Description

This important and engaging book records the first acquaintance of poets from American Indian and Native Siberian cultures as they come to recognize their similar cultures, life-ways, and reverence for the natural world. The poetic dialogues contain a mutual recognition of kinsmen across centuries of mutual isolation. Perhaps their chief value is the declaration of fundamental human values, expressing the authors' deepest aspirations as spokesmen for traditional cultures. As Alexander Vashchenko concludes in his commentary, "This poetic calling-forth offers an important lesson to all of us who live from day to day, with confused priorities, without a thought to eternity; who forsake our original nature-our distant, ancient kinsman, the Bear, that mighty spirit of Mother Nature and powerful symbol of our enormous, universal nation." The Foreword, Afterword, supplementary notes, and Editor's Note limn the historical and biographical background that make this text a world's first, inspiring a call for future intercontinental collaborations of indigenous writers. Poetry and commentary by N. Scott Momaday and Yuri Vaella. Edited by Alexander Vashchenko and Claude Clayton Smith. Contributions by Susan Scarberry-Garcia, Andrew Wiget, Nathan Romero, and James Walter.