How to Be an Indian in the 21st Century

By Louis V. Clark III (Two Shoes)
Wisconsin Historical Society Press (2017)
109 pages

Review by Elizabeth A. Roastingear

Rhyme. Rhythm. Song. Repeat. The near rhyme and the unrhymed weave in and out of the prose of this book like honeysuckle roots in a basketweaver’s brown hands. Kanuhwelatuksla, the traditional Oneida Thanksgiving Prayer, is on page one. The repetition of “We bring together our minds…and so be it our minds…” is soothing. It is a welcome mat, and we enter into Two Shoes’ world, which he prepares for us like an Oneida feast.

How to Be an Indian in the 21st Century stirs up memories for baby boomers, who are survivors of forced assimilation, forced relocation, and botched genocide—both cultural and physical. We survive by grace, much to our oppressor’s chagrin. Our songs, prayers, traditions, and bodies are alive. Our soul wounds are scabbed over and healing, but we are ever wary of having them ripped open by racism. Or by poetry.

This book is written chronologically in accordance with the author’s boyhood memories at his grandma’s house, to his schooling by Catholic nuns, and on to marriage, adulthood, fatherhood, and elderhood. The author’s humility shines through as he shows us his world in each poem and piece of short prose. Two Shoes is a poet warrior in the truest Indigenous sense, and the tears in his readers’ eyes are enduring courage.

Poet/writer Two Shoes, an Oneida Nation member, was once told by a poet laureate to “never repeat a word or phrase more than three times.” But he did it anyway: “I was shocked, I was shocked, I was shocked, I was shocked.” Indigenous peoples were told to never speak languages, sing songs, send up prayers in a traditional and sacred manner, but they did it anyway. Readers can easily tune into the deeply embedded tones of pride and resilience in his creatively crafted poems, prose, and songs. There are vivid images laced with flashes of prose and framed with short notes of emotion, often only a sentence. We all have guilt. We are pulled back to a time long ago when some of us were children of the 1960s, and we remember the twinge of anxiety which still remains. He writes: “Shooting, maiming empty beer cans/A finger dipped in victim’s blood/Touched lips, the enemy, war.”

In an interview with the Wisconsin Historical Society, Louis V. Clark III said, “We each have painful stories inside of us, demons if you will, but you have to be willing to open up your soul, like Pandora’s Box and let those demons loose because only then will hope emerge. Hope will carry us on to a better tomorrow.” There is hope and humor and a gauntlet of emotion from cover to cover in this well-crafted volume. It will surely be a popular book in many libraries.

Elizabeth A. Roastingear, MFA, is a member of the Cherokee Nation and an associate professor of arts and humanities at Navajo Technical University.