Reader: Terri St. John

Respondent: Yolie Luttrell

Recorder: Sara Dailey

“The Last Wolf”

 Mary Tallmountain

Unsettling America pp. 33-34

Biographical Information:

 Mary Tallmountain was born in Nulato, Alaska in 1918. Her parents, an Athabaskan Indian mother and a Scotts/Irish father, who was a soldier, were together for ten years, although the Catholic Church and the United States army would not allow them to be married. At the age of six, her mother became ill with tuberculosis so Mary was adopted by her mother’s physician and taken away from her family and her home while her brother remained in the care of their tribe. She always felt Alaska was her “spirit’s home” and that she had a connection with the land that extended “far beyond childhood.” It is this spiritual connection to Alaska that inspired Mary to write her short stories and poetry, and in so doing, reclaimed her native heritage. She spent her later years in San Francisco encouraging struggling writers, but especially NA writers, through her organization, the Tallmountain Circle. Mary died in 1994.

Course Objectives:

1b, Voiceless and choiceless: In the lines, “He laid his long gray muzzle/On the spare white spread,” muzzle symbolizes the restraint of Native American voices and white spread symbolizes white man’s newspaper which is a tool used to extend his voice worldwide. By having the wolf lay his muzzle on the spread, the poet is making a direct contrast between Native American and dominant culture voices.

3b, Loss/survival: The imagery of the poem identifies the characters as survivors among destruction.

4, Dilemma of assimilation or resistance:  The white man is referred to as “they” in the last line, separating the speaker and the wolf from the dominant class. Although the speaker has been a participant in dominant society by living in a high-rise, he/she is conscious of cultural sacrifices that have been made.

Interpretation:

Native Americans see the wolf as a good sign - a protector that is wise, strong, courageous and mysterious. A native myth about the wolf involves the rescue of a young boy from a deep pit within a forest. A wolf hears the boy’s cries for help and finds him hungry and alone in the dark. The wolf agrees to rescue him upon the condition that the boy becomes the wolf’s son. After the boy agrees, many wolves begin digging their way to the boy until he is rescued. The boy then lives with, and is nurtured by, the pack of wolves until members of his tribe find him years later. This is one myth of why Native Americans consider the wolf to be their brother.

The Navajo Indians are part of the Athabascan language group (connection to the poet) and believe that native people have survived three prior worlds and that we are currently living in the forth world which will ultimately be destroyed.  I believe this poem represents a combination of the Native American wolf myth and the Navajo’s belief that only earth people will survive the destruction of the world, as we know it today.

Questions and Discussion:

Terri: If you knew nothing of the poet, what would identify this poem as a Native American poem?

Jerry: the reference to the wolf

Yolie brought up the creation story about the wolf: The man is guided by a wolf.  The last line of the poem is repeated a lot in Native American poems, it relates to loss and survival.

Dr. White: The word "they" is one clue. It is used a lot in Native American poetry.  Then he asked who is the opposite of they.

Terri: What significance do the directions east and west have in this poem?

Jerry: Looking west - the sun sets and the world ends. The wolf is heading east.  The wolf can be seen as a trickster figure.

Terri: Last year’s discussion focused on the speaker facing west, symbolic for the end of the world, and the wolf running east which symbolized the beginning of the world. This suggests the end of one world is meeting the beginning of another.

(One student commented at this point that the locations of the speaker and wolf may be more relevant than the directions than they were facing.)

Todd: The river divides the east and the west.  In the poem it can be used as two different worlds.  They use the river to divide the country.

Terri: Who is the last wolf? Wolf or speaker?

Yolie: The last wolf is the people, the race.

Terri:  So, you see it as a reference to the both of them? 

Dr. White:  I like the merging of the two identities.  It opens the possibility of survival.
The dominant culture thinks in terms of time.  Native Americans think in terms of space and direction.

Terri:  In my research of the Navajo’s creation beliefs it stated that they (Navajo) may not know when it happened but they know exactly where it happened.