{"id":855,"date":"2009-03-20T17:45:32","date_gmt":"2009-03-20T17:45:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/minnesotahistory.net\/mhnetfix?p=855"},"modified":"2009-03-21T03:59:05","modified_gmt":"2009-03-21T03:59:05","slug":"heid-erdrich-knocking-over-monuments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.minnesotahistory.net\/staging\/?p=855","title":{"rendered":"Heid Erdrich, knocking over monuments"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the definitions of the word \u201cmonument\u201d is \u201ca stone shaft or other object set in the earth to mark a boundary.\u201d This is not exactly what Heid E. Erdrich had in mind in her brilliant new book of poems, National Monuments <\/em>(MSU Press),<\/a> <\/em>though she leaps across boundaries, knocking over markers. <\/em>The book is <\/em>about the nature of the monument as metaphor and endangered sacred space, and \u201cthe places indigenous people would consider their national monuments,\u201d and the human body as monument, and a few other things, which all make perfect sense to readers as we follow her developing thoughts, one leaping to the next.<\/p>\n

The first and title poem in the book describes a once familiar scene in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan, a scene still familiar from old postcards\u2014an Ojibwe graveyard filled with rough bark houses, covering graves marked with doodemic clan markers: \u201cDoodem signs, national markers\/ the body makes by being born\/ that speak your only, only name.\u201d Houses like these were meant \u201cto moss and rot and fail,\u201d not to be kept up with a new roof and a new coat of paint or to survive as a monument of appropriation, meaningful in odd ways beyond the communities where they were created.<\/p>\n

\"Hand-colored
Hand-colored postcard of an unidentifed Ojibwe burial ground somewhere, in the early 1900s<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Erdrich shows the nature of monuments both to the people who create them and to those who have no knowledge of how or why they were made. The geographer J. B. Jackson<\/a> points out that in American society a traditional monument is civic in nature, meant to remind people of important things: \u201cThat is to say it exists to put people in mind of some obligation which they have incurred, a great public figure, a great public event.\u201d People knew of those events and people and traditions kept their meanings alive for generations. Increasingly, he notes, American monuments have taken the form of attempts to reproduce or restore \u201cthe original landscape,\u201d in a golden time beyond history. For a society used\u00a0to appropriating the culture of others,\u00a0Native Americans and\u00a0their sacred sites, their monuments, serve this purpose well, providing new ones for people whose own civic monuments have lost their meanings.<\/p>\n

These beautiful places are sacred for obvious reasons. As Erdrich writes, the graceful shape of Mahto Paha, or Bear Butte, in South Dakota draws many, after all, \u201cwho wouldn\u2019t put their church here?\u201d\u2014even the riders on hawgs, \u201cbound for a bikers paradise,\u201d who drown out \u201csacred words pines speak with wind.\u201d The hill, an animal form, does \u201coffer retreat\u201d to all, \u201cTo gather and praise at Mahto Paha\/ cool in the shadow of her curled form\/ \u00a0<\/span>tucked right under her yawning paw.\u201d Perhaps, she suggests, Mahto Paha has the power to transcend or survive appropriation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Mahto
Mahto Paha\/ Bear Butte, as photographed by Linda Brown in 2002<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In “Black and White Monument, Photo Circa 1977,” Erdrich offers a black and white photograph as a kind of monument, a reminder of what was or is important, an instant of time recorded in 1977. The poem is a truly thick description of the time and place where the photo was taken, even though everything that was important was not in it: \u201cEverything that ever happened\/ lies outside the white border\/ of this photo taken in the late 1970s.\u201d It is a photo of two girls\u2014including, it seems, the author\u2014holding babies, in front of a distant field. The field she says, was \u201cthe real subject of the photo\u201d:<\/p>\n

The light on that land, beyond beautiful, went into me so young
\nIt became the color of all learning, all rest to be hoped for,
\nthe face of heaven. Everything.<\/p>\n

Just as important as the land beyond the girls, is what is beyond the edge of the photograph, a cabin, a clothesline, people sitting in lawn chairs, a pump. And even more, all things that happened that day, the events never photographed. \u201cWhy do we bear the cruelty of photos\u2014the way they suggest anything\/ can stop, any moment can be saved?\u201d The poem itself gives the answer, the nature of the photograph as a monument, a reminder, a piece of a living context and memory, what has always seemed to me the starting point of stories<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But without any kind of living context, what purpose does a photograph serve, or a monument, or anything pulled out of the ground from a burial site? People need Erdrich\u2019s \u201cGuidelines for the Treatment of Sacred Objects\u201d\u2014a parody of NAGPRA<\/a> rules and a sharp, very funny poem that asks questions about objects removed from contexts in museums or more generally found objects that were once important to people and still vibrate with a certain intensity:<\/p>\n

If objects were worn as funerary ornament,
\nadmire them verbally from time to time.
\nBrass bells should be called shiny<\/em>
\nrather than pretty. <\/em>Shell ear spools<\/span>
\n should be remarked upon as<\/span> handsome,<\/em>
\n but beads of all kinds can be told,<\/span>
\n simply, that they are<\/span> lookin\u2019 good<\/em>.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em><\/p>\n

And all of this happens in the first eleven pages of this wonderful book! There is a lot more here. I haven\u2019t even mentioned the series of poems about Kennewick Man, the ancient person’s bones found in Kennewick, Washington, said to date to 9,300 years ago: \u201cKennewick Man Tells All,\u201d \u201cKennewick Man Swims Laps,\u201d \u201cKennewick Man Attempts Cyber-date.\u201d How is it that this ancient First American belongs to all of us? Erdrich gives Kennewick Man an identity to undermine his appropriation, something that seldom happens to the prehistoric peoples dug up and studied for their contribution to prehistoric understanding. Erdrich\u2019s advice, prompted by the sale of tufts of a Pharaoh\u2019s hair on the Internet and their return to the Egypt (after resting in France and being stolen there thirty years ago):<\/span><\/p>\n

Love your body every moment
\nIt is only yours a while, then no longer
\nsovereign, if of interest to science,
\nor souvenir seekers, or other, as yet
\nunspecified future uses.<\/span><\/p>\n

Perhaps we all may end up somebody\u2019s monument at some point (our skulls sitting on someone’s dashboard as happened to some of the remains unearthed on Minnesota’s\u00a0 Oheyawahi\/ Pilot Knob<\/a>), \u00a0so the best you can expect is to treat yourself and others well while you\u2019re alive and after you\u2019re gone, to turn to ashes, which are no one\u2019s monument. In the book\u2019s last lines, the author\u2019s friend, a \u201cbrilliant playwright\/ with attendant torment,\u201d sums it up. \u201cBut, really, scatter my ashes, baby\u2014<\/em>\/from said playwright, about says it,\/ for after words.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the definitions of the word \u201cmonument\u201d is \u201ca stone shaft or other object set in the earth to mark a boundary.\u201d This is not exactly what Heid E. Erdrich had in mind in her brilliant new book of poems, National Monuments (MSU Press), though she leaps across boundaries, knocking over markers. The book … Continue reading Heid Erdrich, knocking over monuments<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-minnesotas-150th"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.minnesotahistory.net\/staging\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.minnesotahistory.net\/staging\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.minnesotahistory.net\/staging\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.minnesotahistory.net\/staging\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.minnesotahistory.net\/staging\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=855"}],"version-history":[{"count":30,"href":"https:\/\/www.minnesotahistory.net\/staging\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/855\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":893,"href":"https:\/\/www.minnesotahistory.net\/staging\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/855\/revisions\/893"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.minnesotahistory.net\/staging\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.minnesotahistory.net\/staging\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.minnesotahistory.net\/staging\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}