{"id":344,"date":"2019-07-20T20:58:25","date_gmt":"2019-07-20T20:58:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/avadawebsites.wpengine.com\/influencer\/?post_type=avada_portfolio&p=344"},"modified":"2025-09-11T18:55:43","modified_gmt":"2025-09-11T18:55:43","slug":"street-poets-on-the-apache-rez","status":"publish","type":"avada_portfolio","link":"https:\/\/livesircuit.com\/streetpoets\/videos\/street-poets-on-the-apache-rez\/","title":{"rendered":"Street Poets on the Apache Rez"},"content":{"rendered":"
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When Street Poets first steps onto the San Carlos Apache high school stage, we are met with a wall of indifference that feels more like a muffled scream. \u201cWhy are you here anyway?\u201d seems to be the question lying behind the students\u2019 eyes. We respond in the universal language of poetry, in waves of words, verses lifted from the depths of our own wounds and those of our ancestors \u2013 mining the darkness for a spark of truth to inspire a response, a connection, a conversation. Jason, a former gang member from South Central LA and a ten-year veteran of our program, brings his own story to light with this piece:<\/p>\n

I remember
\nWhen my smiles became cries
\nWhen the truth became lies
\nWhen I cut all ties to myself
\nSwallowed by darkness
\nA slave to the block
\nI once walked in shock and fear
\nMy pain sprayed through handguns
\nAnd cocaine-laced blunts
\nA passive-aggressive passenger
\nIn a g-ride driven by death
\nBut I remember most
\nWhen I chose to step
\nOut of the shadows
\nTo breathe in the light of the sun
\nAs the ocean washed away my sins
\nAnd restored my soul
\nWhen the earth took me into her womb
\nAnd made me whole again
\nI remember the wounded healer
\nFire breather, true seer
\nI came into this world to be
\nI remember my heart
\nAnd now I\u2019m free<\/p>\n

\u201cDo any of you have any questions about what you just heard?\u201d We ask hopefully in the wake of the performance. A silence as thick as blood permeates the space between us and our reluctant hosts. Nervous laughter ripples across the room. We feel a grief as deep as any we\u2019ve encountered lying there just below the surface.<\/p>\n

For 15+ years, Street Poets has been harnessing the power of poetry and music to inspire Los Angeles\u2019 most \u201cat-risk\u201d youth to bear witness to their own lives and dream a new world into being. We provide poetry and now drumming workshops to the young people in LA\u2019s most underserved juvenile detention facilities and public schools, while hosting regular community open-mic events to help bring our fractured city together. We also run a recording studio that serves to amplify the authentic voices of our youth and young adults. Over time, our community\u2019s personal wounds have become a gateway into the collective wounds of our American culture (particularly those around slavery and the treatment of Native American peoples). We\u2019ve learned to rely on elemental rituals inspired by the teachings of West African elder Malidoma Some, as well as a monthly Lakota Sweatlodge, to help support this healing work.<\/p>\n

Many of our Street Poets have said they would be dead if not for the ways in which poetry, music and ritual have cleared the way for them to reconnect with the healing power of the natural world. It is those stories that we have come to share with the youth on the Apache Reservation \u2013 many of whom have been separated from the lifeline of their own traditional ways by the worst of our modern American culture. Sadly, the Rez is plagued by the same substance abuse and gang epidemic that has ravaged the South Central community in which many of our Street Poets were raised. Today, Native-American Bloods and Crips play out the same suicidal dance of death that originated on the streets of LA and that has been glamorized by our entertainment industry. Because of this tragic legacy, we see it as our responsibility as Angelenos to help export the antidote to that disease \u2013 an antidote that we\u2019ve found rooted in the creative process and in the indigenous cultures of this world.<\/p>\n<\/div>

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\u201cI want to begin by honoring the power of your silence,\u201d I offer to the group of Apache students now gathered around a table with blank sheets of paper and pencils before them. \u201cI\u2019d be happy to sit here with you all in silence for the next hour if that\u2019s what you feel you need. But if that silence begins to speak, I invite you to pick up that pencil and write down what you hear.\u201d Then I close my eyes and begin to breathe. When I open them five minutes later, every youth at that table is immersed in writing.<\/p>\n

Over the next two weeks, a flood of poems pour from the pencils of our new students, traditional Apache songs are danced and recorded, tears are shed, and laughter is shared. Most importantly perhaps, a poetic dialogue begins \u2014 between two communities that share not only deep wounds, but powerful gifts capable of transforming our world into something in which we can all believe. This, in the end, is why we are here.<\/p>\n<\/div>

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I know a girl who runs against the wind.
\nIt whispers in her ear, telling her she can\u2019t.
\nThe strain in her legs screams out in protest. She speeds up.
\nThrough dry hills covered with the toughest plants, she runs.
\nHot on her heels is the past waiting to reclaim her.
\nAhead, the desert valley stretches way beyond the horizon.
\nHer way lost long ago in the mad dash.
\nThe loose rocks crunch under each footstep and then fling up
\nTo ward off her pursuers even more.
\nA thin layer now covers her and adds a shine over her body.
\nGasping for breath she reaches for freedom, wanting to go on.
\nFinally the blazing sun gets to her and her knees buckle.
\nBuzzing bugs greet her under a mesquite.
\nThe sound of her heart rings in her ears.
\nShe takes it all in.
\nDespite everything, this is where she feels most alive.
\nAmong the creatures of her homeland.
\nBut she knows it can\u2019t last.
\nSooner or later she\u2019ll have to turn around and re-enter civilization,
\nBut for now she smiles because she knows \u2026
\nThe wind has lost this time.
\n-Benita, age 16, San Carlos High School, Apache Reservation<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div>

Street Poets on the Apache Rez<\/h2><\/div>

July 20, 2019<\/p>\n<\/div>

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