The NDN Writers, one of the most active clubs at the Institute of American Indian Arts, is speaking up, not only in poetry, but about politics as well.

The mission of the NDN Writers Club involves the promotion of literature, particularly the promotion of the Native voice. Promoting Indian literature is a naturally political agenda – it is a goal that parallels the vocalizing of sovereignty and Indian rights. Not only do we, as Native people, have to tell our own story in our own voices, but we also have to claim proudly our role as active voices in politics and society.

How are poets a critical force in the politics of this time? How are poets integral to a political movement? If you attended the NDN Writers-sponsored event, Poets Against the War, on Feb. 12 in the IAIA student lounge, there would be little doubt about the importance of poetry to politics.

The NDN Writers joined a movement of poets across the country who were making an anti-war statement through poetry. IAIA poets met at noon on Feb. 12 to read their own poems as well as poems composed by other poets from around the world in response to the threat of war against Iraq. Many members of the IAIA community gathered together to eat and share in a political response. DG Nanoak Okpik, Lavina Clay, Sara Ortiz, Matt Antar, Gary Stevens, Jennifer Foerster and Melanie Cesspooch filled the lounge with poetry. Gwen Shunatona sang a Pawnee flag song to conclude the reading.

In such a tense time of uncertain political agenda, how does a small gathering of people honoring poetry and song effect political change? Many poets would say you can’t be both a poet and a politician. But does this mean poets can’t be important purveyors of truth in blurred political power struggles?

Poetry is not necessarily antithetical to politics. In some countries, poets have traditionally been appointed as cultural attaches or ambassadors. Mexican writer Octavio Paz, for example, was the Mexican ambassador to India, as was Pablo Neruda the Chilean ambassador to Spain and a number of Eastern countries.

In the United States, a country that claims to never mix arts with government, poet Archibald Macleish was Assistant Secretary of State in 1944. In almost all nations, even if only in subtle ways, poets have been, and currently are, harbored by governments and political movements to create propaganda.
Poets can be mechanisms for generating propaganda in the interest of the government, as well as powerful voices against governments, becoming the sound of revolutionary movements.

Many times, poets become dangerous forces to political regimes, as in Stalinist Russia, where any poets who rejected writing propaganda for the Communist Party either fled the country seeking political asylum elsewhere, or were sent to prison camps. Russian poet Anna Ahkmatova, for example, composed only oral poetry to teach to others, committing her work to memory, as she knew if the pages were published, or even found in her desk drawers, she would be imprisoned or executed.

We have to remember, however, that it wasn’t just Communist Russia performing censorship. During the same time as the Stalinist regime, the United States was blacklisting films such as "Salt of the Earth," the independent documentary of the 18-month labor union strike in Bayard, New Mexico, because it was deemed "communist propaganda" material.

Interestingly, however, the U.S. was at the same time using art as propaganda to disseminate American culture into Communist countries. During the Cold War, the United State sent orchestras and dance troupes, as well as writers such as John Updike and Kurt Vonnegut, to Eastern Europe to relate American culture on behalf of American diplomatic interests.

The Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 that bars dissemination of American information aimed at foreign countries as propaganda, was renewed when the United States Information Agency became a part of the State Department in 1999. Despite this law, however, the Bush Administration has recently recruited American writers to contribute to a State Department-sponsored anthology, which addresses the question: what is it to be an American? This anthology consists of 15 essays by prominent American writers that are intended for foreign audiences, yet is banned in the United States because of its nature as propaganda.

We are a country that proclaims freedom of speech and strict opposition to propaganda. Yet we have a government that uses its artists only when their art is appropriate as propaganda for foreign diplomacy, while forbidding this same material to be freely shared among our own citizenry. It seems we are a country not of free speech, but of doublespeak.

The bottom line is that we can’t pretend we do not live in a society of censorship or government-controlled art. Is there a time when we haven’t seen hypocrisies in the U.S. claim to freedom of expression? As artists, we need to consider the reality of censorship and the controversies over art and propaganda that exist within our government, instead of blindly assuming censorship or propaganda as a thing of the past, or a concept only existing in other countries.

I found at the Poets Against the War reading that poems composed in WWII in response to Fascist regimes were almost synonymous to modern political concerns. This tells me that art forms such as poetry are relevant to politics, for they can uncover deeper, universal trends in the world, and the statements can apply across distinctions of time and place.

The voice of witness is a dangerous and powerful thing. When the NDN Writers held their poetry gathering as a statement against the war, each of the poems shared reflected this power of poetic witness. Such an event should call us all to consider our capacity not only as artistic "witnesses," but participants in politics through our art.

The vision, perception and opinion that can be rendered through an art medium, whether the medium is performance, poetry, painting, photography, or sculpture, is a statement often more powerful, true and deeply influential than any rhetoric by state department officials or party leaders.

Personally, I’d rather get my "news" from an artist that recognizes the subtlety and indistinctness of truth, than from a biased media source that purports to report the truth while monopolizing access to the multitude of other opinions and voices.

Copyright © 2003 IAIA Chronicle