Category: Beth Piatote

Antikoni

That is the name of the play by Beth Piatote now playing in Los Angeles! This, from “People’s World”:

“LOS ANGELES — Theatergoers are in for a very special occasion—a revelation, it’s not too excessive to say—if they will expand their horizons a bit and embrace a Native American perspective on view now.

“Currently celebrating its 30th anniversary season, Native Voices presents the world premiere of Beth Piatote’s Antíkoni at the historic Southwest Campus of the Autry Museum of the American West, formerly known as the Southwest Museum of the American Indian, deemed the oldest museum in Los Angeles. According to DeLanna Studi, Native Voices Artistic Director, the work ‘developed during our 2020 Festival of New Plays,’ and it ‘perfectly embodies our spirit and mission.’

“Staged in a space that once housed thousands of Native ancestral remains and cultural materials, this timely retelling of Sophocles’ Greek classic, set within a museum full of Indigenous artifacts, centers a Nez Perce family caught between opposing pressures of the modern world and the ancient culture that Indigenous peoples commit to maintain.”

We know Beth from Fishtrap, where she was first a Writer in Residence in local schools, then and several times since a presenter at Summer Fishtrap. And we know her as part of a group of Nez Perce writers and speakers called “North Star” who have been at Tamkaliks and done readings at Fishtrap and at the Josephy Center.

And many of us know Beth from her book, The Beadworkers, a collection of poems, stories, and this play, Antikoni. The play is set in the near future, with the Nez Perce War of 1877, Native artifacts, and the question of how we deal with history, traditional truths, and decisions that must be made in the present day set against the backdrop of the classic Greek play, Antigone. Not really as backdrop, but as mirror reflecting dilemmas faced by Native Tribes and people today, and historians and museums intent on interpreting the past.

That’s an injustice. You will have to read the book and Antikoni, and/or if you find yourself in the Los Angeles area between now and November 24, see the play at the Autry. It’s an all-Native cast with Native direction in a venue that once housed thousands of Native artifacts. Or if you know someone… or at least read the book. There are other treasures in The Beadworkers.

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Photo from Fishtrap

The Way to Rainy Mountain, N. Scott Momaday

Here’s how I found my way to The Way to Rainy Mountain

For the past few years, the Josephy Center has had a book group. It started with small, in-person meetings, and moved online with the coming of Covid. Our last book was Murder at the Mission: A Frontier Killing, Its Legacy of Lies, and the Taking of the American West, by Blaine Harden. We were blessed to have Harden and Bobbie Conner and Chuck Sams join us for the discussion. Conner and Sams have Cayuse roots, and were consulted by Harden as he researched and wrote the book.Read Rich’s Post →

Indian Books

Our number one Josephy Library volunteer, Elnora Cameron, just returned from a trip across the North, and into the Midwest. She spent a few hours in Louise Erdrich’s Minneapolis bookstore, Birchbark Books (https://birchbarkbooks.com), and came back with a very interesting box of books by and about American Indians.Read Rich’s Post →

ta ‘c meeywi and qe’ci’yew’yew’

I don’t know very many Nez Perce words, and will never be a speaker, but it I love the sound of the language and hope to learn a few more. For now, Good Morning and Thank You are enough.

Tac meeywi to all, and qe’ci’yew’yew’ to the many who responded to my blog post about whites writing about Indians. A few things stand out: people are interested in learning the history of Indian peoples—and all American history—that is true and real. They are tired of the omissions and outright lies taught for years in our school textbooks, dismayed by what most of us learned as children. They are very upset about the current boarding school revelations, and wonder how this could have gone on and not be known about in our own times.Read Rich’s Post →

The Beadworkers

Here’s a holiday book recommendation—a gift to yourself and then to pass on to others: The Beadworkers, by Beth Piatote.

Cover art is beadwork
by artist Marcus Amerman

I got an early copy weeks ago, and sped through the poems and stories quickly, but for some reason stopped at the play that ends the collection. This morning I read it in a sitting, and wondered why I had left it so long.

“neti’telwit / human beings” gathers the stories of Indian Wars, of legal and physical mistreatment of Indians, loss and recapture of language; competing notions of getting along in the American world and hanging onto traditions and meanings passed on by elders; the interrelationships of museum and tribal holdings, family and communal pasts. And it weaves and works the script—present and past, now and hereafter—with the loom built in Antigone, by the Greek tragedian Sophocles. It’s a tour de force that holds up the tragedies, disappointments, complexities and the hopes of Indian America, then turns them deftly for our consideration–and importantly allows us, the readers, no easy answers.

Beth Piatote came to Fishtrap almost 20 years ago. We honored Indians that year, calling it “Circling Back.” One of the guests was Mark Trahant, Shoshone-Bannock journalist from Idaho with a long history of work for tribal and mainstream newspapers. He brought Beth along—my recollection is that their history went back to southern Idaho, where Beth grew up.

She was working on a multi-generational novel at the time, and teaching at the University of Oregon in journalism and, maybe, Indian studies. We loved her writing, and invited her to be a writer in residence at our local schools. She did, and we loved her more. But then she went back and went on with her life, almost out of our reach and thoughts.

Doug Hyde–‘etweyé·wise

But she came back. Somehow a couple of years ago I found her teaching and writing at UC Berkeley. She was learning the Nez Perce language and making contact with Nez Perce elders at Nespelem, where she was enrolled, but had not grown up. A short time after that she told me how she had brought Nez Perce language elders from Nespelem, Lapwai, and Umatilla to Berkeley, where they met with Haruo Aoki, compiler of the acknowledged Nez Perce-English dictionary.

This summer, as we readied Nez Perce artist Doug Hyde’s sculpture for the Josephy Center courtyard, I reached out to Beth and those language elders. Beth brought Aoki himself into the conversation, and together they named the Doug Hyde sculpture. They named it ‘etweyé·wise—“I return from a hard journey.”

Beth came back to Fishtrap this summer to read and teach, and struck a new cohort of Fishtrap faculty and attendees as she had struck us those years ago. (She’s already invited back for this summer.)

And then The Beadworkers came in the mail.

By the way, don’t skip the poems and stories on the way to  neti’telwit / human beings.