A New Time Native Diversity
- A New Time Native Diversity
And there are Indians named Jamaal and Leila and Omar; and what were their parents thinking about in those days between Alcatraz and Oglala? Where were they living? Who was that guy, Mustafa Old Man? How did that ermineskin woman in the geyley get to the Stomp Dance grounds?
What do you make of those Moorish crescents in the Spanish silver at Zuni? Where is that Aztec salesman Abdulio? Is it Coffee or Kofi on the eastern shore? Are we northeast neighbors of da Gaul? Don’t we protect our mocs with Scotchgard? Don’t many of us speak in the Bolivar Blues?
Ron Welburn is an enrolled member of the Southeastern Cherokee Confederacy, a mentor for Wordcraft Circle, and chair of the Five Colleges, Inc., American Indian Studies Committee. He teaches American literatures at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. His most recent collection of poems is Council Decisions (1990).
