Indigenous Poetics in Canada

20. Revitalizing Indigenous Swagger: Poetics from a Plains Cree Perspective

20 Revitalizing Indigenous Swagger: Poetics from a Plains Cree Perspective Lindsay “Eekwol” Knight Memory, thoughts, language, words, translations, recitation, and reaction. These are the stages observed with each piece released from whatever that place is in which the lyrics originate. I never know when the good ones will bubble and surface, exposing themselves into forms I process. Sometimes I feel captured, reluctant, and resistant to these persistent poetics, but then succumb to the grander notion of a bigger picture, a better future, a collective necessity for recognition of identity and self. It is for this process that I pay respect to the spirits and ask for strength, understanding, and guidance as I know that stories come to me with intention and purpose. Through my writing process, although I let feeling and heart sit paramount over practice and intellect, I still engage in academic and community research of the history of Indigenous music and then develop lyrical poetry with respect for our ancestral memory as I know that this discipline is the key to maintenance of Indigenous culture. There is an obligation for recognition of Plains Cree music as part of complex and interrelated relationships and connections to land, spirits, and each other. For example, social and ceremonial events like the round dance and the sun dance are all focused on the use of song and instrument as a means of communication from the physical world to the spirit world. Beyond the old social and ceremonial songs and music, there is a continuum of recent Indigenous artists who create, practise, and perform all kinds of music, not in separate compartments or categories, but within an interconnected sameness that transcends time and place. Some examples are drum groups like the Young Scouts and rock musicians like Buffy 259 260 L I N D S AY “E E K W O L ” K N I G H T Sainte-Marie. The Young Scouts use a modernized style of drumming, quicker with stops, and some of their songs include a flute. Their songs are predominantly sung in the English language with parts in Cree. Wellknown performer Buffy Sainte-Marie also uses the English language and includes Plains Cree–style chanting and drumming in her songs. References to her Plains Cree background and teachings are peppered throughout her music. Through their lyrics, both groups use poetics as a way of maintaining Plains Cree identity and are therefore responsible for presenting songs in a way that acknowledges our way of being. Contemporary Indigenous song stems from musical practices of the past, and although adapted and ever changing in language, sound, and style, it maintains the innate purpose of songs and music as an essential connector to all things spiritual, economic, political, and social within Indigenous peoples. While not always intentionally reactionary, contemporary Indigenous artists in all areas of the arts are successfully capturing Indigenous cosmologies in the space of resistance movements. Plains Cree poets, through the use of words, using English and/or Cree, are re-establishing the definition of resistance within Indigenous cultures by relaying truths that can be translated and interpreted by a wider audience. It is because of this growing community that it becomes necessary to continue to build supportive discourse within Indigenous arts because they speak to resistance and become a tool for decolonization within contemporary Indigenous communities. For myself, I have always written lyrics from the perspective of a Plains Cree woman. I observe what I experience in my homeland, both dreaming and awake, and reinterpret it into words. The underlying, undeniable part of the process is that the foundation of everything I write and then say comes from the place of resistance, always consciences of our unique Plains Cree past, present, and future. And while I am not a poet in the “traditional” sense of the word, I view poetics as anything that flows—words, music, paint, beadwork, a river—there is poetry in it all. To me, poetics in Indigenous world views becomes something different and should be embraced as such as that is how we resist the loss of comprehension of and connection to both the physical and spiritual world. Both traditional Indigenous and Western-educated Indigenous scholars adhere to the concept of music as a foundational necessity to all aspects of livelihood. As a form of Indigenous poetics, our music adds to the ongoing flow of poetry ringing throughout our history. Métis scholar Jo-Ann Episkenew claims that stories, dance, and song were considered beautiful each...