Poetry is a tool for navigating transformation, and we needed poets and poetry to make community and inner change. What led me toward the practice of poetry as a tool for justice was hearing the poetry of Simon Ortiz, an Acoma poet, as he read his original poetry on a local radio station. Until hearing him, I didn’t know that we Natives could write poetry that was of our lives, our struggles, our revelations. Ortiz’s poetry was personal, political, and historical, spoken in everyday language used in our tribal communities.
