Ron Leith
Attending Red Lake High School in the 1960s was a beneficial experience as it allowed him to become reacquainted with his Ojibwe-Anishinabe family and to develop a true sense of being an Indigenous family member.
During his time there, he read Lao Tzu, e.e.cummings, Bauldaire, Siddhartha, Balzac, Bukowski, and T.S. Eliot, and for a long time, he wrote in Haiku format. His writing evolved through personal experience, vision, revision, trial, and error, adopting and adapting many variations of style, format, and structure. His first compilation of 500-600 pieces has all been expunged. His collected works began in 1970 after his experience at Kent State University, where he was studying Art, Art History, and Literature. Kent State 1970 was a pivotal year.
He feels very fortunate in that he has had the advantage of being mentored by the best that Indian Country had to offer. In 1971, he met and became family with the leadership of the American Indian Movement. AIM had a fresh vision of Indian Education and what it ought to mean to the Indian community. They offered a direct solution to the problems that existed in the non-Indian, colonialistic educational system. This was important to me because I had seen what the current systems were providing for Indian youth. The answer, of course, was Indio-centric, Native-controlled systems. Indian administered systems of educational training and learning. This was the system that he wanted to be a part of, and he began at the ground floor in the research and development of the American Indian Movement Survival Schools for Self Determination. There, he had the freedom to select the best that literature, art, history, science, and politics had to offer and synthesize that work for Native students. Between 1968 and 1976 everything changed concerning Indian education, not only in Minnesota but nationally and internationally. The individuals who would become crucial to the new vision were all working within the American Indian Movement. The synthesis of self-determination in education, Native-controlled school systems, educational policy revisionism, and truth in history all came about during the development of the AIM Survival School systems.
His current work has become primarily expository. Political in nature, revolutionary is expression and, for the most part, fearless. Contrary to sinister opinions, poetry is still a powerful vehicle for change, an opportunity to cleanly express deep feelings and sentiments. Political injustice has always been his nemesis, the bane that he must continuously extrapolate and extricate for the sake of self and well-being.
Reimagining history in a vile and sadistic promenade may not seem as though it is a useful approach, and it may not be, but for him, the exposition of injustice, anti-heroes, human carnage, colonialistic rampage, and the true nature of the common man is a vital application in his work.