MN American Indian literature.

Follow the blackbirds -- A trade -- School days -- Innocent captives -- Mourning song -- Dying of thirst -- Linear process -- Saving scraps -- Dead end -- Early freeze Henana epe kte -- Quantum theory -- Genetic code -- Feed them -- This is my explaining ceremony -- Red earth gathering -- Journey -- Flint Hills release -- First flight -- Where the buffalo roam -- No contest -- Linear perspective -- Monet on the northern plains -- Road song -- Delisted -- Root words -- At Spirit Lake -- He Keya Woabdakedan -- Venetian -- Skin essentials -- Why he teaches the language -- Dakota Odowan -- Morning song -- Winuna -- Wicanhpi heciya tanhan unhipi (we come from the stars) -- The lesson -- Owotanna Sececa -- Going back -- Migration -- Wowicak'u -- Below the surface.

In language as perceptive as it is poignant, poet Gwen Nell Westerman builds a world in words that reflects the past, present, and future of the Dakota people. An intricate balance between the singularity of personal experience and the unity of collective longing, Follow the Blackbirds speaks to the affection and appreciation a contemporary poet feels for her family, community, and environment. With touches of humor and the occasional sharp cultural criticism, the voice that emerges from these poems is that of a Dakota woman rooted in her world and her words. In this moving collection, Westerman reflects on history and family from a unique perspective, one that connects the painful past and the hard-fought future of her Dakota homeland. Grounded in vivid story and memory, Westerman draws on both English and the Dakota language to celebrate the long journey along sunflower-lined highways of the tallgrass prairies of the Great Plains that returns her to a place filled with "more than history." An intense homage to the power of place, this book tells a masterful story of cultural survival and the power of language.--Cover page 4.