“mourning dove” – a poetic story

From the multigenre mosaic epic, in progress since 1974:

Mourning Dove

signed a copy of her novel Cogewea,

     on being mixed blood, for me, in 1927. “White people should learn

                                                                           that we do have feelings.”

Amused to see my photo as a boy wearing

     American Indian clothes my uncle brought from West Germany,

  she smiled: “So you’re from the land of Troj?

                                  Interesting: My husband’s name is Hector.

Storytelling? I learned it from my mother’s mother.

The first of seven children, I was born in April, The Moon of Leaves.

                In a canoe on a river in Idaho, as a Salishan,

 named Christine Quintasket, with an indigenous name: Humishuma.

                                                                   Sounds Japanese, doesn’t it?

   I chose Mourning Dove as my pen name.

                   Not a direct translation of Humishuma.

                            Okanogan female names refer to water,

                                                 not birds or animals.

     My father’s father was Irish, but

  speaking from the Native American side,

            our ancestors came from Siberia

        twenty thousand years ago, perhaps earlier.

  That’s why our languages have Turkic roots.

Recently, a few centuries ago, exploiters came

                                             with weapons and diseases

                  with a religion they claimed would bring peace.

                       For us, it became the Second Great Flood.

                                                                                                ./..

                                    Even Raven couldn’t protect us,

      though it was Raven who had brought the world

                                          from mythic time to historical time.

First, there were spirits who existed in harmony.

Then the Earth was formed, with animals

                            that spoke the same language.

But a disaster occured, and humans appeared.

                  In their beginning,

they were connected in a sacred way. But

               interaction with the sacred

                                   lessened in time,

                                      now limited only to rituals.

But every disease has a herb to cure it.

The roots are important. That’s why

     we teach sharing to children. When a girl

       picks her first berries,

             she gives them away to an elder

                   so she can share her future success.

When a child carries water for the home,

                          an elder pays compliments.

The child is encouraged to be fruitful

                         and grow straight like a sapling.

Though my pen name is Mourning Dove,

      I’m not pessimistic: Wounds can be healed,

                                and mistakes can be corrected.

                                   That’s the essence of our culture.”

“What is your project now?”

    “Coyote Stories. To conserve our cultural treasures.”

I thanked her, to visit another Earthmate in a different spacetime

    and woke up near the Handbook of Native American Mythology,

       (by Dawn E. Bastian and Judy K. Mitchell – Oxford Uni Press 2008)

                                                     eager to learn more in 2025.

www.tarikgunersel.com/en          www.earthcivilization.net          tgunersel@gmail.com