 I didn't know Janice very well in the way that we didn't spend much time together. The times that we did spend together were brief, but just filled with talk, talk, talk in the short time we had together. And the last time I believe, well she was in the Bay Area over in the east coast side of the East Bay, a couple of years ago for an anthology that we were both in, and so one of the writers there said, oh Janice asked about you, and she said she's sure that you guys are related, you just can't figure out how. And I just wanted to speak to that for a moment. And I wanted to ask Mimi later, because Janice and I, as Kim said, share our origin. We were both from the Koyongkawi people from the northern Sierra. And that name isn't known too much because the anthropologist called us Kankow, which is obviously derived from that word, but they probably didn't care. They're probably like, oh, they said something like Kankow, so we'll just call them Kankow. But I'm just curious to talk to Mimi about how she spelled it, because I want to be in unison in our spelling of it. And that was just something that really made me happy when I discovered her work and discovered that she was Koyongkawi. And when we did talk, we'd say, you know, we must be related. And my mother said she remembered the name Gould up in the high country. And then in here, there's a poem about her mom coming on the train because she was ill from Quincy. So there's not a whole lot of people that I know who even really know where Quincy is. And that's up in the high country where my mother grew up. And so we always said we have short stories to share. Unfortunately, we weren't able to do that. My mother was not a woman of literature, although she read, but poetry was not her thing. The only other book she had other than my writings of poetry was this book, because she asked me to bring it to her. And in case, well, I just wanted to mention also that at the Maidu Museum in Roseville, California, there is a cardboard statue of her. And one time my mom, who lived on the Round Valley Reservation, because that's where her husband was from, she said, you know, I wouldn't really mind going and seeing that statue of that Maidum Gule. And in our language that meant another Indian woman. Unfortunately, my mother did not get to do that. But for people who have survived from that country, the gold rush and everything that came along with it, that was something that she and I shared, Janice and I shared too. So for us to see the statue, the cardboard statue of her is important to us. It means a lot to us. I'm going to read some of her work, but I also wanted to talk a moment about some of the things she said about writing and things that I caught my eye and that I could share the feelings with. But first I'm going to start off with the Indian mascot poem, 1959. Now begins the festival and rivalry of late fall. The weird debauch and daring debacle of frat boy parties as students parade foggy streets and mock processions, bearing on shoulders scrawny effigies of dead defeated Indians cut from trees where in the twilight they had earlier been hung. Just dummies laughs our dad, red Indians hung or burned, it's only in jest. Every fall brings the big game against Stanford where young scholars let off steam before the debacle they may face or failed exams. You're dead wrong, he says to mom, they don't mock real life Indians. Around you see campus mock lynchings go on. Beneath porches we see hung the scarecrow natives with fake long braids dead from the merry making. On bandcroft way one has fallen indecorously to a lawn, a symbol of the debacle that happened three generations ago in California's hills where native people were strung up a way of having fun. Where did they go, those Indian ghosts? Their kids perform mock war dances whooping reenacting scenes of a debacle white folks let loose child's mom. Meanwhile we hang portraits of presidents on school walls and never let fall the old red, white and blue. My dear brother is dead because he fought in a white man's war. How many dead Indians do they need to feel okay? This whole thing wears on my soul. In the dark car we go silent and the fall night gets chillier. In yards blazing bonfires mock the stars that glow palely somewhere above. A thin moon hangs over the tully fogs. I've never heard the word debacle before and wonder what it means. What's a debacle mom? I ask. Oh honey, it's a terrible and deadly collapse, complete ruin. I've noticed how the hung Indians have their heads slumped forward. They wear old clothes, headbands with feathers, face paint, moccasins instead of boots. Little do we know this fall, living Indians that feather falls leave tobacco to mark that. Indeed we're still here, lungs full of indigenous air. And that's one thing that we did briefly speak about was the fact that we're still here as a people. And that's true across the country. It's always amazing to me that Native people have survived when there was such an effort to exterminate and that is the word that the government use to exterminate. So ha ha. Questions about the soul. I have questions about the soul who resides like a dark cousin in the shadow of my heart. I remember her black curly hair, the almond shape of her eyes and her small mouth turned down at the edges. Her voice could not reach her mother when she rattled the edge of her crib. Her mother saying louder. Here in this photo, pudgy and laughing, she is dressed in a crocheted sweater. She was a brown sturdy baby, but her little boots are dirty. Where did she live? The soul with whom did she take her supper? Did she sleep in a solitary room? Did she know her father? Perhaps her mother had beaten her. I heard that she ran away. They say she grew up mean and took many unruly lovers. I have questions about the soul, how she survived her sorrow, whether she could love or if she hated her sons and daughters. I have questions about the soul who resides like history in my heart's dark chamber. I have questions about the soul also. In an interview, I was reading, she made, Janice made reference about the language poets. And, you know, that's a whole conversation workshop, whatever you want to say. But I was talking to Mary Corta, who was from the Bay Area, elder, about the language poets. And I said, I want to mention it. And then she was like, oh, this is all I can tell you. And this is a woman who has a master's degree in Silver Latin, has, you know, been a poet for 50 years. And anyway, so she said, oh, all I can tell you is a joke. And this is the joke. If you cross a language poet with a mafia don, what do you get? And I said, what do you get? And she said, a poem you could never understand, you know, like how you say offer you can never refuse. A poem you can never understand. I've always been told, if you have to explain the joke, it's not a good joke. But I want to touch just a couple of things that she had said about, you know, being from California. And she said, in fact, the whole history of California Indians is such a different kind of story. It's not the standard narrative of contact that people believe is the story of Native Americans in this country. I felt like I had a responsibility to tell this story, to explain this interesting story. And then she went on to say, and this story work is not uninformed by historical reading, which I thought was very interesting. Then she went on to say, the mining technology itself, the hydrology blasted the mountains down for gold until all they had left of the valley was rubble. What I do when I read this book is populate those hills with Indians, because those hills and valleys with the beautiful wildflowers are exactly the country my grandparents came out of. And in our language, when we say koi and kaui, it means people of the meadow. And in the springtime, there are lots and lots of flowers. I want to encourage you also. Pardon me, I don't mean to bastardize the title, but my language. Lavanda. Key. D. Gallero. Lavanda. If you ever get a chance, it is on the internet of her reading it. And her voice is just, just carries the poem. It's just, it's beautiful. And I could read the poem, but I can't do it justice like she did. But I encourage you to look it up. Okay, I got two things that I want to read to finish up here. And they're pros, prose pieces and they just struck me. First death. Mom said, sent us in whispering in a fierce voice that we should not be afraid for Mama B had always loved us. True. The old woman looked like she was sleeping lying silently in the bronze casket her lawyers had paid for. At first, neither Joyce nor I wanted to look. We hung back. It was odd enough being in the mortuary, a place called the little chapel of the flowers. In a building with a mock thatch roof that looked as if it belonged in old England. It was evening after dinner. The casket was on a stand of some sort red velvet curtains hung behind it like the drapes at either side of the stage. A strange quiet permeated the place. I approached cautiously not wanting my little sister to think I was afraid. She whimpered softly. I peered in. I'd seen Mama B asleep many times snoring lightly when I took her an afternoon tray of tea and toast. On the square oak table next to her bed were acrimates, accruements of the elderly, a blue glass bottle of milk of magnesium, a leather covered case of her gold frame spectacles, a tumbler half full of water. In her casket with its white silk lining, she had more color in her cheeks than I had ever seen. Her eyes were not entirely closed and her wispy hair had been neatly arranged. The grim mouth, not quite smiling, was noncommittal. Okay, I whispered to Joyce. It's not scary. Really, you'll see. My sister crept up to the casket, took a peek and reared back quickly. Let's go, I said, taking her hand. I believed I was closer to Mama B than either of my sisters. Joyce so strong and so busy with her horse, and I felt I should be crying. Mostly I was relieved to get the ghastly task over with, looking on death, a dead person. With the appointment over, Dad drove us home, no one talking, a dark sky covering the town. It was late March, a rainy spring. Next day, my 14th birthday, Mom had me open a present, a gray sweater shirt with a portrait of Beethoven emblazoned on the front. Included with the garment was a small plastic bust of the composer wearing his usual frown. This we placed on the piano. Afterwards, Dad took us for family outing to the old cold fields on Mount Diablo. Along the roadside spikes of purple thistle were growing clutches of poppies and purple lupin. Behind a cast iron fence there stood a cemetery. From the 1800s, the carved headstones of minors, their wives and children. The water in the river Delta was choppy, full of whitecaps. Overhead, dark clouds scutted by, tugged by the wind. The shafts of sunlight sometimes broke through, illuminating tufts of new grass, vibrant green among the graves. I'm going to finish, I'm not going to take the time to find the poem about Quincy in the book. When I sit down, I'm going to though. I would like to make offering for, not just Genesis departure, but for humanity in general. And this poem I want to share with her because of where we're from. And the poem is titled Mountain Song, but it could be a valley song. It could be a river song, it could be a prairie song, plateau song, mountain song. Blessed mountain you are my home, sacred homeland you are my heart. Blessed heart you are my truth, sacred truth you are the way. Blessed way you are a circle, sacred circle you are a basket. Blessed basket you weave my life, sacred life you are a gift. Thank you.