Skin Like Mine

In Skin Like Mine Garry Gottfriedson offers a suite of poems on what it feels like to be inside the skin of many contemporary native individuals. He pulls no punches as he reflects on the challenges facing native people today. He speaks of minds full of anticipation yet with tongues pointing arrowheads. He tells of how so many native young people are afraid to live / afraid to die / afraid of ourselves. As he looks around what was once a pristine natural environment, he finds the forests being / eaten from the inside out. In the poem Political Dysfunction, Gottfriedson tackles the many problems with present-day band management. But as the collection passes the midpoint, a new voice begins to be heard as Gottfriedson reflects on the mysterious Horsechild, and he says: I will bind the drying racks once again / with hemp to make ready / The rows for drying salmon / so that beneath your skin / the mountains will be forever abundant. The age-old rituals of the people and of the land return to provide comfort and assurance that some things never change. Poetry. Native American Studies. SKIN LIKE MINE presents a suite of poems that peel away the skin of contemporary first nations society to reveal an inside view of individual experience. Today's youth, Gottfriedson says, are "afraid of themselves." He finds that both individuals and bands end in "tangles," that they write "nonsense words in the sand" or exploit images painted on rocks, those "the postmodern Indian calls / visual poetic expression." As the collection continues, however, his love for the land emerges. He draws attention to the rape of the natural environment through clear-cut logging. He speaks of the damage caused by the pine beetle, of "forests being / eaten from the inside out." And here it is that Gottfriedson introduces the mysterious Horsechild, who is to prepare the drying racks for the returning salmon "so that beneath your skin / the mountains will be forever abundant": a prayer for us to protect the migrating salmon with their multi-year cycles, to protect the bears and eagles that feast upon them, so as to assure that the transformations will continue, that there will be abundance for both humans and the earth itself.