Trevino Brings Plenty: Music

I arrived at the art museum in Seattle, WA a half an hour early. It was a two and a half hour drive from Portland, Oregon at 80 m.p.h.. In the museum cafe, I ordered a pita plate, thinking it wouldn't take long to make it, it took 20 minutes to prepare the overly priced meal. I read over the afternoon schedule. My name was spread through out the presentation. I was the token Indian. It was a two hour poetry reading featuring poets who were honoring "Native Americans." I finished my meal and walked to the auditorium.

All nine or ten of us poets sat on the auditorium stage. It was a full line-up. One poet played a Native American flute as an opener. He was shaky in performance. Later I learned he didn't practice it much. I checked across the stage for brown skin or any degree of beige skin. There were at least three, including myself. The poet who sat to my left introduced herself. She was glad if not honored to be part of this event.

The first poet read a poem that had a date for a title. It was some time in the late eighteen hundreds. I looked at the poem titles on the schedule, all were very much annoying titles and I started to feel uneasy about this whole event.

The second poet to read had a poem whose title was another date in the late eighteen hundreds. Damn, I was in for a long depressing two hours.

The two poets were white or to be P.C. or precise, not-Indians. Their poems were equating the Indian people to the land or how strange and wonderful these first people could have lived in such a time and place. A lot of names were dropped and a lot of locations were mentioned, but they didn't touch upon anything concerning the Indians living now, though I was sitting on stage with them. It felt like a cheap, white-guilt history lesson; their poetry was too foreign, trite, and untrue to any life I have lived let alone any person in the room had lived. It was sad poetry not because it was a high school history lesson, but because it lacked soul.

The choice of poems were prescheduled, they didn't ask me what poems I wanted to read. They chose poems from my book, Dead Indian Road. The first poem they wanted me to read, I didn't read it. In place of it I read a poem with the storyline of this white girl who asked me dumb questions about Native American culture and I led her on with the storyline from Dances with Wolves and basically just ridiculed her about her ideas of Indians living today from those ideas of a past culture. It was a funny piece that blew away the two previous poets sad attempts at honor.

The next poem I read, which wasn't on the schedule, was To Kill A Dirty Hippie. As I read it, I heard audience members grumble after every idea break. It was a great satisfaction to hear such noises. After I finished it, the audience was uncertain whether they should clap or not, but being polite cows, they clapped. It sounded forced.

I sat back down and the poet who introduced herself previously, ignored me for the rest of the reading. I felt like I was doing good. I felt like I was representing my peeps and destroying cheap American ways of honor. All of that faded after two hours of poets who liked the sound of their tame verse and polite thank yous and precious descriptions of nature. Did the audience want to be bored to death? Did they think Indian people were on a 24-7 watch of stoic repose? Damn it, Indian people are a humorous people. Think of the book title, Custer Died For Your Sins. What a poignantly funny title. Think of, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist Fight in Heaven. The funny thing about that title is the two characters in the T.V. series called each other "stupid." Tonto, Spanish for stupid; Kimosabi, Apache for stupid.

One of the brown poets read a poem written by Luke Warm Water. The poem had the audience in an uproar. It was Luke's famous and infamous poem, Are You hungry For Pizza?

What can I say of the whole thing? I sold some books and safely made it back home. I am happy about that.


P.S.
Another silly thing about the Seattle event was the chimed in new age flute music. Where were the drums, man. I did my best not to laugh at the whole thing. The not-Indians could keep their new age theme music, but for me, just put on the theme music from Shaft. CAN YOU DIG IT?






Here is an article about the same event published in Real Change News.
The Songs Less Heard