CIIS Public Programs Podcast

transcript

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This is the CIIS Public Programs Podcast, featuring talks and conversations recorded live by the Public Programs department of California Institute of Integral Studies, a non-profit university located in San Francisco on unceded Ramaytush Ohlone Land. Through our programming, we strive to amplify the voices of those who have historically been under-represented. To find out more about CIIS and public programs like this one, visit our website ciis.edu and connect with us on social media @ciispubprograms.  
 
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Melissa: This is such an honor to be here with you all today, and to be with N. Scott Momaday. In my tradition I'm taught that when you sit at the feet of an elder like N. Scott Momaday, you always offer something so that you get some good stories. So, Scott I offer you some digital tobacco that I grew, and some digital sage that we grew. Two sacred medicines of Native America to honor your wisdom, your lifetime of incredible work and your contributions to Native heritage. So, thank you. It's an honor to be here with you.  

Scott: Melissa thank you very much.  

Melissa: I also want to acknowledge the First Peoples of San Francisco Bay Area, the Ramaytush Ohlone of the San Francisco Peninsula, where California Institute of Integral Studies stands, and all the Ohlone nations and villages and Coast Miwok people of the beautiful San Francisco Bay Area where we are located. I really honor their ancestors, their current communities, and their future generations, and really thank them for taking care of this beautiful land and I really wish and hope that we can create more sustainable landscapes here.  

So, Scott you have just completed another marvelous book, Earth Keeper. Here it is. There it is— Earth Keeper—and I just finished it last night—Reflections on the American Land. Such a beautiful, beautiful poetic prose. And for those of us in the audience who have not been able to read your book yet, can you please share what it means to you to be a keeper of the earth? 

Scott: Yes, I have been a longtime advocate of conservation, preserving the American land. It is very important to me. I was born in the Southern plains, and that landscape means a great deal to me. It contains the blood of my ancestors and so I have a special reverence for the land, and I enjoy writing about it. I enjoy getting out into it. So those are my qualifications for writing this book, which means a lot to me. I was very pleased to have written it. 

Melissa: Mhm…beautiful. And it seems to be such a profound tradition of Indigenous peoples the world over. I know you've been to Siberia and Africa. I've been fortunate to travel to some amazing places as well to meet with the native peoples of the land and this idea of being an Earth Keeper, or an Earth Guardian is such a long and deep tradition and yet we've seen that many cultures dropped this tradition and it's gotten us into our predicament that we're in today in an unsustainable world that is polluted with many environmental issues.  

Why do you think it is that native peoples have retained against all great odds this tradition of being an Earth Keeper, while other cultures sadly dismissed it? 

Scott: I think that the Native American especially has been on this continent for thousands of years, and I think in that tenure he has developed a strong affinity for the land, an understanding that the land is possessed of spirit. It is sacred. And so, he has an advantage over other people who have not had the same kind of experience. Long-term experience of the landscape. And so he has a vested interest in it, and to him it is sacred 

Melissa: Mhm…beautiful. Absolutely. And it's sacred in specific places like you as a Kiowa, my as a Ojibwe, and the local Ohlone people…it's really tied to our specific homelands and landscapes…and you write quite a bit about the beautiful buffalo that has roamed across Turtle Island, North America for so long…and can you share a little bit more about the relationship of the Kiowa and the buffalo and some of your stories of the buffalo that you share so beautifully in your writings? 

Scott: You know the Kiowas migrated to the Southern plains from the North. The earliest evidence we have of them places them near the headwaters of the Yellowstone River in what is now western Montana, and for some reason they came down out of the mountains and ended up on the Great Plains, the northern plains where they formed alliances with the Crow People for one group, continued their migration southward and eastward down the rain shadow of the Rockies, and finally into the southern plains, where they still reside in southwestern Oklahoma. And in the course of that migration of course, many wonderful things happened to them. They acquired horses and they discovered buffalo on the land, and at that time as you know, the buffalo were numberless. I think we estimate that there were at one time at least 30 million animals on the plains…and so they adopted this animal as it were. It became for them the the animal representation of the sun, and of course they were a Sundance people, so the the buffalo represented for them food shelter lodging utensils everything. They made use of every part of the animal. And so when the buffalo were brought to extinction by hunters outside the plains it was a devastation that brought down the plains culture. Can’t overestimate the importance of the buffalo. 

Melissa: That's right, that’s right…and fortunately today the great Blackfoot Nation and many first nations in Canada and Montana, the Northern Plains are regenerating the buffalo and bringing them back through the buffalo treaty and I know that you have created a new organization, the Buffalo Trust really dedicated to Native American heritage and preserving some of these traditions. Can you share a little bit more about this initiative? 

Scott: Yes, I founded the Buffalo Trust some years ago and it has been a value to native peoples. I've worked with the trust in the Southwest and in Alaska and in Siberia…and so we have achieved a good deal. For one thing, we brought the bear ceremony back to the hunting people in western Siberia, and it was on the verge of extinction, so we've done some good things, and we hope to do more. 

Melissa: You bring up the beautiful bear, another totem animal like our buffalo of North America, and in fact your name is very much connected to the bear. You are a bear, as you've said in many interviews and films. Can you share a little bit about the importance of your relationship to the bear and the bear medicine that has really inspired your life? 

Scott: That's a, that’s a…intricate and complicated question [Melissa: laughs softly] because the bear means so much to me in so many ways. When I was an infant I was taken to Devil's Tower, Wyoming which is that great monolith. I think it was the first public national park in the country. National monument anyway…and I was an infant when I was taken there, but it is a sacred place to the Kiowas. They tell a story about it, about a boy who was, who turned into a bear and he ran after his seven sisters, who climbed, who mounted the stump of the tree, which is called Tso-aa in Kiowa, rock tree…and as they climbed on top of the the stump, the bear came to harm them, but they were beyond its reach - the trunk, the stump of the tree grew up into the sky, bore the sisters into the sky and they became the stars of the big dipper. And the bear was left there at the base of the tree, and I think he's still there, in one of my visions in fact, I see him there. [Melissa: laughs softly] And because, because I was taken to this very sacred place as a child, I was given the name Tsoai- talee, Rock-Tree Boy, and I identify with the boy who turned into a bear. I think that I'm the reincarnation of that boy, and so the bear is very meaningful to me. We have a strange relationship, the bear and I. Sometimes we fight each other, and sometimes we get along famously.  

Melissa: Yes, and like a bear do you have a season for berry picking and a season for hibernation? 

Scott: Exactly. [laughs] And your name, isn't your name…? 

Melissa: And my name is related to the bear too, I absolutely… 

Scott: Yes, I thought so. 

Melissa: Yes, yes…Young Bear Woman Standing in the Morning Dew, or mist, or fog, some moisture. [Scott: Uh-huh, uh-huh…laughs…] [Scott: Good!] Yes, so the bear is a great teacher for me too, and Leroy Little Bear the Blackfoot Leader is also a teacher of mine who is also related to the bear, year. Wonderful.  

And you mentioned this great sacred place Devil's Tower, it is known, but we know that that is a colonial name, that is not its first name…and so much of your work is about the power of words, and the power of naming. Can you say a little bit about naming and claiming, and how place names are so critical? You know we call it Devil's Tower, but all of the tribes of that local area have their own names for that place, and why is it important that we really try to bring back some of those native names for some of these sacred places? 

Scott: Yes, naming is very important among native peoples. When one, one who has no name cannot be said to exist we think, and so names are critically important, and Indian names are sacred Tso-aa, Rock-tree, is a much better name than Devil's Tower it seems to me. I don't know the origin of Devil's Tower. I don't know where that name came from, but I call that monolith Tso-aa, Rock-tree, and it has to be seen to be believed. I don't know if you've been there. [Melissa: M-hm…incredible] But the the monument itself is one of the great features of the landscape it is, I guess it's a volcanic core, but it rises a thousand feet, or nearly a thousand feet into the air from base to summit. It's a mile around at its base…so it is truly remarkable and unique and no wonder those native peoples who discovered it or who lived in its presence, no wonder they think of it as sacred. It is sacred  

Melissa: Absolutely, it's such a powerful place. I was very fortunate to go there with my father once and it was just stunning, absolutely stunning…and I later asked some of my Lakota friends about it, and they were saying how it's very connected to the whole sacred geography all the way over to the Black Hills and many of the other landscape markers there. It's a really a large sacred landscape, we often think of sacred places as just one spot, but they're related through a whole geography that covers a much larger area. So that is a very special place. [Scott: Yes, yeah] Wonderful.  

You've also talked a bit about the important role of imagination in so much of your writings and your poetry really invokes and evokes an imaginative quality. You've even said, to quote you from one of your writings, you have written that “We are what we imagine. Our very existence consists in our imagination of ourselves. Our best destiny is to imagine, at least completely, who and what, and that we are. The greatest tragedy that can befall us is to go unimagined.” Can you speak a bit about the role of imagination, and how do you nourish your imagination? And what can you suggest for others to nourish their imaginations? 

Scott: I think if you're a creative person, you rely heavily upon the imagination. I think of the imagination as that which enables us to see beyond reality. You see the mountain, but you imagine the valley on the other side, it is a way of seeing beyond the ordinary and that is of crucial importance to writers to people who write, to storytellers, to artists of different kinds. So, the imagination I think cannot be overestimated. It's crucial to our experience as human beings. 

Melissa: Absolutely. And at the very end of Earth Keeper, near the end you also say “We have suffered a poverty of the imagination. A loss of innocence.” And there was something very bittersweet and poignant about that. In the way that you structure the book, there is dawn in the beginning and then there is dusk, and, in the end, you speak a bit more about the challenges that humanity faces right now and again speak to this loss of imagination as something that needs to be addressed. [Scott: Yes] So, I'm curious again you know what can be done to nourish the imagination? 

Scott: We have to imagine ourselves. We have to, especially now that we are faced with the crisis of global warming, climate change. We have to reinvent our relationship to the land. We have done great damage to the Earth as you know and it has to be repaired, we have to go back and try to restore it to its sacred significance…so it's a matter of understanding, it's a matter of imagining and we had better be about it because we're running out of time it seems to me, you know every day we grow closer and closer to the real destruction of ourselves because we fail to appreciate the Earth, fail to do homage to the Earth, fail to understand the spiritual essence of the Earth. 

Melissa: So true, so beautiful. And it seems that you know for me so much of the imagination as you said is tied to the land and seeing the mountains and seeing the clouds and seeing animal tracks and imagining where is that animal going, and it's connected also to listening and the art of listening. Listening to you know, non-human nature so to speak, and as a poet you seem to be a great listener. The poetry, the music of your poetry is so beautiful. Can you share a little bit about the art of listening, both to nature and to your own creative process so that it can precipitate out as words or poetry, or in your case as paintings as well? 

Scott: You know, I have spent a lot of my life studying the oral tradition. The oral tradition of the Native American especially, and when I was a small boy my father told me stories when I could first understand language, and those stories have never been written down. Well, I did write them down eventually, some of them, but they have existed for untold generations by word of mouth. The oral tradition is much stronger than we realize. I think Peter Farb, a writer who wrote about the oral tradition, said that over half the population of the world at this point in time does without writing.  

And that gives you an idea of how important the oral tradition is even in our time, and the oral tradition is predicated upon three principles in particular. The storyteller or the speaker must speak responsibly. The listener must listen carefully, and he must remember what he hears. Those things are essential to language itself, and you know writing. I can talk about writing in this way because I am a writer, but writing is only about six or seven thousand years old as far as we know, and the oral tradition is inestimably older, much older. And I'm interested in the origin of language because the origin of language and oral tradition grew up at about the same time, I think…and so I can't tell you, I can't say enough about my regard for the oral tradition. I think it is in many ways more vital than writing and the chief example of oral tradition we have in our time is probably theater where you have actors on the stage. They're speaking from their own mouths. They're making eye contact with the audience. They have the advantage of intonation and so we have the oral tradition before us on the stage it's very exciting and dramatic and so I have, maybe I've said enough about the oral tradition [Melissa: No…] but you can understand how deeply involved with it I am.  

Melissa: Oh, it's beautiful…I mean you're such an extraordinary storyteller and the quality of your voice and the images that you paint with your words. It's clear that your father shared that deep tradition with you very well. As you say the oral tradition requires the storyteller. It requires deep and careful listening, and it requires memory. And so much of your work talks about the role of memory. The memory of your lifetime. The memory of the land. The memory of ancestors, and you also write and talk about blood memory. Memory is so important to Indigenous people passed on orally through heart, and minds, and voice throughout the generations. But today so many people are focused on the future and are focused on little sound bites of information. Do you think that memory has atrophied in the human being? Have you seen that change over time?  

Scott: Yes, I think it has. We rely less upon memory than we once did, I think. And speaking of blood memory yes, I think we are possessed of a kind of genetic memory. Blood memory we call it, and it's very important to us. I know that some of my relatives, my grandmother for example, she could talk about places where she had never been you know? She's just talking, speaking out of some kind of memory that we don't clearly understand but it's there, it's there and it's very it's very important. We carry around in our, in our in our bones and blood an understanding of the Earth as it was before we before we were born.   

I sometimes think that we, we live our lives over and over again…you know the Kiowas say that they came into the world through a hollow log, and in my mind's eye and in my blood memory I can, I can imagine that log and I can think that I was there, and I was watching them emerge from it one by one. Now there's something important about that kind of recollection, that kind of imagination. It's sacred to us, and the Indian has it in spades. I think that many of us have lost lost that sense of of memories sense of of the prehistoric world in which we all have such a great part, you know? Language was, we don't know when it came about but, it is the thing that distinguishes us as human beings. It is the thing that separates us from all other species. Other other kinds of life have have language, but not in the sense that we have it. It's an invention of mankind you know we have a grammatic, grammar a system of grammar, and a vocabulary that is, now I think the English vocabulary is far in excess of 500,000 words.   

So, we we have this to our credit we have invented something that that enables us to uh…lead the world in certain ways, but we are inundated by writing, you know? You can go into a bookstore, and you can suddenly find yourself in the presence of more books than you can read in your lifetime. In the in the in the oral tradition you dare not take language for granted, you know. It's too precious. It's it's not to be thrown away. It's not, we're not to be inundated in the oral tradition as we are in writing.   

Melissa: How beautifully stated. And the power of words that you've talked about so much, words and stories can be medicine, as in our ceremonies and they can heal with the chance and the medicine chance, but words can also be weapons, or “word arrows” as Gerald Visenor talks about. They can actually harm. So, it's very important that, like you said, that we are careful with our words and the oral tradition is much more…how to put it..they're potent.  
They're not just thrown out like you said when you look at libraries full of words, published words.  They're very, very carefully articulated and shared. Can you speak a little bit again about the economy of words and the potency of words in the oral tradition? 

Scott: I'm a poet. I think poetry is the, is the crown of literature and it is so because it is such a careful…it is such a careful usage of words, of language. In poetry there is no room for extraneous matter. Every word has to count. And so, poetry teaches us how, teaches us about the economy of language and how to how to how to make the most of it. How to create things in words that are beautiful, and powerful, and long-lasting. Immortal even. So, I have a great respect for uh, for that and I was thinking that, you know, there are there are three things that distinguish the human animal, I think. If one is truly to realize his humanity, one must uh…one must be thankful, he must be of a moral conviction, he must be kind, and he must be patient.  All of these things are what a human ought to be. Language helps us to be those things. Yeah?  Yeah! [laughing gently] 

Melissa: M-hm…Yes, yes, powerful, powerful. I'm thinking of your beautiful poems, and so many of them, and I love a story you share about a poem of course you wrote that for you maybe sometimes, maybe always writing poetry is like falling in love. And you have a beautiful poem about that. The excitement, the thrill of it, the, the trepidation…that was beautifully put, so if writing… 

Scott: Thank you. 

Melissa: Yes, beautifully put. If you, if you want to read it, it would be great. Writing poetry is like falling in love, but you're also a painter. So, is, is painting that same quality, or is it something different? What kind of lover is the, the image on the, the page as opposed to the poetic words? 

Scott: Writing and painting are very different occupations. Both, both are expressions of the spirit and I value both of them very much and to me they exist next to each other and they are in, we are they are in good relation to each other. I find that writing requires a greater concentration than does painting. I can paint and listen to music or listen to a ballgame even, but I cannot write and do that, you know? I have to put all of my focus upon the, the writing. So, they're different, but they're both valid expressions of the spirit. 

Melissa: Beautiful. Yeah, I love how much movement you capture in your paintings. In your new book Earth Keeper, you have some illustrations of some dancers, and they really seem alive to me in there. There, there's so much movement in those you know two-dimensional images, so you really capture movement and flow. And getting back to language again, I've been fortunate to work with many folks who are deeply involved with being language keepers, Indigenous language revitalization. I'm sure you have too, and so many speak about especially with our Algonquian language, the Anishinaabe and Potawatomi, and the Blackfeet and the Cree, it's very much verb based as opposed to noun based; and it's so much more about movement and flow and dynamics rather than things; and I just want you to speak a little bit about the movement and the flow that you capture so well in both your poetry and in your paintings; and how you maintain that dynamism even in your publications, or in a two-dimensional format. 

Scott: Fluency is very important in in writing and in language in general. I think that, you know, I think about the origin of language and because I think that the acquisition of language is what made us human, as I think I said a moment ago. But Lewis Thomas, the great scientist who was also an excellent writer and who wrote a book called The Fragile Species has a, has an essay in it entitled “Communication” and in that in that essay he, he thinks of the origin of language and he said, “I think I know how language began.” He said, “We were living in caves, we were having a terrible time communicating with each other, we were grunting, we were making signs.  And then one day a neighboring tribe came across the ridge to visit with us and they brought their children.” And he said, “Suddenly, there was a critical mass of children. The children played all day long, and at the end of that day we had language.” And I love that because I think it's true. I think children are not afraid of language. They learn it at an impossible age of three or four years old even earlier, and they're not afraid of it. They like to play games with language.  Language gives itself to games in a way poetry writing poetry is playing, playing a game with language.   

So, I like to think about the origin of language. Several years ago, I was I was on on a on a stage with the great paleo anthropologist Richard Leakey. We were talking about the origin of human being and Richard's idea was that we became human when we became bipedal, when we could stand on our two feet and and look out over the tall grasses and we could reach up take fruit from the trees and so on. And I took issue with him, I said, “No Richard, we became human when we acquired language.” And I still think, I think that's true, but it's an exciting subject.  

Melissa: It really is, yes. We don't know the exact origins, but it's very mysterious and it's important I think these days to really learn from the power of Indigenous languages and the oral tradition and to revive that again. When I teach students, I teach an oral literature class on occasion, and I made them do an oral midterm. They didn't have to write anything, and it was just five minutes to just speak and and share a story or respond to some questions that we had studied. And the students said it was the hardest exam they had ever taken because they were so used to writing and thinking and writing but to not have a pen and paper in hand and just face someone eye to eye, heart to heart and and and tell stories. It was amazing how challenging it was, and I think our attention spans and our abilities to remember that embodied way of learning and sharing language has sadly been atrophied, I think. But it's in our DNA like you said. It's part of our blood memory so I think it can easily be revived. I'm sure you've seen that too with some of your students over the years. 

Scott: You make me think of the importance of silence. And I was teaching a course in oral tradition at Stanford some years ago, and I had a large group of people in a in a room maybe 100 students in front of me and I…appeared before them as if I were about to speak, but I didn't speak. I said nothing for a period of maybe two minutes and what happened in the room was truly astonishing.  Students could not, could not bear the silence, you know? They started shuffling their feet, they started coughing, and I could tell that they were miserable. They wanted me to say something, and I think you know, a silence can be very communicative, can be very meaningful and I think that in in our period of word inflation when there are so many printed words around and and we expect so much of our our teachers in the way of books and and so on we have forgotten how important silence can be. The the poet understands I think better than most people the importance of silence, and so does the Native American in his oral tradition. 

Melissa: And that relationship between silence and listening. 

[pause] 

Scott: They go together yes.  

Melissa: They go together. 

Scott: You can hear the silence. 

Melissa: And feel it. 

Scott: Yes. Yes.  

Melissa: Right when we were having sound check for our audience, some coyotes almost literally came up to our doorstep, and we had to get our cat inside. They were howling and I thought that was a great sign, Scott for our conversation tonight that the the coyotes joined us early on in this conversation. 

Scott: You know, I I…I'm sorry… 

Melissa: No – please! 

Scott: I uh lived for a time in a…at Jemez Pueblo, New Mexico, which is one of the Rio Grande Pueblos, and at night there there was a river about a quarter of a mile away from where I lived, and you could hear the coyotes and the dogs. The dogs from the village would go down and they would parley, you know? They would trade dues of the day and so on, but that was a very exciting kind of thing to hear because you had, you had the creatures of the wild on the one hand and the domesticated animals on the other, but they were, they were, you know engaged in at the level of oral tradition I suppose that was interesting to me. [laughing gently] 

Melissa: Yes, they're communicating with each other. So much inter-species dialogue that we don't pay attention to as much. Much of your writings you speak about you know the buffalo and the bear and and the dogs and the horses and so many powerful animals and yet sadly we are losing so many of them every day and… 

Scott: Every day. 

Melissa: Every day, and we don't even know animals that we're losing right, or species that we're losing, like the insect world. So, it's a it's a bittersweet time, a poignant time to to remember those voices in the land. 

Scott: You know I've had the uh, the privilege of visiting several prehistoric caves in Spain and in France…and the animals, the depiction the paintings of animals on the wall are very moving, and you understand that the artist understood those animals in a way that we do not. They were of the same world. The animals were thought to be emissaries from a world just beyond the wall of the cave, and they were they were ben, beneficial to us. We they, they gave us things, we gave them things, we lived in the same world and now I think, as a result of the Industrial Revolution and the advance of what we call civilization, we have severed ourselves from that world. We we no longer understand the animals as we once did and it's a great loss for us. 

Melissa: Yeah. Yes, it is. It reminds me a little bit of one of your other quotes I love it's a, you know, “Reality isn't all that it's cracked up to be.” [both laugh] Meaning, this reality that we've created of you know, speed and content, I love that word inflation, and fast-paced things, and things not processes you know? The reality isn't all it's cracked up to be. Say a little bit more about that. I know you're worried about getting into trouble but there's reality police right, and [Scott: laughs] alternative realities so I'd love to you for you to share a little bit more about that. 

Scott: Well, I go back to the distinction that I make between reality and the imagination. And reality is is something you know we use the word communication we we have overused the word. It is much too…available to us that word and that concept. I think expression is equally important. It's as important as communication, and I think the imagination is equally important as as is reality. The two things are different, we we know them both, we use them both, they they define our world in so many ways, but they are different. And I think the creative person, the writer, the poet, the storyteller relies more on the imagination than most of us do it at our time in in the world and I think we need to get some of that back. We need to put a greater emphasis on imagination. You know, a greater emphasis than we have placed upon it now in recent times. 

Melissa: I couldn't agree more. There's so much emphasis on you know mathematics, and engineering, and and science which is very wonderful and fascinating. I studied science most of my life, a little bit of a love-hate relationship with science, but I agree. The the creativity of the artist. My partner is a musician and lives in a world of sound. Always listening and and imagining sounds, and I think that it's so important that we really revitalize those artistic, imaginative possibilities within the human again, otherwise we're not going to be able to get to where we need to go and and survive, I think these the global crisis that we're in right now. It was Einstein, Albert Einstein who said that imagination was more important than knowledge also and the different types of imagination that, you know, can lead you into the unknown and into the great mystery. And for many native peoples we've always honored the great mystery, right? It's not a personified god per se, it is something that is unknown and perhaps unknowable and yet is very felt and expressed.  

And you end your book with a beautiful poem, which is really a prayer in honor of the great mystery and the the humility and tenderness in which you speak to it is so inspiring because in this you know fast-paced world, mystery is considered something to be stamped out and investigated and dissected and we need answers. So, can you speak a bit about the power and importance of mystery? 

Scott: Yes, yes. Mystery is is profound you know in itself. I don't think we can, I don't think we can live without mystery. I don't know how many of us are willing to admit that, but I'm pretty sure that's true. Mystery is, you know what we do not know is important to us. There is always that which is beyond knowledge. Language itself is limited. We have not reached the limits of it, but we know that it is limited, and I think that what we think of as as reality, ah it is mystery. It is the unknown. It is the imagined, the imagined world, and that is extremely important to us. We had better learn something more about it than we know. 

Melissa: And to honor it with the reverence and the humility that it deserves…m-hm. [Yes, yes] You've spoken beautifully also about the role of art and artists to disturb, right? It's not just to make us feel good, but really true art should disturb like a storm, and in your wonderful, the film about you Words From a Bear, you tell the story of the storm spirit and your mother and father's different relationships with storms based on their relationship to the spirit of the storm. And you know one was befriended that spirit of the storm and one was a little more, your mother, trepidatious and you know, a little afraid of that storm and so, speak a little bit about the role of artists and art in that kind of creative disturbance just like storms create for the Earth. 

Scott: I like art that disturbs. I like the paintings of Francis Bacon for example. I wrote a book called The Ancient Child, and my hero in that book was an artist, a painter. And he declared that he painted in order to astonish God. And I I you know, to me that's a disturbing idea but it is it's somehow it somehow indicates the vitality of art. It should be disturbing you know the great writer Franz Kafka in a letter to Oscar Pollock in 1909, apparently, they had been talking about the kind of books to read and Pollock had said, “Well we ought to read books that make us happy we ought to, we ought to.” And and Kafka wrote back, “Anybody can write that kind of book. A book should be disturbing, you know it should come like a blow to the head. A book should be…” This is his one of his quotes. “A book should be the ax for the frozen sea within us.” I've always thought that's a pretty good definition of of literature, you know. Literature is not, of course there is a kind of literature that that entertains, and that makes us feel good about ourselves and we have nursery rhymes and so on. Children's literature is valid, but if we really talk about the greatness of literature, we think about books that disturb us books that are Moby Dick for example. That's not a happy book but it is a great book. That's the kind of book that interests me most. 

Melissa: Yes. Yes, I agree. We need to be challenged and surprised, and question our assumptions and our world views from time to time to keep renewing them and to keep learning, right? I think it's and and to keep some kind of understanding of our our creative ignorance that we have to keep learning, and art is so helpful and opening up those spaces within us.  Beautiful.  

I have one more question for you…um…but I was very fortunate to just co-edit a beautiful volume, a collection of poetry and stories and essays, and the title of the book is actually a question, and the question is What Kind of Ancestor Do you Want to Be? And I would like to ask you that question. 

Scott: I want to be the kind of ancestor that leaves the world a little better than I found it, and a world that is beneficial to my children and grandchildren and progeny down, down all the way down the line.  

Melissa: Turtles all the way down. [laughing gently] 

Scott: Yeah, exactly. [laughing gently] 

Melissa: Beautiful. Beautiful. Thank you. Well, I…I can…uh…not assure you but I can say that what the legacy that you have left has made the world such a better place. I'm so grateful for your words, and your poetry, and your stories, and the gift, the treasure that it's given you know, my generation, and countless generations I hope and pray after us. 

Scott: Well, I I'm grateful to you too, Melissa and I wish you could go on talking because there's so much to say about the things we've discussed.  

Melissa: Exactly, and with that, and maybe we will over a walk in in Santa Fe at some point, or when you come to California, or in Arizona.  

Scott: You're right. 

Melissa: Thank you. Well, Scott Momaday, [Scott: Thank you, Melissa.] what a treat to be in conversation with you and thank you to all of our audience and participants for being with us this evening. And chi miigwetch, thank you so much.  

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Thank you for listening to the CIIS Public Programs Podcast. Our talks and conversations are presented live in San Francisco, California. We recognize that our university’s building in San Francisco occupies traditional, unceded Ramaytush Ohlone lands. If you are interested in learning more about native lands, languages, and territories, the website native-land.ca is a helpful resource for you to learn about and acknowledge the Indigenous land where you live. 
 
Podcast production is supervised by Kirstin Van Cleef at CIIS Public Programs. Audio production is supervised by Lyle Barrere at Desired Effect. The CIIS Public Programs team includes Kyle DeMedio, Alex Elliott, Emlyn Guiney, Jason McArthur, and Patty Pforte. If you liked what you heard, please subscribe wherever you find podcasts, visit our website ciis.edu, and connect with us on social media @ciispubprograms. 
 
CIIS Public Programs commits to using our in-person and online platforms to uplift the stories and teachings of Black, Indigenous, and other people of color; those in the LGBTQIA+ community; and all those whose lives emerge from the intersections of multiple identities.  
 
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