Indigenous Voices, Part 6: In Rez-idence

Episode Topic: In Rez-idence

“What is peace, and what does it have to do with poetry, language, stories?” Listen in to a conversation with Aniyunwiya/Cherokee Nation poet, scholar, author, and artist Jessica Doe about her creative journey and her time as the first-ever Indigenous fellow at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies.

Featured Speakers:

• Spencer French '24 M.A., University of Notre Dame
• Jessica Doe Mehta, University of Notre Dame

Read this episode's recap over on the University of Notre Dame's open online learning community platform, ThinkND: https://go.nd.edu/ada59a.

This podcast is a part of the ThinkND Series titled Indigenous Voices.

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Transcript

Introduction and Acknowledgements

spencer-french--he-him-_1_05-01-2025_153256 0:06

Hey everyone. Thank you for joining us for Indigenous Voices, a think ND series where you can engage with a legacy of diverse Native American cultures and celebrate the arts and self-expression of indigenous artists who enrich our lives through dance, music, song fashion, and the decorative and visual arts. I'm Spencer French, a poet and PhD candidate in English here at Notre Dame, I'm really excited to help facilitate this conversation. Jessica, it's good to see you. I'm gonna do a couple more yet. It's so good to see you. I'm gonna do some more, thank you to some co-sponsors and we'll get into this after a short intro for you as well. at this time I want to thank all the co-sponsors of Indigenous Voices, the Crock Institute for International Peace Studies, the Notre Dame Initiative on Race and Resilience, the Rachlin Murphy Museum of Art, the Native American Initiatives at the College of Arts and Letters, the Native American alumni and the Notre Dame Alumni Association. Thank you all for sponsoring this and making this conversation a little more possible. And now to the real focus. Welcome Jessica. I get the real distinct pleasure of introducing my friend Dr. Jessica Doe Meta, a visiting research fellow at Notre Dame's Crock Institute for International Peace Studies. Jessica is an, a multi inter anti disciplinary poet artist, scholar, born on Turtle Island, a term used by some American indigenous peoples for North America in the Northwest region, also known as Oregon. As a citizen of the Cherokee nation space, place, and indigenization are driving forces in her work, which have been described as avant-garde conceptualism. She's currently working on a monograph that expands to include modern contemporary indigenous indi queer poetics. has authored poetry, collections, novels, and short story collections. She has also enjoyed exhibitions around the globe, most recently at Don Dexter Gallery in Eugene, Oregon. Jessica, thanks for being here.

jessica_1_05-01-2025_123255 2:10

Yeah, absolutely. I'm excited for our talk.

spencer-french--he-him-_1_05-01-2025_153256 2:13

of course. Now, just looking through this intro, you, I, you know, we talk about you're a member of the Cherokee Nation, but you also, the word a, could you explain some of like the history of naming and why that's really important to have the right language there?

jessica_1_05-01-2025_123255 2:28

Yeah, of course. So, typically Cherokees, we often refer to ourself as, which translates loosely to real people or principle people. We have as a tribe reclaimed the term Cherokee, because it's not derogatory. So the word Cherokee, there's a few different theories, but it came from a neighboring tribe, probably Muskogee Creek. it might also be Chickasaw. So depending on that etymology Cherokee either meant speaker of another language, which is how one of our neighboring tribes referred to us, those who come from the mountains. I'm a member of the Cherokee Nation. There are three federally recognized tribes. There's also the Eastern band and another one as well, the spiritual culture keepers in Oklahoma. for the most part, we speaking for all of us here, our. Usually good with Cherokee or it's a little different than some other tribes, for example, my children were adopted from the Al Lakota nation in South Dakota, and they are often referred to a Sioux. Sioux was also a term given to them by a neighboring rival tribe, which translates to snake in a derogatory sense.

spencer-french--he-him-_1_05-01-2025_153256 3:43

Got

jessica_1_05-01-2025_123255 3:43

most Lakotas don't really go by SIO unless it's a reclamation. kind of like the term Indians.

Jessica's Artistic Journey and Mediums

spencer-french--he-him-_1_05-01-2025_153256 3:49

Sure. That makes a lot of sense. it's always fascinating to me as a poet and as a scholar of literature like you are, to see how not only language functions, but also to see how it. He comes so central to culture formation and identity formation. And so it's a really helpful, kind of contextual note that I think really does introduce, well, some of the many threads that you talk about in your work. So just speaking of those threads, going through kind of your intro, just gonna try to cover some of the things that you do. You're an academic, you're a writer, and when you say writer, you know, for someone like me, it's like and a little bit of drama. it's poetry, fiction, essays, academic writing, mixed media, and then you go beyond writing to sculpture and performance art. I have to ask like, what compelled you to use all these different methods and mediums? Like how do you think about that?

jessica_1_05-01-2025_123255 4:44

I always say that? I consider myself a poet first. That I think poetry is our, as a human first and most natural form of communication. I mean, if you look at things like children's books, especially maybe mid-century and prior, it was often poetry. That's what we are drawn to, the rhythm, the cyclical nature, patterns. So I have poems that my mom had kept that I wrote at six years old. And so that's, you know, the beginning I think of how we communicate is through storytelling. And I come from the first tribe to have a written form of speech syllabary, and that was created just a little over 200 years ago. So it's fairly new. I see written text and especially poetry, written poetry as an organic extension of the pan indigenous tradition, oral tradition. That being said, you know, I have a bachelor's in literature. I do not have an MFA. My doctoral work was more literary criticism. I have participated as an attendant in two poetry workshops in my life. So when I say I began as a poet, that was my creative journey I. myself be boxed in and boxed myself into this label, this title of poetry. what I started writing. That's what I published the most in. And while I think we kind of have permission as writers to go into other genres, that's especially true for poets, there's, I think it's kind of typical for poets to also go into prose. Whether you look at, ocean Vong, you know, Sylvia Plath, and you can really tell when it's a poet writing prose.

spencer-french--he-him-_1_05-01-2025_153256 6:29

I completely agree with you

jessica_1_05-01-2025_123255 6:31

And it's so good when a poet is writing prose. I think it's trickier the other way around

spencer-french--he-him-_1_05-01-2025_153256 6:37

Sure.

jessica_1_05-01-2025_123255 6:38

a prose writer, like, now I'm gonna write poetry. You can kind of tell that a lot of the time as well. And you know, I went into scholarly writing to write about poets and poets that I loved. So that was kind of a natural journey in terms of. More visual work, performance work, installation work that was a bigger leap and much newer. And it was kind of just that giving myself permission to, I don't need to be sequestered into this writing

spencer-french--he-him-_1_05-01-2025_153256 7:08

Sure.

jessica_1_05-01-2025_123255 7:08

or whatever you wanna call it. That being said, I made that jump using text. The first thing I really did, you know, that was funded, that was a professional, was painting my poems on human bodies, and then it just kind of expanded from there. text and especially poetry is still at the heart of everything.

spencer-french--he-him-_1_05-01-2025_153256 7:29

Yeah. That's fascinating. You know, your note on poets who write fiction is so well taken. I just read Kava Akbar's Martyr, and that's a fantastic thing. Oh, it's so good. You have to read it. and the other ones that you listed, ocean Vong and other, like, I completely agree with you. now you said something in there that was really fascinating to me. So now I have been writing poetry since I was like 16. I've been writing for over a decade, so you don't have to convince me of any of this stuff. But when I think a lot of people in the broader public think about poetry, it's like usually there's a pipe involved, maybe a tweed jacket, you're staring at some flowers, and it's always in some old dusty book. What your work does is it helps us think about poetry, which you, if I understand correctly, you kind of see as the origin and kind of animating force behind a lot of your artistic movement. you see it far more expansively than that. So, was wondering if you could kind of help, help our audience understand, you know, and performance. Are those different things, are those the same extension of the same thing? And then also you mentioned as an expression of like the pan indigenous oral tradition, right? So these things are all around and I think they actually really contest some basic general notions of what poetry is And I'd love to hear your thoughts more on that.

jessica_1_05-01-2025_123255 8:45

Yeah, So first of all, I love Tweed Jackets and dusty books. Yeah. so this is, I don't know, I sometimes call myself a post confessionalist, bearing in mind that the idea of confessional poetry, even though the person who coined it Rosenthal went back and regretted that decision those who fall under confessional labels, maybe just three people, maybe just Plath and Sexton and Lowell.

spencer-french--he-him-_1_05-01-2025_153256 9:11

Yeah.

jessica_1_05-01-2025_123255 9:12

but that's what I, confessional poetry is what I first fell in love with. So that's the springboard for me. And I think it's because confessional poetry, at least how I was exposed to it, was the first time where I saw it's okay to just absolutely purge on paper. and I, you know, I wasn't raised in any kind of. Organized religion, but it was, it's, you know, from a small Oregon town, it's gonna be threaded through the culture anyway. But I love Christian Catholic iconography and so I liked that Ties to Confessionalism. And when it comes to where poetry is right now, oh God, I don't know because it's changed So much in the past, I would say like a hundred years compared to prior to that and cons. There was a time, probably mid-century, where poems were appearing alongside articles in, you know, Sunday newspapers. That was the norm.

spencer-french--he-him-_1_05-01-2025_153256 10:14

So it's so true. Yeah.

jessica_1_05-01-2025_123255 10:16

People were just exposed to it. And like I said, you know, with children's books, that's how, you know, we learn language, even if we're learning a foreign language as an adult, you know, it's through the rhythm, it's through song. And now in this. I hate this term, the digital age with Insta Poets. I think there is some goodness in people, younger people being exposed to poetry through social media. A lot of the times we have a lot less gatekeeping for better or worse. like, I don't know, I feel like we're in this space where there's so much of everything, including poetry and poetry that I'm gonna put in quotes. it can be really difficult to be exposed to a wide reaching range and quality poetry and hate this word too diverse poetry.

spencer-french--he-him-_1_05-01-2025_153256 11:17

yeah.

jessica_1_05-01-2025_123255 11:18

so I don't know. We're in a strange place and I don't know where it's going. I.

Classroom Experiences and Teaching Poetry

spencer-french--he-him-_1_05-01-2025_153256 11:22

Totally. I mean, this brings to mind, the class that I just taught at Notre Dame Poetry and Peace, which you were kind enough to come guest lecture in, and, Two, two quick notes on that. The first is, when one of the assignments I gave the students was to memorize a poem from our readings in the class. Right? And one of the reasons also why I, you mentioned diverse poetry in air quotes, and the reason why it bothers me so much is because I taught an incredibly quote unquote diverse But I wasn't setting out to do that. I wasn't like, well, I gotta check these boxes. I gotta, I'm like, no. Like, I wanna teach the best poetry I can and I found the best poets I could. And it was like, oh, well, like we just happened to be all over the world and all over different kinds of experiences, right? But so these students went to go memorize this and they hated it. They were like, why? Why is this guy in this, you know, thrifted tweed jacket making me memorize a poem? You know? but afterwards they all thanked me for it. They all thanked for the memorization, which is interesting how. We talk about poetry kind of socially, and then we understand it after having experienced it. Right. But you know, that, thinking about this reminds me of when you came into class, I wasn't sure if you were gonna come in and lecture on, on Ogalala Lakota poet, LA Long Soldier, or share some of your own poetry, and you did something actually very different. And I was wondering if you wanted share a little bit about that.

jessica_1_05-01-2025_123255 12:46

I didn't have a solid plan in place. I mean, I'm prepared, but I like to just let things go they go. And because my background as a poet isn't this trajectory that a lot of people might imagine it to be.'cause like I said, you know, I don't have an MFA, my background isn't in workshops or anything like that. I just like to present works of other people that. Others might not be familiar with or, you know, dive deep into, but then also just share my own journey so far in how I got where I am. And that includes showing visuals from previous exhibitions and shows. yeah, because everybody, every single person, whether it's us or someone who's never been to a poetry reading in their life, has an idea of what poetry is like you said, and definitely has an idea about what a poetry reading or lecture is going to be. And it's difficult for me to kind of backtrack see through someone's eyes what they're expecting, what it might be, and something that happened a couple weeks ago. So I had a friend, visit me at Notre Dame, as you know, and she is a math education professor. And we've been friends for over 20 years. We were an undergrad together. We don't have a lot of overlap professionally. She has previously gone to one a WP conference with me in Tampa.

spencer-french--he-him-_1_05-01-2025_153256 14:22

Sure.

jessica_1_05-01-2025_123255 14:23

she's used to going to a lot of math conferences. Huh?

spencer-french--he-him-_1_05-01-2025_153256 14:26

And what's a WP?

jessica_1_05-01-2025_123255 14:27

Oh, association of Writers and Publishers. It's like the biggest Yeah. A w publishing conference in the United States. And this was 2 20 19. We went to a WP and she said it was so much more fun than the conferences she is used to going to, just a bunch of writers milling around and drinking and going to workshops and buying books. I took her to the Jericho Brown conversation at Notre Dame and I wasn't Sure, how she would respond to it. And he is an amazing, they're just an amazing, I don't wanna say performer, I do think performance is always in poetry to some degree. And that kind of comes from Anne Sexton similar stance on that. But she absolutely loved it. She was the only non poet person in there and said it was amazing. Bought Jericho's book. even though she has no background in what it means to write poetry, still resonated. And I think that she wasn't expecting that. I don't think anybody does. And like, you know, we think of poetry readings as dry and boring and sometimes complicated and esoteric and they can be,

spencer-french--he-him-_1_05-01-2025_153256 15:41

sure.

jessica_1_05-01-2025_123255 15:42

but not many that I've gone to have been'cause post are weird.

spencer-french--he-him-_1_05-01-2025_153256 15:46

There poets are weird. Right. No, I love that. And you know, with Jericho Brown, he has, in one of his interviews he does, he talks about, he was seeing this man and the man was like, ah, poetry I don't really like, it is like I read on the page, it's kind of confusing. And he goes, to the music. And you read it aloud to them. This guy was like, oh, I kind of get it now. and that's why I think poetry readings could be so fun, which is also why when you came to class and shared your own work and then also led a little kind of group writing exercise, it was so moving, right? You put that of flowers in front of us and just said, just write to together for 10 minutes. students, most of whom are very poetry averse. And one student the other day called Poetry embarrassing.

jessica_1_05-01-2025_123255 16:28

It can.

spencer-french--he-him-_1_05-01-2025_153256 16:28

like, I dunno, I don't wanna read my poetry. Poetry is embarrassing. I was like, come. I was like, I had to mark him down 10% for the whole class, you know? but, but it was fascinating seeing you lead that, because the students walked away really enjoying it actually many students went on to write very fascinating poems in the class.

jessica_1_05-01-2025_123255 16:45

Yeah,

spencer-french--he-him-_1_05-01-2025_153256 16:45

a time.

jessica_1_05-01-2025_123255 16:47

just having time to write in quiet. Comradery slash solidarity, but you're still doing your own thing without the pressure to like, I have to share this, or I have to turn it in.'cause I never say, I never push for anybody to,

spencer-french--he-him-_1_05-01-2025_153256 17:02

Sure.

jessica_1_05-01-2025_123255 17:03

you know, writing prompts can be simple like a bouquet of flowers. And we as humans today, unless it's like us, don't carve out time. to write,

spencer-french--he-him-_1_05-01-2025_153256 17:15

Sure.

jessica_1_05-01-2025_123255 17:16

not pen to paper.

spencer-french--he-him-_1_05-01-2025_153256 17:17

No, I agree. I agree. I agree completely. and now speaking of poetry, I am, I'm looking at. In front of me. I have a couple poems of yours from a book that you were working on during your time at Notre Dame called, spread SP Red. and I was wondering, you know, trying to stay on, you know, getting, continuing the theme we're working on, if you could give us a little introduction to this project that you finished during your time here, and maybe even we could get into hearing a poem or two.

Jessica's Poetry and Tarot Project

jessica_1_05-01-2025_123255 17:46

Sure. So, spread has been a work in progress for a while, but it was completed at Notre Dame because I had just supported time to write and create. Spread is an indigenization of what I think is the most well known or recognizable tarot deck. the Smith writer weight deck for anybody who's Not into tarot, you would probably recognize these images. And it was commissioned by a white British man around 19 10, 19 13, and American White American expat created the series and it's very. It's got a lot. but it's also problematic. It's overwhelmingly white. The only figure that might not be white is the trickster you can infer without everything that you will. it's, yeah, no, it's, fat phobic, it's heteronormative. It's all of those things. but obviously regardless of what the illustrator personally thought was operating and creating during a time when there really weren't any other options. yeah, I wanted to indigenize it. I wanted to personalize it, but I also wanted to flip on its head, some of the mostly Christian, some Judaic imagery that's in there and highly recognizable.

spencer-french--he-him-_1_05-01-2025_153256 19:15

Sure.

jessica_1_05-01-2025_123255 19:15

own background with tarot is, so, you know, my dad was from the Cherokee Nation. My mom was white, she was specifically the child of British immigrants and she was my first tarot teacher from when I was a child.

spencer-french--he-him-_1_05-01-2025_153256 19:30

Oh, cool.

jessica_1_05-01-2025_123255 19:31

I learned on this deck because that's what was available. I have other decks now, but this is what I use on a daily basis. And I thought, you know, I've been reading these cards for 30 something years

spencer-french--he-him-_1_05-01-2025_153256 19:45

Sure.

jessica_1_05-01-2025_123255 19:46

and I'm Sure. I've internalized some of this imagery even though it clashes with,'cause I was brought up, pretty much entirely. I spent the summer on the res and that was my spiritual upbringing. But it's hard to know that I'm internalizing this imagery from religions that have caused so much harm to my and my ancestors.

spencer-french--he-him-_1_05-01-2025_153256 20:11

sure.

jessica_1_05-01-2025_123255 20:12

Yeah. but at the same time I wanted to do like deep dive of research, so it's full of footnotes. And that is the dissertation years talking. I don't think I can escape footnotes now.

spencer-french--he-him-_1_05-01-2025_153256 20:21

Yeah. Just

jessica_1_05-01-2025_123255 20:22

So that's where I am.

spencer-french--he-him-_1_05-01-2025_153256 20:22

interject

jessica_1_05-01-2025_123255 20:23

Yeah.

spencer-french--he-him-_1_05-01-2025_153256 20:24

part of those footnotes, I have a list here looking at some of the things you talk about. You go from citing the Wizard of Oz to the Hebrew Bible to Tupac, to the Christian New Testament, to the coding language, c plus to Sylvia Plath to the history of Turtle Island and. Far and near like between, it's fascinating reading. I was having such a good? time yesterday. going through it, you know, this citation kind of footnote thing, like these are really wide ranging What, how are you thinking about that in your own work before we maybe get into a poem or two?

jessica_1_05-01-2025_123255 20:57

I'm not thinking of like, I wanna include a, b, C though. Everything that you just listed is all. Deeply integral to who I am as a person in terms of my history, my interests, my passions, Tupac, Sylvia, yeah, the Hebrew Bible because like my doctoral work, when I tell people, it's on the intersection of eating disorders and female poets, mostly Plath. But what I wanted to do with my dissertation, which my supervisor says, you can't, there's not enough information. And after all those years, I was told, actually, you could have, and my entire defense committee said, you know, you could have written an entire thing on this. So what this is the concept through Sylvia's work of the forbidden fruit was probably a fig. And what does that mean? Since it's an inverted flower, it's inverted female genitalia, and ultimately the female wasp will die in the fig of starvation.

spencer-french--he-him-_1_05-01-2025_153256 21:56

sure.

jessica_1_05-01-2025_123255 21:57

I couldn't do an entire dissertation on that apparently. So this is my like, kind of like this. Yeah. I'm gonna, I'm gonna get it a little bit more in this collection.

spencer-french--he-him-_1_05-01-2025_153256 22:06

No, I, as someone who's currently writing his dissertation, I'm like, well, like Jessica, I need to read that one. That one's fa. I'm sure the one that

jessica_1_05-01-2025_123255 22:12

I know

spencer-french--he-him-_1_05-01-2025_153256 22:14

that's

jessica_1_05-01-2025_123255 22:14

one I wrote. Okay. But I wanted to write the other one.

spencer-french--he-him-_1_05-01-2025_153256 22:19

Well, okay, so on this note of. Of writing of poetry, and then also some of the other forms. there's this home strength that I was wondering if you could read for us, which is to give a little bit of an intro to our audience. Also really engages with the literary theme and tradition of horror. gonna be if you're, if you have maybe kids in the audience, maybe we mute this for a second or listen to a time, whatever else, but I'd love to hear this poem and then hear how you're thinking about it.

jessica_1_05-01-2025_123255 22:45

Yeah. So first, hopefully this shows up on the screen. Okay, I'll show. So this is what the Smith Rider Weight Strength card looks like.

spencer-french--he-him-_1_05-01-2025_153256 22:52

Okay,

jessica_1_05-01-2025_123255 22:52

Any strength card, even if it's not Smith Rider weight is going to homage to that in some way. Before I read it, I think it's important to note you had no way of knowing this, but strength is my astrological card in terms of both my Zodiac sign, which is Leo and Numerology, which is eight on my birthday. So it's one of two cards that I consider mine. And so, yeah, I'll just dive right into reading it. So strength, even the loveliest leash is a means to submission coronation to cowardice. Flowers are only great. tricksters for bonnets and bees. monster bursts forth from an alien womb. We intercourse with intestines of blood gone beautiful docility bread through strokes. You look to me as your God, the woman who led you to Green Range and Cowering Tale. Tamed or damned whips and hats attain the same as gentle, loving.

spencer-french--he-him-_1_05-01-2025_153256 23:55

Whoa. Fascinating. So there, there seems to me, just on hearing this in your own voice, this kind of like pivot, right? There's like a back and forth, so it's tamed or damned. It's. The loveliest leash is a means of submission, right? This critique, and then there's that striking moment in the center where the monster versed forth, really quite horrifying. What do you, if you take that characterization as being somewhere near to what the poem is doing, what do you make of that movement with that kind of intro and conclusion? And then the quite horrifying moment in the middle,

jessica_1_05-01-2025_123255 24:37

I don't consider it horrifying. I consider it a birthing, which I guess some people could. See as horrific. Obviously the film alien was in my mind with that one and Alien being like, you know, her being the ultimate cat lady because the cat is saved at the end as well. And we're dealing with a lion here. I began riding this because if you look at the card, the lion is, she's leashed the lion, around her waist and it also serves as like a flower crown as well. And she's wearing a matching crown. it began with my exploration of BDSM, which is another more like, scholarly interest of mine. And I was doing a lot of work with that when I was in residence in Manhattan as well, because the strength card lies, it's number eight in the deck

spencer-french--he-him-_1_05-01-2025_153256 25:32

Okay.

jessica_1_05-01-2025_123255 25:33

and it's said that. To get to strength is as far as most people can go in life in terms of their own evolution, in terms of attaining more wisdom. Very few people make it to number nine and beyond. At number eight for a very broad reading of this card, it's strength is gleaned through gentleness. And you probably noticed when you're reading it, quote, I think a couple of times the film The Secretary, because I consider that my favorite love story on film ever.

spencer-french--he-him-_1_05-01-2025_153256 26:11

Okay.

jessica_1_05-01-2025_123255 26:11

And there's a line in another poem that says, from that film, something like, who says Love needs to be soft and gentle?

spencer-french--he-him-_1_05-01-2025_153256 26:18

Sure.

jessica_1_05-01-2025_123255 26:18

I believe it's quoted by a clergy, I, maybe a priest. so that's how the poem began. And I credit a lot of how I write with these kind of images because of the fact that I grew up. horror films, and I still love them. I think indigenous people have a very different relationship to horror than other folks for multiple reasons.

spencer-french--he-him-_1_05-01-2025_153256 26:47

Yeah. Well, Okay. I wanna follow up on that then, because one of the ways that you and I, became better friends was looking at a couple of your short horror stories from a collection called Those We Feed. And I was wondering if you could share a little bit about that collection and then talk a little bit about, you know. You know, not only horror as a genre, but like why do you think that indigenous people, particularly, I'm not gonna ask you to speak for all indigenous people, but just generally there might be some different engagements with horror than maybe with other more normative European kind of contexts.

jessica_1_05-01-2025_123255 27:24

Yeah, so I, I did not come to Notre Dame to write A I always butcher this when I say it. Horror, indigenous horror, short story collection. Okay. I did it.

spencer-french--he-him-_1_05-01-2025_153256 27:36

A lot of arts.

jessica_1_05-01-2025_123255 27:37

yeah, just came to be, and I think it's because indigenous horror is really having A moment right now. is an anthology that is 80 something weeks on the bestseller list. it's called Never Whistle at Night. And Whistling at Night is kind of a pan indigenous, no-no, that kind of summons not the greatest, energies or spirits.

spencer-french--he-him-_1_05-01-2025_153256 27:59

Okay.

Exploring Indigenous Horror

jessica_1_05-01-2025_123255 27:59

and I don't know, I had written a couple of, a handful of short stories before, not horror, but I, like I said, grew up on horror. I vividly remember reading Stephen King and Dean Kunz when I was in fifth grade,

spencer-french--he-him-_1_05-01-2025_153256 28:14

Sure. Sure.

jessica_1_05-01-2025_123255 28:16

for indigenous people. Obviously we've been facing horrors on this land for about 500 years,

spencer-french--he-him-_1_05-01-2025_153256 28:23

Right.

jessica_1_05-01-2025_123255 28:24

oftentimes told through the settler colonial lens of us being the victims. And obviously there are vast disparities happening

spencer-french--he-him-_1_05-01-2025_153256 28:31

Right.

jessica_1_05-01-2025_123255 28:32

indigenous people do appear literature, in film, it's gonna be through this white lens. are going to be dehumanized, we are going to be the ones where the bad things are happening to us. And at the same time, our own stories are being either lost or twisted or bastardized and not shared. So the title of the collection, those we feed, you know, stems from this story that was attributed to but was not, and most people listening know the story. There's two wolves fighting inside us. One's good, one's bad, which one wins The one you feed.

spencer-french--he-him-_1_05-01-2025_153256 29:14

Yeah. Right.

jessica_1_05-01-2025_123255 29:15

Yeah. so, which is, it's a beautiful little it was created by an evangelist who, wanted to give it that, you know, Indian twist.

spencer-french--he-him-_1_05-01-2025_153256 29:27

Yeah.

jessica_1_05-01-2025_123255 29:28

And so that's what I set out to do with this collection. And as much as I hate to say this, it was difficult to write horror stories that featured indigenous people, settings, some figures, and make sure. that the people who were truly indigenous do not become the victims.

spencer-french--he-him-_1_05-01-2025_153256 29:52

sure.

jessica_1_05-01-2025_123255 29:52

And I think that's such internalized colonization really.

spencer-french--he-him-_1_05-01-2025_153256 29:57

Right, right. Sure. it's also interesting, right, the way that systems of power kind of reflect and inflect expectations, right? In this film, you know, person of this race or that background is always the first to go, or always becomes the demonic possessed one or whatever. Even gender plays a role in this too. And, That's fascinating and how those things inflect and reflect off each other. I just, I mean, I remember looking at the story that we particularly worked on, which I believe is the title story, those We Feed, or is it just a line, I'm trying to remember the name now.

jessica_1_05-01-2025_123255 30:34

It is. It is The title story. Yeah.

spencer-french--he-him-_1_05-01-2025_153256 30:36

The title story. Right. And I remember walking away feeling kind of haunted and I was wondered if like, well, I, it was, we were talking about this a little bit, but I'd love to hear more about horror and haunting and like, do you see those as different genres, themes, or one as an expression of the other? Because in many ways, looking at the history of Turtle Island, we're living in haunted times, haunted by the trauma, genocide and massive violence that happened here in the last 500 years. Right. And so I'm wondering if, like, how you think about that theme, or even if it's a useful category for you as you think about your own work.

jessica_1_05-01-2025_123255 31:15

It is threaded throughout my work. But before I talk more about that, what you just said reminds me of that meme of like, when everything's just going to hell. it's like everything's built on an Indian burial ground. Oh wait. Like this is all built on an Indian burial ground. I mean, burial was kind of used loosely considering all the unmarked graves, but

spencer-french--he-him-_1_05-01-2025_153256 31:36

Relates really?

jessica_1_05-01-2025_123255 31:38

yeah. Another story in the collection, and the first that I wrote of this, believe it was, Yeah, it was the very first, I wrote about Dear Lady and Dear Lady is a multi indigenous figure, including amongst the, and there's, there's many stories that are related to her, but. What I grew up learning was that dear lady is a figure who is beautiful woman and then she has hoofed feet. So her purpose is to punish men who treat women badly, and there was a great rendering of her in reservation dogs. So the title of that is, dear Lady, A Haunting with the A Editorial, edited out. So Haunting. Haunting. it was difficult to write that story because I felt like I needed to give her an origin story, which I've never heard an origin story really to dear lady. There've been a few that kind of hint at it, but not really. And I felt like for her to become this, you know, being who takes on this role that she needed to come from trauma. so we get back to that issue of my not wanting to make that be the case, but it was necessary. And then the thought of like, well, all of us indigenous people did come from trauma, either ourselves or our ancestors, and usually our very close ancestors.

spencer-french--he-him-_1_05-01-2025_153256 33:04

Sure.

jessica_1_05-01-2025_123255 33:04

So, you know, I gave her that origin story and then turned her into the hunter instead of the hunted. I'm very into this whole haunting kind of

spencer-french--he-him-_1_05-01-2025_153256 33:23

Yeah.

jessica_1_05-01-2025_123255 33:25

in terms of haunting and horror. I think that can be up to individual interpretation, but I don't think of haunting as necessarily inherently negative, but I neither do I think of horror that way.

spencer-french--he-him-_1_05-01-2025_153256 33:38

Truly. Yeah.

jessica_1_05-01-2025_123255 33:40

Yeah. I also think it's because I, how I was raised and how my dad raised me. The separation between what we consider living in death is so much more fluid and constantly evolving compared to what a lot of people think of whether folks are an organized religion. It's like, oh, after death there's heaven or hell or after death, there's nothing. I kind of sit more the fence between all of that. Yeah. so I don't know. it's not, we think of binary and good and bad, and I don't think of it that way.

spencer-french--he-him-_1_05-01-2025_153256 34:18

and I think that's helpful even as a corrective to the, not necessarily binary way I constructed the question, but like the more kind of categorical way it, those in betweenness, those interes are where life happens, where history happens, where trauma's expressed. And so I think that's a helpful thing. And I just have to say though, like, I haven't seen the hunting haunting story after this. Sometime I have to read it because I love that turn of the phrase and kind of the context you gave for, for dear lady. so I, on circling back to the poetry collection, if that's all right, again, who would've thought the two poets are talking about poetry again and again. I was wondering if you could, share with us one last, poem, three of Pentacles, which this story I kind of really dovetails nicely with what we've been talking about, in terms of violent histories, particularly and like reclamation, particularly of Indian schools or native so yeah, would you be open to that?

jessica_1_05-01-2025_123255 35:18

Yeah. and I'll show the photo again. I have those ready. So this is, yeah, three of Pentacles. typically it's look like there's, you know, a trio of people working on building the foundation of something.

spencer-french--he-him-_1_05-01-2025_153256 35:30

Cool.

jessica_1_05-01-2025_123255 35:31

looks kind of. church-like. yeah, so three of Pentacles, we were children. Sona Seeds, no babies gone to ghost. You entered us not in unmarked graves. Buried sins and shames ill covered And rather we took root in cherished gardens, unearth us, capped a cradle. These bones never forgotten, tended, tender. Now Bai hands. We are not your foundation's. Stem walls and slabs for slaughter. Brick by brick, we are nation's found called Home to Ever Blossom.

spencer-french--he-him-_1_05-01-2025_153256 36:11

Yeah.

Three of Pentacles: A Poem of Reclamation

jessica_1_05-01-2025_123255 36:12

is one of the poems that I did not write at Notre Dame, but was inspired by this card. It's, four years old. It was written. Because like when I showed the card, I mean that's what it looked like to me, that they are working on something that maybe it's not underground, maybe it's just'cause it's so dark. It seems underground to me. But I wrote this poem specifically to accompany, series of visual works that I created in Portland, Oregon. It was part of the glean project. And with Glean, cohort of artists are asked to create a series using 90% materials gleaned from the Portland dump. And went into this thinking I wanted to do something with eating disorders.'cause that's always part and like, there's gonna be kitchen things, you know, all kinds of like cool stuff like that. But I went and there were kitchen things, but they just didn't like talk to me. I initially fell in love with this. I'm not a construction person. This big slab of concrete that was shaped and had these like rusty wires sticking out, it looked so much like an anatomical heart to me.

spencer-french--he-him-_1_05-01-2025_153256 37:22

Oh, okay.

jessica_1_05-01-2025_123255 37:23

we were told there were some volunteers there. They're there every day we were glean artists, we could ask them, can you set it aside if we can't get it right now? I asked for it and this shows how little I know about this kind of thing. They're like, that weighs about 600 pounds, we'll try. It was just a slab of concrete. I went back the next day. They couldn't move it. can't blame them, but at the same time, somebody was there dropping off. they were clearly working on some kind of building project, a bunch of rebar. And so there were smaller pieces, a lot of bricks, and they were just so, such fascinating shapes to me. And they were being trashed, but they had initially been used, you know, to build something. At the same time that this was happening, this was when the first big mainstream media unmarked graves in Canada was, being reported on. And when I say unmarked graves, it's unmarked graves of indigenous children who had been buried on either current or former residential sites.

spencer-french--he-him-_1_05-01-2025_153256 38:28

Got

jessica_1_05-01-2025_123255 38:28

very brief history for anyone who doesn't know. So for long time, indigenous children were taken from their families and put in what was called Indian residentials boarding schools, where they weren't allowed to speak their language practice, you know, anything related to their culture. hair was cut. A lot of, yeah, horrific things happened there. my dad survived residential, as I was gleaning, this was in the summer of 2021. Up in Canada, the phrase we were children was written in red paint on the doors of St. Paul's Cathedral in Saskatoon. And that was a previous residential site. So that's what spoke to me like with creating this poem with this tarot card because you know, I said I've been reading for over 30 years, so whenever I see certain things, I can picture a card.

spencer-french--he-him-_1_05-01-2025_153256 39:18

Sure.

jessica_1_05-01-2025_123255 39:19

And so with these materials I chose nine and I also gleaned a mid-century typewriter, skin paper, somehow glue and those kinds of things. The only thing that wasn't gleaned was the ink for the typewriter. And I wrote this poem and it is kind of like paper mache on top of the pieces, and that's been in a couple of shows. But yeah, I wanted to put the poetry on a physical thing that represented schools and the crumbling of them, of their foundations.

spencer-french--he-him-_1_05-01-2025_153256 39:54

Yeah. and it's interesting, right? There's like a, there's a kind of reclamation in tension in this poem, which is like the sowing of seeds and, you know, we took root, but then also at the same time you say, we are not foundation stem walls and slab for slaughter, brick by brick. So there's like a, there's a building that's happening even in the face of the atrocity, but. it's who's building who gets to benefit from the building. Seems to be really clearly stated. at least at the ending is that, I'd love to hear a little bit more about what you think about that ending and that tension in the poem between the incredible violence that it points to and also possible, what do you maybe language of reclamation.

jessica_1_05-01-2025_123255 40:38

Yeah. so it, I mean, it definitely is a reclamation. That's what I do with a lot of my work because. You know, all of these things were forced upon us. We are being literally walled in by these institutions. And that's why the, the non tarot name of this poem and the name of the visual series is Strong Found Nations. it's this, I did a similar series. It was a suspended series that kind of expanded from this, in which I, hung infant body bags from ceilings. And because when it's like, it's this unearthing and there's something so violent about that, not just about what happened to the children, obviously, but now this just like seemingly random and Yeah. it's, I think it's a slow reclamation. a very common saying that, you know, it didn't, I don't believe began with indigenous people on Turtle Island, but you know, they tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds is also like tied through my work, but it's not, I don't think a choice that I use the collective we so much. And I think it's also reflecting I am as a mixed race person because that's impossible to escape as well. You know, I'm half my mother as well and kind of facing that, not just inner conflict, overall conflict of how I came to be. Yeah. I think there's a lot of that through that poem. And I feel like the poem ends on what seems like a very certain confident note. But not necessarily because what we were talking about is that in between of what is being called homey'cause that's so like biblical.

spencer-french--he-him-_1_05-01-2025_153256 42:33

Yeah. Right. and again, like e you know it when you start a, the last sentence is like, we, it starts with a, not like we are not, you go on to say, we are nations found, but. Even that there's the kind of in betweenness and maybe progress to it that doesn't point to some kind of certainty, at least in my reading. It's like a direction maybe, but not a destination.

jessica_1_05-01-2025_123255 42:56

because, you know, I would say in what we call the United States, we are not even barely beginning to search in earnest. We are so far behind Canada, not that Canada is so advanced in dealing with this, but compared to us, they are. I mean, I don't know. I think it's, I think the poem is also kind of a call for more action to be taken in this regard of

spencer-french--he-him-_1_05-01-2025_153256 43:23

sure.

jessica_1_05-01-2025_123255 43:24

finding these children and bringing them, home.

spencer-french--he-him-_1_05-01-2025_153256 43:27

Right.

jessica_1_05-01-2025_123255 43:28

I say home, I don't mean in that sense, I, mean in like yeah, in the indigenous sense.

spencer-french--he-him-_1_05-01-2025_153256 43:33

and so what do you what, explain that sense. When you say bringing them home, what do you mean?

jessica_1_05-01-2025_123255 43:38

for example, I believe it, one of the Lakota tribes recently, they, there was an unearthing residential school that was not, not even in South Dakota, I don't think, but there was an entire ceremony of bringing these children back to their ancest ancestral lands. I think, yeah, the ending of the poem was also a call for that, for the government of this land to, I say government as if there's just one. I mean, there were. There's so, and tribal nations. So, what I mean is the US government look, to bring attention to this and to aid in finding our children and bringing them back to their ancestral lands.

spencer-french--he-him-_1_05-01-2025_153256 44:24

Absolutely. It's, you know, you've heard me say this quote many times that to love nation involves critique and direct criticism and action against that nation to bring it into its values. And it's crazy to me that basic notion of honor the treaties you know, and like, let's begin. What is the smallest baby tiny the direction of remembering rightly has somehow, you know, is not just has become controversial, but has been controversial for hundreds and hundreds of years, and that permits this massive violence to continue even to this day. now speaking of kind of direct action, I know, you mentioned to me that you're going to, a collective action training camp in Rapid Cities South Dakota. And, you know, we've talked a lot about the arts and how the role that the art plays in working for justice and building positive peace and just peace. I think both of us would say that's not the only useful or only necessary method of seeking that kind of peace and justice. So I was wondering if you could share a little bit about what is this collective action training camp you're gonna be attending in the next few weeks and what you're planning on doing.

jessica_1_05-01-2025_123255 45:38

Yeah. So I think by the time, this airs, I will have already done it. So I'm speaking, in the past, I am like my own ghost right now. But so the, collective in DN three letters is one of, if not the largest indigenous led and supporting nonprofits in what we call the United States. I'm nervous, honestly. They are, they get a lot done. I'm incredibly impressed by their work. They have sting operations often in South Dakota to expose businesses that, exhibiting racism specifically to indigenous people. But this training camp, I believe is bringing 150 indigenous folks and leaders to. I don't recall the name of it, but we are gathering at what is in the summer a, Christian summer camp for children, and they are covering as much iconography as possible. We're getting these emails about it, and there's different tracks that you can join. one of them is arts based and that would be a natural fit. Right. And it's like a, what they're focusing on in arts is creative resistant strategies. Sure. exactly what that's going to entail, and I might not ever know what all it entails because I'm like, I'm not gonna do that Trek. I wanted to do something more physical and bodily based, so I'm like, let's do tactical climbing for, Yeah, So I'm going to be spending seven days how to scale walls for five hours a day. And that was obviously a very conscious decision.

spencer-french--he-him-_1_05-01-2025_153256 47:18

Sure.

Collective Action and Indigenous Justice

jessica_1_05-01-2025_123255 47:19

I don't know. I think sometimes when you're a poet or any other kind of artist, when you're, when you identify as anything, you get stuck in these ruts of like, I'm gonna keep going on.'cause you can always grow and learn more. But I just need something wildly different right now. and I'm curious to see how that will feed into other areas of my work as well. I'm sure there'll be poems about it. me six months.

spencer-french--he-him-_1_05-01-2025_153256 47:47

yeah. I look forward to reading them. But again, it, I think what your work does before this and continues to do is to really challenge the boundary of what's on the page and what's not. What's a poem like, is living a poem, right? Is what is performance and what is not. And when we talk about the question of justice and real positive piece, you know, the questions of action, the questions of collective action and collective reading, collective writing really do together. Now, we've been talking for a while now and so I was thinking I would ask one more question if that's all right and then maybe pivot to a close. but it's kind of wrapping things up in this conversation. We've had a really rich conversation. It's ranged from many different things. And I'll confess, as someone who's getting a PhD in poetry, I have many technical thoughts

jessica_1_05-01-2025_123255 48:37

Yeah,

spencer-french--he-him-_1_05-01-2025_153256 48:38

that is to follow. But for those in the audience, again, who maybe are new to poetry or are suspicious of it, or maybe even embarrassed of it, as my student was, what would you say about kind of a broader statement about poetry and justice, poetry and peace? W what do those things have to say to each other and why?

jessica_1_05-01-2025_123255 48:59

I think that's a very personal question. For me, poetry is the necessary balm to foster. Peace and justice, both within myself and branching outward. I hear a lot of poets say something like, you know, they need to write. I definitely need to write. I saw one therapist very briefly who, I mean, she was aware of what I did as a living, in terms of just making money. I owned a writing editing agency for 11 years. and she told me, if you weren't already a writer, would prescribe writing, like journaling, something like that, because, Yeah. you would need to write and trauma feed psychosis, clearly you've been self-medicating through writing for years.

spencer-french--he-him-_1_05-01-2025_153256 49:54

Yeah. Yeah.

jessica_1_05-01-2025_123255 49:55

So that's what I was told. and I believe that there's definitely, I mean, there are times where physically on a physical level, I need to write, and it's almost always poetry. I never wake up in the middle of the night like. I really need to get this outline for a short story down or for this scholarly article. When you wake up in the middle of the night and need to write. For me at least, I need to write poetry.

spencer-french--he-him-_1_05-01-2025_153256 50:15

I'll be honest, I've never woken up in the middle of the night and, felt the need to work on my dissertation chapter. Please don't tell my advisor that, but, so no, that makes sense. I have a nighttime journal with poetry Right, right by my bed as well. think also, you know, the way that you're talking about this, it's really interesting as a, as both a scholar of poetry, but also, as someone who's friends with you, just to see how you alternate between the individual and the collective. So naturally you talked a lot about the collective we in your work, but then you're also talking about personal trauma and also societal trauma and how those things are filtering through and into each other. And it seems like poetry is a really generative container. Method means and end in which you express and encounter that. and so, I've been thinking, I've been sitting with your work for, oh, around maybe a little less than a year now, one school year at least. And as I was preparing for this, there was one particular poem that really moved me, and I wanted to actually leave our audience with this, if that's all right with you. Is that all right?

jessica_1_05-01-2025_123255 51:17

Absolutely.

spencer-french--he-him-_1_05-01-2025_153256 51:18

Okay. So it was your tarot poem, five of Pentacles. it ties together your commitment to indigenization to place and space to a precise ear for the poetic line. And so I'm gonna share it now. Just parts of it. A selection. You write, quote, we are not the removed, we are the movement. And later in the poem, quote, we resist, persist, plant our pasts and futures fication to emerge from germination, self sowed unowned. Thanks Jessica, for sharing your work with us.

jessica_1_05-01-2025_123255 51:58

Yeah. Thank you so much. This is great.

spencer-french--he-him-_1_05-01-2025_153256 52:00

It's so fun. Right. And thanks also to the audience for tuning in. you can find more information about Jessica and her work at All one word, all lowercase, this cherokee rose.com. If you'd like to explore more from indigenous voices and over 85 other think ND series, please visit@think.nd.edu. Please feel free to tell your friends as well. ThinkND is open to all, and until next time, inspire your mind and spark conversations. Thanks everyone.