a pastel by Ethel Mortenson Davis
All of Us
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
we cannot go
to another planet,
to another earth
in another solar system.
We are too late for that,
too far away.
Instead, we must
sit down, you and I,
and look into each other’s eyes,
our arms embracing,
before we can save
any of us.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, Photography, poems, Poetry
Meditation on Ceremonies of Beginnings Released by Tribal College Press
Tribal College Press has launched Meditation on Ceremonies of Beginnings! The book went up on their site, https://tribalcollegejournal.org/buy-meditation-on-ceremonies-of-beginnings, yesterday. I have emphasizing the Tribal College Press site for purchases because any purchase here goes to help the tribal college movement out through work that the Tribal College Journal does with all of the colleges.
To me, at least, this is the most important book I have ever written, as accidental as it is in some senses. It represents decades of work for all the tribal colleges and specifically for the colleges that I worked directly for over much of my life. Imbedded in the book also are all the sacrifices Ethel and my children, Sonja, Mary, and Kevin, made during the years when I was working so hard to make so many things happen of American Indian communities and students in individual communities and nationwide. I also want to celebrate Ethel’s magnificent pastel the press used for the cover.
I received my first copy of the finished book at the house yesterday, and I was surprised at how much emotion it generated in me. The tribal colleges and universities and international indigenous controlled institutions of higher learning are so important! All of us need to reach out, if we are not American Indian people, to the original people of this land and celebrate them and feel the power of what they and their communities have to offer the world. I hope that in the pages of this book of poetry both Indians and non-Indians can find the spirit of the tribal colleges and universities and then become inspired to support them in some concrete way. They are still among the poorest funded colleges and universities in this country even though they are doing God’s work in some of the poorest places in the United States.
Filed under Art, poems, Poetry, Thomas Davis
In the Time of Covid
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
The old men are dreaming bad dreams. The rain will not fall on our land. Even the deep water stays away. I yearn for the earth to give us her blessing, her sanction, so we can harvest the oats and rye again, so I can run to the far field to wrap my arms around the face of my horse and dream good dreams.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, poems, Poetry
Podcast About Leadership
Christine Reidhead has just informed me that The Los Angeles Tribune has put a second podcast I did with Christine on leadership on its website’s front page. We did ten of these in total, and the Tribune has told Christine that they have reviewed all ten and will be running all ten of them. How Christine talks me into these things sort of mystifies me, and then how she manages to get major national coverage for them amazes me even more. Her work at Navajo Technical University in the Navajo Nation as the head of the business department is amazing. Her list of scholarly publications in business journals keeps growing. Her founding of Afrika Rising!, a non-profit that works in Africa, has earned her multiple significant honors. She is much more extraordinary than I am. I have no idea how many magazines have had her on their front cover. I just know that it has been a lot of them. The Tribune also ran a long article about the second podcast in the ten podcast series to accompany the podcast’s availability. Here’s the link:
https://thelosangelestribune.com/2020/11/10/tom-davis-reveals-qualities-of-leadership-in-the-latest-podcast-with-christine-reidhead/?fbclid=IwAR1H9d1M8hatVEdg3XfJknSloDRnLouuZSuLou-thP0PBa3x8DxH0jHvbDU
Filed under Uncategorized
The Telling Dream
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
In my dream it was nighttime. I was in a muddy field overlooking a large city with bright lights. The field was enclosed with barbed wire, and there was a herd of cattle within the enclosure. The cattle were not really cattle, but were members of my family. They were up to their bellies in mud, unable to move. Hundreds of poisonous frogs were climbing onto the cattle, killing them with their bites. This was a foretelling, a story of betrayal and pain, a story of survival and transcendence, an ancient story. Come over here and sit down by this tree, and I will tell you this story. It is a story of my life and yours.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, poems, Poetry
Separation
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
At birth, the farmer separated the calf from its mother. He wiped away the amniotic fluid with a gunny sack before putting him in a separate pen. Black children born to enslaved parents were taken from their weeping mothers and moved hundreds of miles away. Native children were snatched from anxious parents and moved to some miserable life. A Central American baby Is ripped from its mother’s arms. Both baby and mother’s spirits are broken. The farmer’s wife protested, “keep the calf with its mother. Do you need every ounce of milk?” “This is the way we do things,” replied the farmer.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, poems, Poetry
The New Calves
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
The new calves are growing stiff from the wetness of birth, and old men come running across the fields asking, who killed our apple-blossom time? I say to them, surely dead leaves can’t grow in your pockets now.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, poems, Poetry
New Cover for my new book of poetry was just finalized!
Meditations on the Ceremonies of Beginnings is a book of poetry developed over decades as I played my small role in the tribal colleges and universities and world indigenous nation’s higher education consortium movements. Tribal College Press has announced it will be released in late November. The cover design just came in! The drawing is by Ethel Mortenson Davis.
You’ll have to enlarge to cover to read the writing, but I am especially excited about what Carrie Billy, one of the great leaders of the tribal college and university movement, and Kimberly Blaeser, on the most important Native American poets in the United States, say about the book.
Filed under poems, Poetry, Thomas Davis
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