All students will find something inspiring in the works of these five Indigenous poets.
It’s always a good day to teach Indigenous poets, but doing so in November is an especially great way t
o honor Native American Heritage Month. Challenge and inspire your ELA students by teaching these five phenomenal, Indigenous living poets.
1. Natalie Diaz
Students love reading Natalie Diaz! Sure, she writes about difficult themes such as cultural erasure, colonialism, and white saviorism, but she does it in accessible, snarky, and sometimes even humorous language.
Diaz, who grew up in the Fort Mojave Indian Village of a California border town, incorporates both her Mojave and Mexican cultures into nearly every facet of her writing. She also relies on myth and storytelling techniques from many cultures and traditions. Her poems vary from being intensely personal to reflecting more broadly on Native American survival amidst continued oppression. “We are stories,” writes Diaz. “Even our names are stories… [and] to write is an act, just as to erase is an act.”
Students will find Diaz’s poems bold and powerful in their unabashed and sometimes heartbreaking honesty, but they will also feel welcomed in as witnesses and advocates.
Poems to Get Started:
“They Don’t Love You Like I Love You”
2. Bobby Wilson
Bobby Wilson, a citizen of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Dakota Oyate, is a spoken word poet, visual artist, comedian, and television writer. He was raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and often writes about being steeped in Dakota culture while growing up in an urban environment.
Much of Wilson’s work focuses on how his heritage has provided him with strength while facing racism, poverty, and homelessness. In 2009, Wilson and four other young Indigenous artists founded a sketch comedy troupe called The 1491s. Together they have written, filmed, and acted in over 100 short comedies which they’ve toured nationally.
Wilson’s poetry will serve as a constant reminder to your students that, despite depictions that portray Indigenous people as only living in the past, Native art and culture is thriving in our modern world. Describing how he uses the past to think about the present and the future, Wilson says, “Native cultures and language are incredibly important because they inform us of the way of life that people had in order for us to survive and to live the lives that we have right now.”
Poems to Get Started:
3. Layli Long Soldier
Layli Long Soldier, a citizen of the Oglala Lakota tribe, writes poems that investigate the erasure of Native American people and their representation in western society. She is especially interested in the question of what an apology means in the face of genocide, a theme she examines in one of her most famous poems, “Whereas,” which also focuses on microaggressions that Indigenous people face daily.
In another poem, “38,” Long Soldier writes about the 38 Dakota men who were hanged during the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862. Long Soldier explains why it’s important to remember events like this: “As a people, we remember who we are from our families, from this land, from stories within the community, and from our senses. Yes, from our senses, we remember what’s stored within us already.”
Many students will find Long Soldier’s subject matter challenging, but her staccato rhythms, casual phrasing, and offhand asides mimic teenage speech, so they're likely to also see something of themselves in her poems.
Poems to Get Started:
“38”
“Whereas”
4. Heid E. Erdrich
Heid E. Erdrich, a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Ojibwe, is a poet who deserves more classroom attention. Erdrich was raised in Wahpeton, North Dakota, where her Ojibwe mother and German-American father taught at a Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding school.
When asked to describe the motivations behind her poetry, Erdrich says, “my writing always turns toward the way Indigenous people and our objects, art, sacred relatives, even our languages and bodies are portrayed by others, kept in the past, imprisoned in museums and institutions...and constantly presented by the other in terms the other understands, which is namely in the past.”
Students will enjoy Erdrich’s poetry because it so seamlessly and joyfully weaves her Ojibwe heritage into everyday actions, such as choosing jewelry, standing in a bank line, or getting a family pet. The deep and difficult themes of theft, displacement, and erasure are presented matter-of-factly, but still gently, inviting in students who may, at first, resist reading about troubling subject matter.
Poems to Get Started:
“De’an”
5. Laura Da’
Laura Da’, who is Eastern Shawnee and a public school teacher, is a wonderful poet to bring to the classroom, as she actually writes about interactions she’s had with her own students.
Her poems also include childhood memories that make the personal intensely but subtly political. She rails against her people’s objectification and misrepresentation, and somehow does so beautifully. Da’s language sometimes pulses with vivid color and is sometimes muted, with understated lessons that your students will relish discussing. She peppers her poems with hard-hitting historical references that will give your students multiple opportunities to engage in further research.
When talking about what she hopes her poems will accomplish, Da’ says, “I want to confound words like ‘frontier,’ ‘civilization,’ and ‘nationhood’ and pull down that foundation.” Even with this lofty goal in mind, Da’s poems will reach your students and impress upon them the importance of finding and cherishing their own voices and identities.
Poems to Get Started:
More Resources for Teaching Indigenous Poets
For lists of even more Indigenous poets, check out the Poetry Foundation’s Collection of Native American Poetry and Culture and The Academy of American Poets’ list of Indigenous-authored poems selected specifically for young readers.
We hope you enjoy exploring these poets with your students. For more suggestions for diverse and culturally responsive ELA resources, check out Mirrors and Windows, our 6-12 anthology that encourages students to use literature to reflect on their own experiences and connect to their classmates with empathy and compassion.
Before joining Carnegie Learning’s marketing team in 2021, Emily Anderson spent 16 years teaching middle school, high school, and college English in classrooms throughout Virginia, Pennsylvania, California, and Minnesota. During these years, Emily developed a passion for designing exciting, relatable curricula and developing transformative teaching strategies. She holds master's degrees in English and Women’s Studies and a doctorate in American literature and lives for those classroom moments when students learn something that will forever change them. She loves helping amazing teachers achieve more of these moments in their classrooms.
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