Wendy Rose
b. 1948
For the White poets
who would be Indian
just once
just long enough
to snap up the words
fish-hooked from
our tongues.
You think of us now
when you kneel
on the earth,
turn holy
in a temporary tourism
of our souls.
With words
you paint your faces,
chew your doeskin,
touch breast to tree
as if sharing a mother
were all it takes,
could bring instant and primal
knowledge.
You think of us only
when your voices
want for roots,
when you have sat back
on your heels and
become
primitive.
You finish your poem
and go back.
--Lost Copper
Biography / Criticism
Wendy Rose was born Bronwen Elizabeth Edwards on May 7, 1948, in
Oakland, California. She came from a mixed-blood family (her father
was Hopi; her mother could trace her lineage from both Miwok and European
descent). As a teenager, she dropped out of high school and became
connected with the bohemian scene in San Francisco. Her experiences
in the city and the struggle in finding her identity within her mixed
lineage would be major influences on the poetry she was then beginning,
and works she would later produce. In 1966, Rose began a scholastic
endeavor that would carry her through 1980. Through these years, she
was enrolled in Cabrillo and Contra Costa Junior Colleges and the
University of California, Berkeley, where she would go on to complete
her Ph.D. in Anthropology. Balancing her academic interests with her
artistic, Rose published five volumes of poetry during this period
of her life. Since completing her Ph.D., Rose has remained in the
world of academia, heading the American Indian Studies Program at
Fresno City College in Fresno, California. She has been active in
such divergent roles as teacher, researcher, consultant, editor, panelist,
bibliographer, and advisor. She is a member of the American Federation
of Teachers and has also served as a facilitator for the Association
of Non-Federally Recognized California Tribes. Such diversity is also
characteristic of Rose as an artist, who not only writes, but draws
and paints as well.
![[The Cover of Rose's _The Halfbreed Chronicles_]](../images/Rose_C.jpg)
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Diversity
is also apparent in the numerous books of poetry that Rose has produced.
Each collection of poems represents a period in Rose's own life, but
from a multitude of perspectives that covers a broad range of the
human experience. Her first collection of poems,
Hopi Roadrunner
Dancing (1973), deals with such issues as her involvement
in the American Indian movements that were taking place in the 1960s
and 1970s to her own struggles with personal and cultural identity.
Academic Squaw: Reports to the World From the Ivory Tower
(1977) begins a theme which persists in several of her poems, that
of the duality between scholar and subject. It was during this period
in her academic pursuits where she began to see herself in much of
the material she was studying. In
Lost Copper (1986)
Rose re-affirms her connection with the earth, in a work that N. Scott
Momaday describes as a collection of "songs." Additionally,
Rose has kept a political flair within the broad framework of her
writing, blending a feminist perspective with that of a woman of color.
Bringing together her personal and political views, Rose deals with
the concept of "whiteshamanism" in some of her prose writings.
"Whiteshamanism" refers to non-Indians taking on a literary
"shaman" identity to which they are not entitled. Rose despises
such an artistic stance, viewing it in terms of the exploitation,
commodification, and injustice that it represents. Her writings on
the concept of "whiteshamanism" may be viewed as a converging
point for an acceptable understanding of the diverse themes that she
has put forth in her poetry. As she states in the introduction of
her retrospective collection Bone Dance (1994) that,
"the personal is political," we come to understand that
the diversity of Rose's poetry is not about distinctions, but about
wholeness. Her contempt for the "whiteshaman" is out of
the lack of wholeness which they represent, a wholeness which she
has struggled to define in herself and her work. As she was struggling
to find her identity within her mixed lineage and culture, using poetry
to express herself, the "whiteshaman" simply stole from
her culture. As her poetry bespeaks the position of injustice, the
"whiteshaman" spoke from a privileged position. Thus, as
difficult as it is to summarize the works of Wendy Rose, her writings
on "whiteshamanism" bring together different strands of
themes that appear throughout her poetry.
Selected Bibliography
Works by the Author
- Itch Like Crazy (2002)
- Bone Dance: New and Selected Poems, 1965-1992 (1994)
- Now Poof She Is Gone (1994)
- Going to War With All My Relations (1993)
- The Halfbreed Chronicles & Other Poems (1985)
- What Happened When the Hopi Hit New York (1982)
- Lost Copper (1980)
- Aboriginal Tattooing in California (1979)
- Builder Kachina: A Home-Going Cycle (1979)
- Academic Squaw: Reports to the World from
the Ivory Tower (1977)
- Long Division: A Tribal History (1976)
- Hopi Roadrunner Dancing (1973)
Other:
- "Just What's All This Fuss about Whiteshamanism, Anyway?"
Coyote Was Here (1984)
- "Neon Scars," I Tell You Now (1987)
- "The Great Pretenders: Further Reflections on Whiteshamanism",
The State of Native America: Genocide, Colonization and Resistance
(1992)
- "For Some It's a Time of Mourning", Without Discovery
(1992)
Works about the Author
- Momaday, N. Scott. Introduction to Rose's Lost Copper.
(Banning, Cal.: Malki Museum Press, Morongo Indian Reservation, 1980),
pp. ix-x.
- Ruppert, James. "The Uses of Oral Tradition in Six Contemporary
Native American Poets." American Indian Culture and Research
Journal 4.4 (1980): 87-110.
- Saucerman, James R. "Wendy Rose: Searching through Shards,
Creating Life." Wicazo-sa Review 5 (Fall 1989):
26-29.
- Wiget, Andrew. "Blue Stones, Bones and Troubled Silver: The
Poetic Craft of Wendy Rose". Studies in American Indian
Literatures series 2, 5 (Summer 1993): 29-33.
Related Links
- Native
American Authors: Wendy Rose
- The Internet Public Library's page on Rose, including a brief
bio and list of published works with links.
- Wendy
Rose
- Information about Wendy Rose from the University of Illinois English
Department.
-
This page was researched
and submitted by: David Perron
.
Chrystos fights the victimization and colonization of minority people in terms of language. She challenges conventional genre categorizations of poetry and prose as well as rules of grammar, punctuation, even typography. Interestingly, she often us...
![[Photograph of Wendy Rose]](../images/Rose_A.jpg)
