Planet Alaska

THE HIDE OF MY TONGUE

2012-01-25T16:14:00.001-04:00

The Hide of My Tongue

They must adjust to their environment and conform to our civilization …They cannot escape it, and must either conform to it or be crushed by it.

Thomas J. Morgan, commissioner, "Report of the Commisioner of Indian Affairs," 1889

Yee yoo x’atángi áwé haa sinéix a yáx yatee x’áal’ a káx’ haa s’éil’ x’éiyi.

--Keet Yaanaayí

Your words are healing like the skunk cabbage applied to our open wounds.

—Paraphrased from a speech by Willie Marks, Keet Yaanaayí with translation help by Ethel

Makinen, Daasdiyáa, and Irene Paul, Yaaxl.aat

I spent the last twelve years creating my first full-length poetry collection, The Hide of My Tongue, Ax L'óot' Doogú.
Plain View Press, devoted to publishing social issues, has now published my collection. The Hide of My Tongue is dedicated to my daughter, Vivian Mork, Yeilk', Cute-Little-Raven, and those who work at revitalzing the Tlingit language.

The Hide of My Tongue is a familial and historicalaccount of the loss & revitalization of the Tlingit language. The Hideof My Tongue explores the historical and contemporary effects of the lossof one of the world’s most complex languages: Tlingit.

The book includes a study guide by Professor Lance Twitchell, X'unei, and a Tlingit language glossary.

For your enjoyment here is a poem from this collection:

Cephalic Index

I took my baby
to the PublicHealth Nurse
and the nursemeasured her head,
pulling the tapetaut around
my baby girl’sthick black hair,
measuring hercranial capacity,
measuring,
measuring againjust to be sure.
They wanted me tocome back
but I told them
of course she hasa family head,
she’s from theHead House
—KaaShaayi Hít,
and she is also aMork
She is Norwegian
She is Táax’—Snail
She is Yéil—Raven
But they made me
bring her backanyway
and they stillkept measuring,
telling me theywere concerned
about thediagnosis behind
the circumferenceof her head,
but I told them
no need to beconcerned because
I am themother-expert
who knows
there needs to beroom enough
inside her head
for all ourhistories;
because someday Iknow she’ll be the one—
the one who tellsour stories,
since we belong
to a people
who are measured
by our words.

*originally appeared in Tidal Echoes

Photo by Mitch Mork

Vivian Faith Prescott writes poems thatexplore the boundaries of a marginalized people whose language has survivedcenturies of genocidal intentions and now hangs on by delicate tendrils. She isfaithful to the beauty of an ancient language that is rooted in place, and herpoetry is a welcome and violent resistance to linguistic and cultural death.

—X'unei,Lance A. Twitchell, M.F.A., Associate Professor of Native Languages, Universityof Alaska Southeast, author of Tlingit Language Dictionary

The Hide of My Tongue is also available on Amazon.

DEVILFISH

2012-01-18T18:16:00.002-04:00

Devilfish

Giant Pacific Octopus (kidzcoolzone.com)

Grandfather is fishingfor king salmon on the Mercedes, his 40-foot wood troller. The boat rocksbeneath his feet; he turns and sees the line jerking down hard. He reels thegirdies, and as the lines comes up, he sees it: a giant Pacific octopus, a devilfish. It's a monstrous thing withalmost human-like skin tinged pink and purple. He unhooks it and it flops ontothe deck-hatch and reaches its arms outward. Grandfather hurries aside, backingup against the pilothouse.

An arm moves towards him as if it can sense himthere; he readies his knife. The arm reaches Grandfather's feet, moves up hispant leg, feeling along. The arm is firm against his torso. It feels his bicep,his shoulder. Grandfather resists the urge to slice it. The arm moves towardshis face—he holds his breath. The devilfish taps Grandfather’s face, then the armmoves downward to his torso again, tracing his hip, down his leg, tapping its armback across the deck. Grandfather exhales—he can breathe again.

Smithsonian National Zoological Park

Grandfather stayspressed against the pilothouse, watching. The devilfish reaches out, spreadingone arm to the starboard side of the boat; another arm reaches across to the portside: a 12-foot beam. The creature touches the water on both sides, feeling itslifeline. Then suddenly, the devilfish pulls its eight arms together,stiffening them, then pushes off, heaving its body overboard. And with hardly asplash, the devilfish descends beneath the surface of the green water.

Grandfather told this story to his wide-eyed son, my father, and my father told it to me. I've told this story to my children, and I'll tell this story to my grandchildren. The creature my grandfather happened to hook on his trolling gear was, in fact, a giant Pacific octopus, the Enteroctopus dofleini, the largest octopus in the world. The giant Pacific octopus can grow up to 30-feet long and typically weigh around one hundred pounds. Of course, there are variations, as some records document octopuses weighing from 100 pounds to as much as 600 pounds. Not surprisingly the Tlingits called the large octopus a devilfish, because that’s the word our elders use; however, the name in the Lingít language is náakw (knockw).

* The rest of this essay can be read in What's Nature Got to Do With Me? from Native West Press.

DRUM TIME

2011-12-22T16:09:00.001-04:00

Saami Shaman Drum

I am part Sáami. Who are the Sáami?

The Sáami people (also spelled Sami) are one of the indigenous people of northern Europe inhabiting Sapmi, which today encompasses parts of northern Sweden, Norway, Finland and the Kola Peninsula of Russia but also in the border area between south and middle Sweden. Their ancestral lands span an area the size of Sweden in the Nordic countries. The Saami people are among the largest indigenous ethnic groups in Europe. Their traditional languages are the Sami languages, which are classified as members of the Finno-Lappic group of the Uralic language family (Wikipedia).

The phrase "Drum Time" refers to the time before our drums were banned by colonizers.

My poems "Check The Box" and "Cartography" appear in Drunken Boat's First Peoples Issue. "Cartography" is a poem about the Noaide (shaman) drum.

Cartography

Grandmother, you chewed alder

to red paste, mixed ash

from woodstoves, a tincture

traced on swollen bellies, landmarks

for reindeer traveling to the sun—

Charcoal figures: fisher and boat,

hunter’s bow, a conduit between

skydome

and tundra.

You warmed painted hide

by camplight in the season before black

robes silenced our trances. Now, I peer

at drummed bellies

beneath a tree rising from center,

what remains hidden

in mountains near seidda—rock piles,

beneath sedge—sun-skins now mute

behind museum glass. I see your patterns

moving upon laavu walls

sketching tracks to the pulse of thumb,

hooves on the rim of my drum,

a map

lingering with lichen-scent, signposts

herding my migration toward home.

*Seidda: rock piles marking Sáami worship sites. Laavu: Sáami tent. Missionary efforts nearly wiped out our Sáami drums. In the 1600s, Sáami were ordered to dispose of the drums and attend church. Our Noiade (shamans) hid themselves and their drums in the mountains. Some families hid drums; others were burned or sold to museums.

My Shaman Drum

CEREMONY

2011-11-20T21:48:00.000-04:00

This time of year we give thanks for what we have. I'm reminded that a favorite Southeastern Alaskan food that we enjoy during the fall and winter is harvested in the spring: herring eggs. Herring eggs are a part of our eveyday and ceremonial life. Often a Thanksgiving dinner includes herring eggs.

*This piece originally appeared in Alaska Women Speak.

Photo courtesy of Roby Littlefield

I am with my husband and four children in an aluminum skiff near an island outside of Sheet’ká Kwáan, Sitka, Alaska. We are looking for the best place to set out our hemlock branch. Using a long rope, we tie off the hemlock branch from a larger tree on the beach. This is the same technique that my husband's and my children's Tlingit ancestors have used for thousands of years. With our skiff, we tow one end of the long rope with the hemlock branch attached out into the ocean. We leave the branch to bob and sway in the water, letting the tide flow in and out, enticing the herring who'll lay their eggs on the delicate hemlock needles.

While the tree is soaking, my children and I walk the beaches on the small island, pulling herring eggs off the rocks and eating them. I put the herring eggs into my youngest daughter's mouth. She chews and smiles at me. Around us, flocks of shore birds and eagles share in the harvest. Some of these gull-types are clan-family: the black-legged kittiwakes. We walk the forest edge and I place my hand on an old spruce tree.

"Feel the bark," I say to my oldest daughter. She touches it then bends in to sniff it. Next, I walk over to a hemlock tree. "Now, feel this one," I say.

She rubs her fingers across its bark. This daughter, my oldest child, is the one I've chosen to remember our stories. So I tell her a story about how Beaver and Porcupine were friends. One day, Porcupine invited Beaver to his house. A bear frightened them up a tree and when the coast was clear, Beaver climbed down leaving long striations in the treebark with his claws.

Photo courtesy of Roby Littlefield

Now, we have participated in the ritual of man and nature, story and family. The old stories carry traditional knowledge. I say to my daughter, "You can recognize hemlock bark because of its long striations going down the length of the tree—these are the marks left by Beaver."

After a picnic lunch on the beach, we climb back into the skiff and head to where the hemlock branch is soaking. We haul it into the skiff, heaving it over the gunwale. Thick herring roe dangles from the branches. Our elders view the herring roe as a sign of life continual. In the spring, after the herring have spawned in the Sitka region, herring eggs are distributed to the smaller villages like Hoonah and other communities in Southeastern Alaska. Much of the roe is saved for memorial parties in the fall. Before we take our share home, we distribute herring eggs to relatives and friends.

Photo courtesy of Roby Littlefield

At home, we treat ourselves to herring eggs blanched in boiling water. The eggs remain on the smaller, thin-needled branches. We sit around our table. A large bowl brims with eggs. I've made a salad with the last package of beach greens that I'd put up for the winter: goose tongue and beach asparagus. We eat herring eggs with soy sauce or with bits of black seaweed sprinkled on top. We dip them in seal grease and the grease drips off our chins. We tell the story of our day, creating new stories. We recall the chop on gray water, the pungent smell of roe, the deafening sound of hungry gulls; and the elder's face when she opened the door to find my youngest handing her a bag of herring eggs. This is our ceremony.

GROWTH RINGS

2011-11-04T21:23:00.002-04:00

Welcome to Planet Alaska. The following is a guest post by Joy Prescott, a writer and artist working on the Shakes Island Renovation Project in Wrangell, Alaska.

GROWTH RINGS

Being an adzer for the ShakesIsland Renovation Project doesn’t just mean adzing wood. Under thedirection of master carver Wayne Price, our adzers make bentwood boxes, cleantotem poles, carve paddles, and even make flutes.

Master carver Wayne Price says a blessing over the Eagle Totem after it was taken down and laid on the lawn behind the Chief Shakes

tribal house.

All of these tasks, however,involve working with wood, mostly local cedar. Wood that ties them closely tothe environment of Wrangell and the surrounding islands.

Adzer Josh Lesage with carved flutes

Adzer Justin Smith with an

unfinished paddle that he's carving.

The cedar tells the story of the rainfall and thetemperature of every year through which it lived before being harvested. Asthey work with the wood, the wood’s story is revealed. Carver Vanessa Pazar says that adzing is a "communication with the grain.It’s similar to talking to a person and learning their story. I spend anywhere from eight to ten hours a day communicating with a piece of board, reading the grain, and how it grew up and what kind of life it had.”

Carver Vanessa Pazar
with her handmade adze.

This kind of intimacy with the wood can only beachieved when working by hand, sometimes even

with tools you’ve made yourselfalso from local wood.

Vanessa's adzing on a
cedar plank designed
for the reconstructed
Chief Shakes tribal house.

Not only does working with new wood create intimacy with theenvironment, but working with the old totems does as well. When you’re on theground looking up at the totems, they seem so high and distant. But the adzerson the project have gotten up close and personal with the totems. Some weretaken down and laid behind the Chief Shakes tribal house, while others theadzers accessed from scaffolding in the Kiks.adi Totem Park.

Adzer Tammi Meissner says about looking up at standingtotems, “you saw them but you didn’t really get to see them. We got to touchthem and clean them and feel them.” Not only did the adzers become intimatewith the way each pole was carved but they learned the grain of the trees whichgrew a generation previously – in tree years anyway. They’ve seen how, asmaster carver Steve Brown writes, “deeper sculpture with more exposed end-grainusually brings more water and fungus spores into the totem interior.”

Adzer Tammi Meissner cleans roots
and other growth out of the top of the
Chief Kadashan Crane totem before
totems are tarped for winter weather
protection.

The adzers cleaning the poles also know every bit ofweathering that has occurred since the Shakes Island totems were raised – mostin 1939-1940. They’ve seen every woodpecker cavity. They’ve seen how widergrowth rings, indicating faster growth, also brings more fungal decay.

Adzer Susie Kasinger cleans the

Chief Kadashan Red Snapper totem.

They’vepulled the rot out following its sometimes tortuous path into the totems’interiors. They’ve gently pulled and untangled the roots of trees and otherplants from the tops of the totems. They’ve used bottle brushes to clean outthe nostrils and skewers to reach deep into cracks.

Tammi says, “we just feelconnected…We know them intimately.” Adzer Linda Churchill has even tasted thelichen from the back of the Eagle totem as it fell into her mouth while on herback wedged under the totem scrubbing it clean. You can’t get any moreconnected to your culture and your environment than that.

Adzer Linda Churchill works to clean the underside of the Eagle totem.

* * *

Joy Prescott is a writer, photographer,fiber artist and crochet pattern designer currently working as thedocumentarian for the Shakes Island Renovation Project. She lives and worksfrom her studio in Wrangell, Alaska.

THE DEAD GO TO SEATTLE

2011-10-26T19:15:00.002-04:00

Since it's almost Halloween I thought I'd post a poem with creepy title: The Dead Go to Seattle. This poem was previously published in Cirque.

Life in Alaska can be dangerous. We live with those dangers every day. At any moment, someone can disappear while out hunting, fishing, hiking, boating, etc....

The meaning behind the title of my poem is based upon a myth in the hometown where I grew up, Wrangell, Alaska. Growing up, I heard quite often about disappearances and, in turn, speculations on where and when the person would show up. My poem "The Dead Go to Seattle," reflects my own thinking plus stories I've heard, and also the hopes that the lost loved ones will someday reappear healthy.

Here's the poem plus you can click on the YouTube link and watch the video or any number of poetry videos on Planet Alaska Poetry.

THE DEAD GO TO SEATTLE

Sometimes people slip in their Xtratufs,

foot on the gunwale, and they go down, cold green

water fills their boots. And sometimes it's a hook

and line catching their arm, yanking them down,

thrashing. Or maybe, it's the rotten stump they've

stepped on to get a better view of the deer in the

meadow below that gives way. Either way,

someone's seen them

in Seattle

during yearly trips to the malls for school clothes,

or to get supplies to build a new house. They're there,

the dead, turning their heads in a crowd crossing

a street at a red light or walking with a golden

retriever by UW. They've been spotted—a child

holding a white Styrofoam cup of clam chowder

down by the warf, an uncle sitting on a curb,

a cousin on a park bench.

They've been jogging, strolling, driving even.

Reported alive-and-well— no seaweed weaving

through their hair, no crab eaten faces, or moss

growing over their bodies. Just sitting on the bull-rail

at the old piers, pulling a wool coat closer, their hats

hanging low on their foreheads, waiting at the old

ferry dock for a ride back home.

Veil of Water, Veil of Story

2011-10-18T14:12:00.001-04:00

I kneel beside the petroglyph, tracing a killer whale fin with my finger. There is a story here. I feel the ovoid eyes, the high dorsal fin.

I imagine the artist with her carving tool, gouging rock. I take the time to thank her: Gunalchéesh. Gunalchéesh Platform House, Frog House, all those from the Shtax'héen Kwáan—Bitter Water Tribe.

There are many stories that shape my childhood, and are still shaping my adulthood. My father, Mitchell Prescott, has allowed me to record his stories for use in my unpublished memoir, The Wind and the Amoeba. One of these stories is now published in The Hamilton Stone Review. In the story, my father witnesses nature's violence: killer whales attack a humpback whale. "We were heading across the mouth of Snow Pass and I looked out and I could see this whale thrashing around in the water...."

Intrigued? You can go to the Hamilton Stone Review and read it online:
Veil of Water, Veil of Story.

Planet Alaska Receives Liebster Blog Award

2011-10-14T16:17:00.000-04:00

My blog Planet Alaska has been awarded the Leibster Blog Award.

What's that? The Liebster Blog Award is bestowed to read-worthy blogs with less than 200 followers.

I guess that means someone is actually reading my blog. Hooked, a blog from Tele Aadsen, a fisherwoman in Sitka, Alaska, has awarded Planet Alaska the Liebster Blog Award. Hooked is an award winning blog about the fisherman's relationship to the sea and to everything else. Hooked's adventurous blogger provides readers with a fascinating look at the commercial fishing life. She writes about encounters with whales, longlining, and sustainable wildlife, in addition to blogging about women's roles in fishing.

The Leibster Blog Award rules: 1). Thank your awarder and link to their blog. 2). Nominate 5 other blogs you visit and enjoy. Let those bloggers know by leaving a comment on their blog.

My nominees are:

Ishmael Hope: Alaska NativeStoryteller. Ishmael Hope's blog is a refreshing look at contemporary indigenous culture. Ish's blog is intimate and beautiful. On the subject of wellness, he writes, "I want a healthy, happy life. And I want a life full of the beauty and wonder of my Tlingit and Iñupiaq heritages."

Anne Caston's Deep Dixie is a reflection of her storytelling talent. Her blog is funny, insightful, and heartfelt. In a "Book of Splendor" she writes about her love of flimsy, thin notebooks that she's bound together with staples. "What I understand about my words, even the moments in which something profound may surface in them, is how rightfully they belong on paper that tatters and frays and wears thin at the edges."

Write In The Middle is a blog from Hawaii. Being an Alaskan, I'm fond of Hawaii, especially in the winter. According to Toni Todd, blogger extraordinaire, Write In the Middle reflects "...the middle of the ocean, the middle of nowhere, the middle of town, the middle of action, the middle of the couch, the middle of life, the middle of it all." Toni blogs about the environment, the recession job hunt, and being a writer, among many other topics. This blog is humorous and touching.

Accentuating Tlingit Traditions is the blog of renowned artist Clarissa Rizal who blogs about her art and her experiences as an accomplished artist. Clarissa is multi-talented. She does Chilkat weaving, painting, collage, Raven's Tail weaving, and sews button blankets. She is an Alaskan treasure. On the topic of visiting Excursion Inlet, Alaska, Clarissa writes, "...it was a good feeling to hear stories of my parent’s days as young adults – it was good for my own children to experience the place and to hear the stories. We tend to forget that old people were once young." Clarissa's insight into her own artmaking process is worth the read.

Alaskan author Eowyn Ivy's Letters From Alaska is a fresh look at life in Alaska. Myself, I'd like to be Eowyn's neighbor because she's always doing such delightfully Alaskan things. "I know a place where we can find blueberries. Fat, ripe, wild blueberries so thick on the bush that you can grab handfuls at a time." Eowyn blogs about chopping wood, camping, being a writer, moose hunting, and even making pickled peas. Her wonderful photographs enliven her musings. As well, Eowyn cleverly addresses her reader in a different manner each time she blogs: dear lovely reader, dear fearless reader, dear patient reader etc...This technique draws you right into the post. At Letters from Alaska you discover that the author is just as interesting as her upcoming novel.

Stop by and leave a message on these terrific blogs.

The Language of the Landscape

2011-09-14T21:25:00.001-04:00

(Previously published in Praxilla)

*From my unpublished memoir The Wind and the Amoeba.

We hike out to the point, then cross the beach to stand in the middle of an area peppered with large boulders. Here, several Elders remember a time before the Park closed subsistence activities to Hoonah residents. They speak in Lingít, telling us about the relationship they once had to this landscape. One of the Elders tears up because many of our Elders fished, hunted, and harvested seafood in this area. But today the Park Ranger escorts us, oblivious to the grief they are experiencing. Everyone is silent as the ranger points out the landmarks: the old fish traps, the site of ancient smokehouses. We look beyond those artifacts to the Park's lodge, to the Park's headquarters, the Park's housing.

The tide eventually lowers beyond the boulders and we start looking around for what we came here for: gatheringshaaw—gumboots. Our rubber boots stick in the mud as we trudge over slippery rocks and orange popweed. First, we are instructed to thank shaaw for giving its life to us. I lift the thick-blanketed veil of orange seaweed like a soggy curtain and spot several large shaaw suctioned to the base of the rock. I take my knife and slip it under the edge of its shell. I repeat my thanks, "Gunalcheésh shaaw, gunalchéesh shaaw,” while lifting the tip of the knife. The suction loosens and it comes free. I gently put the shaaw in my bag.

Afterwards, as I walk back down the path with my bag full of shaaw, I no longer need to repeat the name over and over again in order to remember the word. In my mind, I see the crustacean hiding beneath orange seaweed. The language lives on this beach, in shaaw, in the limpet shells called Yéil saaxu—raven’s hat, in the barnacles—s’ook, and in a fall sunset over Icy Strait. Likoodzi—amazing.

On this fourth night, I dream in Lingít; yet, I cannot fully comprehend this language during the daytime. In my dream, words form like shadowed hemlocks in waning light. Sounds move from Raven’s mouth to mine. The underlined ‘x’ and ‘g’ pull back into my throat. I'm speaking to the Elders.

Resources:

Troubled Raven

Lingít Yoo X'atángi

Alaska Native Language Center

Online Tlingit Dictionary at Alaskakool

The Eternal Return

2011-09-01T12:44:00.000-04:00

Stories: The Heart and Soul of the Cultural Landscape

The heart and soul of the cultural landscape are thestories we live and the stories we tell. Stories are what hold my culturallandscape in a place that I can understand. Stories help me to make sense ofthings. I will share with you one of those stories here. It is a story of loveand lust and salmon. Yes, those things go together; at least in my worldviewthey do.

The eternal return is the concept that things come around incycles: events, seasons, etc. In Tlingit oral tradition there is aWoman-at-the-Head-of-the-Stream who calls the fish back to her. This archetypeappears in many other cultures. In my Finnish culture she is Veen emo, the water mother.

In the poem "Eternal Return" I take a familystory, the story of my grandfather's love affair, and turn it into a mythicalstory. I transform the woman he loved into the Woman-at-the-Head-of-the-Streamand my grandfather is a salmon— the perfect love affair. In my family's story, mygrandfather was married to my Grandma Ruth when he had an affair with Bette.Bette hung a red nightgown on her clothesline to signal to my grandfather an"all clear" sign (Interestingly, the name for a salmon egg nest in agravel stream is a redd). Bette's husbandwas a fisherman also. My grandfather eventually married Bette and they livedmany happy years together.

The "Eternal Return" was published in Off the Coast Journal and on the Poetry Super Highway.

Poetry Collage:

GLACIOLOGY

2011-08-24T20:05:00.002-04:00

Ice acts as a womb for stories, microbes, fossils and ice worms—ice reflects our time on this planet. Therefore, whenever I hear a story about a glacier, I listen. In Southeast Alaska, our stories link us to the landscape. An elder once told me that glaciers listen, so one must talk respectful to glaciers. I move respectfully through this glacial landscape of Southeastern Alaska, as do my children. They are Tlingit; their ancestral roots began with glacial activity. Ice fields have stories to tell. That's what glaciology is—a form of listening to stories.

*This is an excerpt from "The Memory of Glaciers" published in Alaska Women Speak, Summer 2010.

To read my poems, "Glaciology" go to Catapult to Mars.

(In photo: My grandmother Ruth Binkley)

Tlingit Language Children's Book Project

2011-08-08T17:26:00.001-04:00

This blog post features Ernestine Hayes, Saankalaxt', and her Tlingit language children's book project. I can't begin to tell you how important her work is to the Tlingit language revitalization in Southeast Alaska. She has already published one book in Tlingit: Aanka xóodzi ka Aasgutu Xóodzi Shkalneegí, The Story of the Town Bear and the Forest Bear.

Photo by Tommy Joseph, Sitka, Alaska

PLEASE HELP SUPPORT THIS PROJECT!

Ernestine writes:

"Currently it is not the practice to teach the Tlingit language as a first language, nor even as a second language, in the home. Many children receive their greatest exposure to the Tlingit language and to the Tlingit kinship system in the classroom.To varying degrees, the Tlingit belief system, many Tlingit customs, and certain traditional aspects of Tlingit identity have also faded in everyday practice.
My recent children’s book, Aanka Xóodzi ka Aasgutu Xóodzi Shkalneegí (The Story Of the Town Bear and the Forest Bear), represents the first time that a story originally written in English has been translated for its initial publication in the endangered Tlingit language. I plan to follow the successful reception of this book with a second book, The Story Of Persuasive Raven. While Town Bear Forest Bear is meant for young children and beginning language learners, Persuasive Raven is meant for older children and intermediate language learners."

Know My Skin

2011-06-30T21:34:00.000-04:00

I recently visited my hometown of Wrangell, Alaska. My father, sister, daughters, cousins and eveyone else dear to me lives there. Everything is familiar. I am related to that place, to petroglyph beach, to Elephant's Nose, and Pat's Lake. The place is me. This poem "Know My Skin" refects my idenity and was featured in Earthspeak Magazine. Don't forget to check out the poetry video below.

Know My Skin

To know my skin, smell bull kelp

and popweed, catch my scent

after a morning walk on the beach.
Know my skin—pronounce my name,

your voice rising and falling; don't laugh
whenever I speak. Be able to lick

the bark of my skin, at s’áxt—it tastes

like soggy earth, the flavor of rainforest.

And listen—don't be offended

by scratchy sounds, settle in among

silences. Know my skin—look beyond

paleness, see reindeer herds,

glaciers calving, kittiwakes sitting

on drifting logs, and snails. Learn

my outer shell, ax daakanóox'u;

understand my membrane-layered world;

touch peculiar stories, become familiar

with strangeness: my antenna eyestalks,

the spiral of my shell, and my slick-

tongued foot.

Equilibrium

2011-04-17T13:13:00.000-04:00

Happy National Poetry Month! My poem "Equilibrium" appeared in a blog carnival from Blue Print Review, Issue 26: Identity.

Equilibrium

Haa kusteeyí kut kei ntoogíx', kut kei ntoogíx'..."

We're losing our culture, we're losing it..."
_—William Johnson, Keewax.awtseix

We are told “balance”

is the most important concept

in the Tlingit culture—Follow

the mother’s lineage, but in my house

Mother=White, Father=Native

so we are left to follow

the same old post-contact disease,

while they stare at our smallpox scars.

We don’t open windows.

Our floor slants, the couch

creeps toward the outside

world—and he doesn’t mind

coming home and walking uphill

to hug his children.

To whose clan do we belong?

Are we Eagle or Raven?

Who are our mother’s people?

Who are our father’s people?

All these questions are drowned

out by the sound of the television

channels changing into water,

pouring through the remote

control—the tide changers.

“See,” my children say, “we are

the People-of-the-Tides.”

We don’t know our Tlingit names

so we walk around town with our mouths

gaping open like dying salmon,

sucking on the last breath

of water, struggling

to call out our own names.

Each step we take on one leg

shorter than the other—our clan

off-kilter—causes us to hold our arms out

wider and wider, steadying ourselves,

drawing in silty river water, pulling it back

next to our bodies, hugging close

all these Bitter Water People.

Transients by Vivian Faith Prescott

2011-04-11T14:24:00.001-04:00

This prose poem is from my digital poetry collection "Slick" published at White Knuckle Press.

Transients

At the window in the bar overlooking the bay, stretch your neck back to Bligh Reef where you worked spring of '89. See killer whales: sleek black canoes, cruising through water. Twenty five or more rounded the point like a whale highway and last in line, a towering dorsal fin like huge sail on a boat. Now, walk along petroglyph beach, see only shadows. In grooved rock, trace a killer whale fin with your finger. Remember, his fin collapsing, lesions on his skin. Pack for the next job: your hazmat certificate, your rubber boots. Carry his story to the Gulf.

Kaona: In Honor of National Poetry Month

2011-04-05T14:55:00.000-04:00

Now, that's powerful, life-changing poetry. Happy National Poetry Month!

Living by a Tank Farm Cradle Song

2011-04-01T12:30:00.001-04:00

The fuel man’s yelling again, 3:00 a.m., a January night at 10 below, Put out your goddamn woodstove, it’s sparking the sky. You’ll blow up the town like the Fourth of July. Our backyard: the black sludge dump where dead cats seep in soppy mud holes. And every night so far, I sing to the marrow of our tomorrows, to my drowsy children—Don’t let your tiny red chambers weep into your colorless stem-celled dreams. Spin-dizzy in the sweet threshold of this benzene lullaby—Go to sleep, little children, go to sleep.

Exxon Valdez Oil Spill, March 24, 1989

2011-03-23T09:15:00.001-04:00

Response Teams

Naked Island: Workers in red and yellow raincoats and white hardhats, walk with high pressure, hot water hoses, spraying sludge. Some use buckets and shovels. Some stand weeping. Nearby, she holds a dead murrelet in her hands, tarballs at her feet.

Back home, Grandmother removes the Sea Grizzly Chilkat robe from her cedar chest, a blanket that took her two years to weave. She wraps it around her shoulders and turns up the radio. She dances to a new song: 987-foot tank vessel Exxon Valdez, 11 million gallons, oil slick, over 3,000 square miles, 350 miles of beaches.

*from my poetry chapbook "Slick," which is available at White Knuckle Press.

The Real Road to Nowhere

2011-03-10T16:08:00.001-04:00

The following prose poem appeared in Gutter Eloquence's issue #9

"The Road Issue."

The Real Road to Nowhere

We tell the tourists to drive to the other-side-of-the-island to find the mall where they'll find some great deals on souvenirs from China, and they nod heads and ask to take photos of us--Alaska's pale Indians--and they touch my daughter's long hair and they pinch her cheeks and call her Eskimo and we smile and say 'go-ahead-shoot-us-again' and they snap off a few and then head off in their rental car all smiling and we wave politely as they drive off on our ten miles of paved road then roll on down the gravel logging roads for about a hundred miles, going this-way-and-that, driving over pot holes and bear shit until they find themselves at a dead end, a log-loading ramp left by a logging company that drops off into the ocean, because they came in on a ship and asked us how high above sea-level we are and then maybe we wonder what happens to all those tourists who are seeking a road outta here, a road to the mall, a road to see the civilized population, trying to find the igloos and the reservations where the real Indians live, and maybe from a hundred miles away on the other-side-of-the-island they can hear the echo of our war cries.

(Wrangell, Alaska from Mount Dewey)

On Mentoring Teens

2011-03-02T18:07:00.000-04:00

Alaska 49 Writers' blogger, Deb Vanasse, recently posted about mentoring young writers. That got me to thinking. I hadn't considered myself a mentor but yet here I am mentoring adults, teens, and young kids in my three different writers' groups. I counted them up and, low-and-behold, over the past year and a half I've mentored eighteen people. Wow, I thought. And all it took was a bit of word of mouth and advertisement in a newsletter and they showed up.

Our teen writing sessions begin with chatting about the day and things like boys and girls and teachers, and drugs, and grafitti and even farts. When mentoring teens one has to be open to anything.

Below, I've transcribed last Monday's meeting to the best of my abilities. Cast of teens: Sally, Mike, Lexie, Amy, and Odea (Mike was out of town this week so it was just us girls).

A typical teen writers group goes something like this:

Lexie to Odea: I saw you with a boy in the corner at school.

Sally: (laughs)

Lexie: Same place Sally and Adian go.

Lexie: You don't deny it?

Odea: (laughs) No but I...Which one?

Lexie: There are others?

Odea to Amy: If I say something you might talk to my little sister and she'll tell.

Amy: I never talk to your sister. And the only time I did, she said to me, "I wonder what it would feel like to poop out Legos."

Odea: That's my sister.

Me to Amy: You'd better write that down. That's a good line.

Amy: Your sister is ten; she'd say something like that. I'm fifteen. I'm older.

Lexie: (Plugs her nose) Who farted? Oh, my god.

Me: Maybe it was the dogs. Ladies, #1 rule: If you pass gas, blame it on the guys or the dogs.

Sally: Man, that's bad (waves her hand).

Amy: My mom farts. She gets even with my dad because he farts really loud and then she'll fart. My brother, he thinks that girls shouldn't fart and that's gross.

Me: Can we change the subject? Let's write for ten minutes without stopping. Don't pick up the pen from the paper.

Lexie: I forgot my notebook.

Me: Here's some paper (I tear out a couple of pages from my notebook and hand it to Lexie).

Lexie: Todd fell asleep snoring on his paper (Plops her face down on the paper on the table) and when the teacher woke him up, he lifted his head and the paper was stuck to his face and he said, "Huh?" (She lifts her face and the paper is stuck to her face).

ME: Who is the most annoying in your classes?

All together: Adian, Conner and Paulo.

Me: Wouldn't it be funny if on April Fool's Day you could organize an annoying habit day. The whole class could be in on it and...

Lexie: And we could make weird noises (burps).

Odea: Or faces (She moves her eyes back and forth rapidly). I once did that at school and the teacher was watching me. He wondered what was wrong with me.

Sally: Yeah, everyone could be in on it except the three that usually get in trouble. See who gets noticed first. (She demonstrates armpit farts).

Me: It should be the teacher with the best sense of humor.

All together: Mr. Vega.

Amy: Yeah, that would be fun.

Sally: Yeah, we could scratch or tap our foot (Scratches her arm).

Lexie: Or click the top on a pen.

Odea: Or tap on the desk (Taps her fingers on the table).

Pretty soon, my kitchen table is surrounded by laughter and teenage girls making odd sounds and gestures.

I watch them, waiting for the right place between the fingers drumming the table and the clicking tongue to interrupt.

Me: So....let's write for ten minutes nonstop. Ten minutes.

Lexie: Okay (Puts her paper down and grabs one of the pens in the center of the table).

Odea: (Makes a popping sound with her lips)

Lexie to Odea: Let's write

Odea: Okay (One more popping lip sound. Starts writing. More popping sounds while writing).

We write for ten minutes and they ask for five minutes more.

Pipeline Boom Town 4th of July

2011-02-14T15:10:00.000-04:00

Pipeline Boom Town 4th of July

A thousand miles from anywhere, the parade rolls through town. Egg toss, log rolling, a drawing to win a Lund skiff and a 25 hp Evinrude. Auntie's smoking at a corner table in the Totem Bar and Uncle is in town with a hefty wallet. Money to fly Big Macs in from Juneau. Money to saw logs for the house. Money for the divorce, money for marriage. And tonight we sip root beer from the hospital auxiliary booth and dance in the street in 11:00 p.m. daylight waiting for the darkness, waiting for fireworks to blast against the mountains.

* This poem is from my digital poetry collection "Slick" which you can find at whiteknuckle press.com

Life and the Pursuit of Excuses

2011-02-04T10:58:00.000-04:00

Life and the Pursuit of Excuses

*This is a piece I wrote during my first MFA semester.

An MFA student can conjure up all kinds of excuses for putting off writing or turning in assignments. I could invent an excuse and my first year mentor, poet Zack Rogow from San Francisco, wouldn’t know if I was telling the truth. I could say that I have the flu or I have writer’s block or there’s a volcano erupting.

So what do I do when I have a genuine excuse? One arose this morning when I was set to drive through ice and snow to mail out my writing packet to my mentor. As I was heading out the door, my eldest daughter called to tell me her car wasn’t running right and she was going to be late for her second job in town. She wanted me to give her and her husky a ride into town. Again, she complained to me about the lack of water supply and inadequate heat at the 120-year-old Salmon House where she lives. My daughter is the winter caretaker for Old Sitka, a park run by the State of Alaska, the site of the first battle between the Russians and Tlingits in 1802.

When I arrived at her house, three sea lions were playing in the ocean just yards from her porch. After watching them for a while, we packed water from the artesian well for the toilet, cooking and dishes. I decided it would be best to let her borrow my truck for the day so she could go to work at her other job in town. By the time we got to my house it was mid-afternoon.

As we walked into my house, my daughter’s husky, Keishish, peed on the floor because she was so excited to see my two dogs. I realized, as my daughter was rushing out the door to work, and as I was sopping up dog pee with paper towels, that I had forgotten to go to the post office to mail off my writing packet.

Now, as I sit here at my living room window, I decide that if I’m going to rise above zero, I won’t be able get my assignments out in the mail at all today. The husky sleeps beneath my feet and I rub my toes through her fur. I look out at our dormant volcano at a small cloud forming like a plume of ash. With my journal in my lap, I sip my tea and note the temperature outside and the inspiration inside are hovering just above zero—this is the perfect time to write—I begin.

THE NUMBER ONE RULE

2011-01-23T15:55:00.000-04:00

My husband and I are in the same MFA program; both enrolled in the poetry genre. At our first residency, a faculty member mentioned that the only other couple they knew enrolled in an MFA program together had gotten a divorce during their stint. Well, I thought, we’re different. In a low-residency, there’ll be some semblance of normalcy since we’ll be going about our everyday lives—that's what I thought before my husband-poet was called up for active duty in the Middle East.

Like Raven in northwest coast mythology, war tricked us and came through the smoke hole in our house. “Normal” was a video conversation on Skype every few days—when the Internet worked—or a phone call once a week. My husband was a medical officer for the U.S. Coast Guard’s combat unit, the PSU 311 out of San Pedro, California.

I figured there was hope for ending the war if we could sneak in a poet or two. When I packed my husband’s books into his duffle bag, I included a copy of Here Bullet by Brian Turner along with other required readings. During a Skype conversation, I asked my husband if he was writing about war and he said he’d written down some notes, which were evolving into a poem, something about mass casualty drills. His mentor during that time was poet Linda McCarriston.

Myself, I’ve begun to write poems about the experience of being a new military wife. I wrote a poem about the first dream I had the night my husband left for Kuwait. I dreamed Godzilla charged after him spewing smoke and fire trying to kill him. I was hopeful that when he returned from war, we'd have many poems to share with one another. Now, that he's been back a year, our poems are still emerging. Sometimes we share them, other times we talk around them. But every morning we start the day with writerly shop-talk. In our marriage we've always had this one rule: during morning coffee, we can only talk about writing. During his stint in the Middle East, we substituted another number one rule: Come home alive.

Above Zero

2011-01-14T10:22:00.001-04:00

Rising Above Zero

Above Zero is a metaphor for the moment Alaskans revel in the slightest rise in temperature. I’m told that Zero is actually a number. From my perspective, Zero is the place where something begins to happen in ones writing—when we write. I could have titled this post “Below Zero” because, after all, I do live in Alaska, but I didn’t want to suggest negativity—no one wants zero publications, zero lovers, or a zero bank account balance.

Being an MFA student in a low-residency program at the University of Alaska Anchorage, means some students live in villages, small towns, as well as out-of-state, and, like me, in both Puerto Rico and Alaska. Each summer we attend a two-week residency, held in Anchorage at University of Alaska’s campus. UAA’s new low-residency model “emphasizes a literary approach to exploring and redefining relationships between people and place, no matter where such connections exist and how they are expressed.” We share the same struggles with every MFA student: time management, doubt, inspiration, craft, and large SUV-size brown bears walking through town. Well, maybe we don’t all share brown bear avoidance.

Alaska has been in the news recently, and some publicity has not been favorable. Typically, Alaska isn’t usually on the minds of every American, but now people want to know where Alaska is and what kind of people live here. In Alaska, we are smart, intelligent, and especially creative people. Just you wait—as our writing starts rising Above Zero.

Tlingit Language Revitalization in Southeast Alaska

2010-10-17T12:32:00.014-04:00

Click to hear my Tlingit introduction in a WMA audio file.

The following is the foreword to my new poetry book The Hide of My Tongue to be published by Plain View Press in the winter of 2010.

Originally published as an interview with Tlingit language instructor Vivian Mork, Yeilk' (Little Raven) titled: "Perspectives from a Tlingit Language Instructor" and appeared in Sharing Our Pathways.

Tsu héidi shugaxtootáan yá yaakoosgé dakeit haa jeex' a nák has kawdik'éet'.— Kichnáalx .We will open again this container of wisdom left in our care.—George Davis

***

Perspectives From a Tlingit Language Instructor

The pride in learning your Native language is a big change from past generations. We’ve come a long way from the boarding-school generation who were forbidden to speak their languages. When you look through old government documents, you find references that the government knew in order to get rid of the “Nativeness” in Native people, they had to remove children from their homes, out of the culture, out of the influences, and take away their customs and their language. Because language and culture are intertwined, the government schools had to take it away to assimilate them—it was almost successful.

But it wasn’t just the boarding-school experiences that created the loss of our language: it began with epidemics such as small pox and tuberculosis. These diseases wiped out entire villages including their traditional knowledge and language.

Also, there were entire generations of people who decided that the language was dead and let it go. This came after the push to assimilate Natives into mainstream American society. There were reasons why people went to the schools and reasons why people sent their family members away to get educated. Native people knew change was coming. They needed to be ready and one way was to educate leaders within the Western system. But it didn’t have to be done in such a traumatic way.

Although the process of re-learning the language is difficult, through learning, both young and older students have been changed. There are people who've decided to dedicate their lives to learning the Lingít language and have devoted themselves to making sure it will never die. It's changed how we language-learners relate with one another; knowing we are going to interact with each other for the rest of our lives, we treat each other with respect.

Despite the lack of natural settings, teaching in the school system is important. When children start to learn the language, they realize where their pride can come from. We tell them that they’ve been here since time immemorial and this land is theirs—they belong to it. When they really know who they are in the language, no one can take that away from them. This is amazing to hold on to; it makes their spirits stronger. After all, the Lingít language is such an elaborate language—It needs to be lived—It's a living language.

Vivian K. Mork, Yéilk', Little Raven, M.A, CCS, Indigenous Knowledge Systems, Tlingit language and cultural specialist.

Twin Appendage

2010-10-14T07:16:00.006-04:00

To protect their privacy I'll call my teen writers Sally, Mike, Lexie, and Amy. The first lesson I wanted to teach my teen writers' was to be able to recognize a story. Where can we find stories? What is a story? The first day I gave them an assignment to write about the "famous" writer and the storm scenario because it was storming outside when they arrived at my house. Here's the prompt: What would happen if you've been given the opportunity to go to a famous writer's house to learn from her/him. You don't really know that person at all, and after you arrive it starts to storm (or something else happens) and you and several other students are trapped at the writer's house. Write about it.

The following Monday, the teen writers dutifully arrived at my house again. Each writer read their story or shared a synopsis. As it turns out Lexie's story was very good. Her scenario: two male skater dudes happen to go to a 'famous' writer's house and after being offered snacks the writer gets up to go to the kitchen and the young boys discover the writer has an undeveloped fetus (or twin) attached to her lower back. Creepy? We were discussing how stories can come from everyday life when Lexie explained that her twin appendage story actually arose from a conversation she'd had the week prior with Sally via a text conversation on their cell phones. Sally and Mike were the first to learn about the writers' group I was starting. Lexie wanted to join so she texted Sally to ask about the group and ask about me. Sally—who already knew me—told Lexie that I was "nice."

"Nice?" Lexie wanted to know. Lexie then added, "Nice could be describing anyone or someone with a weird thing going on like maybe she has a fetus growing out of her butt, or something like that." In other words, they got the lesson: stories arise from real life. However, I did assure them that I wasn't hiding an evil twin appendage.

A Dark and Stormy Night

2010-08-26T12:44:00.000-04:00

Okay, so I'm also writing from Puerto Rico. I often ask myself how I ended up in Puerto Rico. Well, it was most likely a typical cloudy and rainy day in Sitka, Alaska. And my husband, freshly back from a stint with the Coast Guard in Kuwait, asked what I thought of going to Puerto Rico with the Coast Guard for two years. "Sure," I said. So, here I am. Now What?

Well, my husband and I started an adult writers group on base (Air Station Borinquen) which has been going strong since December 09. We have five regular members. If that wasn't fun enough, I recently decided to start a youth writers group for ages 12-15. I have three teens, possibly four; one male and two females. We meet once a week for an hour. We had our first meeting last week and, my god, those teens have energy. They were so excited about writing. It was contagious. And of course, I have to do the writing prompts along with them. This week we are making a collage about ourselves. We also have a writing prompt: Pretend you've been given the opportunity to go to a famous writer's house to learn from her/him. You don't really know that person at all, and after you arrive it starts to storm (or something else happens) and you and several other students are trapped at the writers house. The road has washed away; the electricity is out, whatever. Now what happens?

You see, as the young writers were arriving at my house it started to downpour. I had candles and a small battery light on the table just in case. For our first lessons, I'm trying to teach them where to look for stories. What is a story? How do we find them? I talked about the rain, the storm and said, "This could be a story." It all began on a dark and stormy night. Cliché, maybe, but it certainly lit up their eyes and, after all, it was their suggestion. They wanted to get started writing right away.

So, as I write a response to the prompt I wonder what is churning in the teenagers' heads. What house will the writer live in? What kind of a storm? What characters will be present? Will there be danger? Humor? Hmmmmm...

Tlingit Introduction according to protocol:

2010-08-16T10:08:00.000-04:00

Átk’aheen yoo xat duwasáakw ku.aa Dleit Káa X’éináx Vivian Faith Prescott. Yéil naa ka T’akdéintaanx xat sitee. Tax’ Hítyoo duwasáakw haa naa kahídi. Sáami ka Suomalaiset yádi áyá xat. Howie Martindale yoo duwasáakw ax xúx. Mitchell Prescott áwé ax éesh sáayi, ka Lorna Woods áwé ax tláa. Ax léelk’w has áwé Binkley ka Amundsen. Kaachxana.áak'wx' áwé xat koowdzitee, ka Sheet’káx’ yei xat yatee yeedát. Gunalchéesh.

My Tlingit nickname is Átk’aheen, and my English name is Vivian Faith Prescott. My family and I belong to the T’akdeintaan clan, and our clan house is called the Snail House. I am a child of the Sáami and Suomalainen. My husband's name is Howie Martindale. My father's name is Mitchell Prescott and my mother's is Lorna Woods. My grandparents are the Binkleys and the Amundsens. I was born in Wrangell, Alaska, and now reside in Sitka, Alaska. Thank-you.

Hello from Planet Alaska

2010-08-10T11:21:00.001-04:00

Hello from Planet Alaska. I'm new at this so I'll be posting every other week.