Simon Ortiz: The Power of Words and Sacred Spaces
Today -- Simon Ortiz at Tucson Festival of Books
By Brenda Norrell, Censored News, March 9. 2024
Through the years here in Tucson, Simon's voice has sounded out the beauty and the struggles, and memories of the sacred spaces. At the Tucson Poetry Festival, celebrating its 25th anniversary in 2007, the theme was home and Simon gave voice to the power of home.
"Poems always come from home," Simon said, remembering the way of respect he was taught for his family, the land, others and himself.
"Indians always tell a story," Simon continued, giving voice to the words of the human condition, loss, mourning, abandonment.
Simon remembered the Lukachukai mountains on Navajoland and taking the sheep out at Acoma, Wounded Knee and Sand Creek.
In the spring, Simon said, flowers bloom at Sand Creek.
Simon remembered the 600 Arapaho and Cheyenne, many women and children, massacred at Sand Creek. Black Kettle, he remembered, had already said the people wanted peace.
Remembering Sand Creek, he said, "The dream shall have a name after all."
Simon spoke of the Zapatistas and the fight for our lives through the years.
When the Zapatistas of Acteal, Chiapas, were murdered in 1998, Simon joined protesters in Tucson in a memorial march and carried tiny white crosses with the names of the victims massacred by paramilitary forces.
“It is not just a Mayan struggle in defense of land and culture, it is also our struggle for a human way of life,” Simon said.
“It is a life and death matter for us to speak and act for ourselves."
“The same language they speak when they fight for their language, their culture and their land is the same language we speak when we fight for our lives," Ortiz said at the memorial.
“The same language they speak when they fight for their language, their culture and their land is the same language we speak when we fight for our lives," Ortiz said at the memorial.
Reclaiming life, liberty and space, Simon said during a poetry reading in Tucson, "Thank goodness, Indians are everywhere.”
"The whole of the Americas sings through its Indigenous Peoples," Simon said during his poetry reading at the Tucson Festival of Books in 2012, introducing his new book of Native poetry from North, Central and South America: 'Sing: Poetry from the Indigenous Americas.'
"I've been here before," Ortiz said, reading his poetic verse, as he brought listeners back to the heartland, the canyon, the homeland.
Now, Simon's 'Light as Light,' is among the Southwest Books of the Year at today's Tucson Festival of Books, selected by Pima County Library. Simon's new book of poetry is among the books written by Dine' and Native writers honored this year.
"The whole of the Americas sings through its Indigenous Peoples," Simon said during his poetry reading at the Tucson Festival of Books in 2012, introducing his new book of Native poetry from North, Central and South America: 'Sing: Poetry from the Indigenous Americas.'
"I've been here before," Ortiz said, reading his poetic verse, as he brought listeners back to the heartland, the canyon, the homeland.
Now, Simon's 'Light as Light,' is among the Southwest Books of the Year at today's Tucson Festival of Books, selected by Pima County Library. Simon's new book of poetry is among the books written by Dine' and Native writers honored this year.
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| Southwest Books of the Year Pima County Library https://pima.bibliocommons.com/list/share/348306508_pimalib_swbooks/2460364189_southwest_books_of_the_year_2024_for_adults |
Read more:
Simon Ortiz and Luci Tapahonso: Blue Horse on a Red Mile (2005) by Brenda Norrell, Censored News
Coming Home, Simon Ortiz and Demetria Martinez (2007) by Brenda Norrell, Censored News
Tucson Festival of Books, March 9 -- 10, 2024, free and open to the public: https://tucsonfestivalofbooks.org/?id=67
Simon J. Ortiz
Simon J. Ortiz (Acoma Pueblo) is a poet, fiction writer, essayist, and storyteller and a retired Regents Professor of English and American Indian Studies at Arizona State University. Ortiz is the author of Out There Somewhere, Men on the Moon: Collected Short Stories, After and Before the Lightning, Woven Stone, and from Sand Creek. He is also the editor of Beyond the Reach of Time and Change: Native American Reflections on the Frank A. Rinehart Photograph Collection and Speaking for the Generations: Native Writers on Writing, as well as the author of the children’s book, The Good Rainbow Road.
Simon J. Ortiz (Acoma Pueblo) is a poet, fiction writer, essayist, and storyteller and a retired Regents Professor of English and American Indian Studies at Arizona State University. Ortiz is the author of Out There Somewhere, Men on the Moon: Collected Short Stories, After and Before the Lightning, Woven Stone, and from Sand Creek. He is also the editor of Beyond the Reach of Time and Change: Native American Reflections on the Frank A. Rinehart Photograph Collection and Speaking for the Generations: Native Writers on Writing, as well as the author of the children’s book, The Good Rainbow Road.
In 1982, Ortiz won a Pushcart Prize for from Sand Creek. He is also the recipient of the Lila Wallace Reader’s Digest Writer’s Award, the New Mexico Humanities Council Humanitarian Award, the National Endowment for the Arts Discovery Award, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and he was an Honored Poet at the 1981 White House Salute to Poetry. In 1993, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Returning the Gift Festival of Native Writers (the Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers) and the Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas. -- University of Arizona Press
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