On Janurary 21st, 2017, The Amerind Foundation convened a presentation entitled “Native Voices: Indigenous American & RED INK Literary Festival”. Seven authors shared their work at the Amerind Museum in Dragoon, Arizona. The event was hosted by Simon Ortiz, an Acoma Pueblo member and award winning Regents Professor in the English Department at Arizona State University. Today’s first poet is Kyle Grant Wilson, is Diné (Navajo) from Fort Defiance, AZ. He is the Indigenous Rhetoric Coordinator in the Department of English at Arizona State University. He also is Affiliated Faculty in American Indian Studies. and Honors Faculty in The Barrett Honors College. In the second portion of today’s show, we’ll hear from Simon Ortiz.This is part 2 of a multi part series.
Poet, f
iction writer, essayist, and storyteller Simon Ortiz is a native of Acoma Pueblo and is the author of numerous books, including Beyond the Reach of Time and Change, The Good Rainbow Road, Out There Somewhere, Men on the Moon, from Sand Creek, After and Before the Lightning, Speaking for the Generations, Woven Stone, and Earth Power Coming. He has received national and international recognition, including the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, the Lila Wallace- Reader’s Digest Writers Award, Lannan Foundation’s Artists in Residence Fellowship, “Returning the Gift” Lifetime Achievement Award, WESTAF Lifetime Achievement Award, and, most recently, the Golden Tibetan Antelope Prize for International Poetry. He lives in Tempe, Arizona, where he is a Regents Professor in the English Department at Arizona State University.
Kyle 
Grant Wilson is Diné (Navajo) from Fort Defiance, AZ and is the Indigenous Rhetoric Coordinator in the Department of English at Arizona State University. He also is Affiliated Faculty in American Indian Studies and Honors Faculty in The Barrett Honors College. He received his Bachelor’s in English Education and his Master’s in Creative Writing (poetry).
Indigenous Rhetoric at ASU traverses issues such as decolonization, self-identification, and acculturation; and voices from the periphery for empowerment. Texts feature writers from a diverse Indigenous spectrum and authors with comparative ethos but from different backgrounds.
He started and directs Project Communal Effort at ASU, a student-run group that organizes fundraisers to benefit local Indigenous families facing disparities. He publishes poetry centralized on the themes of “Indigenous Identities” and “Decolonization”. His poems have been published in Rattle, Arizona Highways, Arizona Republic, Red Ink and he has been featured in Poet Lore.
Established in 1937, the Amerind foundation and Museum seeks to foster and promote knowledge and understanding of the Native Peoples of the Americas through research, education, and conservation.
Recorded and produced by Amanda Shauger.
