Close shot of a field of sweetgrass, slightly brown with autumn

FEATURED ESSAY

These Sweetgrass Prayers

Closing my eyes I 
  retrace my steps that brought me here to 
Odaawaa Zaagaa’ iganing          minawaa, 

here standing in 
this soil of government allotted land– 
           planting rhubarb and lilac 
  trees tending 
these wooded acres of ni mama’s home. 

          I breathe. 

Allowing the chilly northern wind to bathe I 
rinse off those weighted sorrows of decades 
  old trauma– 

                   I don’t breathe. 

The wise ones instruct me to pray, 
   think good thoughts              they say– 
Release those concrete burdens you carry 
       to the Holy One. 

I haven’t. 

       I need these sweetgrass prayers to.

 

Since being home 
  I’ve returned to that god’s eye above the stairwell in six-mile 
      minawaa and again. 
I forced myself to enter that dark basement where 
surrender remains 
       foreign. 

I lose myself there still 
  in that childhood home. 
My father…                           he wasn’t there. 

                         Ever. 

So I carry, 
  still 
cellular memories storing fatherless 
      echoes my heart shattered for, 
these, I rebelled against my own body for. 

I’ve created a mosaic of scars– 
      individual burns and historical horrors 
buried deep in my mixed-blood lineage. 

I reside here, my 
  anemic body with the stones and birch 
bark roots of northern Wisconsin.               I 
       drifted in frigid waters of Gichigami 
washing clean years 

of penitentiary sorrows,                         barring my isolated 
and pale skin.                     Realigning I with 

elements of Aki. 
       Sweet, sweet Aki.


This poem was commissioned in conjunction with the exhibition SEEN, on view at Weisman Art Museum February 8 - May 18, 2025. 

Louise Waakaa'igan

A femme-presenting person with dark hair, pulled back in a ponytail hugs a tree and smiles into the camera
About the Artist

Louise K. Waakaa’igan is an enrolled member at Odaawaa-Zaaga’iganiing in northern Wisconsin. Her first chapbook, This Is Where, Aquarius Press, was published in 2020. She is also the first-place winner of the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop’s Broadside Competition (2016). Louise’s work has been previously published in PEN America, 21 Mythologies, The Moon Magazine, Night Colors, 27th Letter, Words in Gray Scale, and Doors Adjacent. She is ready to publish her second collection and recently has moved back to her beloved Minneapolis.

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