Phillip at Wachusett The grating of the dried oaks of Wachusettleaf upon layered leafwould shatter the wind’s soft lilting whisperin the sea-pines at Pokanoket.I listen for it nightly in my sleep,and hear the wandering dead of the Wampanoagswailing amongst the duneslooking for their people.My father went among the Nipmucsto die; ...

Pushing the Boundaries: An Interview with Two New England Native Artists Virginia McLaurin is a PhD student in the Anthropology Department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, specializing in Native Studies and Film. Her Eastern Cherokee ancestry led to her academic focus on both dominant filmic and televisual representations of ...

Don't Look Back She was in a home for those who wait, where they sit and fondle favored toys from the bins of memory, picking through the litter of their lives and muttering bits of dialogue from happier times. They seem to understand each other’s lives, and bond, while preserving ...

Phoebe “Songbundle” Legere (Abenaki) lives in Maine and New York City. She is an internationally recognized composer and multi-disciplinary artist.

Dance, Pray, Heal: Strong Medicine Content warning: alcoholism, self harm Last fall, I let my guard down in the place where spirits get eaten. I found myself alone in my empty two-bedroom apartment on the reservation, sending up smoke to Creator. It was a time of reckoning. “Please give me strength and vision ...

Writer’s Statement You could say that my sons turned me into a children’s author at a time when my main objective was writing and publishing poetry. First of all, the traditional Abenaki and Iroquois stories I told them as bedtime stories (stories I’d learned not in my own childhood from ...

Kataahdin     Read Suzanne Rancourt's article in Combat Stress about trauma and her healing through expressive arts and Native culture and ceremony at www.stress.org   Suzanne S. Rancourt's book, Billboard in the Clouds, Curbstone Press, was the 2001 recipient of the Native Writers First Book Award. She is an Abenaki ...

Standing in a Wooded Area Iti waya chito fako Iti chito kanafa shila kchulakko Iti illi Large tree Leaning without limbs Large dry tree fallen turned up By the roots Dead ~iti kafi 2017 You Never Have to Ask I was six years old and my little brother three, when ...

Statement on Poetry  by Carol Bachofner I’ve been “writing things down” for a very long time. In fact I don’t recall when I didn’t. Because of the fact that I write things down, words are important to me. When I write poems, I am acutely aware that words are the ...

Mi’kmaq Creation Story for Faith Liljegren upon her Confirmation Of course you are familiar with the Genesis creation stories, and know others exist in different cultures around our world. We Mi’kmaq have our version, too—deep and involved. It goes something like this: All life seen and unseen comes from me, ...

Return to Dawnland I Am Passamaquoddy “Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. It is far better take things as they come, along with patience and equanimity.”  ~Carl Jung  To say that my ...

My Grandfather My grandfather, Sylvester Francis, used to hunt and trap in the Sunkhaze area. He also took all kinds of jobs to put food on the table. I’m sure his hunting and trapping put food on the table. Back in the day we lived in direct relation with the ...