Who Are the Chickasaw Indians? A program by Rebecca Hatcher Travis

Who Are the Chickasaw Indians? Come hear Chickasaw Nation citizen Rebecca Hatcher Travis tell stories about her American Indian heritage and read from her award winning book, Picked Apart the Bones on Wednesday, August 10^th at 7pm in the Friendswood Public Library Activity Room.  Rebecca Hatcher Travis’ book Picked Apart the Bones won the “First Book Award for Poetry” from the Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas.  

About her award winning book, Rebecca Hatcher Travis writes, I see many of the poems in the book Picked Apart the Bones in the color red, since they were written to remember – the stories, the struggles, the people of the past.  Other poems, bright yellow as the sun, rejoice in the continuation and determination of generations of Native Americans.  Still others, in shimmering green, celebrate the beauty of and our connection to the sacred natural world.     

Rebecca Hatcher Travis has graciously shared three of her poems for inclusion in From the Reference Desk. These poems include Blood Wise, Easy Clay, and Pieces of Place. These poems, with additional comments by Rebecca, follow immediately:

Blood Wise

green rolling hills with sacred mounds

ceremony and forbidden ways

the blood remembers

what memory does not

like the instinct to survive

intuition confirms

our deepest knowledge

we understand where we belong

The poem Blood Wise along with a copy of the book Picked Apart the Bones are included in a time capsule sealed in 2010 on the grounds of the newly opened Chickasaw Cultural Center in Sulphur, Oklahoma. 

Easy Clay

find the right trail

down the hill

to the old slow river

there along the bank underfoot

you will find its home

sister calls it easy clay

as she rolls it carefully

between her palms

stretches snake coils out one by one

to form her useful pots

still gathered by the riverside

this old earth almost falls into shape

it tries so hard to please

for easy clay remembers why

it lives there by the water

Easy Clay is a tribute to all potters for the art of creating handmade vessels.   

Pieces of Place

how this land clings beneath my fingernails

travels down my throat in small armies  

moves under my skin without a sound

year after year I hurry back

step into the cool of Travertine Creek

hear the roar of Turner Falls

sip their clear spring waters

until I am so full of this place

I could burst

Pieces of Place relates to the natural beauty of the crosstimbers found within the Chickasaw Nation in Oklahoma which includes some of the purest spring waters in the world. 

Come to the Friendswood Public Library on August 10^th at 7pm to hear Rebecca share stories about her American Indian heritage and read from her award winning book, Picked Apart the Bones.

 

More poems by Rebecca Hatcher Travis:

Singing Down the Sun

Urban Sprawl