Native Writer Fantasies 2022 by Cliff Taylor

I started writing seriously when I was 15 years old and a sophomore in high school. I was into horror movies, comics, Kurt Vonnegut and Jack Kerouac. Like most Indians at that age, my life was kind of a living hell. But writing gave me contact with the ecstatic realm of the spirits. I wrote to live. My writing goals back then? I didn’t even know. I just knew that I was a writer and I wanted to spend my life writing books, whatever that was meant to be like.

And then I spent next 25 years kind of trying to do that, haha.

I wrote short stories for years, then submerged myself in the pure magic of poetry, wrote an immense memoir, wrote it again, and then wrote it again, and then I taught myself to write essays and wrote about 50 of those. While all that was going on, I Sundanced for a decade, worked at a gas station for a decade, moved to Seattle, talked to a lot of spirits, remained poor, eventually found love, and ultimately wound up on the Oregon Coast. It’s been a good life. Everything has changed, but my single-minded dedication to writing has just always been the same as it ever was, the same as it ever was.

And I’ve been happy with that, for real.

As you can imagine, I’m not the same person I was when I first started writing (even if I kind of am). Now, I live for my people, my tribe, the dreams I’ve been given during 20 years of ceremony and praying with my relatives. Now, I know that both I and my writing serve a purpose, a vision. I know that my writing is a medium for things bigger than myself to speak through, to sing through, to storytell through, so that the big elder understandings of our tribal reality can pour into this world, into the minds of those who dig my essays or horror stories or poems, into this huge, galloping, shapeshifting animal that we’re all riding in the strange belly of; this animal of our collective reality. When I write I don’t feel like I’m alone; when I write I feel these other forces that are with me (it’s half the reason I write; for the company it brings), the spirits and the ancestors. We compose together. We imagine and craft together. See, we’re all serving the same big purpose.

I want to challenge myself to be very explicit with this essay and say, as a Native writer I want to write things that overflow with the same kind of power and beauty that is so profoundly and commonly found in our tribal culture, ceremonies, and gatherings, so that those things can be with whoever reads my stuff, even if it’s inside a horror story or in an essay about living in New Orleans. I want to make my writing into these cool sci-fi medicine pods that travel around and dump beadwork into people’s laps, play recordings of elders talking, open windows onto tribal homelands, communicate visuals from the land of visions, drizzle soil, vibrate with the drumbeat that’s present in so many of our best memories. I want my writing to help Natives feel more Native and to help them on their journey to being more Native, just like so many others and so many things have helped me. I want my writing to make people feel proud to be who they are when they read it, to cause them to lift their head up and remember the good ones they’ve had in their lives, to inspire them to double-down on what really matters to them, to make them feel as strong and powerful as their heroes in their own very real way. I want my writing to be a bow-and-arrow to a kid who’s never held one, a gift from an elder to someone who’s never talked with an elder, a dream from the spirits, a map back home, a memorable power-up for their soul, a pair of moccasins to dance through their everyday life with, a sacred puzzle piece that really, really helps them. You know that relative that changed your life who you know you’ll never forget? I want my writing, my books, to be like that. That’s the aspiration I carry for them when I think about them in the quiet of the night.

And I’m one hundred percent sure that I’m not the only one who’s carrying this kind of vision when it comes to their writing or their art. I’ve been around long enough to really believe that the ancestors are whispering in all of our ears and they can see a best possible future that they’re working their happy/concerned asses off with us to try and achieve. This is just kind of the way I’m articulating it with my writing and my work; a translation of feeling, reflection, and experience. But what does it look like as we’re all working on it together? Good question. Let’s see what my fantasies have to say, haha.

I see us all, writers, artists, singers, activists, moms, dads, tribal-historians, speakers, jokesters, all infusing the greater collective culture with such an immense amount of Indigenous wisdom, beauty, story, culture, expression, prayer, and presence, that we kind of tip it over, like a bowl, so that its contents start to just fundamentally vibe with us in a way that is the opposite of how they fundamentally haven’t vibed with us, since basically just about the beginning. And our outpourings of inspired action and expression will connect with so much of the humanity inside of our neighbors and fellow citizens that people will just start to see us as humans, will respect us, will want to redress the wrongs of this country’s past, will want to give us our LAND BACK, will join us in protecting the waters, the plants, animals, our sacred sites, and our individual Indigenous cultures. And doing so will be both common sense and a passionate enterprise, growing the spirit of radical collaboration when it comes to steering this shapeshifting animal we’re all riding around in. America is going to become helplessly in favor of us Indians, like some great story where the misled finally get their act together and start to fall in with the folks who’ve been loving and serving the land and everything that’s worth loving about it all along. We’re going to be so loud and eloquent and undeniable and soulful and guided and radiantly Indigenous that America Herself is going to become our ally, become a water-protector, wear a mammoth LANDBACK patch across her back, and then…

Indians are going to make a ton of awesome movies telling our stories with big-budgets that are such masterpieces we’re going to win all the awards. We’re going to have heart-breaking plays on Broadway that have longer runs than Hamilton or Cats(!?). We’re going to write the great American Novel, make that Great Native American Novel, and we’re going to win even more Pulitzers and remind everyone that our stories are made to fly in literature’s greatest realms; but we’re also going to avalanche out into horror, sci-fi, fantasy, memoir, essay, short story, and comic books, turning out Native stories there too that’re just going to permanently change the color of the waters, tint them a deep red from here on out, haha. We’re going to become prodigious in all of the arts, unavoidable, beyond silencing, clear transmissions of the genius that resides in our people’s ancestral hearts. We’re going to be showing up in city councils, frequently on the radio’s top 40 (the Grammys too), wherever there’s an Indian mascot that needs retiring, at your kid’s school which is actually our kid’s school too, at the museums that’re still holding our tribe’s relics and belongings hostage, on the private property where our known sacred sites are, and praying at a river near you. We’re going to be riding our horses on a grand memorial ride through the streets of America to honor what was lost and to create new traditions and to bring healing to our people and to publicly demonstrate our beautiful, unkillable, powerful, and continued existence.

Can you feel this vision the ancestors are carrying on their horses beside us? It’s there in Reservation Dogs. It’s all over Instagram and social media. And it was there in a history-making way in Standing Rock. The truth is all of us Natives are feeling it, like a spring bubbling up in our hearts, the life-waters of everything our ancestors passed down to us just roaring on out.

My writing has a purpose nowadays. I can see all the young ones coming up, their arms loaded with their gifts, their eyes focused on how they’re going to transform things in ways we cannot even imagine. The key is knowing how we’re here to prepare things for them. If you’re Native then your life has this purpose: you’re a future-writer for the tribe and you’re meant to channel your people’s greatest dreams. Let it look like whatever it looks like. Don’t be too hard on yourself. Laugh hard and laugh regularly. Be rugged, be different, be your own beautiful person. Learn to make moccasins for yourself and then for others too. Feel that vision of your ancestors and push to make it into a true singing reality. Think of our little ones and do what you can with all that you got.

This year I hope to write a book of poems about my great-great-great grandpa Chief Standing Bear, to make it back to Nebraska for our tribe’s powwow (for the first time in several years), to watch season 2 of Reservation Dogs with my girlfriend and maybe our local Astoria Indian Club, and to get an even better hold on this prophetic wave of Indigenous cultural transformation that’s moving through the world right now, that’s the main story I want to be living in. I feel like it’s a damn good time to be Indian, haha. I feel like, despite everything, it’s somehow going to be a damn good year. Let’s be proud of what we’ve got, relatives, and see what game-changing things we can do.

Cliff Taylor is an enrolled member of the Ponca Tribe of Nebraska. He is the author of The Memory of Souls, a memoir about the Sundance and his life/walk with the little people. He can be reached through his website @ www.cliffponca.com