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SPEAKER 1: Was it a transition to go from Oklahoma to the flat fertile plains of Minnesota?

SPEAKER 2: I do miss Oklahoma, the land, the openness of the prairie, the wind that could sound different each day. And I assume it can in Minnesota too, but I live in Saint Paul right by Macalester College, very much in the city. I mean, I went from the back roads of Oklahoma to a very Metropolitan and cultural area, such as the Twin Cities with The Hungry Mind bookstore within three blocks of where I live, more books than I'd ever seen in my life. Opportunities, readings all the time, things going on and happenings, and travels, and conferences in my life just kept multiplying and multiplying. It's just been incredible.

SPEAKER 1: I remember you saying something to the effect that humor was difficult for you and it was something that you were going to work on in the near future.

SPEAKER 2: I think we all have a different role as we write. And I think mine has been maybe one of tribal mourner. And I hope to get over that now that I've gotten out all the writing that there is to mourn over, I guess. But we all have a way of approaching material and mine has always been more serious. While the more humorous side, I've never really gotten at. I think it's very hard to write funny.

SPEAKER 1: They say there is a whole different feel or a whole different philosophy behind Indian humor and that not everyone necessarily understands or comprehends Indian humor. What do you have to say on that?

SPEAKER 2: Well, because it's based sometimes on sarcasm, on sourcasm, on bitterness, on wit, on puns, and not the usual things that are immediately funny. Sometimes there is such a subtle wit in Indian humor, it's an hour later or a day later when you realize, that was pretty funny. You know what I'm talking about. I hear you laughing.

It's based on a recognition of likeness. I would say something and you would recognize the truth of it or that you had had a similar experience, or that you recognize the irony or the subtle wit, or the sourcasm, or the poking fun at something in such a dry way.

SPEAKER 1: I have heard it said that Native American tragedy and Native American humor share two very common things, and that's irony and the art of understatement. Would do you agree with that?

SPEAKER 2: Very definitely. Yes, understatement, especially. I had not thought of that word. That's a good word. Indian humor can also be what you do not say. There can be something that you have in mind and just one word will kind of poke it a little bit and somebody else will get it so that it's that kind of indirect humor too.

Although, I think in a lot of my short stories, there are some very funny things. In Aunt Parnetta's Electric Blisters, they have this old refrigerator and it dies. Filo, the husband, goes out and does a war dance to try and bring it back to life and finally shoots it with his gun. And as I say that, this is not very funny at all. But when you read it, it is. And I don't really know what I'm missing here. And I'm leaving something out that I can't remember right now. Anyway, I'm going to try and do that more because I think humor is vital and I have missed it.

SPEAKER 1: You had mentioned earlier that Native American literature was experiencing a Renaissance. Why is it experiencing a Renaissance now, do you think?

SPEAKER 2: Simply because I think a lot of Native American people are being educated. They're beginning to read, which a lot of have not in the past, and still don't. For instance, on reservations, I would say reading is at a minimal. In my own family, it was. But now there are junior colleges, there are scholarships. Native American students are learning a pride, I would say.

Though, I don't mean pride in the sense of pride, but a sense of awareness of self and history, and heritage, and the value of one's voice and what has been erased and can be brought back. As I said, literature is a long conversation. They hear others speaking and they want to speak. And there is a trust in that voice, in that self, even a fragmented self.

SPEAKER 1: I can remember in my hometown of Lewiston, Idaho, my father saying signs in cafe windows that would say, no dogs or Indians allowed. I think maybe another part that may have helped bring about a Renaissance is perhaps people's perceptions of Native Americans have changed, maybe making them more receptive to the things we have to say and what we have to write about.

SPEAKER 2: Yes, very definitely. There's always been issues of land, the importance of land. We are joined to the land. The land has words. It has a voice. The importance of our setting. There's also important issues of the importance of family. What you are is what you are in relationship to others. Your wealth is your family members. There are spiritual values. There's much more beyond this material world that we need for our wholeness, for our well-being.

And even I think the sense of loss is important and how we have dealt with it because many people in America, in the world for that matter, are facing cutbacks and loss, and a diminishing of maybe former hopes. I think the Native Americans have a great deal of insight, although it varies from tribe to tribe, from person to person.

The traditionals, the mixed bloods, the acculturated, there is no agreement anywhere in Indian country, as you well know. And there's just a richness of that long, valuable heritage, the importance of story, of words, of communication, of knowledge, of wisdom, which gets beyond knowledge of a spiritual awareness of our meaning.

SPEAKER 1: What I'd like to have you do now is just find a few selections, a few of your poems that you would like to read.

SPEAKER 2: This is called Photo Frames, the Kansas City Stockyards. I took the idea of a photo album and put words there instead of pictures so that, for instance, in frame one, it says, father, you were the leader of the animals in the stockyards. Finally, plant superintendent, I hated you. Loved you, father. I carry your anger like a cattle prod. What is it we could never settle? A pinhole camera. I look into and find only parts of what must be whole. And then I reconstruct his history and some of my history, and the history of the stockyards.

Frame number two. It was after the flood. You were transferred to packinghouses in several Midwestern towns. There was a terrific flood in Kansas City in 1951 that covered the stockyards. Many of the hogs and cattle died. And then I move on to my father's death and how I got along with him afterwards. The end of it says, we should forget our bad times, relish the good with delight, like pomegranates bursting from their seed and have it here in our album so it is a pinhole back into the life we had.

And one interval will not have to jump another the way a train track used to take cattle to the yards and we would drive down the viaduct in Kansas City where you will be again, father, when I arrive, your face smiling, your arms open wide. I do picture entry into the afterlife as that old 12th Street viaduct in Kansas City and my father there waiting.