Thanksgiving is a US holiday that celebrates gratitude by focusing, apparently unconsciously and without irony, on a version of history that disguises or erases hypocrisy, greed, and classically violent colonization. Many US elders who are not Indians learned some different history from the occupation of Alcatraz (1969 to 1971) by AIM, the American Indian Movement.  Most recently/obviously, people in all generations who are not Indians learned from the resistance/action of Native Americans and their allies at Standing Rock in 2016.  (And that learning continues, as court cases move through a different sort of pipeline: The AP reported early this month that federal regulators have ordered the Keystone pipeline shut down until its Canadian owner takes corrective action aimed at determining the cause of a breach that leaked an estimated 383,000 gallons (1.4 million liters) of oil in northeastern North Dakota …. TC Energy, formerly called TransCanada, said in a statement that it expect[ed] to have the damaged portion of the pipeline excavated by the end of the [first] week [of November].  The company said it ha[d] about 200 people at the site working around the clock who are "focused on clean-up and remediation activities. …. We're continuing to monitor air quality around the site and the surrounding area throughout clean-up, with no concerns," TC Energy said.) …. (italics added to AP text in two places)

However!  Many shows on KBOO do a mighty fine job of bringing news and political analysis to listeners; this is a poetry show.  For this broadcast, I’m reading poems from the work of North American Indian poets. Some were originally published as part of the great wave of women’s work in the arts that rolled across the USA in the 1960s and 70s. Some are by poets who come from or have lived in KBOO’s region, the Pacific Northwest; a few are by people I’ve met, known or worked with. I chose in the usual way choices are made: searching plus attitude, interest, context and the constraint of time – this is, after all, a show that runs a bit less than an hour. For tonight’s show, I've read work by Elizabeth Woody (Oregon Poet Laureate Emerita), Ed Edmo, Paula Gunn Allen, Sherman Alexie, Chrystos, Ralph Salisbury, Linda Hogan, Diane Glancy, N. Scott Momaday, Trevino L. Brings Plenty, Janice Gould, Joy Harjo (current US Poet Laureate), and an unknown poet from the Arctic, who wrote long ago. [photo at Standing Rock: Getty Images]