To meet Elizabeth Woody is to feel the full breadth of nature embodied in a woman. She truly understands the human condition.
And she is an endless well of experience, knowledge and fascinating stories. This made her a natural choice to become poet laureate of Oregon, an honor she received in March from Gov. Kate Brown. She is the first Native American to hold that position.
Woody is a member of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs in Oregon. She was born Tódích’íinii (Bitter Water clan) in Ganado, Ariz. Her family has connections to the Milee-thlama (People of the Hot Springs) and Wyampum peoples (People of the Echo of Water Upon Rocks), and the middle Columbia River Chinook peoples, Wishram, Wasco, Watlala.
Woody and her ancestry are woven into many communities across Portland, the state of Oregon and throughout the Pacific Rim. Woody has collected a lifetime of appreciation for the natural world, artistic creation and service across her communities.
I asked her to comment on a poem she wrote in the 1980s titled “Home and the Homeless.”
Elizabeth Woody: I wrote that during a very down economic time. When people reflect back now, Reaganomics didn’t bring back the prosperity that was promised. When I returned from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, I was looking for a job, for work and there just were no jobs.
People ask me, “What kind of support did you receive when you were writing your first book of poetry that received the American Book Award?” I say I basically wrote that book when I was impoverished and I was in a single room occupancy and eating out of the soup kitchen. I had food stamps and a meager income that came to me from my tribe, and I used that to buy my necessities. I was applying for school, bridging my way to better times.
I became very conscious of the way a set of circumstances can take you from what I considered my height as I was part of this elite school, The Institute of American Indian Arts.
When I wrote that poem, I was living in a Victorian four-plex in central Southeast Portland at the base of Ladd’s Addition.
There was a warehouse district from there to the river, and a lot of people lived there at that time. I think there still are some camps there.
There were a lot of people traveling through, and I saw a lot of people (without) means. There was a gentleman who rode his bike. He had a long grey beard and he called me sister.
I felt like when I closed the gate to my apartment, I left that environment where people were interacting with me who didn’t have a place to live. But I did. I could go in and shut the door and nobody would bother me. But they were constantly in this environment where they were continually touched and hollered at by people.
There was no way that I could describe the difference between us except that I had a home that had these beautiful roses in the garden and had the trees and had things that I valued that they couldn’t enjoy.
Suzanne Zalokar: The role of poet laureate, in Oregon, was first bestowed in 1923, and then the position was left vacant for decades. In 2006, you were a part of the process of revamping the position with the governor at the time, Ted Kulongoski, who in 2006 named Lawson Fusao Inada as the state’s poet laureate. A decade later you were nominated. What is your vision for the time that you are serving in this role?
E.W.: The lady who nominated me was so kind, and when she explained to me why she wanted to nominate me, I figured it would be disrespectful to tell her no.
I’ve applied for a lot of things, fellowships. I’ve never received any of it. Even the Oregon Book Awards, when I was a finalist, I didn’t expect to win. (The award of poet laureate) comes at a time when I had no idea that I had this kind of regard as a poet.
S.Z.: What a beautiful gift, to be valued.
E.W.: Yes. I’m at a different time in my life now. I’m in my 50s, and I feel like I am getting back to what I genuinely am: an artist and a writer.
There was so much work to do, and when I was younger, I was really focused on getting my second and third books out. Then I was just working because I wanted to build up these programs that I was involved in.
I was a program officer at Meyer Memorial Trust, so I spent some time in communities that I didn’t know that I would be in. I was able to see some amazing people doing remarkable things at a really hard time. We have some very important communities in our state and our world.
I’m thinking of Ontario, Ore. They are closer to Idaho (geographically and culturally) than they are to the rest of Oregon.
I’m thinking of Coos Bay and Medford and these places that are more geographically tied to Northern California.
We’re in this state, but our communities go beyond the state. They go to the ocean, a very important part of our existence here in Oregon.
S.Z.: Pablo Neruda’s remains were returned to his family recently, and earlier Prince passed away. Both artists leave behind a remarkable legacy of their life’s work and service. What legacy do you want to leave one day?
E.W.: Just a minute (becoming emotional). I’m sure you know this, but Pablo Neruda lived in Portland because of his politics.
It just occurred to me: Pablo Neruda stood up for his beliefs. They say his demise was by being poisoned by the Junta. Poets have lived and died because of their belief system.
I’m intuitively strong, meaning that any time that I have been asked to contribute or be part of something, I give it my all.
Right now, I have the wind basically knocked out of my sails because my mother passed away (in October). My mother was an exceptional person.
S.Z.: Tell me about her.
E.W.: One of the things that came up to me was her childhood with my grandmother who was also an exceptional person.
My mom told me the story about how she used to go out on the land and spend her day out there. She would come back and my grandmother would shake her down and empty her pockets – pull out a snake, pull out a frog and a lizard or something.
(My grandmother) would say, “I want you to go and take those back because they have a family. And what would happen if somebody picked you up and took you away from us? We would be really sad.” And my mother started taking the critters back. Eventually she got to the point where she would just admire them and not bring them home.
My mother was an alcoholic on the streets for a long time. I think in the ’60s and early ’70s is when she started to sober up, but she was like the toughest woman on the streets. They said it took 11 Klamath women to take her down. It took seven cops to haul her in – in leg irons. She had her collar bone broken by the police in Seattle and almost died. Physically, she was tremendously strong.
What I didn’t really know or appreciate was she was brilliant. A genius. Her IQ was way up there, but she wasn’t appreciated for her brilliance. She was always appreciated for her beauty. She was a beautiful woman. She was like movie-star beautiful.
When she sobered up, these friends, these socialist and communists, were forming the first free clinic in skid row there on Ash Street. My mom became their receptionist. One guy said she was actually mob control because she (wouldn’t let people from the street pull grifts because she was savvy to them).
We had the FBI parked in front of our house 24/7. My mom had an AIM (American Indian Movement) house there on Ash Street, which we lived in communally with social activists. They went on to go work in the fields and so they decided they needed to live in the SRO to get the full experience.
We’d leave every day and the FBI would be out there parked in the car across the street. My sister used to give them the peace sign. Every day my mom’s boyfriend would make a new sign and put it in the window (chuckle). One day their car was broken down and my mom went out there and helped them get it started. She would take them coffee.
My point is that my mother was a brilliant woman.
S.Z.: What was her name?
E.W.: Charlotte Pitt.
S.Z.: Did she maintain her sobriety?
E.W.: She did. My mom was the first Native woman counselor at the Native American Rehabilitation Association (NARA). And I think she was the first or second woman board member.
She also was instrumental in the first Native American Alcohol and Drug Treatment Center based on Native American practices and principles. When she sobered up, she fell off the wagon a couple of times and she ended up in prison. But she became an alcohol and drug counselor up until the time she died when she was 74.
When she passed away, people came up to me and told me, “You have no idea how many lives your mother has saved – thousands and thousands of lives.”
She had an integrity and a brilliance.
S.Z.: Service seems to be a large part of your identity. Can you speak to that?
E.W.: Oh yes. My auntie, Lillian Pitt, who is an artist, I worked with her for about 12 years as her studio and inspection manager. I like to call it “my finishing school” (laughter). She was always saying things that really struck me. One was, “When you do well, put your hand out and bring someone along.” You have to share your good fortune.
I was going through a really hard time in the ’80s emotionally, just trying to grow up and my uncle, Louis Pitt, he told me I needed to think about something other than myself. He told me to go down and volunteer at this Thanksgiving kitchen. You need to think about other people and doing service and volunteer. And you need to do that for a little while so that you can get out of this funk you are in. So I began to volunteer – a lot.
At that time there were a lot of racial crimes going on. My cousin Rosetta and I were talking about a time when the police dumped all of these dead possums in front of this restaurant. It was just a scary time. Things were coming to a political boil and everybody was in this pot together, but we didn’t know how to turn down the heat.
There was the killing of Mulugeta Seraw (an Ethiopian student who was attending college when he was killed in Portland by three white supremacists), which was right around the corner from my apartment.
At that time, Red Spirit Creations, which is a women’s cooperative collective that sells art in Portland, they were part of a group that was working to defuse the white supremacy movement because they wanted to make all of the states in the Pacific Northwest – Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana – white. All white. How that could happen, I don’t know, but that was the plan.
There is always this push and pull between light and dark, black and white, red and black, whatever way you want to look at it. It doesn’t have to be grand. It doesn’t have to be huge. It can be making a decision.