Notes on Layli Long Soldier's "WHEREAS"

Layli Long Soldier’s WHEREAS: Connecting Words to Reality

• Layli Long Soldier's debut book of poetry, WHEREAS (2017), has received praise for its exploration of language's role in shaping reality, notably in response to the 2009 congressional apology to Native Americans.
• Critics acknowledge the book's astute critique and engagement with the congressional apology.
  • Natalie Diaz: WHEREAS is an "excavation, reorganization, and documentation of a structure of language" used to perpetuate violence by the United States.
  • Emilia Phillips: The book "dismantles the language" that has justified violent actions by the U.S. government such as restrictive legislation, broken treaties and formal apologies.
  • Crystal Alberts: Long Soldier's poetry challenges government declarations and reenacts violence against Indigenous nations using the government's own language.
• WHEREAS holds the language of colonization accountable for its extensive harm to Native American communities.
• Long Soldier uses language to highlight its potential for honoring lived experiences and upholding fidelity to material and spiritual realities.
• The book presents images, narratives, and impressions that responsibly depict tragedy and trauma, highlighting language's deep involvement in life.

Language as a Tool for Engagement

• Long Soldier views language as a tool for engagement, stating that each community has been given its own language "to reach with," emphasizing the active nature of reaching.
• The congressional apology, however, avoids direct engagement, often pushing the poet into silences and blank spaces within her poetry.
• WHEREAS explores the dual functions of language:
  • Its capacity for violence through manipulation and denial.
  • Its role in nurturing communities.
• The book confronts the congressional apology, dissecting specific methods of the language of colonization, termed "the American casual."
• Long Soldier challenges this language through innovative poetic forms, advocating for congruence between words and reality.
• WHEREAS offers a fluid depiction of human interaction, conveying healthy perspectives on language through lament, struggle, defiance, and description, demonstrating communication about traumatic experiences.

"The American Casual" in WHEREAS

• The 2009 U.S. congressional apology, “S.J. RES. 14,” is part of a genre of political writing that acknowledges injustices suffered by Indigenous people under colonialism.
• Similar apologies have been issued by governments in Canada, Norway, Sweden, and Australia.
• The U.S. apology states its purpose: "To acknowledge a long history of official depredations and ill- conceived policies by the Federal Government regarding Indian tribes and offer an apology to all Native Peoples on behalf of the United States."
• The document spans six pages, chronicling harmful acts and events, including:
  • The Trail of Tears.
  • The Sand Creek Massacre.
  • Boarding schools where Native practices and languages were suppressed.
  • Numerous treaty violations.
• The apology also mentions positive interactions between Europeans and Native Americans during the colonial era.
• Critics have questioned the authenticity, effectiveness, and impact of the congressional apology.
  • Sheryl Lightfoot: Gives the apology a "low" rating on "content" and "method of delivery."
  • Rob Capriccioso: Asks if a silent apology is a true apology and questions the lack of emphasis on it by President Obama.
  • Robert T. Coulter: Wonders about the meaning of an apology that is not communicated to the people being apologized to.
• Long Soldier points out that no tribal leaders were invited to witness or receive the apology and that President Obama never read it aloud.
• Sherry L. Smith and Audra Simpson critique the apology's language as "lame" and inadequate compared to apologies from Canada and Australia.
• Chadwick Allen likens the apology to the "discourse of treaties," characterized by "platitudes of good faith, understatements of treachery."

Language, Reality, and Injustice

• Long Soldier’s WHEREAS engages with broader discussions about language's role in shaping reality and perpetuating injustice.
• George Orwell: "Political language [ . . . ] is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind."
• Wendell Berry: "The increasing unreliability of language parallels the increasing disintegration [ . . . ] of persons and communities."
• Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann: Language is a powerful and "essential [constituent] of the reality of everyday life".
• Geneva Smitherman: "Consciousness and ideology are largely the products of [ . . . ] the sociolinguistic construction of reality," with language being used to create a new theory of reality, shaping identity, culture, and power dynamics.
• WHEREAS suggests that language is implicit in violence and significantly influences individual and cultural ideologies, as well as perceptions of reality.
• Settler-state discourse creates a new theory of reality through narratives that portray colonialism as well-intentioned and positive for Indigenous communities.
• The apology's mention of "peaceful and mutually beneficial interactions" elides the Native perspective of the European conquest, controlling reality through language.

Postcolonial Theory and the Language of Oppressors

• Long Soldier grapples with writing faithfully in the language of the oppressors.
• Uses the colonizer's tools to protest and resist their abuse.
• Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o: Laments that African writers define themselves in terms of imperialist languages.
• Trinh T. Minh-ha: Questions the encounter with the other in her.
• Long Soldier mourns the absence of necessary words and concepts in English to explore reality.
• Feels "waȟpániča" (Lakota for "poor") and describes the "metaphrasal ache of being language poor."
• Points to a lack of linguistic and narrative resources in Euro-American contexts for communicating about regret, sorrow, and tragedy.
• Confronts "the American casual," the language of colonization, akin to "manifest manners," "white settler mythologies," and "American niceness."
• Gerald Vizenor: Explains "manifest manners" as the racialist notions that enforce the colonization of Native Americans.
• Sherene H. Razack: Argues that "white settler mythologies" deny conquest, genocide, slavery, and exploitation through the fantasy of peaceful settlement.
• Long Soldier explores this "disavowal" in the congressional apology, noting the absence of words like "conquest" and "genocide."
• Challenges words and stories that deceptively suggest the apology is genuine or that Europeans "peacefully settled" North America.

"American Niceness" and the Minimization of Violence

• Carrie Tirado Bramen: Analyzes “American niceness” in U.S. government documents, asserting it implies Americans are fundamentally well-meaning.
• Acts of aggression are framed as passive, reluctant, and defensive.
• The Declaration of Independence’s passive voice exemplifies this ideology.
• Long Soldier draws parallels between the congressional apology and the Declaration of Independence.
• The apology frames aggressive acts passively, such as stating “the arrival of Europeans in North America opened a new chapter in the history of Native Peoples.”
• Long Soldier describes the physical effect of these words: "I can’t help my body. / I shake. The realization that it took this phrase to show."
• Allen: States that government documents transform into abstractions and platitudes with no concrete relevance.
• Naming the European invasion “a new chapter” misrepresents its destructive consequences.
• Long Soldier is haunted by manipulative language and the absence of narratives acknowledging grief and loss.
• The language of “American niceness” disassociates Americans from violence and negative emotions.
• Ta-Nehisi Coates challenges the language of individualism in education, noting that “personal responsibility” exonerates historical wrongs.
• WHEREAS critiques Euro-American linguistic traditions, linking language to the care or lack of care for people and communities.
• Emphasizes the moral and communal loss when language fails to acknowledge wrongdoing, tragedy, and sorrow.

Linguistic Problems and Historical Narratives

• Daniel Heath Justice: Argues that "we must name our violent history to understand its continuing effects,”
• The resources to describe tragedy are inadequate or unavailable.
• Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography: Refers to mistakes as "Errata," indicative of optimism that characterizes national stories.
• Uses “errata” to signify moral failure, such as his emotional abandonment of his future wife Deborah.
• Coates: Paraphrases this optimism with "Mistakes were made. Bodies were broken. People were enslaved. We meant well. We tried our best."
• Jay Parini: Notes that “sins were not something [Franklin] was much worried about”.
• Despite Franklin acknowledging his failures, his vocabulary and positive narrative align with the language of intention and personal responsibility.
• "Errata” implies moral failures are like printing mistakes that can be corrected and forgotten.
• Long Soldier encounters this optimism in a conversation with a “string- bean blue- eyed man” in a bar, who minimizes the gravity of the apology with, “Well, at least there was an Apology, that’s all I can say”.
• The man implies the U.S. deserves moral credit for the apology's existence.

The Colonizer's Language and Perspectives

• Harjo and Bird: Promote Native women’s writing that resists the colonizer’s control of language.
• The blue-eyed man's statement posits his perspective as reasonable and morally acceptable.
• Yvonne Dion-Buffalo and John Mohawk: Argue that “conquest and colonization” coerce people to accept European ideologies.
• The man’s rejoinder dismisses Long Soldier’s feelings and the apology’s failures.
• Mark Rifkin: Explains that “settler common sense” underlies the statement “at least there was an Apology”.
• The man derives his beliefs from “everyday instantiations of settlement,” possessing ethics that elide the dispossession and murder of Native people.
• Long Soldier intimates the tenor of his ideological assumptions through filler words.
• The man believes Native Americans should be grateful for the apology.
• To be dissatisfied is not considered “legitimate”.
• The blue-eyed man silences the poet, indicating the difficulty of engaging his perspective.
• Long Soldier names “the American casual”: the practical and optimistic language that precludes tragedy and irreparable wrongs.
• The apology “rephrase[es] as ‘conflict’” tragic events that should have been named “genocide”.
• Similar to Franklin using "errata" instead of "sin," the U.S. Congress opts for a less serious word.
• The blue-eyed man readily accepts the “rephrasing as ‘conflict’”.
• WHEREAS challenges the assumptions he and others have in common with the congressional apology.

Long Soldier's Work with Language: Dismantling Deceptive Language

• Long Soldier comments on the difficulty of responding to the congressional apology’s linguistic manipulations.
• describes the document as “so carefully crafted”.
• It's "very astute and very aware of what each phrase [ . . . ] may carry, the implication of each phrase”.
• She describes the construction of words as “almost poetry”.
• Long Soldier's work with words differs from the blue-eyed man and the U.S. Congress, avoids assertions, arguments, or abstractions.
• Minh-ha: Admits, “I am therefore not concerned with judging the veracity of his discourse [ . . . ] a veracity he always implies through his scientism, professionalism, or ‘scholarism’”.
• Long Soldier doesn't proceed through traditional forms but “expos[es] some of the premises of oppression” in the congressional apology.
• Her poetry engages the readers’ senses, conveying truth through impressions and experiences.
• Many poems identify disingenuous words and actions, reshaping or relocating them to reveal their true colors.
• Toni Morrison: States that work “requires [her] to learn how to maneuver ways to free up the language from its sometimes sinister, frequently lazy, almost always predictable employment of racially informed and determined chains”.
• Kimberly M. Blaeser: Observes that “Many Indian authors have purposefully chosen to ignore standard rules and forms that are ill suited to Native storytelling. They strive to introduce different codes. Their works teach readers and critics new ways of reading and interacting with voices on the page”.

The Visual and Spatial Elements of Language

• How the words look on the page contributes to the reader’s response.
• White spaces signify “the white space of history” and absences in Euro-American narratives.
• Long Soldier undermines traditional poetic expectations to “free up the language” and express reality.
• Shape poems challenge “the American casual” and traditional expectations.
• She refashions the apology to show it means other than what it says.
• William Apess: Argues about Euro-Americans’ perspective of history: “Although in words they deny it, yet in the works they approve of the iniquities of their fathers”.
• Long Soldier excerpts a phrase in the shape of a hammer:
  • "[The United States Congress] expresses its regret for the rami- fications of former wrongs and its commitment to build on the positive relationships of the past and present to move toward a brighter future where all the people of this land live reconciled as brothers and sisters, and harmoniously steward and protect this land together."
• Reveals inconsistencies between the U.S. Congress’s words and works without using her own words to argue against them.
• Harjo and Bird: Called this “reinventing” the colonizer’s language by “turning those images around to mirror an image of the colonized to the colonizers as a process of decolonization”.

Restructuring Language

• Long Soldier selects a passage rife with abstractions, such as “build on positive relationships,” to represent as a pounding hammer.
• The phrases appear insincere due to the apology being signed quietly without tribal leaders.
• Terms from the apology are used in new contexts, like "chapter".
• Misuse of language, as when a renowned Native American poet conflates “myth” and “legend”.
• As a result of being “under,” she does not challenge or counter the misused language; instead, she reports, “my supernatural chapter ended”.
• Long Soldier uses the word in a different context, conveying the experience of oppression when the “chapters” penned by the U.S. belie reality.
• Uses “chapter” to signify her own diminishment under a misuse of language, alluding to the ways official histories of the Western world have oppressed, colonized, and lied about who she is and the histories of her ancestors.
• Unlike the abstract language of the congressional apology, WHEREAS offers an alternative perspective on language and practices for working with it.

Language as a Means to Reach and Connect

• Long Soldier’s perspective aligns with the purpose of language she articulates in her book: “each People has been given their own language to reach with”.
• She extends and interacts with other Native writers concerning the role of language in human life.
• N. Scott Momaday: Refers to spoken words as “the deepest sustenance of the human race”.
• John Mohawk: Contrasts Native and Western ideologies and suggests, “as a general rule, Natural people do not lie. Theirs is an oral tradition, and lying destroys language and the destruction of language means the destruction of culture, the nation”.
• Long Soldier avoids generalizing the veracity of Native people but draws attention to cultural traditions that contribute to language development.
• There is no word for ‘apologize,’ or ‘sorry.’ this doesn’t mean that in Native communities where the word ‘apologize’ is not spoken, there aren’t definite actions for admitting and amending wrongdoing.
• English offers a word that tends to exist more as an abstraction than a participant in reality.
• In Native languages, apologies are real because of the “definite actions” that express appropriate remorse for “wrongdoing”.
• Readers should “reach with” language, connecting words to actions.

WHEREAS as a Physical and Concrete Experience

• The poetry will be concrete and real, asking the reader to prepare for a physical experience:
  • “Now / make room in the mouth / for grassesgrassesgrasses”.
• Language in WHEREAS is sizable and edible, requiring the reader to “make room” because the words endeavor to exist on the page and in readers’ lives.
• The grass image responds to and shapes the Euro- American literary tradition.
• Conor Bracken: Writes that the grasses are “a trebled nod to what both hid and revealed Dickinson’s narrow fellow, as well as what Whitman thought of as, among other things, the hair of the dead. And now, whenever grass pops up in a poem, it will also be Long Soldier’s grass”.
• Pushes the metaphor into further concreteness, proclaiming that the words themselves have a size.
• Her request that the reader “make room” suggests that her grasses will occupy a space that the U.S. government and Euro-American culture have historically denied her.

Poem "38"

• The longest poem, provides a narrative that expounds upon the grass metaphor and Long Solider’s expectations for language.
• By connecting her definition of poetry to a heroic action, she suggests a larger philosophy of language.
• Faithfully to nourish human beings and represent their material realities.
• Poetical reports an understudied historical event, the hanging of thirty- eight Dakota men.
• Demonstrates both practically and ideologically Long Soldier’s vision for language’s participation in life.
• Relies on image and fact to narrate the Sioux Uprising, which led to the mass execution of Dakota men in 1862.
• Quotes Andrew Myrick, who said, “If they are hungry, let them eat grass,” in defense of his refusal to give store credit to the starving Dakota people.
• Relates what became of him during the Sioux Uprising, found “his mouth was stuffed with grass”.
• Connects WHEREAS to the Dakota warriors’ insistence on their own survival when she opens her book with the “grassesgrassesgrasses”.
• This metaphor expresses her solidarity with the historical struggle of Native people against violence and genocide.

The Power of Poetry as Action

• Long Solider’s retelling of Myrick’s execution deepens her contention that responsible language is connected to physical realities.
  • “I am inclined to call this act by the Dakota warriors a poem.
    • There’s irony in their poem.
    • There was no text. ‘Real’ poems do not ‘really’ require words”.
• Holds poetry accountable to the purpose of language, that “each People has been given their own language to reach with”.
• In her perspective, poetry is an action or a reality that nourishes and supports communities and individuals.
• In her work, Long Soldier provides readers with words that gesture and appeal to the senses.
• Diane Glancy: States "As writing at the alphabet will be the bone of existence".

Healing Through Language

• Long Soldier includes poems that depict the powerful connections between words and bodies.
• Those poems demonstrate many failures of the congressional apology as well as offer concrete signs of genuine healing words and gestures.
• Stating, “All is experienced / through the body / somebody told me”.
• Alludes to the material, spiritual, and emotional effects of the apology.
• In the first “Whereas” poem, Long Soldier establishes the link between words and bodies:
  • “WHEREAS when offered an apology I watch each movement the shoulders / high or folding, tilt of the head both eyes down or straight through”.
  • “I read / each muscle, I ask the strength of the gesture to move like a poem,” and the final line asks, “Where in the body do I begin;".
• The strength of the word and its meaning depends on physical corroborating evidence.
• The words need to include “definite actions for admitting and amending wrongdoing”.
• Long Soldier enjoins herself in WHEREAS to “begin” “in the body”.
• She not only provides “grasses,” or poems grounded in reality, to respond to injustice and tragedy but also holds herself accountable to a more responsible way of using and working with language.

Reflections on Language

• Long Soldier depicts herself as working vigorously yet humbly with language.
• States, “I sat I wrote about writing. I write I sit about writing”.
• A responsible approach to language signifies respect for its power combined with an awareness of one’s own limitations.
  • “How much must I labor / to signify what’s real”.
  • “I climb the backs of languages, ride them into exhaustion— maybe I pull the reins when I mean go. Maybe kick their sides when I want down”.
• Delineates language as a powerful animal that she must respect and learn to work with.
• Confesses, “maybe I pull the reins when I mean go,” she acknowledges her own fallibility.
• Conceding she does not have power over language contrasts with the writers of the congressional apology.
• Stating “to signify what’s real,” whereas the congressional apology misrepresents, manipulates, and controls.
• Albert White Hat, Sr.: Asserts “how we handle our language, how we develop it, can cause the Lakota people to grow or can destroy us”.
• Evinces her faith that language can indeed participate in growth and healing.