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Table of contents
Introduction 0 Why Write for the Public? 1 What to Expect, from Pitch to Publication 2 How to Write a Pitch 3 How To Tell a Great Story, Part 1: Structure 4 How To Tell a Great Story, Part 2: Style 5 Navigating Ethics and Reducing Harms 6 Habits of Thriving Public Anthropologists 7 Cultivating the Craft of Writing 8
Table of contents
Introduction 0 Why Write for the Public? 1 What to Expect, from Pitch to Publication 2 How to Write a Pitch 3 How To Tell a Great Story, Part 1: Structure 4 How To Tell a Great Story, Part 2: Style 5 Navigating Ethics and Reducing Harms 6 Habits of Thriving Public Anthropologists 7 Cultivating the Craft of Writing 8
Poem / Identities

In the Event of Flooding

An Indigenous poet-anthropologist speaks to the survivance of Native communities in the face of colonialism and genocide.
By Abigail Chabitnoy
10 Apr 2023
A close-up image features the profile of a child with long, stringy hair and a brown coat on the left side of the picture with a swan, sandy shoreline, and water in a blurred background.

Eszter Tokar/EyeEm/Getty Images

“In the Event of Flooding” is part of the collection Indigenizing What It Means to Be Human. Read the introduction to the collection here.

In the Event of Flooding - Listen
1:04

This time an ark won’t do
Only fish or fowl

Adapt

Sew wings
between shoulder blades
slit gills into necks

Try to gain perspective:
fill our lungs and see how long platitudes
can keep us
floating

Sharks
flock to the city
wolves learn to keep
their head above water

And girls have been turning bird
since the beginning.

Uyaquq ataku aturciquq. [1] Later the neck will sing.

Yes, there will still be singing
when the tide has swollen its fill
of giving
ground.

Paniyaqa aturkutartuq. [2] My daughter will sing soon.

Yes, there will be singing.

Abigail Chabitnoy

Abigail Chabitnoy is the author of In the Current Where Drowning Is Beautiful (forthcoming, Wesleyan 2022); How to Dress a Fish, shortlisted for the 2020 International Griffin Prize for Poetry and winner of the 2020 Colorado Book Award; and the linocut illustrated chapbook Converging Lines of Light. She currently teaches at the Institute of American Indian Arts low-residency MFA program and is an assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Chabitnoy is a member of the Tangirnaq Native Village in Kodiak, Alaska. She has an MFA in poetry and a B.A. in English and anthropology.

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