The colonial calendar calls this the first day of the new year, with all the fanfare such lines of demarcation imply. We marked ours more quietly, in concert with Mother Earth herself these near two full weeks past. This old world knows that most such lines lead nowhere — false from their inception, an illusion imposed from without upon a sphere still young in relation to the workings of time.
But we stand now on the face of this sphere, a hoop given mass and dimensionality, ever shifting, by the agency and passage of time. We are taught as children that the earth is round, but in fact, her shape and surface are uneven, no perfect circle in three dimensions but an organic being whose form grows and shrinks and changes with the forces of the cosmos . . . and the forces of her troublesome children, seemingly bent on her and their own destruction.
And still, time and the spirits give us seemingly endless opportunity to get it right. Today (because it is colonial frameworks the world recognizes now, despite there being vastly better ways of counting and marking, of doing, of being) is the latest off those chances . . . but with every new year, the possibility that it could be our last grows ever greater. That possibility has hardened like old amber since the last weeks of 2016; now, it is accompanied by a revenant, one that bears what seems a certain haunting inevitability, as though future is already past and we have only yet to recognize it.
But these, as Scrooge himself so hoped, are in part still only shadows of things that might be.
Our ancestors foretold of this pass; prophets and spirits alike have long warned us of the Earth’s dark days to come. They also foretold of its rescue and reclamation, of the return of Indigenous illumination and wisdom and the strength to put them to work. It is a vision of a post-colonial world, a new earth rising to heal her own wounds and revive herself in good health and harmony.
It is our obligation to rise with and in aid of her.
Today’s featured work, one of my all-time favorites from the moment of its own creation, embodies the process and progress and promise of this truth. From its description in the relevant section of the Bracelets Gallery here on the site:
Earth Rising Cuff Bracelet
It is a time of elemental change, Earth rising to link past and present and future in a sacred hoop of protection and survival. Wings links them in more tangible ways with this spectacularly complex cuff, one that fuses one of his very early pieces into a whole new work that honors elemental powers, sacred numbers, and ancient spirits. It begins with a solid sterling silver cuff, scored freehand into eight separate lines, the number of the cardinal and ordinal directions. At either end, a sterling silver overlay in the shape of Grandmother Turtle, she who holds the world on her back, climbs steadily upward. Each turtle is cut, freehand, with a tiny jeweler’s saw, articulated head, legs, and tail each stamped with traditional patterns to form scales and provide texture and dimensionality. Each turtle’s shell is gently scalloped with stampwork around the edge, a Morning Star stretched across the shell’s center. Wings brought old to new and melded them together at the top of the cuff with the addition of one of his very early pieces from his personal collection: a hat pin in the form of a medicine shield that doubles as a medicine wheel, cut freehand and centered by Buffalo’s skull, our Elder Brother of the Earth. The horizontal spokes of the medicine shield are sculpted and stamped in the shape of a ceremonial pipe, eagle feathers suspended at either end. The entire wheel is overlaid onto a backing of hand-hammered sterling silver. Cuff band is 7″ long by roughly 1-1/8″ across; turtle overlays are 1-1/4″ long by 15/16″ across at the widest point; buffalo medicine wheel overlay is 1-7/16″ high by 1-3/8″ across at the widest point (dimensions approximate). Other views shown above and below.
Sterling silver
$1,900 + shipping, handling, and insurance
It is, by the outer world’s reckoning, a new year: a leap year; an Olympic year; here, an election year. It is a year that promises to be filled, and to fill our days, with detours and derailments and distractions, with agendas of short-term self-interest and the quickest of bucks, with a rising tide of authoritarian control and its powerful attendant undertows of violence.
It is our charge and obligation to avoid and prevent them all. Every good moment of every existence is owed to the good offices of the same Earth now ailing from abuse and neglect, increasingly unable to support us with the basic conditions of survival. Protecting her is protecting ourselves.
On this day, beneath the winter snow outside the window, there is a new earth rising.
On this day, we rise to meet her, to defend and heal her.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2020; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
