Celebrate American Indian Heritage Month with an Excerpt fromWaiting for the Long Night Moon(Exclusive)

Mar. 15, 2025

Courtesy of Amanda Peters; Catapult

Waiting for the Long Night Moon, out Feb. 11, 2025, from Catapult, Peters' debut story collection “describes the Indigenous experience from an astonishingly wide spectrum in time and place,” according to the publisher. It explores contact with the first European settlers, to the forced removal of Indigenous children, to the present-day fight for clean water.

In what Catapult calls “beautiful, spare prose,” Peters “describes the dignity of the traditional way of life, the humiliations of systemic racism and the resilient power to endure.”

Below, read an exclusive excerpt fromWaiting for the Long Night Moon, in celebration ofNational American Indian Heritage Month.

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Catapult

Mother’s feet sink into the mud, the difference between flesh and earth nearly impossible to distinguish. The mud hugs her as if welcoming a long-lost sister. I bend and trace a circle around her ankle where the mud and my mother meet. My dress is muddied and Mother’s soft hand rests on my head.

“Epit’jij, pay attention to your grandmother. Come, my girl.”

The sun is just coming up over the water; the water fairies are dancing, welcoming the sunrise. The clouds are the color of cold hands turning warm again. It’s too early even for the birds. Grandmother and Mother hum in unison, soft and quiet. It’s a song I don’t know, but Mother assures me that it’s simply hiding away in my heart, waiting for the right time.

We travelled yesterday from the camp, leaving my father behind with the four younger children. They waved as we ducked into the woods, finding the river and following it to the ocean. We stayed awake praying to the full moon, our fingers, toes and bellies full of the water she gave us. Only when the sun began to sneak above the line where water meets the sky did Grandmother open her eyes and gesture for us to collect our gathering tools and follow her.

Grandmother knows the best places to pick sweetgrass. “Where the water that tastes like tears meets the water that tastes like the river. This is where Kisu’lkw placed the most fragrant and sweetest,” she whispers.

I think she knows that if we speak too loudly, the pink of the sky will shatter. Mother often says that I am like my grandmother.

Mother moves forward, her feet sinking gently into the earth again. I follow and enjoy the cool, soft mud. I stop to wiggle my toes, the little beads of mud sputtering away to rejoin the rest of the wet earth. Mother uses her hand to push the tall grass to the side, allowing us to move effortlessly until she stops, holding the grass away from me in the direction of the sun. She moves her hand up the green stalks as they fall away until only the greenest remain, glowing in the early morning light. The sweet smell reaches my nose and I breathe in.

“This is how you know it’s the hair of the great mother, epit’jij. It will glow.”

source: people.com