Episode 46: From Whereas Statements - Layli Long Soldier

In this larger episode, Connor and Jack explore an excerpt of Layli Long Soldier’s sequence “Whereas Statements,” which responds to the Congressional Resolution of Apology to Native Americans that US President Barack Obama signed on Saturday, December 19, 2009. They discuss how Long Soldier interrogates and writes against the language of the Apology, the effects of her syntactical experimentation, the surprising commonalities of legal and poetic language, and how indigenous writers are often read reductively as only their indigeneity.

Read the poem below. Read a long excerpt from the sequence here: www.nytimes.com/2016/12/02/magazi…s-statements.html

More on Long Soldier: www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/layli-long-soldier

Check out Long Soldier’s collection, Whereas, here: www.graywolfpress.org/books/whereas

Check out the full text of the Congressional Apology here: www.congress.gov/bill/111th-congr…solution/14/text

Read the referenced review of Whereas by Natalie Diaz here: www.nytimes.com/2017/08/04/books/…long-soldier.html

Read the referenced review on Divedapper between Long Soldier and Kaveh Akbar here: www.divedapper.com/interview/layli-long-soldier/

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From “Whereas Statements”
By: Layli Long Soldier

WHEREAS my eyes land on the shoreline of “the arrival of Europeans in North America
opened a new chapter in the history of Native Peoples.” Because in others, I hate the act

of laughing when hurt injured or in cases of danger. That bitter hiding. My daughter picks up
new habits from friends. She’d been running, tripped, slid on knees and palms onto asphalt.

They carried her into the kitchen, she just fell, she’s bleeding! Deep red streams
down her arms and legs, trails on white tile. I looked at her face. A smile

quivered her. A laugh, a nervous. Doing as her friends do, she braved new behavior, feigned
a grin — I couldn’t name it but I could spot it. Stop, my girl. If you’re hurting, cry.

Like that. She let it out, a flood from living room to bathroom. Then a soft water pour
I washed carefully light touch clean cotton to bandage. I faced her I reminded,

In our home in our family we are ourselves, real feelings. Be true. Yet I’m serious
when I say I laugh reading the phrase, “opened a new chapter.” I can’t help my body.

I shake. The realization that it took this phrase to show. My daughter’s quiver isn’t new —
but a deep practice very old she’s watching me;