On To be Indigenous is to Mourn
by Aliyah American Horse,
Nebraska Youth Poet Laureate 2023
Midwestern Youth Poet Laureate 2024
by Matt Mason, Nebraska State Poet emeritus
Hi, my name is Matt Mason, I’m the 2024 State Poet of Nebraska, here for Poets on the Plains.
Today, I’m here reading Nebraska poet Aliyah American Horse’s poem “To Be Indigenous Is to Mourn.”
The poem is from Aliyah’s brand new chapbook Shed No Tears Unci (oon-shee).
This chapbook is Aliyah’s first release as she’s a young writer, in fact she was recently named Youth Poet Laureate of the Midwest after serving a year as the Youth Poet Laureate of Nebraska.
I first came across Aliyah when I was touring with two other poets through northwest Nebraska. One of our days was at Gordon-Rushville High School with a reading that night at the Gordon Community Theater, a great, newly-renovated space in the small town’s downtown. Gordon has a little over 1500 people and it sits in Sheridan County, Nebraska’s 4th-largest county, area-wise, with a little over 5000 people in it.
At the school the three of us (Zedeka Poindexter, joe from long island, and myself) were encouraging high school students to come to that night’s reading at the Gordon Theater. And though we didn’t meet American Horse in classes that day, she was mentioned by many of the students who referred to her as “The poet,” and that we should make sure and get her to be there. With introductions like that, of course we reached out to her through students and teachers and met her that night where she indeed lived up to her name. It was no surprise to any of us who were there when she was named Nebraska’s Youth Poet Laureate several months later.
Aliyah is a proud Oglala-Lakota poet and this poem describes her experience watching the unique parts of identity of those in her tribe as they fade in the world, the poem shows frustration as there is less and less of these amazing and meaningful anchors of left each year.
| To Be Indigenous Is to Mourn |
Our regalia has morphed
Into a dark, weighty cloak
Suffocating each new generation
The rivers that once flowed freely
Now, just open wounds across our hearts
A stream too strong to be sewn shut
Humming echoes through the trees
A song so sad and sung so loud
We all know this haunting melody
Our elders’ eyes hold the stories
Lost in the storms of time
Raining tears that never dry
We are only left to scavenge
What specks of identity we have left
To our forgotten existence
This poem starts with the regalia, with appearance, and how it gets heavier for every new generation as there’s less connection to it, in some ways, given American culture, but more importance to it, leading to a weight that’s “suffocating.”
It moves to rivers, then. The word “Nebraska” means “Flat water,” how the Platte River, which flows from the western edge of Nebraska all the way to the Missouri appears as it goes in a wide river valley. The rivers get compared to wounds across hearts, a powerful metaphor as, in modern times, these rivers are all channeled, controlled, so it leans into how culture tries to channel and control hearts, also.
By the end of the poem, she uses line breaks effectively, the last 3-line stanza beginning “We are only left to scavenge” and moving on to “forgotten existence” as the regalia, the homelands, the songs and stories all are less and less recognizable and remembered in each generation.
Aliyah American Horse’s work is meaningful to me as she works to inspire other young writers as well as educate older writers and readers like myself. My ancestry is Scottish, not Native American, but that’s what makes poetry special. A good poem helps its reader step inside what is happening in another poet’s head and heart, so poems like Aliyah’s live up to what she describes on the chapbook’s back cover, how she uses her writing “to advocate for Native American communities, with themes of love, life, spirituality, and family bonds in an attempt to connect with the dreamers and believers.”
The chapbook, Shed No Tears Unci, is only available from events Aliyah herself performs at or through the website, shortened here to: tinyurl.com/aliyahbook
Thank you, This is Matt Mason, Nebraska State Poet, based out of my hometown of Omaha.
POETS ON THE PLAINS HOST
Matt Mason served as the Nebraska State Poet from 2019-2024 and has run poetry workshops in Botswana, Romania, Nepal, and Belarus for the U.S. State Department. His poetry has appeared in The New York Times and Matt has received a Pushcart Prize as well as fellowships from the Academy of American Poets and the Nebraska Arts Council. His work can be found in Rattle, Poet Lore, Prairie Schooner, and in hundreds of other publications. Mason’s 5th book, Rock Stars, was published by Button Poetry in 2023. You can find more about Matt at https://midverse.com/
FEATURED POET
Born in Utah and raised in small town Gordon, Nebraska, Aliyah American Horse is no stranger to the rural lifestyle as a community based artist. Titled the Nebraska Youth Poet Laureate in 2023 and the Midwestern Youth Poet Laureate in 2024, her work centers around creating a better future for the youth and raising awareness for at risk Indigenous communities. Stemming from the Oglala Lakota Sioux tribe, preserving her culture and protecting her people is what matters most to Aliyah who currently runs a small business and interns as a drug and alcohol counselor.
