Indians
Rent from DeepDyve- Indians
The Depression Franklin Delano Roosevelt help is on the way with the C. C. C. and Social Security
He didn’t bring the men and families down from Kanawake but on arrival of the two men and two women and horde of kids he got them jobs. Not much. Ditch digging was all he could offer. They didn’t complain but took what was offered gratefully. Today you might say they were migrant workers but so was he as he was never granted citizenship until nineteen-twenty-four. [End Page 95]
Hunger is an ugly thing. He knew what it was . . . no not as a boy on the farm but as the water boy for fifty cents a day. Too young to work iron for the American genius, he did encourage later the “Indian” men to climb high in good spirit/balance to the great skies where the Haudenosaunee first lived in harmony.
In his inimical way he touched that sky. [End Page 96]
Maurice Kenny, born in Watertown, New York, in 1929, is one of the most celebrated Native American poets of all time. He has published over thirty books of poetry, fiction, and essays. His Mama Poems, an extended elegy, won the American Book Award in 1984, and his books Blackrobe, Isaac Jogues, and Between Two Rivers were nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. He considers his most important work to be Tekonwatonti, Molly Brant, 1735–1795, a historical poetry journey in many voices that honors the Mohawk figure Molly Brant and explores an important time in American history when the British, French, Iroquois, and colonists were engaged in a monumental collision of cultures. Calling him “a master lyricist,” Joseph Bruchac writes: “Kenny is the creator of a new form of dramatic monologue in his creations of the voices and time of Isaac Jogues and Molly Brant.” For the past four years, between New York and Mexico, Kenny has extended his method of historic poetry in writing two new books, Conversations with Frida Kahlo: Collage of Memory and Connotations, a collection devoted to the life of his father. Kenny has taught in many places, including St. Lawrence University, Paul Smith’s College, the University of Victoria, Lehigh University, and the University of Oklahoma. In 1995 St. Lawrence University awarded him the degree of doctor of literature. He currently teaches at the State University of New York at Potsdam as “Writer in Residence.” His latest poetry collection is Carving Hawk: New and Selected Poems. His favorite flowers are Black-Eyed Susans and Blue Morning Glories.
