We Are Resilient
Dream Warriors at ASU
By: Turning Points staff
3,035 Native students. That is the figure that marked a record-high in the university’s Native student enrollment during the Fall 2018 semester. Correlated with this achievement was a visit in September from the Dream Warriors, a collective of artists who travel Indian Country to “empower others to embody, teach and live their heartwork.”
Frank Waln (Sicangu Lakota), Tall Paul (Anishinaabe), Mic Jordan (Ojibwe), Lyla June (Diné/Cheyenne), and Tanaya Winder (Southern Ute/Duckwater Shoshone/Pyramid Lake Paiute) address personal, historical, ancestral and intergenerational trauma through art and discussions.
Kickstarting their national “Heal It Tour” at ASU, their message to Sun Devils was simple yet mighty: resist through self-empowerment.
“Know who you are because these systems aren’t built for us. They’ll try to steal your light and tell you who you are,” Waln said. “Remain grounded and rooted in your community, culture, land and who you are. Go forward in that way and I think you’ll do good.”
Brought to ASU in a collaboration between Poetry Across the Nations, the Alliance of Indigenous Peoples, the Center for Indian Education and [archi]TEXTS, their visit consisted of live performances and intimate poetry and songwriting workshops for the ASU community.
“It feels like a blessing to do what we do,” Winder, the group’s founder, said. “We pick up a lot of people’s stories and pain. When you’re taking all of that in, that energy needs an outlet. Thinking about how all of our traumas… and healing are connected, we wrote (the song ‘A History of Hearts Breaking’) as a gift to process all of that.”
The artists bring their own creative tools and personal experiences to the songwriting table, opening up conversations on hard-hitting topics such as drug use and language loss, and addressing these subjects by highlighting sobriety and language revitalization.
For multi-instrumentalist Lyla June, her song “All Nations Rise” is a song of healing for listeners.
“I wanted to write about getting our people back on their feet,” June said. “As Indigenous peoples, we’ve been beaten down for so long sometimes it’s hard to have hope and get up in the morning. (The song gives) them the courage to drive.”
In Tall Paul’s “Prayers in a Song” (written and submitted as his senior project while attending the University of Minnesota), he raps in both English and Ojibwe, marking it as a powerful song on identity and is used as a revitalization tool by educators across the country.
“(Growing) up on the city or on the rez, there’s a chance that you didn’t grow up with your language and culture due to colonization,” Tall Paul said. “I didn’t really know what it meant to be Native. When I got into college, I took (an Ojibwe) course and started learning about my language.”
Waln’s song “Wokiksuye” also touches on language in which he sings the Lakota phrases “Wokiksuye Mi Oyate/Wokiksuye Mi Tiwah” (translation: “Remembrance of my Nation, Remembrance of my family”).
“My great-grandparents were the last people in my family to speak Lakota, (which they) took to the grave because the boarding schools never taught anything to my mom and her siblings,” Waln said. “So I decided to start writing songs in Lakota to maybe heal those wounds that my grandmother took to her grave.”
For both Winder and Mic Jordan, songwriting is a type of diary.
“I’m really shy and awkward, but I love poetry and writing,” Winder said. “There’s not anybody that I share my thoughts with, but the page and the song, that’s where I feel like I can share. Each song is a prayer.”
Mic Jordan discovered the healing powers of music at a young age growing up on the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation in North Dakota.
“Music for me has always been a diary that somebody found,” Mic Jordan said. “There’s something about music that just hits the soul at a time when you need it the most. I fell in love with hip hop because a lot of their stories were parallel with what we were going through on the rez: they were stories of struggle.”
In helping Indigenous youth heal today, the Dream Warriors were asked for their advice to introverts in college. Here is what they had to say.
Tall Paul:
(University of Minnesota) I was probably one of the most quiet kids in my high school. What helped me succeed in college was immersing myself in the communities on campus that I was comfortable with, (which) was the Native student groups (and offices). I made sure to establish relationships with the Native counselors on campus. I got out of my shell in college because I made an effort to go out there, meet people and get help with my academics. I always tell people to get out of their comfort zones. As an incoming freshman who’s an introvert, I would say get comfortable first and slowly get out of those comfort zones.
Frank Waln:
(Columbia College Chicago, a Gates Millenium Scholar) If you are an introvert, it’s okay. Don’t ever believe that your voice or stories aren’t worth anything… because each and every one of us is a miracle. Less than one percent of our people survived. We are the special ones. I still struggle with being an introvert a lot, but now I know my voice and I try to chip in when I’m brave enough and when I think it matters.
Mic Jordan:
(Minnesota State University Moorhead) By you already being yourself, you’re decolonizing both inside and outside.
Lyla June:
(Stanford University) Maybe you’re introverted for a reason because this space wasn’t made for you. When I went to Stanford, I drank the Kool-aid of like, ‘Oh yeah, this is all normal. We write, read books, go to lectures and we get this grade,’ but our ancestors never did that. We didn’t grade each other, we didn’t have a written language — not because we couldn’t, we knew of other nations who had it — but because it was so easy to lie that way and we believed in the oral organic transfer of information. I tell introverts: don’t try to fit in.
Tanaya Winder:
(Stanford University, University of New Mexico) I wished someone told me to find more mentors and friends to help you. (Being) so introverted, I really need people who help me in different ways. If I was struggling to identify a person who could help me, just be really open and vulnerable. Say, ‘Hey, I’m really shy, I need a study buddy — can you work with me?’ I think that’s how I survived Stanford looking back, was finding my loud, fierce friends… who didn’t take no for an answer. It’s just recognizing your strengths. As everyone was saying: know who you are, be okay with who you are, and figure out how you can use who you are to help in different ways.
