Text

Various texts from authors such as Peter Blue Cloud, Kao Kalia Yang, Naomi Shihab Nye, and Mitsuye Yamada 

Full texts are available in the full score to your left and also below.

We Require Stories: This is what I have come to believe about human beings: We require food, water, shelter, air….. and stories. Something in us needs to speak and to be heard, to sing and to hear music, to speak our truth, and listen for the truths of others.

Excepted from from “The Sacraments of the Word and Celebration” by Victoria Safford From A People So Bold, John Gibb Millspaugh, editor Skinner House Books, 2009 Used with Permission 

Swede Hollow (or your own community story)

On December 11, 1956, the houses of Swede Hollow were doused with gasoline and set on fire by the St. Paul fire department. The 60-100 families that lived there, by this time mostly Mexican-American immigrants, had been evicted and relocated prior to the fire.The community, which began in the 1850s with the Swedes had never had running water or city services and so had built outhouses on stilts above Phalen Creek. They also did not pay taxes and there were no businesses in Swede Hollow. But this settlement, which was the first stop for many immigrants on their way up and out, was the only home for others.

It might be difficult to imagine now, but there was a great amount of anti-Swedish sentiment in Minnesota in the 1850s. This was true for each wave of new immigrants, including those who lived in Swede Hollow —the Irish, the Poles and Italians, and later, Mexican-Americans.

And yet, before the Swede Hollow settlement, there were Native Americans who lived on that land and all over the United States, including where we sit right now. And there are also those who were brought to this country against their will.

You will hear first hand accounts of people’s experiences. Through these beautiful, sometimes difficult stories, we can come to understand how our neighbor’s lives are closely linked to who they are, or who they are perceived to be — by their past experiences, and by their history. These are our neighbor’s stories, our neighbor’s voices — our voices.

© 2017 Catherine Dalton, All Rights Reserved

No Irish Need Apply

GIRL WANTED – In a small private family – a young girl, 14 or 15 years old, either American or German, to take care of a young child. She must have good references. Wages $3 a month. No Irish need apply.

One young man wanted, from 16-18 years of age, able to write. No Irish need apply.

CLEAN, ACTIVE GIRL WANTED – To do the housework of a private family; must be a first rate washer and ironer, a good plain cook, and kind and obliging to children. No Irish need apply.

Notice to Contractors – The White washing and papering of Hacket & Keefe’s Saloon will be given to the lowest bidder. bids to be in sealed proposals and not to exceed $13 – the balance in whiskey. No Irish Need apply.

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River Crossing

In a rough whisper, my father told my mother to hurry. Did she not know the soldiers were coming? With her fingers she dug into the moist ground of a bamboo patch. In the shallow hole, she placed all the pictures of her brothers, her mother, herself. Her baby shivered against her body, calling her back into the night. She ran to my father’s side.

He tied her to himself. On her neck she wore the heavy silver necklace her mother had given her. The pieces of embroidery, gifts from her mother so that when she died she would find her way home, she put in between her child and herself; she tied Dawb to her front. My grandmother was already tied to my father. He took everything off but his underwear, and then he dragged everyone into the cold water. It was after midnight. Behind them there was the crack of more guns, the sounds of more yelling in the madness of pursuit.

The currents were strong. Somehow my mother hung onto the baby. Somewhere in the undertow, when her head was beneath the water, the heavy silver necklace slipped from her neck. My grandmother had her shaman’s tools, her iron gong and her ring of copper coins, the sacred water buffalo horns, all tied to her. They gasped for air and tried to breathe. They thought they heard voices in the water. My father tried to swim. His muscles hurt. He thought he would never make it. He saw the lights of Thailand across the expanse of night. When the dawn streamed in on folds of soft pink, layers of white, a rising blue, they knew they had passed the midway point between the two countries, the old one they loved, where so many had died, and a new one they did not know, where so many would be born. It was still. The water was very cold. Their hopes had gone numb in the night. The baby was white against the black of the water.

When my father’s feet touched the river bottom, he did not know if they were far underwater or close to shore. He walked on the shifting pebbles, and he pulled, for all the years running through the jungle, the weight of his wife, his mother, and his child. He fell to his knees on the shore and looked behind him. There were men on the other side with guns, firing. He could not hear sounds, there was silence in his ears. In the river, he saw a family being dragged into a Laotian gunboat. He shivered. He knew the fate that awaited them on the shores of Laos. My grandmother and mother had crawled to their feet and were hovering over the baby, silent and pale and unmoving. Her little arms dangled limply at at her side. My mother started to cry. She rocked the baby in her arms, and she gulped the air as if she were underwater. Had it all been for nothing? The sun rose higher, a cool breeze blew, and in the layers of pink and orange, in the leaving of the gray dawn, my mother saw the lids of the baby flutter.

If my family had crossed the river two months later, they would have been massacred. Thailand was no longer taking refugees from Laos; there were too many coming in.

From The Latehomecomer, by Kao Kalia Yang © 2008 Coffee House Press. Used with permission

The Old Man’s Lazy

I heard the Indian Agent say,
has no pride, no get up
and go. Well, he came out
here and walked around my
place, that agent. Steps
all thru the milkweed and
curing wormwood; tells me
my place is overgrown
and should be made use of.

The old split cedar
fence stands at many
angles, and much of it
lies on the ground like
a curving sentence of
stick writing. And old
language, too, black with
age, with different
shades of green of moss
and lichen.
He always
says he understands us
Indians,
and why don’t
I fix the fence at least;
so I took some fine
hawk feather fixed
to a miniature woven
shield
and hung this
from an upright post
near the house.
He
came by last week
and looked all around
again, eyed the feathers
for a long time.

He didn’t
say anything, and he didn’t
smile even, or look within
himself for the hawk.

Maybe sometime I’ll
tell him that the fence
isn’t mine to begin with
but was put up by
the white guy who used
to live next door.

It was
years ago. He built a cabin,
then put up a fence. He only
looked at me once,
after his fence was up,
he nodded at me as if
to show that he knew I
was here, I guess.
It was
a pretty fence, enclosing
that guy, and I felt lucky
to be on the outside
of it.
Well, that guy
dug holes all over his
place, looking for gold,
and I guess
he never
found any. I watched
him grow old for over
twenty years, and bitter,
I could feel his anger
all over the place.
And
that’s when I took to
leaving my place to do
a lot of visiting.
Then
one time I came home
and knew he was gone
for good.
My children would
always ask me why I
don’t move to town
and be closer to them.
Now, they
tell me I’m lucky to be
living way out here.
And
they bring their children
and come out and visit me,
and I can feel that they
want to live out here
too, but can’t
for some reason, do it.
Each day
a different story is told me
by the fence,
the rain and wind and snow,
the sun and moon and
shadows,
this wonderful earth,
this Creation.
I tell my grandchildren
many of these stories,
perhaps
this too is one of them.

from Clans of Many Nations:Selected Poems,1969-1994, © 1995 by PeterBlue Cloud/Aroniawenratem.
Used with permission of White Pine Press

Sammy Davis, Jr.

who can make the sun rise?
sprinkle it with dew

she awakened me with tears
get up baby / get up & pack
martin luther king, jr. has been shot and killed you
& i baby / we’re goin to
atlanta
mom & i flew there to pay
our respects
say goodbye to a man & hello
to his dream
i have a dream that one day…
we crashed a hotel segregated
high rise tower on peach tree street
with white valets
& nervous executives
eager to appease they sorta
welcomed our presence kinda
treated us proper like
tellin us ‘bout all the amenities this four star
had to offer
so many things but i only heard
the pool / the pool
so first things first
i went to swim
lap after lap
back ’n’ forth
like esther mae williams come down outta da hood
oblivious
to the scavengers & piranha
angry white men pointing / disgusted
flustered white women in high heels / appalled
there’s a NEGRO in our pool
a COLORED girl, i tell you