An Artistic Intervention
Erdrich’s poemeo serves as a contemporary interjection of Indigenous art into the history of the St. Anthony Falls area that underscores Indigenous persistence despite colonial social and environmental disruption. In the last stanza, Erdrich presents modern video footage of St. Anthony Falls that transitions into spiraling word imagery:
All time all hours all decades all millennia
River river river
I never never never–but that is not to say that I won't ever
(3:36-3:53)
Clip from Erdrich's "Pre-Occupied," (3:36-3:53)
In the poemeo, the St. Anthony Falls scene becomes violently shaky. Then, the rust-colored cinderblock and metal structure (on which the spiraling words appear) emerges from the top of the frame and slides down to cover the Falls clip. The cinderblocks, with a rippling water lighting effect superimposed atop them, are evocative of the St. Anthony Falls lock structure, and this connection is underscored by the preceding video of the Falls. The pairing of these images emphasizes the idea that, through this poemeo, Erdrich artistically projects her spiraling words and images into the contemporary scene of the St. Anthony Falls lock and dam.
These words and images serve as the transformed “spiral icon in limestone” that ancient Indigenous peoples etched in stone along the riverbanks. As the spiral icon reemerges in the present in a new media form and a new social context, Erdrich draws on spiraling conceptions of time to subvert inaccurate colonial assumptions of Indian extinction, instead emphasizing Indigenous persistence in the face of social and environmental apocalypse.