I see I’ve been posting a lot of poems, some stories, a lot of discussion and biographical background. I think I need to add something from my time at Sherman Institute. That was a very important and formative period in my life and helped focus my desire to teach. I’ve written a lot about it, in articles, some of which still need to see the light of day, and in my autobiography which I’m still working on. Sherman Institute was an off-reservation Federal boarding school for native American students. I saw the reasons why the word Institution was appropriate, and I saw how easily the government was able to control and remove what it saw as impediments. I also saw the strength of spirit of people I hadn’t known about, it tore my heart then, does today, and always will. I hope you’ll read the details when you can. 

This poem appeared with a group of five in Weber Studies: An Interdisciplinary Humanities Journal, Volume 12, Number 1, Winter 1995.

Sherman Institute

A thousand miles two years
without reservation and I carry
carefully among the white and English
my own song and
the true knowledge of the sun
I am still inside me
and bound at my neck
or free
my black hair shines