[Worship] Fwd: Teach Poetry & Heritage with “Peace Path” by Heid E. Erdrich

Mon Oct 1 04:53:52 CDT 2018

*"*The truth will set you free.
*But not until it is finished with you." *
— David Foster Wallace

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From: Teach This Poem | Academy of American Poets <education at poets.org>
Date: Mon, Oct 1, 2018 at 5:31 AM
Subject: Teach Poetry & Heritage with “Peace Path” by Heid E. Erdrich
To: peggyclifford at gmail.com <peggyclifford at gmail.com>

October 1, 2018 View this email on a browser
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Peace Path
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Heid E. Erdrich
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This path our people walked
one hundred two hundred              endless years
since the tall grass opened for us
and we breathed the incense that sun on prairie
                                                             offers to sky

Peace offering with each breath
each footstep           out of woods
to grasslands plotted with history
removal   remediation                     restoration

Peace flag of fringed prairie orchid
green glow within white froth
calling a moth who nightly
seeks the now-rare scent                 invisible to us

invisible history of this place
where our great-grandfather         a boy
beside two priests and 900 warriors
gaze intent in an 1870 photo
                                                             his garments
white as orchids

Peace flag                                           white banner with red
cross
crowned with thorns                       held by a boy
at the elbow of a priest
beside Ojibwe warriors                   beside Dakota warriors

Peace offered after smoke and dance
and Ojibwe gifts of elaborate beaded garments
thrown back in refusal
by Dakota Warriors                         *torn with grief *
                                                             since their
brother’s murder

This is the path our people ran
through white flags of prairie plants
Ojibwe calling Dakota back
to sign one last and unbroken treaty

Peace offering with each breath
each footstep                out of woods
to grasslands plotted with history
removal   remediation                     restoration

Two Dakota    *held up as great men*
humbled themselves
to an offer of peace
before a long walk south

before our people entered the trail
walking west and north
                                                           where you walk
now
where we seek the source

the now-rare scent
invisible as history
history the tall grass opens for us
                                                            Breathe the
incense of sun on prairie
                                                            Offer peace to
the sky

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Copyright © 2016 by Heid E. Erdrich. This poem was commissioned by the
Academy of American Poets and funded by a National Endowment for the Arts
Imagine Your Parks grant.
North Country National Scenic Trail

[image: North Country National Scenic Trail]
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Photo credit: National Park Service.
Sioux Chippewa Peace Conference

Fort Abercrombie, August, 1870

[image: Sioux Chippewa Peace Conference]
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Photo credit: State Historical Society of North Dakota.

[image: classroom-activities]

The following activities and questions are designed to help your students
use their noticing skills to move through the poem and develop their
thinking about its meaning with confidence, using what they’ve noticed as
evidence for their interpretations. *Read more about the framework upon
which these activities are based
<https://academyofamericanpoets.cmail20.com/t/y-l-kiutqt-tlqtrlrly-q/>.*

   1. *Warm-Up* *(pair share)*: Make a list of different gestures and
   symbols that make you think of peace. Share your lists with a partner.
   2. *Before Reading the Poem **(individual writing)*: What, specifically,
   do you notice in the photograph from the North Country National Scenic
   Trail? What is the photograph of? What colors do you see? What perspective
   is the photograph taken from? Can you imagine a place where the trail might
   be leading? How might going down this trail make you feel? Why?
   3. *Small-group Discussion*: Share what you’ve noticed, imagined, and
   felt with your group members. Do you all agree, or do you have different
   interpretations?
   4. *Reading the Poem*: Read the poem
   <https://academyofamericanpoets.cmail20.com/t/y-l-kiutqt-tlqtrlrly-a/>
   silently. Write down the words, phrases, and structures that jump out at
   you.
   5. *Listening to the Poem* *(enlist two volunteers to read the poem
   aloud)*: Listen as the poem is read aloud and write down any additional
   words and phrases that jump out at you.
   6. *Small-group Discussion*: Share what you noticed from reading and
   hearing the poem. How is the poem structured? Why do you think the poet
   structured it this way? Is any part of the poem repeated, perhaps with
   slight changes? Why might the poet have repeated these words?
   7. *Whole-class Discussion*: How does the structure of the poem relate
   to its content? How does it relate to the photograph of the trees? What is
   the history recounted in this poem? What in the poem tells you this? How
   does the image of the tall grass make you feel at the beginning of the
   poem, and do you feel differently when the image is repeated at the end?
   8. *Extension for Grades 7-10* *(research activity)*: What can you learn
   about the Ojibwe
   <https://academyofamericanpoets.cmail20.com/t/y-l-kiutqt-tlqtrlrly-f/>
   and Dakota
   <https://academyofamericanpoets.cmail20.com/t/y-l-kiutqt-tlqtrlrly-z/>
   tribes and their histories? Write an essay about what you have learned.
   9. *Extension for grades 11-12*: It is possible to look at the two sides
   of the poem “Peace Path” as two separate poems or as two halves of the same
   story. How might these be seen as two separate poems? What are the
   similarities and differences between the stories they tell? If you look at
   the two sections as part of one poem, how do they interact with each other
   in content and structure?

*Read more poems about family heritage and history
<https://academyofamericanpoets.cmail20.com/t/y-l-kiutqt-tlqtrlrly-v/>.*

[image: Heid E. Erdrich]
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Heid E. Erdrich Poet

Heid E. Erdrich grew up in Wahpeton, North Dakota. A member of the Turtle
Mountain Band of Ojibwe, she is the author of several poetry collections,
including* Cell Traffic: New and Selected Poems *(University of Arizona
Press, 2012). She is also the editor of the anthology *New Poets of Native
Nations *(Graywolf Press, 2018). Erdrich lives in Minnesota.
[image: more-at-poets]
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More Context for Teachers

About this poem, Heid E. Erdrich writes, “The North Country Trail leaves
Minnesota and heads toward Fort Abercrombie just above my
hometown—Wahpeton, North Dakota. This poem envisions the tallgrass prairie
as I have seen last remaining swaths of it in areas of the trail. The poem
depicts events that took place when the grassland was unbroken and when our
great-grandfather, Keesh-ke-mun-ishiw/Joseph Gourneau, serving as an altar
boy and standard bearer for a Catholic priest, was photographed at Fort
Abercrombie in 1870. The path the North Country Trail traces from the Lake
Superior shore through the North Dakota grasslands, maps the migration of
my Ojibwe ancestors as they moved, and were removed, from their territories
as treaties decreed. For me, and for other Native Americans, a map of the
trail tells a specific story, one of tribal history. The Grasslands stand
as an emblem of peace for me—the hush of wind in tall grasses, the surprise
of wild roses and rare lilies, the open faces of sunflowers in fields, the
prairie potholes where water is
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