“Sta kaakway misnimow,” means, “I’ve got nothing” in Mahican, an ancestral Mohican language. My students at College of Menominee Nation (CMN) garner the English iteration of this complimentary phrase whenever they’ve made a definitive point that needs no further context from yours truly. Larry P. Madden knows this because he’s a CMN graduate.

I met Charlie Hill in a building named in honor of his father’s service to the Oneida Nation. It was the summer of 2010, and we were both in the Norbert Hill Center’s Auditorium watching the debut of a play written by College of Menominee Nation students. As the script’s editor and the production’s director, I was seated in the back watching the audience laugh at our carefully staged punchlines.

“All music is poetry,” Louis V. Clark III stated. “I write in a musical manner. I hear drums in my head.” I asked the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin tribal member to describe his craft in honor of April being Nation Poetry Month.

Editor’s note: This is the first of a series of monthly columns by Ryan Winn, a member of the faculty at the College of Menominee Nation. The columns will explore Native American culture and history and the impact on both native and non-native communities.