16 pages • 32 minutes read
Remember
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Themes
The Importance of Memory
Harjo presents a series of beliefs about nature and human beings’ relationship to the natural world. Many of these spring from the Muscogee (Creek) people and other Indigenous nations. The significance of repeating “remember” has two meanings—that people have forgotten the teachings of Indigenous religions, and that people forget the way they may have understood nature from their youth.
The repetition of “remember” also mimics the way that memory works. A person actively reconstructs memories from electrical impulses. The word literally means “to member something again.” To remember means to create, actively, the beliefs and the world around them. To keep a memory alive, people must go on remembering it, regenerating it every time it is recalled.
This act of remembering imitates the practice of oral tradition in pre-literate communities. Beliefs and stories were passed down from one generation to the next. A person would remember what they heard and teach it to someone else, and that person would need to remember it for those after them. The speaker does not advise the reader to write down their memories, but to remember them. Remembering is a more intimate act, taking place in both body and mind. It becomes part of who people are, part of their story, and presumably a guiding force that determines how they act in the world.
Some of the chief “rememberers” of the poem itself are natural elements themselves. The stars tell “stories” (Line 2), and the wind knows the “origins of the world” (Line 18). The earth itself carries memories and transmits those memories and special knowledge to anyone who asks or listens to her.
The Wisdom of the Planet
Depicting the planet as a series of sentient beings possessing feminine, nurturing qualities encourages readers to treat the planet with respect and appreciation. This is a central theme throughout many of Harjo’s poems. The earth is interactive. People are one small part of a larger whole, not dominant over it. The speaker reminds readers to “Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their / tribes, their families, their histories, too” (Lines 14-15).
In a modern-day, Christianized world, people tend to view themselves above nature. Indigenous people considered themselves part of nature and nature as being part of humanity, viewing plants and animals as being not only sentient, but also helpful to human beings. That is why it is important for people to “Talk to them, / listen to them. They are alive poems” (Lines 16-17). Calling animals “alive poems” implies that animals, like poetry, can instruct humans.
The speaker also says, “Remember the sun's birth at dawn, that is the / strongest point of time. Remember sundown / and the giving away to night” (Lines 4-6). In most Indigenous and animistic cultures, the sun has special reverence because it causes plants to grow, brings light, and is the most important celestial body for humans’ daily activities. When the sun rises, it brings the most vital blessings and powers to the human race.
In this understanding, the speaker treats both aspects of the daily cycle with dignity. She does not suggest people fear or struggle against the loss of the sun each day, but willingly “[give] away to night” (Line 6). The earth and cosmos teach people how to appreciate something and then release it, both taking and giving away what they value. Sunrise and sunset point to the passage of time, which connects to the theme of memory. The earth creates past and future by continuing to spin. While human memory is short, the memory of the stars and wind are longer. People can learn from older forces by listening, the same way they learn from plants, animals, and wind by hearing their voices and stories.
In the end, the speaker calls this a “dance” (Line 25) and explains that the dance creates life and language. It is the interaction between plants, animals, the earth, and the cosmos, as well as humans that create a unified performance, binding all together in harmony.
Female Creative, Nurturing Power
All the natural elements personified in this poem are treated as feminine. This, coupled with the age of the moon and wind, suggests they have an elder maternal presence in the order of the world. Personifying the earth as a “mother” is typical of poets, and the term “mother earth” is common vernacular.
When the speaker says “remember,” she may allude to an older wisdom passed down from previous generations, but she may also be asking readers to remember their personal path, namely their mother. The correlation between mother and earth is subtly present throughout the poem. The first force most babies interact with is their mother, the giver of life, the first teacher, the first caretaker. To remember the earth is to remember what it means to be nurtured, supported, guided, and given life.
In perhaps a more literal way, the speaker implies that the reader’s existence is “evidence” of their mother’s existence. She notes that they are their fathers too, but she emphasizes the mother, describing the pain of enduring labor, the sacrifice of her body in order to give “form and breath” (Line 8). This correlates with the earth, which also gives each person the materials to sustain form and draw breath.
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By Joy Harjo
