My work is an act of rematriation: reclaiming knowledge and stories from the forces of disconnection and assimilation and a return to the sacred. As a member of the Six Nations of the Grand River, born in Mankato, MN and raised as a guest on Osage, Muscogee, and Cherokee lands (Tulsa, OK) I write from my fractured lineages. I am the eldest grandchild, the family historian—tasked with holding the artifacts and narratives of trauma, poverty, and displacement that ripple through my maternal line.
My poetics engage surrealism’s rebellion against rational thought and traditional forms. I utilize surrealism as a tool for resisting colonialism by embracing fractured narratives, reclaiming indigenous knowledge, and disrupting oppressive structures. I attempt to work against chronology—to make space for the fluidity of queer and Indigenous histories. I am interested in our Indigenous relationship to time, where chronology dissolves, and death defies binary. Where queerness is not a new identity but an ancient, sacred inheritance.
Through teaching in carceral settings, I witnessed firsthand how powerful writing one’s own story is to the foundational act of sovereignty. My poems are sites of return to honor where we have been, and to map a path for what we might become. Ultimately, this work is an assertion that the imagination is our source of liberation. The only way to combat a war on vision is to persistently, defiantly imagine sovereign futures.
Claire Maracle 