Heid E. Erdrich - DNA Tribes

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Heid E. Erdrich - DNA Tribes

Written by Mark Bramhill

Mark Bramhill: This is BirdNote.

Ojibwe writer Heid Erdrich's poem DNA Tribes was inspired by two things. First, in the early days of the internet, some annoying targeted ads:

Heid E. Erdrich: They would always ask me if I wanted to learn about my Native American DNA and if I knew my tribe, which, of course I did!

Mark Bramhill: And the other was the Red-eyed Vireo, whose call sounds like someone saying…

Heid E. Erdrich: Here I am, where are you? And I thought that was something to think about. Like, why would a bird be saying that? 

I kind of felt the two things together. You know, do you have to move away from where you are, mislead people from who you are, to keep your home safe?  

DNA Tribes

The red-eyed vireo calls:
Here I am. Where are you?  
Like some bizarre bio-mimic,
web ads pop up while I email

asking: Native American DNA— 
What tribe are you?

All's I’d need to do is swab 
and mail away 

cells my ancestors took 
millennia to perfect. 

And who owns them then?  

Here I am. Where are you? 
The red-eyed vireo calls,

misleading us to relocate,
following its flight 

away from nestlings tight in twigs, 
to get us lost in a bog, 

asking all along if we even 
know our own locale: 

Here I am. Where are you? 

Native American DNA—
What Tribe are you? 

As if that could fool us, 
make us forget the nesting grounds, 

the red eye cast ever backward 
to a place always known as home.

Mark Bramhill: For BirdNote, I’m Mark Bramhill.

                                                                         ###
Senior Producer: John Kessler
Production Manager: Allison Wilson
Producer: Mark Bramhill
Associate Producer: Ellen Blackstone
Bird sounds provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. ML247983971 Red-eyed Vireo recorded by Matthew D. Medler.
BirdNote’s theme was composed and played by Nancy Rumbel and John Kessler.
© 2021 BirdNote   May 2021    Narrator: Mark Bramhill

ID#  erdrichh-01-2021-05-25      erdrichh-01