Naal’eełi / Drake is the name for a male duck
Between 1863 and 1866, Diné were forcibly removed and marched more than 300 miles in dead winter to Hweeldi/Bosque Redondo at Fort Sumner in New Mexico. The US military marched men, women, and children under direct orders from General Kit Carson. Approximately one-third of our people perished on the journey.
In the years of scorched earth,
Kit Carson’s pale-knife face
bayonetting the sky, his blood thirst,
Redshirt, the waves of men pocking the desert
like plague, in the years that he slaughtered,
leaving only wide stroke of flame, his fame
fanned higher by newspapers, soldiers, the names
of Colorado border towns, those terrible
years—
My great-grandfather rowed bands
of our people across the river at night, boat
little more than raft, cradling children,
hushed forms and wet moon-faces
turned to sky. These were the People
who ran for the mountains. In the canyons,
they huddled, sent up white and yellow corn
prayers in smoke to the Holy People, prayed
protection for those who were captured
and marched. In my dreams, I conjure
his boat, quiet arrow, pulling the water
like the tail of a fallen star, the sapphire
sharp enough to pierce the breath
of night. Small sun, he returns,
back and forth, buoyed
by the river that swells with the rain.
Eventually, they will find him,
drag his proud body from his boat,
and when he refuses to speak
they will spit names in English,
gunmetal flush to his rod-straight back
beneath his armor of blankets. In my dreams,
he gazes at the water, and the soldiers
cannot slake the fires hot
in their eyes, even when they name him
into ash, even when his son is marched off
to school, and, demanding his name,
they dismiss him in English:
son of something
that floats or swims,
which marks him
of his father’s boat, the reeds and the blood
spilled in hot stars across the desert. Yet
he has witnessed his People’s return—
four years after they are marched
to Bosque Redondo, they sing Shí Naashá
and weep rivers,
raise hands to their mountains. He knows
a body refuses translation,
will always return home
dressed in songs snug to the rhythm
of rebellious feet.
Source: Poetry (March 2025)