Second Skin:

Mary BlackBonnet & Trevino Brings Plenty

Poetry Reading:
Tuesday, December 4, 4:30pm, Gaylord Hall

Free and open to the public

                                                                  Mary Blackbonnet (Sicangu Lakota)

Trevino Brings Plenty (Minneconjou Lakota) and Mary BlackBonnet, (Sicangu Lakota) will share their poetry in conjunction with Bently Spang’s exhibition Cyberskins, currently on display in Coburn Gallery. The poets have collaborated with Spang on previous art and poetry projects under the auspices of the collective Indian 3.0. The poets’ works address the ways in which contemporary Native American identity is constructed.

Poet and musician Trevino L. Brings Plenty (Minneconjou Lakota) writes about urban Indian life. His work explores how American Indian identity has historically been constructed within American culture, revealing how this identity has affected indigenous peoples in the 21st century. Reflecting his dual identity as an American and a Minneconjou Lakota Indian, Brings Plenty’s work often addresses the idea of what he terms decolonization, saying that contemporary Native Americans must “…unlearn pop culture’s idea of what it means to be Indian.”

Adopted as a child by non-Indian parents who prevented her from participating in her native Sicangu Lakota culture, Mary Blackbonnet’s poetry speaks of her journey back to her indigenous roots.  She writes of her return to the Rosebud reservation, “Wherever I looked there were people who looked like me, with dark skin, dark eyes, and dark hair.  I had connected to that part of myself that I’d lost so many years before.  I was home.”

                                         Trevino Brings Plenty (Minneconju Lakota)

Trevino L. Brings Plenty was born on the Cheyenne River Reservation, Eagle Butte, South Dakota, where he lived on the reservation until age three, then with family moved to Bay Area, CA. At age sixteen, he moved to Portland Oregon where he now resides. He has read/performed his work at poetry festivals as far away as Amman, Jordan, and close to his home base at Portland’s Wordstock Festival, 2005. His publications include: Removing Skin (2005); Real Indian Junk Jewelry (2004); Dead Indian Road Vol. I & II (2004); Drinking With The Rocks (2002); Making Out With Shotguns (2002); Poems Madly Made In Three Days (2001); All the Clocks Are Wrong (2000). When not writing poetry, Brings Plenty is also singer, songwriter, and guitarist for the musical ensemble The Vinos.

Mary BlackBonnett Sicangu (Rosebud) received a BA in English form the University of South Dakota.  An emerging poet in the Midwest, in 2006 BlackBonnett was named on of Ten Outstanding Young South Dakotans for her contributions to literature and has served as Artist in Residence at the Montana Artist Refuge. BlackBonnet’s poetry has appeared in Nagi-Ho Journal, Tribal College Journal, Potomac Review, and the Oregon Literary Review.  She will be featured in the upcoming anthology Wild in Our Breast for Centuries:  Women and the Returning Realities of War. Blackbonnet currently lives in Vermillion, South Dakota, with her husband and newborn daughter.

Second Skin: Mary Blackbonnet and Trevino Brings Plenty is made possible through the generous support of The Robert & Ruby Priddy Charitable Trust.