Program Description

See program description on the ALA Annual Wiki, Diversity Events section.

List of Performers

The list below include links to the performer's website or any available online info about him/her. For my own education about Indian tribes and languages, I have included relevant links to each performer's tribal affiliation. These may not be the best links to learn about particular Indian cultures but I have to start somewhere.

• Francisco X. Alarcon
  Biographical Info: http://www.poetrymagazine.com/archives/2003/May03/alarcon.htm
  Tribal Affiliation:
• Sherman Alexie
  Biographical Info: http://www.fallsapart.com/
  More Info on Alexie (Modern American Poetry)
  Tribal Affiliation: Spokane Indian tribe of Washington
• Jorge Tetl Argueta
  Biographical Info: http://www.jorgeargueta.com/
  Tribal Affiliation: Pipil Nahua
• Janice Gould
  Biographical Info: http://www.nativewiki.org/Janice_Gould
  Tribal Affiliation: Maidu | Konkow
• Gordon Johnson
  Biographical Info: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/09/16/RVA5RNM2B.DTL
  Tribal Affiliation: Cahuilla | Cupeño
• Kristy Orona-Ramirez
  Biographical Info: http://www.childrensbookpress.org/ob/kiki.html
  Tribal Affiliation: Taos Pueblo | Tarahumara
• Arigon Starr
  Biographical Info: http://www.arigonstarr.com/
  Tribal Affiliation: Kickapoo
• Tim Tingle
  Biographical Info: http://www.choctawstoryteller.com/
  Tribal Affiliation: Choctaw
• Erica T. Wurth
  Biographical Info: http://faculty.wiu.edu/ET-Wurth/
  Tribal Affiliation: Chickasaw | Cherokee | Apache

Some Thoughts

In the course of his storytelling for this event, Sherman Alexie let his head hang down on one side to express the weight of speaking for his race. I found the gesture both funny and poignant. It showed the kind of humor and self-awareness that comes from both pain and grace. The beauty of events like MVON is that it brings many talents together so that this weight of lifting a minority race is shared among and expressed by many voices, each unique in their own right but united in spirit and in grace.

Listening to and lapping up the words that flowed from the eight performers - of rainforests, frybread, families, memories, identities - made me realize the commonalities in our longings for love, respect, dignity and peace but also the rich diversity of cultures from which those emotions spring. I must say that I am ignorant about specific American Indian cultures and languages. I tend to lump all Indian tribes in one imagined culture in much the same way that my minority tribe in the Philippines (Ifugao) is lumped by lowlanders into an undifferentiated boondocks culture called Igorot. It takes focus to truly learn about and appreciate distinctions. What's a Choctaw or a Kickapoo Indian?

On the other hand, I tried to see each performer as a unique individual as much as I also want to be seen as one. There is a tendency to judge the authenticity of the work of minority writers and artists by how well they speak for their race or their ethnicity. But Sherman Alexie says in one interview, "Most of us [Indian writers] are outcasts. We don’t really fit within the Indian community, so we write to try to fit in and sound Indian. So it’s ironic that we become spokespeople for Indian country, that we are supposed to be representative of our tribes." [quoted in the section, Alexie on Indian Literature, http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/alexie/general.htm]

I participated in this event technically as a timer, signalling to the performers when their time was up. Alexie noted this measured breaks in the flow of performances to fit art to the reality of gatherings occuring within time constraints. In his characteristic humor, he wondered what that Indian woman was doing with those 3-, 1-, 0-minute-left signs but realized she was in fact Filipino. He worried that the whites in the audience didn't know what they were getting into - didn't they know that these Indians would tell stories and poems till 4 am in the morning? He congratulated the performers for ignoring their ancestral inclinations and adjusting their rythyms instead to the timer's signs. Alexie was the last performer and I was told not to do the signals on him. He did wrap up his story gracefully well within the closing time.

Mostly the flow of one performer to the next was well choreographed by Jose Aponte, Director of the San Diego County Library system. He opened the event with an Indian ceremonial dance (I think), inserted raffle drawings into the artistic performances and closed promptly with a style which I think left the audience looking forward to next year's MVON. Sonia Alcantara organized the logistics and the volunteers for this event very well and it surely was an event that I had the privilege of volunteering for, if only for a few hours.