EXHIBITS
Intermountain Indian School: Poetry and Literature
Poetry and Literature
Poetry and literature were another area where Intermountain students drew on their traditions in order to express themselves. In its early years, Intermountain’s main literary focus was on teaching students who spoke only Navajo to read and write in English. However, the school still hired outstanding teachers and writers like Ann Nolan Clark, who had taught in a Zuni pueblo for many years and wanted students to feel connected to their culture. Though white, she had grown up in New Mexico among people of many cultures and wrote stories about Native American life with text in both English and Native languages for use in the classroom. In 1953, while teaching at Intermountain, she won the Newbery Medal for her book, Secret of the Andes.
As time went on, more people became concerned about helping Intermountain students see the value in their own cultural traditions. There was little Navajo or Native American literature published at the time, since many Native cultures are based on oral instead of written tradition, but English teachers like Alexa West wanted Intermountain students to see that their own culture could have a place in great literature. To address the shortage of available material, West collected poems and essays written by her students and used them to teach her classes, holding up Native American voices alongside the others they were studying. One of the collections, Examine, shows a variety of viewpoints from Navajo students. Examples of some of her Navajo students' writings are included below.
“You are a young Navajo
Made once from turquoise and silver
Creation of Living Nature made you,
Brown, strong human being.”
—Bruce Paddock
Bitter Wind
"Bitter Wind
Sad, almost poor
Selling horses, sheep,
For drinks, begging for money,
Leaving home, leaving kids,
Leaving parents,
Pawning jewelry.
Sickness, loneliness,
Cold, Freezing,
School, thinking of families,
Thinking of home, sisters, brothers,
Sheep and horses.
Come home from school—
Grandma all alone,
Picking up wood.
Loneliness . . .
Mom and Dad fighting over drinking . . .
Bringing family back together . . .
No more old days . . .
Bitter wind.
—Bessie Yazzie
“I remember the day
Dad built the hogan,
I was about four or five.
It took him days to finish it.
Mom was happy for it was
built for her.
Now we moved to the mountains.
Now the hogan sits all alone
out in the desert.
I visited the old home last summer.
There on the inside was a nest.
There were a couple of little birds inside.
I thought, maybe they too will be big like me someday,
For I lived in the hogan in my younger days.”
—Harrison Wilson in Examine.
“Desert is the land of my people
Where the sun bakes down hard,
Where the cactus stands high into the light blue sky
As it seems to be begging for the summer rain.
Desert is where no animals can live without water,
Where the wolves howl at dawn as though they are praying for food.”
—David Allen in Examine
“Long, dark nights
Dancers chant all night
People are coming and going
The smell of fry bread and stews
Fires everywhere
People keep themselves warm
The freshness of woods burning
The dancers are getting ready”
—Charlene Watchman in Examine
The school had its own printing press and published the school newspaper, Smoke Signals. It also published literary magazines like Writings Diné and Naatsiilid during the Intermountain Indian School years and Spider Webs of Silver in the Inter-Tribal years to showcase the writing accomplishments of its students. The following two poems come from Inter-Tribal students.
“When I’m in love
I love the fire-flies
dancing with the summer nights
the spider webs
of silver
the scent of patchouli
on my jacket
and pine-cones
flying with the
rhythm of fire”
—Deborah Liberty (Flathead) in Spider Webs of Silver
“I was born to be Indian
to hear the drums call into moon
shine nights
To obey my elders like a captured
feather sewn on a pipe
To dance in rhythm with firefly
and hear the rain tell of fallen
stars
To run into snow and feel the
patterns of frozen sorrow
To look up and see the Nations
of the world in colors streaking
across a fallen sunset
To feel pride in animals because
they are thoughts of Nature
To feel I am sacred because
I am given a form of sparkling
life”
—Angie Sireech (Northern Ute) in Spider Webs of Silver