♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ELISA NEW: The struggle for survival in harsh climates and terrains is one of the oldest sources for American art.
Well before the arrival of Europeans, the original peoples of the Americas passed down stories and songs of the living things with which they shared their unforgiving environments.
These "Earth tales" bore wisdom that humans could apply to the rigors of their own lives, whether in the cold of the northern plains, or the searing heat of the desert.
ALBERTO RIOS: My father told stories of the jungle that he grew up in with such eloquence and being so close to the idea of survival.
"Everything's been said, "But one last thing about the desert, And it's awful."
LINDA HOGAN: My poem comes from stories that I heard.
Stories about bad winters and horses without tails.
"When the old man rubbed my back with bear fat "I dreamed the winter horses "had eaten the bark off trees and the tails of one another."
♪ ♪ CHRIS EYRE: Survival and the need to eat and drink, that's where the strongest source material comes from.
♪ ♪ NEW: To explore the influence of these traditions on contemporary poetry, I talked to two poets-- Alberto Rios of Mexican and Indigenous heritage and Linda Hogan of Chickasaw and Oglala ancestry.
I shared their poems too, with students in Gallup, New Mexico, where Navajo, Hopi, Zuni, and Mexican-American traditions come together.
And with three scholars of Native American history and literature.
Joining this group, renowned film director Chris Eyre, and one of America's most familiar biologists, Jeff Corwin.
♪ ♪ NEW: We began in the Southwest.
♪ ♪ RIOS: "Everything's been said, "but one last thing about the desert, "And it's awful: "During brush fires in the Sonoran desert, "Brush fires that happen before the monsoon and in the great, "Deep, wide, and smothering heat of the hottest months, "The longest months, "The hypnotic, immeasurable lulls of August and July-- "During these summer fires, jackrabbits-- "Jackrabbits and everything else "That lives in the brush of the rolling hills, "But jackrabbits especially "Jackrabbits can get caught in the flames, No matter how fast and big and strong and sleek they are."
♪ ♪ EYRE: The first two lines say, "Everything has been said except for this."
I mean, what kind of hook is that?
♪ ♪ It's a genre of storytelling and understanding, which is very masterful because it's done in simplicity, but it is all-knowing about itself.
NEW: This poem seems to come to us from the centuries.
- Mm-hmm.
This poem is as old as the desert.
It starts at the end of that long storytelling tradition.
DANIELA MARTINEZ: Children are always growing up with being told stories of, like, "This is how the world works," "This is how a creature is born," or "this is what the importance of this creature is."
PATRICK DEILELIGI BURTT: Our creation stories explain how indigenous peoples are obligated to care for a specific place.
RIOS: This is an earth tale.
This is very much in the Indigenous traditions that are part of my makeup.
My family were all great storytellers.
♪ ♪ My brother was in the Forest Service.
And he would come back and regale me with stories of fire.
(fire crackling, aircraft roaring) RHEANNA SMALLCANYON: My uncle's a hot shot, so he basically, like, fights fires.
He's seen a lot of wildlife get trapped.
How they can't do anything for themselves, like, once they're cornered, they're basically cornered.
♪ ♪ RIOS: "No matter how fast and big "and strong and sleek they are.
"And when they're caught, "Cornered in and against the thick "Trunks and thin spines of the cactus, "When they can't back up any more, "When they can't move, the flame-- "It touches them, And their fur catches fire."
JEFF CORWIN: Fire actually has a role in the ecosystem.
There are trees and plants that can only germinate with fire.
RIOS: The Sonoran Desert, that's my particular desert.
The word "Sonoran," it basically means sonorous or soundful.
(wildlife clicking, buzzing, hooting) (wind rustling brush) If you are this jackrabbit, you've evolved around all things listening.
(animal rattling) They listen so well, but it doesn't always save them.
♪ ♪ CORWIN: The jackrabbit is a creature that is constantly running for its life.
It doesn't get to stop because it is delicious for many other things.
(eagles screeches) And they go incredibly fast, but they move in a wild sort of way, zigzagging back and forth.
NEW: Though beginning slowly, as Rios's poem narrows down on the fate of the one rabbit, its lines shorten, its tempo grows more urgent, and patterns of alliteration crackle across the page.
RIOS: On the page, it has no breaks.
I'm emulating the contagion of the fire.
It's like at that moment, it just catches.
SMALLCANYON: "And when they they're caught, "Cornered in and against the thick "Trunks and the thin spines of the cactus" MARTINEZ: "When they can't back up any more, "When they can't move, the flame-- it touches them."
It kind of takes over your emotions and just keeps following you along as this fire is with the rabbit.
(fire crackling) RIOS: "Jumping big and high over the wave of fire, or backing "Even harder through the impenetrable "Tangle of hardened saguaro And prickly pear and cholla and barrel."
The barrel, I just say "barrel", I don't say "barrel cactus."
You wouldn't say "barrel cactus"-- "it's a barrel over there."
EYRE: With the familiarity he has with the subject and the geography, he knows the Arizona-Mexico border, so we understand the specificity of his knowledge.
We trust the storyteller.
CORWIN: An ancient barrel cactus is loaded with fuel and it's so dry, it literally explodes.
♪ ♪ RIOS: "Whichever way they find, "What happens is what happens: They catch fire "And then they bring the fire with them when they run.
"They don't know they're on fire at first, "Running so fast as to make the fire "Shoot like rocket engines and smoke behind them."
(rocket engine roaring) ♪ ♪ EYRE: I just want the rabbit to get ahead of it.
I just want the rabbit to get ahead of it.
♪ ♪ Honestly, it reminds me of, like, the Looney Tunes with the, with the roadrunner and the coyote going at each other.
EYRE: And I'm thinking, can the rabbit really be a bottle rocket and ignite other bushes in the desert?
And I'm thinking... no.
Well, maybe?
No!
(laughs) So there's a delight in it.
♪ ♪ NICOLETTE BRITE: "But then the rabbits tire "And the fire catches up, "Stuck onto them like the needles of the cactus, "Which at first must be what they think they feel on their skins."
RIOS: "They felt this before, every rabbit.
But this time the feeling keeps on."
EYRE: There's one line that can sum this up.
He says, "What happens is what happens: They catch fire."
He's taking this image, putting it up to your face, and saying, "It is what it is.
I'm sorry to tell you this, it's horrible."
♪ ♪ JEFF CORWIN: Even the most beautiful things can be incredibly dangerous in the desert.
A cholla cactus looks fuzzy, like a pile of little hamsters, but if you ever touched a cholla, barbs break off into your skin, cause tremendous pain.
SMALLCANYON: Like the fire, it does hurt to get poked by one of the cactuses.
That's probably his interpretation of what the rabbit feels.
RIOS: "But this time, the feeling keeps on.
"And of course, they ignite the brush and dried weeds "All over again, making more fire, all around them.
"I'm sorry for the rabbits.
And I'm sorry for us To know this."
NEW: Oh... (laughs) those poor rabbits.
- Poor rabbits, I know.
Poor so many who get caught in that sort of circumstance.
♪ ♪ CORWIN: The Sonoran Desert, it's basically at the bridge which connects the Americas.
♪ ♪ RIOS: I can't imagine having to cross through that for days upon days.
(birds cawing) SMALLCANYON: I feel like a lot of people from the southwest can relate to the jackrabbit.
(rattling) EYRE: Alberto Rios literally says, "I'm sorry to have to tell you this."
And I'm like, well, then why did you tell me this?
He's a truth teller and a storyteller.
One that likes to bring us to see in ourselves and also seeing what's around us.
Mortality or death is a part of the cycle of this environment.
Jackrabbits, cacti, and dying are also contributing to life.
NEW: Alberto Rios's poem dispenses its hard truth for humans through a searing, if simple, tale of one animal's final moments.
By contrast, Linda Hogan's poem layers past and present, chronicle and dream, as it peers through the eyes of animals and ancestors.
LINDA HOGAN: "When the old man rubbed my back "with bear fat "I dreamed the winter horses "had eaten the bark off trees "and the tails of one another.
(distant horse whinnies) "I slept a hole into my own hunger "that once ate lard and bread from a skillet seasoned with salt."
(wind whistling) STEPHANIE FITZGERALD: The word "dream" is only used once at the very beginning, what launches the poem.
So is the whole thing a dream?
HOGAN: Poetry takes you into another part of yourself, a dream space.
It takes you so deep that you don't always know you're going there.
FITZGERALD: In the poem, there is no geography.
It could be any geography.
It could be any time period.
HOGAN: Native people don't think of time in the same way.
Native people talk in the present tense when they talk about history.
It's as if time all comes into one container within that person.
♪ ♪ PHILIP DELORIA: There's different kinds of visions that you might have.
You might have a dream that connected up to a vision that you had had before.
In Lakota tradition, people who dream of bears are healers.
NEW: This poem is one in a collection called "The Book of Medicines."
I mean, I read it in that sense, as medicine.
For a Native writer, medicine has a big, capacious kind of meaning, you know, from the very material stuff you might go out and gather.
(wind whipping) FITZGERALD: Cedar, or any other kind of medicinal plant, it's mixed with some kind of fat, of oil, and then it's rubbed on the skin.
In our culture, when we use any type of fat, mostly sheep fat, that's a healing process.
FITZGERALD: The fat of the bear gives to humans.
It helps cure the ache of humans.
♪ ♪ TASHEENA THOMPSON: The part of the poem that most affects me would probably be, "When the old man rubbed my back with bear fat."
It's because in my religion, it's surrounded by animals.
And bear was one of my grandpa's associated animals.
So I'm also part bear.
(bear grumbling) CLEVELAND: In the Navajo culture, we couldn't hunt bears, because bears were a protector for us.
(gunshot, animal yelping, dogs barking) DELORIA: You wouldn't go out and hunt bears, really.
That's not a food source.
Because bears are too much like human beings.
The bodily form is too much like a human being.
♪ ♪ NEW: Though opening in a dream space, soon enough, Hogan's poem is pierced by reminders of historical time.
HOGAN: "I slept a hole into my own hunger "that once ate lard and bread from a skillet seasoned with salt."
DELORIA: "From a skillet seasoned with salt."
Oh, that sounds very European to me.
♪ ♪ CLEVELAND: When the Native Americans started trading with the white, that's when they started trading their skillets, their pots and pans.
That's probably where they got bread and the lard from.
FITZGERALD: The poem is evolving from a specific, very human domestic scene of humans caring for each other, into this world of hunger.
DELORIA: "Fat was the light I saw through "the eyes of the bear three bony dogs leading men "into the grass-lined caves of sleep to kill hunger as it slept itself thin."
This does feel like the exact dynamic of hibernation, right?
I'm going to consume my own body in order to survive.
So if you read it as an Indian poem, in a lot of ways, it's about survival.
NEW: The displacement of Native peoples from the Eastern seaboard began with the first arrival of Europeans in the 15th century, but in the 1830s and through the 19th century, the removal of tribes from their ancestral lands hardened into U.S. policy.
Forced marches-- The Trail of Tears that displaced the five Nations of the Southeast and The Long Walk inflicted on the Navajo-- were only two of these expulsions.
SMALLCANYON: My grandma's great-grandma had to go through The Long Walk and she said that it was horrible.
They were mistreated so badly.
THOMPSON: My people, we were associated with The Long Walk, as well.
I think this poem spotlights a lot of the emotions, especially hunger.
My family are Oglala Lakota and I'm a Chickasaw.
We had separate Trails of Tears.
We paid for food in advance and the food didn't arrive where it was specified.
We wanted to stop and hunt, and that wasn't permitted by the military.
The elders usually passed away along the way and then, you know, infants and children.
Reaching Oklahoma, there wasn't anything there.
DELORIA: Keeping horses alive through the winter was really hard.
The grass is all covered up with snow, and what do you do?
You eat the bark of the cottonwood.
CORWIN: "They grew fat with the swallowed grease.
They ate even the woodash after the fire died."
People would be so hungry back then that they would actually eat the cinders of a fire just to fill your stomach.
And we know that there are nutritional benefits from eating ash.
Do dogs eat wood ashes?
If it had lard in it or fat.
Everything is eating everything because they're hungry.
♪ ♪ NEW: The hunger Hogan's poem depicts leads us further back in time to a primal scene: a cave where the animal competition for fat to quell hunger and cold sharpens the senses.
FITZGERALD: "Fat was the light I saw through the eyes of the bear."
DELORIA: "Fat was the light I saw through."
Oh, there is this thin veneer of fat that I'm looking through.
It's the lens in which I'm going to see.
CORWIN: Are they talking about the fat that they're burning as fuel through a lantern, or are they talking about what makes the bear the bear?
It's tallow.
DELORIA: We're talking about the collapsing of these boundaries between different worlds and who gets to look through whose eyes.
Some of these words in the poem are ambiguous.
"They" in this stanza is one because it's not quite clear who "they" is.
♪ ♪ CORWIN: She's taking us to an earlier time, to a much earlier peoples who would have encountered these creatures they would have depended upon for a resource, for meat, for fire.
We're eating the same things, we're competing with them for the same resources.
And in some cases, we are the resource for them.
DELORIA: "Three bony dogs leading men into the grass-lined caves of sleep to kill hunger."
They're being led by the dogs who were once wolves and immediately in the next stanzas, you're led to think about the relation between dogs and wolves.
If you're being led by those bony dogs, you're looking over your shoulder at them.
CORWIN: She talks about the domestication of the modern dog from wolves about 10,000 years ago.
We connected deeply to this canine for companionship, for exploitation.
♪ ♪ FITZGERALD: What a wonderful thing it is to be a wolf.
This sense of freedom and fierceness and wildness.
(wolf howling) So different from the human experience.
♪ ♪ HOGAN: "I am afraid of the future "as if I am the bear "turned in the stomach of needy men "or the wolf become a dog "that will turn against itself "remembering what wildness was "before the crack of a gun, "before the men tried to kill it, or tame it, or tried to make it love them."
"The crack of a gun turned in the stomach of needy men," the violence is implied.
CLEVELAND: The guns most likely came from Columbus.
(gunshots firing, swords clashing) NEW: Are the wolves the Europeans who arrived, the white people who arrive, who gobble everything up?
Exactly, who are keystone predators, who kill everything.
(horse whinnying, bear grunting) CLEVELAND: The bear is not really a bear, it's Indigenous people.
NEW: As with the "they," the repeated pronoun "it" blurs dog, wolf, bear, and man.
Just who is predator and who is prey?
"The men tried to kill it, or tame it, or make it love them."
And if you sort of thought, "What's the first moment?"
It's the moment of conquest, right?
Let's kill it, right?
And then what's the next moment?
It's the moment of taming.
It's like, "We're gonna put you on a reservation, "we're going to take away your language and your spirituality.
"We're going to colonize your mind to the point where you love us."
♪ ♪ The metaphor of hibernation, laying low through the hard times, and surviving that and coming out the other end sounds easy.
You know, we lay low, we survive, but there's a cost to that, which is the self-consumption.
♪ ♪ CORWIN: We know the horrible truth that no other animal knows-- that it at all ends.
We know what's in store for the rabbit.
Because in the end, it's in store for us, which is death.
(bell tolls) So, rubbing out a backache with some bear fat and a full belly, I think it provides a sense of peace, because life can get a lot worse.
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