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Wetzelbill

(27,910 posts) Wed Dec 18, 2013, 05:52 PM Dec 2013

‘Skin Writing 101

I have a new short story out at Hinchas de Poesia if anybody is interested. - Bill

‘Skin Writing 101
by BILL WETZEL

“Oki niskani, my name is Web Monroe.”

In the old days, he used to introduce himself to a crowd by using a sentence part Blackfeet and part English. Then he’d joke, “That sentence is a half-breed, kind of like me.” The crowd would laugh, every single time. He’d add that his band was “Amskapi Pikuni” which meant, as he would explain “a Blackfeet from Montana.”

Web Monroe was sitting at his desk at a quarter past ten o’clock on a Tuesday morning, preparing to teach a class at ten-thirty. Native American Literature, or as he affectionately called it: “‘Skin Writing 101.” He had a syllabus lineup of some of the greats: Welch, Momaday, Silko, Harjo, Ortiz. In his estimation, they didn’t make indigenous writers like that anymore. He took a sip of coffee from his custom manufactured Rez Made coffee mug, one of only a couple in existence, and watched the first few students wander into the room. After a moment, Web found himself daydreaming about his own writing career. He had to admit to himself that he loved the adulation. He was shy and soft-spoken and often the audience consisted of only a few dozen people, but he enjoyed the attention. Somehow the allure seemed different for him. As if he enjoyed it for other, more pure reasons than some of the younger indigenous writers these days. He was humble about it. For him, promotion and book tours were more about the language. About art. These kids these days, in his opinion, were more influenced by Western attitudes than any true respect for traditional language and culture.

They were in it to become famous. They played towards the West by mouthing platitudes about the sacredness of language and culture and were rewarded for it. They presented themselves as either sage guardians trying to preserve something sacred or as homogenous “Super Indians” spouting stories about generic Indians on generic reservations eating generic commodities and telling generic rez jokes. White people ate that shit up, he knew.

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