5 Indigenous Poets to Teach Right Now
It’s always a good day to teach Indigenous poets, but doing so in November is an especially great way to honor Native American Heritage Month. Challenge and inspire your ELA students by teaching these five phenomenal, Indigenous living poets.
Natalie Diaz
Students will find Natalie Diaz’s poems bold and powerful in their unabashed and sometimes heartbreaking honesty, but they will also feel welcomed in as witnesses and advocates.
Poems to Get Started:
“They Don’t Love You Like I Love You”
Bobby Wilson
Bobby Wilson’s poetry will serve as a constant reminder to your students that, despite depictions that portray Indigenous people as only living in the past, Native art and culture is thriving in our modern world.
Poems to Get Started:
Layli Long Soldier
Layli Long Soldier, a citizen of the Oglala Lakota tribe, writes poems that investigate the erasure of Native American people and their representation in western society. Many students will find Long Soldier’s subject matter challenging, but her staccato rhythms, casual phrasing, and offhand asides mimic teenage speech, so they’re likely to also see something of themselves in her poems.
Poems to Get Started:
“38”
“Whereas”
Heid E. Erdrich
Students will enjoy Heid E. Erdrich’s poetry because it so seamlessly and joyfully weaves her Ojibwe heritage into everyday actions, such as choosing jewelry, standing in a bank line, or getting a family pet. The deep and difficult themes of theft, displacement, and erasure are presented matter-of-factly, but still gently, inviting in students who may, at first, resist reading about troubling subject matter.
Poems to Get Started:
“De’an”
Laura Da’
Laura Da’, who is Eastern Shawnee and a public school teacher, is a wonderful poet to bring to the classroom, as she actually writes about interactions she’s had with her own students. Da’s language sometimes pulses with vivid color and is sometimes muted, with understated lessons that your students will relish discussing. She peppers her poems with hard-hitting historical references that will give your students multiple opportunities to engage in further research. Da’s poems will reach your students and impress upon them the importance of finding and cherishing their own voices and identities.
Poems to Get Started:
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