Empowerment

Several months ago Adrian C. Louis sent me an e-mail about a dream he had that he partially remembered. He said I was in that dream, which is why he told me about it. In my reply to his e-mail I told him about an experience I had some time ago that his dream reminded me about. A bit later he e-mailed me in return and asked if he could make a poem from our e-mail conversation. I told him to go ahead, why not. Adrian wrote the "poem" based on our conversation-communication and sent it to me. The following is the poem that came about.

Me and Simon Send Smoke Signals on the Great and Gaseous Internet

Me:
"Hey dog, I know you don't want to hear this, but I had a
dream you were in the other night. Yeah, I know it's
weird. I dreamed that you and I were sitting in a bar and
you were trying to get me to drink and I kept saying no,
and finally I started drinking and got shit-faced. Then
we staggered down this dirt road to an old run-down
motel, a shit-ass dump like I stayed in on the outskirts of
downtown Gallup one week many moons ago. We
walked into the motel room and visible from the
doorway was the bathroom. The tub was full of water
and there was a young Indian girl, maybe 15 or 16 totally
submerged in the water—dead and we both ran away
from there like chicken-shit drunks. I woke up
shivering. That's about all I can now recall of the dream,
but it was very strange and kinda scary. I don't know
what it means, cuz."

Simon:
"Yeah, that's strange and scary. Such dreams, such stuff
scares the shit out of me. And you hear and see shit like
that in and around Gallup, Holbrook, Albuquerque,
Vancouver, Rapid City, and Phoenix. Hellholes our land
has turned into. I used to be afraid, and still am I guess,
to go into Gallup. Now I just pass by fast on the
Interstate and don't look back. Well, look in the rear and
side mirrors for the cops! Years ago once walking with
a Navajo-Ute guy through a dark and dangerous-looking
parking lot outside Milan's, a dive northside bar across
'the Purky,' we stumbled upon a guy with a knife
stuck in him. Oh shit, what we gonna do? What am I gonna
do? You don't know what the fuck to do, you just walk
away fast, muttering, cussing, and checking all the dark
spots around you. Shit, man, you don't know why, how,
what or nothing, a kind of panic you can't just push aside,
no way. You get kind of brainless too. Sometimes I think
you just end up cussing yourself for walking that way,
being there, just being there, you blame yourself, in other
words, you know, like it was your fault for crissakes,
cussing yourself and the guy with the knife in him,
cussing and blaming yourselves for being Indian, geesus."

After I read the poem—that is what Adrian called it—that had come about from the e-mail conversation between us, I thought about it as an example of empowerment that comes about when we communicate with each other. That is what Adrian Louis and I were doing, simply communicating with each other. Being writers and poets was secondary. Even being Indigenous writers and poets was secondary. We were simply talking with each other via e-mail. Conversing and being in communication with each other is an act of community. It is also an act of affirmation. We acknowledge each other and are affirmed as a result. By our acknowledgement and affirmation, we are empowered, basically and simply because knowledge shared with each...