 We are live on YouTube and we're going to start the webinar. We are live. Welcome. We're going to give it a moment for folks to get in. I will put in the chat box tonight's link to our document or shared document. This document contains a library information, library news, but also links to our presenter and her book. And as we go along and as the presenter speak always resources come up, I will add to that doc and hopefully try and link it back to the library's catalog. I'm going to be in for a treat. Welcome tonight everybody. All right it's seven o'clock so we'll start with library news and updates, and I want to thank Ursula pike and Michelle opinion for being here tonight, and taking part in our big summer stride. So it is summer stride and it's not just for kids, all ages, read, learn, play, watch, go to events, do your 20 hours of any of those things, and you can get our San Francisco public library iconic tote bag, and you can do that any of our 28 locations. All right. So, we want to give a land acknowledgement, the San Francisco public library acknowledges that we occupy the unseeded ancestral homeland of the raw material lonely peoples, or the original inhabitants of the San Francisco peninsula. We recognize that as that we benefit from living and working on their traditional homeland, and as uninvited guests affirm their sovereign rights as first peoples, and wish to pay our respects to the ancestors elders, relatives of the raw nutrition community. And now I'm going to throw in the chat box, a link to some reading sources and some great websites on indigenous culture, and particularly aloney. And I'll shout out sagorate land trust which is an all women run organization in the Bay Area working on land rights and land back movement so check them out. They have this amazing thing called the shumi tax, where you can calculate how much tax you can pay, or should pay. It's really interesting, including, you know, you calculate whether you're a homeowner or a renter. It's very fair. I paid under $100 a year. So it's very, it's very interesting check out their website. And if you don't know what land you're joining us from, you can check out native land map. It's an interactive map. It'll also show you any treaties that are in place or any treaties that were broken. So that is a really interesting map. All right. Like I said, it is summer stride so we have a whole bunch of stuff coming up still to go and we want to thank our friends of the San Francisco public library for supporting us in all of this amazing program. It has a on the same page it's called which is a by monthly read where we encourage all of San Francisco to read the same book at the same time. So we chose for July and August a good beach sizzle read, and the one and only Miss Beverly Jenkins with her book, Wild Rain. It's not your typical bodice ripper either because it has feminism and it has family planning. I was very surprised by this book so check it out at any of your 28 locations. And then we will be having an author talk on August 23, 7pm, same place, same time. In August we celebrate all things food, and we keep our partnership nomadic press going on we've had them all summer long, and they have our poets coming out, talking about their love of food. And just a few programs I'm going to hit on. Joanne Losch, who is a bartender at notorious the Soviet spar, and she has written the most hilarious book and it's really verbatim over her convo and chat at the bar so really great. And this will be in person at the main library August 2. And there's going to be some refreshments will come on down and sure it's going to be fun. August 5 will be talked to Suzanne cope will be in conversation with Cleo Silver her book power hungry women of the Black Panther, and freedom summer their fight to feed a movement. And I'm just going to show you quickly how much amazing stuff we have coming up. And a lot of this stuff is in person, but also hybrid, which we are exploring. She's like an icon now to she's just like a powerhouse in the vegan industry, so she's going to be actually talking about dairy farming, and she has a ranch that she runs and it's, you know, all about being for animals. She's amazing. Christina Cho, who is now a two time James beard award winner will be at our Richmond branch. And my favorite can't wait to hear about this is the Bay Area food co ops and this will be a panel in our correct auditorium. We'll be streaming featuring other avenues who are just like, you know, an established SF, you know, business they've been in business for many, many years, and we'll have air is Mindy my favorite bakery in town, and the deep which is grocery co op in Oakland and collective co op from Venetia, and then we'll talking about the democracy of food co ops, and like the last democracy of the working force. So come check that out. I know it's going to be a powerful panel. And without all of that without further ado, I'm going to introduce tonight's panel tonight's presenters. So I'm really excited I am a huge fan of heyday books. I just can't even say enough there you always partner with us and they're just really giving of their time and their authors are always giving up their time so thank you Ursula for being here and giving your time, and as well as being with Michelle. So tonight we'll be talking about Ursula Pike's book and Indian among Los Andeja and Dana, and he was going to look at Los Andeja and this, a native travel memoir. So tonight's memoir up in the white writer canon of travel memoirs with sharp, honest and unnerving examination of the shadows of colonial history. Even the most well intentioned attempts at cross cultural solidarity. It is also the debut of an exceptionally astute writer with a mastery of deadpan wit. When Ursula was 25 she boarded a plane to Bolivia and began her two years service in the Peace Corps. A member of the Karooftide tribe, I sought to make meaningful connections with indigenous people halfway around the world. But she, when she arrived in La Paz with trepidation, as well as excitement. Knowing I followed in the footsteps of Western colonizers and missionaries who had claimed they were there to help. In the following two years as a series of dramatic episodes brought that tension to a point and point. She began to ask, what does it mean to have experienced and the effects of colonialism firsthand, and the risk becoming a colonizing. Because the author of an Indian among last indebtedness, a native travel memoir, and again this is from heyday books, Ursula lives in Austin, Texas and writes about identity, Native American issues, economics, travel and powwows. She has an MFA in creative writing nonfiction from the Institute of American Indian Arts and a master's degree in economics from Western Illinois University. She is a member of the Karooftide, her work has appeared in lit hub, yellow medicine review, Ligea magazine, World Literature Today and Oh Dark 30. And joining her in conversation today is Michelle La Pena, a member of the Pitt River tribe and mother of three. She's Indian law attorney represents Indian tribe since 1999. She's published several law reviews, law review articles, essays and creative nonfiction articles on topics relative to her work with the California Indian with California Indian tribes. Her poetry has recently been published in Warren's literary view, yellow medicine review, red ink and news from the native California. Her first short story was published in wax wing in 2018, and she received her BA in 1993 with her JD and 1998, both from the University of California Davis. She is the recipient of a 2015 Truman Capote creative writing fellowship and earned her MFA creative writing from the Institute of American Indian Arts in 2017. Her novel manuscript The Fantasy Spring is nearly completed and she is currently working on a poetry chat book. When the book is complete Michelle please come on back and we would love to hear about it. All right, I am going to stop talking and turn it over to Michelle and Ursula Pike. Wow, thank you, Anissa for that great information. I want to come back you guys have so much exciting stuff going on this summer. That's great. Michelle. Thank you so much for joining me for this conversation. I'm, I'm really excited. It's a pleasure to be here. I'm excited to hear you read from your book. And we are going to be talking about the book, an Indian among those indigenous, and I probably misspelled that or mispronounced it, but I love the book, and I'd love to hear your voice telling us part of your story. Great. All right, well I will start with the beginning of chapter two, which just kind of gives an overview of Bolivia, and it's called the chapter is called Coach Abamba. Bolivia was isolated, isolated by mountains and expanses of sparsely populated rugged terrain. It was a landlocked country that lost access to the Pacific Ocean in 1904 after a war with Chile. In Bolivia, the Andes Mountains broke into two separate ranges and continued bumping along South America into Chile and Argentina. There were mountains of snow-capped mountains with tranquil llamas silently chewing in the foreground. But Bolivia also had mountains of jagged orange and slate jetting toward the sky. Centuries of wind and rain erosion had revealed layers of red and gray minerals. There were mountains around the tree-less steep mountains because there was no going over them. In Potosí, the high altitude bone-chilling city whose silver deposits inspired the hot greed of Spaniards. The hard brown shape of Cerro Rico, literally rich mountain, could be seen from every narrow street and open plaza. It was also home to the world's largest salt flat, Salar de Uyuni, an expanse of horizon-skimming whiteness that stretched for mile after barren mile. An Aymada Indian story explained that the mountains surrounding the salt flat were once giants. One of the giants deserted his wife for another woman while his wife was breastfeeding their child. She cried and cried, and the tears mixed with the milk and ran down her chest in white streams covering the vast area between them. When it was dry, the sun reflected off the salty whiteness. Light-skinned tourists were burned to a shade of pink, not unlike the flamingos that flocked there to mate every November. During the rainy season, a thin layer of water accumulated on the surface and turned the salt flat into a giant mirror that reflected the sky and erased the horizon. Tourists were drawn to the remoteness, to the myth of Bolivia's savage purity. It let them prove they were travelers and not tourists. Tourists ordered frozen blue drinks from the hotel bar. Travelers, by contrast, rode buses without shocks for 50 cents while suppressing their explosive diarrhea, proving their hardiness. What about the grandmother seated next to the traveler? She'd been riding the same bus for 20 years. The bus was luxurious compared to the back of the truck she'd ridden the previous 20 years. Would she see a difference between a traveler and a tourist, or would she simply see a gringo riding through her country as though it were a roller coaster? The eastern border of Bolivia pressed up against the backside of Brazil. The rivers from that region flowed into the Amazon basin, and the jungles were full of the world's largest rodents. Thick vegetation and piranha. By the 1990s when I was there, the eastern lowlands were one of the poorest regions of Bolivia. Giant cattle ranches with few cattle remained. Many hid processing operations that turned the coca leaves grown nearby into cocaine for North American snorting. I was told it was a dangerous, messy part of the country. Thick with yellow fever infected mosquitoes and no volunteers. But the tribes in these lowlands have built causeways that stressed for miles, controlling the water and enabling large communities to exist well before the Spanish showed up. The mountains, the solar and the thick jungles all made Bolivia a difficult place to explore. The isolation and remoteness helped the Quechua, Aymada, Guarani, and other tribes maintain their culture and language for centuries. Some of the tribes managed to stay hidden until the 20th century, but the riches in the ground itself worked against their efforts. Gold, tin, rubber, mahogany, cocaine, lithium, and even the water drew Westerners who did what they do, explore, infect, desiccate. But those natives were still there speaking their languages, dancing, and feeding themselves and their children. And I have one little part I'm going to read. It's called chapter 10. It's just a little part from the beginning of that. Misenyawi, which is a Quechua word that means cat eyes. Strikes across the country shut down the schools for weeks and the children from the center went home. Oh, I probably should give a slight explanation. So I was sent as a volunteer to work in a children's home in a rural part in a small community in Bolivia. And I call it the center. It was a children's center had about 100 kids. And the kids lived there during the school year there was a cook. There were teachers who helped the kids with their homework. So when I refer to the center in this excerpt, that's what I'm referring to. And then the three women that I talk about, they all worked at the center. And, and so here's a here's a little excerpt from that chapter. The teachers in Cantuta marched through the streets at night with candles. I saw my landlord's wife marching, but wasn't sure whether it was appropriate to wave at her from the sidelines. As though it were an independence day parade down Main Street. I was still able to buy food and supplies at the market, but didn't attempt to travel the coach of bomba for fear of getting stuck on the wrong side of the blockades. Both the Churango workshop and the bakery project sat idle, but every day I still walked up to the center because I knew my friends were there, and I had nothing else to do. I said, but it's okay. I'm thinking about leaving my poliera. He minute said one morning, as we all snacked on the last of the bread. I dipped it in my coffee shop, softening the edges a little. I didn't understand what she meant by day hard me boy era leave my skirt and looked at her day hard to keep her she said in a different way, but I still didn't get it. I understood that the words meant to leave or to quit but still was confused. I'm going to say Ursula don't you understand Teresa asked. She doesn't want to be a Cholita anymore. He many to didn't want to wear the traditional catch you address anymore. Why would you want to do that and what would you wear. I knew there were fewer Bolivian women wearing pull yet as than in previous decades, but I didn't think this was how it happened. One day a woman decides to stop being a Cholita. He many to explained how expensive the Poliera was, and how much money she'd save if she could dress in regular skirts and dresses. Teresa and Florencia nodded their heads in agreement. Both women were children of Poliera wearing Cholitas, but they didn't wear traditional clothes. It had to be about more than money. Everyone says that Cholitas are from the countryside and thinks that they are indios, he many to said Cholita was synonymous with Indian. Bolivians told me all the time that they were proud of their income ancestors, and the kids often bragged that cantuta meant sacred flower of the Incas in Quechua. Yet they knew what many people, especially the wealthier wider population of Bolivia, thought about Los Indios few wanted to be seen as an Indian. For a young woman like he manita living in town for the first time in her life without family nearby, being seen as a Cholita made it that much harder for her to succeed. Maybe she didn't want to be a cook's helper for the rest of her life. But what do you think I should do he many to look straight at me. All I could think was this is not right. The choice she faced symbolized why cultures disappear, why languages get lost, why my grandmother told my mother not to braid her hair in high school, because it made her look too Indian. Cholita should stay a Cholita, but it wasn't my place to say. It was easy for me to think my friend should wear poliera when I didn't have to walk through the world as a Cholita. And I understood why she wanted to tuck away her indigenous identity, despite being proud of it in order to survive. Maybe she wouldn't put it in those terms but that's what seemed to be happening. The feminists and me wanted her to be able to do whatever she wanted. Thanks so much. I love that. I love that chapter and the dialogue, the inner dialogue that you're having with yourself about all of these questions and the conflicts that you're having and interacting with other indigenous people and the kind of insecurities that you're having as a young woman with your own Indian and your own native identity. It's a really beautiful exploration of that. What really captured me was that you thought about it so much and I think that might be a distinction between sometimes indigenous peoples' way of communicating is that we might think more about what we should say in a particular instance and might be more careful about how our words might land on somebody than perhaps other people than other cultures where there might be a more instant dialogue back and forth. And so that really caught my attention throughout the book that you reflect that native perception and way of thinking. So it's lovely the way you've captured it here and you've done it so many times throughout the story. So my first question I want to ask is, your memoir tells us about your experience in the Peace Corps in Bolivia in navigating that space as a native person. So what would you tell a native person who wants to join the Peace Corps today? And again, I'm assuming that there is the Peace Corps because I really done my research on that. So tell us a little more about that. No, and there definitely still is a Peace Corps. I mean everyone was brought home because of COVID and now they're starting to send people back out. And actually I've had recruiters reach out to me and ask me to speak to groups. And I've said I will but I'm going to be honest about my experience and they are always open to that and I appreciate that. You know, the thing I would tell a native person who's considering it is to to consider it and that, you know, they can think about their experience when someone comes to their community to help, because as native people, we all have had that experience. I know I've had that experience of some well meaning, well intentioned outsider coming in to help our community. And, and sometimes it, it isn't helpful sometimes it's to serve their purposes more than, than it is to ours and they don't necessarily listen to us. But there's other people who have a, have a more respectful way of approaching that that assistance that, and that recognizes the full humanity and that native communities are thriving in many ways. So I think that that's what I would tell a native person considering it. And I also would tell them Peace Corps opens doors to graduate programs I mean I was able to get my master's degree because of a fellowship specifically for return volunteers. There are all kinds of resources that come as a result of the Peace Corps, the connection and the networking. And I just think I would really love to have more native people take advantage of those opportunities that that are available. And I think as a result of that experience. Yeah, and your, your story is a lot about how to become a giver. And the difficulties the challenges that come with being a giver and sharing and trying to aid other people because you explain that is it's a transaction, you know you're getting something out of it. And you, you were constantly searching for that the balance so that you weren't taking but you were truly giving and I love that that part of your book that thread that talks about giving because I believe very much in creating a giver economy and native people we certainly do that. Yeah, yeah, I see that and I see that in the community work that you do that so many of us do but you especially and I appreciate I'm glad that you that you notice that. Oh yeah, and Malcolm Margolin, you know who is the founder of heyday books your publisher has very strong beliefs about givers and so that's something that we are very much touched by so I think that's probably why they were so attracted to this book and why Malcolm thinks so highly of it. But you know, in addition, it also shares your story shares. You share a lot of very personal intimate details about your travels as a young woman in Bolivia. And, you know, for a moment I was a little shocked, you know that you went there and you told some things you told on yourself. And that is important in memoir because our memoirs are supposed to be truthful and honest depiction of of ourselves so I love that it has that humility and that honesty, but were you worried about sharing any of these details in a publication. That's a good question and it's something that I know I teach a memoir class and that's one of the first questions that a lot of students asked me about. And I, I wasn't so scared for myself, I mean I changed the name of the town and I obscured enough details about people because I was okay with people know that these are things that I did or happened to me, but I, I'm the one making that choice. They are not so I want them to be able to be anonymous if possible, but I really was trying to model some personal accountability. And people talk about their experience overseas and maybe don't confront some of the choices that they made or priorities that they had, and I really wanted to show just asking myself those hard questions because that's what I was thinking about when I was there. And I also was really lucky that I worked with Melissa Fibos and Alyssa, Alyssa was shoot a who both have memoirs that are incredibly intimate and honest about their life experience and I, I saw how much power that gave them to, to talk about their experiences in complete, completely honestly. And you know, another thing that they talked they both talked to me about was just writing about other people and, and how the way that people will react, you can anticipate it there. You don't know how people who love you or people who know you are going to think when they read a book that maybe they're in either tangentially or a lot. And, and you have to be okay with that and that was really helpful to years before the book was published to, to kind of think that this is something this is one of the things that happens when you have a memoir come out. People are going to wonder where they are in there or how they're portrayed. And you just, you know you have the right as the author to tell your story about what happened to you, and you have to be comfortable with that. Yeah, that's one of my barriers to writing a memoir is having to come to grips with some of the things that I've done and you know I think we're all as humans a little afraid of everyone seeing how who we really are and to the art of the memoir is revealing those things so I applaud you and your bravery to, to share some of those details. And, you know, in the native community, we don't share those things. There's a lot of, you know, humility, and, and maybe it's not humility because that's reflecting to positively on it. Maybe it's shame. And in our community, we, there is quite a bit of shame that runs into our culture through the threads through our culture, and that is intended to keep us on the right side in our behavior, that if we behave in a way that's counter to traditional rules, such as the reading, you know, you're the, the woman him and he to keep being confronted with the decision of whether to wear the dress the traditional dress, or not. You know, there's a judgment involved there and that's what she's struggling with is that shame because she's not no longer going to be a traditional Bolivian woman or catch you a woman. So how does your Karuk heritage, you know, shape the your writing today. Do you believe it's a big part of it. Yeah, you know, and it's so great nobody has ever asked me that I love that you asked this question. So, first of all, I want to say that I am really fortunate to have many examples of other Karuk authors, like Julian Lang Lynn rising and the Lisa trip others. And then, and there's all kinds of interesting exciting work coming out there's a, there's a Karuk chef who's writing a cookbook that's going to be coming out next year. I'm super excited about it. And then other California native authors are writing all kinds of interesting exciting work. And so that to me that helps me, because I think about when I was growing up I really didn't have any examples specifically of California native authors. And so now to see so many from my own tribe but then other California tribes is exciting. And, you know that my kids are growing up, being able to read those things. And feeling validated in a way that on the page that, you know, I don't know that I had and I really love that so that that helps me a lot. I think that at the, the, the bigger picture that being a person helps me in my writing is just understanding that any situation is more complex and messy than it really then it's been portrayed. Often, I went back to the travel reunion, right before the pandemic, like the year before and, and as we're driving around I noticed all these, all this stuff about pioneers and gold rush and, and I forget got how, as a child I was taught that people, like, oh look at this exciting minor Farni Niners and all that stuff, all that myth around how good that was for the country. And I, and I didn't learn until later about how the devastating impact it had on native communities, and my community specifically my family. And I think that I understand that any situation I go into any place I go into that there's a, a different narrative than one we have been taught about it, and that I want to that's the narrative I want to pay attention to that's a narrative. I am interested in not what everybody thinks about it. I completely understand that there's that the level of the layers for native people because we're in our homelands, and then this colonial history has happened, but we're still existing with our native roots that are. It's difficult to explain that to people that aren't native from this land, they, you know, it's, it's different to, I believe, I can only speak for myself but to if I lived, you know, in another country, and even had children and had generations afterwards. Our roots were from someplace else. And so here we have that wonderful gift of that we are home in our homelands and we can easily learn from the land and we're still connected to land and. So yeah, you're, you carried that with you as you traveled to Bolivia, even because you understood how they fell in their lands. And you also pointed out, you know, how much harder they had it in Bolivia, compared to even the difficult things that your family experienced, you know, from that colonial history, it was very, it's a very challenging place to live for native people in Bolivia. Yeah. Yeah. I do want to talk about the Institute of American Indian Arts, because we, for those that are participating, we were in the same class in, and participated in the program together. I, I, in the MFA program, and so many wonderful writers have come out of our of that university at the Institute. We have, you know, the ones that you've mentioned. Well, I don't. So, and then Tommy Orange obviously was there. And so many others that have have excelled, Teresa Malhot has been exceptionally successful and at these New York Times bestsellers. Yeah, yeah, for sure. And so, you know, when I'm curious about your journey to get there, and what, what you got from it, but specifically I was wondering it did. Did you already have the idea for this memoir when you went there and you were working on it through the MFA program, or was it something that came because you went there. And I had started to write some stuff around it, but once I got there to, I definitely focused pretty exclusively on writing about writing this book so you know it's a low residency program if people don't know it's a low residency program. So you go for a week long in person residency, and then you spend a semester submitting different packets of work to your instructor to your mentor, and though every single packet was was another chapter. So I was actually scared to share the work in the in class workshop I would sometimes workshop other things it wasn't towards the until maybe halfway through that I started actually workshopping my Bolivia stories but yeah, I, I really enjoyed that and it was there to me. It gave me a sense of it expanded my, my understanding of the boundaries of native writing. I remember specifically Orlando white was talking one time about how, you know he's a deny poet and, and he was invited to the event as the native poet, and he read some poem about vocabulary or something, not directly native. And, and people were asking him why you are the native poet like aren't you supposed to read something native and, and he, and then he turned it around to the students who had gathered for that talk and we just all had a conversation about different feelings that we felt people had of our writing, and, and different pressures that we felt. And I loved that conversation. And that was like my very first residency I think it just really examining the, the boundaries that we had put on ourselves that I had put on myself. Based on the feedback I'd gotten from non native writers or maybe instructors. So I love that it just kind of blew my mind and, and it was just really supportive and exciting to see all this work different work that people were doing in all different areas. But I want to ask you, Michelle, about your experience that I did. How did you. How was it for you I mean what was the thing that that really helps you're writing the most while you were there. In my experience there, I was scared to death. I was scared it was such it was so out of my wheelhouse because I have my, my day job, you know, as an attorney representing Indian tribes. And I'm always hearing about other people's problems and other people's stories and I'm, you know, I'm a listener I'm the counselor so I'm processing with people. So I had a lot inside, and I was very, very scared. And so sharing my work was just absolutely frightening because prior to I really had only published just, you know, articles about different topics and news from native California so it really did. I've been working on a novel, but it had written poetry for 20 something since I was 18 years old, but I had never really taken it seriously and so yeah I really enjoyed it. I, I got a little I worked out some of the fears that I had although they're still there. And I actually, I'm not going to read this poem tonight, but because it's really long. But one of the poems poems that I wrote was there I made a list of it's a list poem that talks about all the things I was told not to write. It's called the list of things that I have been told not to write about while I was at I. And, you know, because there's all these tropes and we, you know, aren't supposed to talk about, you know, stereotypical things like commodity cheese and eagles flying and and so I felt really constrained by that part, where there are some of these rules, but, you know, I'm also rebellious and so the rules are there to be broken and so that's kind of how I worked that out and in the poem was that I'm not going to write it the way anybody else would write it so I'm free to write whatever I want to write about. Yeah, for sure. To ask you it's one thing that I really admire about you is that you move in these different genres you write poetry, you have a novel. And I've seen essays that you've written so I just think to me it's, it's so interesting and and when you're working on, I mean does it. Yeah, for one of those sparkles, one of those ideas. Is it clear to you from the beginning, what genre, whether it needs to be a poem or a short story or. Yeah, I usually my, what I consider my best writing happens through an inspiration and some kind of a glimmer and that's what Pamela Houston, Pam Houston, what is one of my my mentors and she. She talked about glimmers and how you can get this idea you know like oh that would make a good story or oh I should write about that or oh I should write a poem about that. And I get those ideas a lot. My difficulty is I have like a job and I have a lot of responsibilities. So I don't have the time that I would love to, I'd love to be a full time writer you know when I grow up. You know the, the best writing is when I'm just inspired and I run with it. And they seem to be kind of gifted to me from someplace else and I just write it so sometimes it's because of an issue I think there was an essay that I wrote. When I was in news from native California which I really did feel like was some of my best writing and it was, it was in response to the Standing Rock. Occupation, and I thought, well the standing, it was such a big deal for Indian country when that happened. I thought about the environmental harm that comes to our country here in California, and I wanted to make to write a response to it. And, and so and also it kind of got conflated a little bit with and I don't want to get real political but it kind of got conflated with the, the campaign for where Donald Trump was saying that make America great again. And that really resonated with me because of our history here in America is, I was trying to figure out where, when it was great for native people and in my family, so I wrote an essay about that too. So sometimes it's just a, it's usually just something that comes out of the universe. That's great. Well, I would love to have you read a poem. Now, if you. Oh, okay. Yeah, I did. I do have one that's not too long, and I haven't read poetry in quite a while. So I'm very rusty, but this poem is, I'm just going to frame it a little bit in the, in California in the valley, we in the Central Valley we have a ceremony called the Hesse ceremony and one of the things we do in the Hesse ceremonies we throw pennies at the dancers. And so pennies also are, you know, you, their sayings about pennies and so I just wanted to talk about the pennies. So it's called a good luck penny. They pick a penny for good luck. But others say it must only be heads or tails. We're not sure. I scoop them all into a pocket, a satchel, a Slytherin coin purse. Auntie said to keep them in a big glass jar. She saved them until she died. And then we all got one. She made luck with her pennies for old age that nieces turn to greats, great greats, and great great greats. But how many pennies make good luck? Do they combine their magic when tossed in an old coffee can combined with dirt from the roundhouse floor, thrown at the feet of the Hesse and the leader and the Mother Earth. But we don't remember why. Wavoka told us to throw a penny to the dancer. Just do it. And we thank them when we do it. Sometimes a penny gets stuck to a sweaty leg or foot. Watch the penny stomp each step until it falls away. Waiting for the dancing boys to clear the floor. Scurry out when they are chosen to do the first of tasks to become a dancing boy. The second time they use the broom to sweep pennies into careful piles while not making dust. But do coffee cans full of earth, toolies and pennies bring us luck? Or does it go to the other side? We give it all away. Oh, that's beautiful. I love that image of the pennies stuck on the leg while he's dancing. That's wonderful. Thank you so much for sharing that. Yeah, thanks for inviting me, Ursula. Sure. Well, we wanted to wrap this up by just sharing before we have some, because we have some time for questions and answers. But we just wanted to share some work that other people are doing, some things that we are reading, want to read. And do you want to go? I can go. Go ahead. Okay. All right. So there's some brand new books like that came one that came out yesterday. But then there's other ones, new ones coming out this summer. So calling for a blanket dances. This is this book by Oscar Ho Kaya. Right. And I think he was at I met him at some event. And I'm excited to read this book that's set at a powwow. Hopefully someday I could teach a class where we only read books and stories set at powwow. That's one of my goals. And Ramona Emerson, who's Denise, she has a new book called shutter. It's like a mystery police. I don't know. It's just, it's getting so much buzz. I'm really excited. Ramona is an amazing filmmaker documentary filmmaker. And so I'm just so excited to see that Sasha LaPoint was in my program. She has a book called red paint. So those are brand new books, but there's also a bunch of books that came out in the last couple years. Tony Jensen, who's an instructor, she has a book called carry that is essays and I just, I love it. I teach several of the essays in my class because I find them just so I love them. So she has a book from last year book of essays called white magic. I also have, there's a craft book that Melissa Phoebus came out with this year, called book work or body work, and it's, she has this great whole section on writing about other people and just reflecting on that as somebody who's written about other people. I think it's a, it's a really good book if you're writing about your experience about trauma. Anyway, and last thing I'll just say is on Instagram, indigenous book nerd who is at indige book nerd. She's a great person to follow because she really keeps on top of the latest native books that are coming out. So I'll, I'll put that in the chat. And so how about you, Michelle, have any. Yeah, I love Tony Jensen was my mentor as well and that her book carry is amazing I just, I was stunned, like over and over and over again when I read that book is such good writing. I've recently been very, very obsessed with Natalie Diaz, a Mojave poet who won the Pulitzer Prize for post colonial love home and I'm getting chills still just being able to talk about it. The work is, is gorgeous and thought provoking and I loved it. I also like to read just nonfiction. And I, I've been very obsessed with this book about Marie pots. It's a actually a biography of Marie pots, called the lettered life of a California Indian activist by Terry Castaneda. She's a professor of history at Sacramento State University. And it's, it's, it's not a literary book, it's a historical book but there's so much history of California in and and she was such an amazing woman. And in a, you know, a non native Arthur that I've been very involved with lately is bell hooks and I've been reading all about love. And I, and that's just something that's sort of for me to heal with. And then Stephen Graham Jones, of course Stephen Graham Jones is a native primarily horror fiction writer, but he does move among genres, and he's extremely prolific. And I try to keep up with him, but it's very hard to do, but he has he has wonderful books, some of them are a little slasher for me, and others are gorgeous and they don't have that scary that it's more of a mental thriller. And then Brandon Hobson, who has some new mystery fiction novels that I'm really, I'm really excited about. So what are you working on now. Well, I am. I'm working on a novel so I'm trying to do something different. I lived for a while on in Grace Harbor, which is on the western coast of Washington. My mother was a forestry manager for the quenalt reservation and and just. I'm exploring that from her perspective that in a novel, and it has some of the same themes of being an indigenous person but not of and working with indigenous populations but not your tribe, and just those those conflicts of being in that, in that in between space and trying to kind of face what you're doing and thinking about your own experience. So, and how about you, what are you working on. I'm still working on my novel. I set it aside for what turned into years, but I have. It's done except for the feedback I got required me to go back and change some of the structure, and I'm actually changing it from an omniscient voice to first person. I've been editing it now and I'm loving it that it's really just sort of sparked it in a whole new way for it to be in first person voice. So I'm leaning on others that have come before me like Tommy Orange she was in the chat here from Oakland California. And I'm really leaning on his work to kind of bring a little more energy to my characters. And that that sees the light of day someday. Oh, that is awesome. That's great. I look forward to reading that. I see someone posted a question. What inspires both of you to write and what's your writing practice, I'll address it and then if you want to. So what inspires me. I have specific stories that I'm looking to write that I haven't seen before. I mean that's why I wrote my, my memoir is that I hadn't seen that story told before. And but honestly sometimes, and this is where the practice comes in, I just have to sit down and write. And sometimes I feel like I'm not writing great stuff, but you just got to put in the time I feel like I have to put in the time. And just setting some deadlines, some goals for myself a certain amount of hours or certain amount of words each each week. Not a specific time just fitting it in when I can at the library or whatever libraries my favorite place to write so anyway, what about you Michelle. Wow writing at the library. I, I get inspired by things going on around me one like an example. One day I was presenting something at the California Native American Heritage Commission which they deal with repatriation and the unfortunate situations when our ancestors are discovered during construction and it's a really heavy, heavy topic to be dealing with these ancestral remains. But on the way back from the meeting where I had given them some work, I had, I just got the story like it just came to me and I'm and then I went home and I wrote the story. And that's probably that was my one short story that's been published. And so usually there's a, just, it's like a gift from somewhere and I and the question is, am I going to catch it and am I going to turn it into something. And I, you and I talked about this Ursula the other day where what. Why do we write and it's because there's this creative spirit that just kind of wants us to get it out and so it's not really always a conscious thing it's just there's always something gnawing out on me. Right now I'm, I have a glimmer, an idea that I want to write an essay about the fourth of July. And from more like a memoir kind of perspective on the fourth of July because it seems like there's been a lot of things that have happened to me or with me or for me around the fourth of July and I think that could be a wonderful essay. And maybe part of a memoir someday so I have a bunch of essays like that that I hope to string into a memoir someday. My writing practice is unfortunately very disorganized and not very disciplined. But I hope to change that with my all of my children leaving the house and going to college and my last one will leave here in a couple of months and hopefully I'll reclaim my time and get some time to write. Yeah, that's great, that's great. I see someone has asked do you do any other creative arts. And I do not. I write and, and that's it how about you. I, when I in the past have done basket weaving, and but that is extremely if writing is timely time consuming basketry is, is, you know, ongoing it's all the time I have old basket materials that have gotten too old and I can't use them anymore so you, you know, you have to gather them all year long and let them cure and then there's a lot of sitting time for weaving. And I used to do that. When I was younger and I always said well when I get when I grow up I'll be a basket waiver so I'd like to become a basket waiver someday. And I also would love I really feel called to doing pottery or ceramics and like making sculptures. I haven't, I haven't had the time to do it, but I'm hoping as I get older I'll have time. Yeah, I hope so too. That's great. Well, Anissa, I know that we're almost at time. Is there anything that you needed to. I just want to say thank you and I knew those reading resources and all of those more than just reading resources so much came up. And we did have a question from Claire, who asked me to type in all of the authors who were mentioning I did my best, and it's in our doc right and I'll go back and add in links to have so you can check them out. California has an amazing library coalition. Anyone from California can get a library card at any California library you don't have to belong to that town or that's maybe you can get a library court in California. These books are available at all libraries, well maybe not all libraries but you can request that these books be available at your library we love patron requests. And I want to thank you just for all of that library love you gave us to. We'd love writers we love to see you writing at our libraries of course. Tommy Orange was our one city one book in 2019 so he totally amazing I got to drive them all over California. And then Natalie Diaz, yes, absolute goosebumps. Oh my God, powerful that we we have not picked too many poetry books as are on the same page but we did select her book for poetry month and Wow, just like slam dunk. So if you haven't checked out all of these people. Now is your chance and I think I have a new book list to create. So I want to thank both Ursula pipe for being an author and being here tonight, and Michelle opinion thank you for being in convo and share your poetry with us like your community. We love you as always, and we'll see you all next time. Thank you. Thank you, Anisa and Michelle and SFB D. Yes, wonderful opportunity. Thank you for letting me participate. All right. Thank you so much. You have a wonderful night. Thank you.