Behind the Masks: A Community Feature with Yellow Medicine Review
Words By Diane Glancy, Travis Hedge Coke, January Rogers, Art By Koby Griggs
Yellow Medicine Review showcases the works of Indigenous writers and artists, both emerging and renowned. The journal takes its name from the Yellow Medicine River running through southwest Minnesota, a place where all peoples—Indigenous and settler alike—came together to dig for the root of a medicinal plant that grew along the riverbank. It brought healing. Such is the spirit of Yellow Medicine Review. Each issue is guest edited by a different Indigenous writer, and submissions come strictly from an Indigenous perspective. It is a journal created by Indigenous peoples and not a journal about Indigenous peoples, so that authentic and contemporary voices replace harmful stereotypes and misconceptions.
Sapote
by Travis Hedge Coke
Admonish and relish little cobbled quayside The home pleasant locus of Iroquoian costume The warrior of social disintegration still standing as her old people walk abroad, may be used to a relaxing politics gist Inexorably annexed from Zapotecan culture we see “Spanish-style” grow in-line and have complicated feelings about what that means, standing still as the old people walk abroad, maybe used to a black sapote, red sapote, marmalade sapote Mami Americana, Mammy in Cuba, Mama from Buenos Aires to Santa Fe to Santa Fe to Santa Fe There are at least three Santa Fe in Colombia Holy faith wherever you look, in a conquered land Where clothes become costumes Where we are consumed A reduction Half the world in five stanzas and marmalade trees.
John the Revelator in a Gas Mask
by Diane Glancy
from Beaded Mask
2015
seed beads, deer hide, ermine, and ribbons on Iraqi gas mask 9 1/2 x 7 1/2 x 6 1/2 in.
lent by the Tweed Museum
Naomi Bebo, Ho-Chunk and Menominee
one of 15 featured works in a 2022 exhibit, “Air,” to protest pollution
Utah Museum of Fine Arts
Salt Lake City, Utah
The gas mask was for the smoke from burning oil fields. He tells her.
They set their own fields on fire in defiance.
And the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke—
when day was night, and night was without moon and stars.
She travels through pokeweed for the relic of an old war.
Her headlight steady.
She drives her needle through small holes in the beads.
She finds the tunnels she ties with thread.
She remembers the beaver. The badger. The wolf.
The thick lakes and forest of the north woods.
She knows distant fires spread remnants of ash on the road.
She beads the gas mask white as frost on sycamores with sparse floral pattern—
a vine and leaves.
The State of Indigeneity 2022
by January Rogers
Men don’t like to get forgotten Women, expect it the illusion of noise is created, it’s easy to fake it what makes a generation devoid of apathy/compassion Children left unchallenged unable to focus without ambition Big Auntie Energy is where I live this love is why I write look at me in protected stance arms spread apart like wings for you, you don’t even know... layers of boundaries built to move in freedom within them the lack of distraction becomes your legacy not forced responses to questions so stupid so putrid yes stupid Journey as achievement blind to the binaries of Sexes characteristics still exist, but different show me an Uncle who didn’t evolve from Knowledge and Instincts to support good Women around him and the Children bring me into circles of creative beings who listen committed to connections at all costs no sacrififice, no such thing but constant Investment who cares who, really cares find us in the middle of roads hoisting signs high above us reading, Give it ALL back Damn that thing that makes activism fashion and those who practice it, popular perhaps we need to wait just a while more for politics to truly intersect with influence, and influence becomes a pinnacle of change Big Cosmic Energies on the move simultaneous urgings of keep up, and wait and if we get forgotten in the end, we’ll dust off our stories because our voices didn’t get the attention our egos won’t feel the sting of insult because of it it means we’ve moved on the kids will be what they be the state of Indigeneity will be, we are here briefly as men and women and all others are healing from life to goddamn life we are here witnessing, participating in the fluidity of our times.
