‘WHEREAS WE RESPOND:’ LAYLI LONG SOLDIER’S ACTS OF SOVEREIGN POETICS AND INDIGENOUS JUSTICE

Abstract

In 2009, the United States voted on a Congressional Joint Resolution of Apology to Native Americans. President Barack Obama signed the Apology, which, however, was never delivered to the public nor to representatives of Tribal Nations. The Apology text was later folded into a larger piece of legislation known as the 2010 Defense Appropriations Act. In her 2017 collection of poems WHEREAS, Oglala Lakota poet Layli Long Soldier presents a direct intertextual response to the Congressional Apology. Part II of the collection, also titled “WHEREAS”, adapts the tripartite structure of the Congressional Resolution by including “Whereas Statements”, “Resolutions”, and a “Disclaimer”. Writing as a dual citizen – an enrolled member of the Oglala Lakota Nation and a U.S. citizen – Long Soldier exposes the U.S. history of settler colonialism that continues to operate, embedded in the language of the Apology. This essay analyzes Long Soldier’s poetic enunciation as an act of defiance against the empty statements of the Congressional Apology. By excavating and exposing the Apology’s language, Long Soldier makes a decolonial intervention in “the language, crafting, and arrangement of the written document” (Whereas 57) and affirms the enduring presence and resistance of Indigenous Peoples in the United States and beyond. Placing language and storytelling at the center of her poetic enunciation, Long Soldier frames resistance and resurgence within the everyday existence of Indigenous communities and their never-ending struggle to defend and reclaim their lands. Poem after poem, Long Soldier exposes the empty ritualistic rhetoric of the Congressional Apology that, despite its well-presented message of reconciliation, is void of any gesture amounting to reparations for the hundreds of Indigenous nations living within the borders of the United States. As we enter the second decade since the adoption of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples by the General Assembly in 2007, a landmark document in international law and Indigenous rights, yet still reluctantly accepted by the United States government, which continues to treat it as a non-legally binding text, this essay will also discuss how Long Soldier’s acts of “sovereign poetics” (Mishuana Goeman) can function as an empowering educational tool in the battle to decolonize international human rights law and affirm Indigenous self-determination.