Whereas I went one day to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription, and the pharmacy was closed, and I decided a book of poetry was the next best thing to medicine;
Whereas the book I selected was Layli Long Soldier’s collection titled Whereas;
Whereas in January of this year, President Trump signed an order to expedite the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, and, as my colleague Robinson Meyer wrote,
For roughly four hours after these orders were issued, they only existed online in an image from an Associated Press photographer. That version was missing at least a page, and some words were so blurry as to be non-parseable.
Whereas poems can be made to peel apart language, and language can be made to flail, to strike, to obfuscate and blur, or to shift responsibility and blame from one party to another;
Layli Long Soldier’s collection is a direct response to the official “Apology to Native Peoples” on behalf of the U.S. government buried quietly in the 2010 defense appropriations bill. At the time, the apology attracted little notice; President Obama signed it without fanfare or ceremony. Long Soldier pays close attention to its language, dividing her book into sections whose titles are borrowed from the apology: “These Being the Concerns,” “Whereas Statements,” “Resolutions,” “Disclaimer.”