning warriors. Geary Hobson, Linda Grover, Karenne Wood, and Jim Northrup express the Vietnam experience in poetry:
Central Highlands, Viet Nam, 1968 by Geary Hobson—Cherokee, Quapaw, and Chickasaw
1
An eagle glides above the plain
where mice scurry in a vortex
of smoke and blood.
Wings dip, soar downward
in a clash
of fire
and upheaval
of earth and bone.
2.
You will die, Dull Knife,
and your people,
and your vanquisher’s descendants
will weep over their father’s deeds.
3
In the mountains of Viet Nam
The Meo people, too,
will pass
from this world in napalm flashes
and burnt-out hillsides
and all that will be left
to give
will be
the helpless tears
of history future.
4
The eagle flies blindly
into the smoke of his past.
From “Casualty Days,” by Linda Grover—Bois Forte Band of Ojibwe
. . . Pammy’s cave rat trapped deep in the jungle,
and Sharon’s sniper in that twelve-foot boat,
in sleep, those absent boys, what did they dream
while their feet softened and yellowed, damp
in heavy laced boots, near the China Sea?
From “A’no:wara” by Karenne Wood—Monacan
“. . . He was twenty years old./ Months of recovery. Years of rage. No one notified his family/ welcomed him home, taught him how to survive after war, how/ those three months had changed him—you take nothing with you/ when you die, but what do you carry when you live? Friends who/ didn’t make it. Nightmares. Scars. At Akwesasne, another ceremony,/ one used to heal warriors for hundreds of years. . . .”
Quarter Century Ago by Jim Northrup—Fond du Lac Ojibwe
What's it like to be an aging warrior,
a graying grunt
the body catching up to your old man eyes
it means feeling pain that started
with a bang 25 years ago. . .
The explosion drills into your memory
we didn't know it then but
we were making fuel for flashbacks
Haven't killed anyone in almost 25 years,
more importantly, I've wanted to but didn't. . . .
There is pride in knowing you could
do it again, if you really had too
But, let's not do that war thing again
These survivors--Geary Hobson, Linda Grover, Karenne Wood, and Jim Northrup--express the physical, mental, and spiritual effects of that painful conflict from a Native point of view.
