One last warm day, and the only webbing visible anywhere in the sky is from the smoke of the prescribed burn ignited yesterday to the west.
Tomorrow’s forecast is one of high winds, expected to usher in a fast-moving cold front. While our highs have been mostly in the seventies, tomorrow night’s low is expected to plummet to fourteen.
The extended forecast suggests otherwise, but we have to be prepared for the very real possibility that today is our last day of Indian summer.
I wrote about this elsewhere a couple of days ago, how the seasonal term that forms part of the title of this piece was intended as a slur . . . and yet, we use it anyway. As I said then, part of it’s generational; part of it’s a process of reclamation. In this case, the two are inextricably intertwined. And it goes back to experiences of representation — and lack thereof — and how it comes to pass that what white supremacy may intend as an insult labels something that our peoples understand as a gift.
The etymology of the term “Indian summer” is generally thought to have twinned origins, neither intended to be flattering to our ancestors. One was practical, tangible: the notion that, for that brief warm period that so often occurs after the first freeze, when summer seems to have returned, would have been marked in part, by colonial invaders, by the sight of Native peoples once again more visibly out and about, taking advantage of the good weather and mild temperatures for a last go at hunting, fishing, gathering, and other outdoor tasks to make ready for winter.
Of course, the colonists did not like to be reminded of the presence of the peoples whose land they stole so violently.
The other theory, linked to but not entirely of the first, has to do more with symbolism — and with all the prejudices, petty and otherwise, inherent in white supremacy. Academic types love to make much, today, of the notion that white colonizers simply misunderstood Indigenous social patterns and practices, particularly those attendant upon acts of hospitality, the honoring of guests, and the giving of gifts. There is of course some truth to that, but the bald fact of the matter is that most of such criticism leveled by colonizers against the Indigenous populations were nothing more than the projection born of simple sociopathy: accuse your enemy of that which you yourself do, and do it first to set the narrative. It’s a hallmark of both colonization and white supremacy the world over, precisely because of its effectiveness in sustaining the primacy of invading populations over those they purposefully marginalize. It’s the hallmark, indeed, of today’s Republican Party and white conservatism (although it appears with disturbing frequency on the Democratic, allegedly “liberal” side of the party aisle, too). And so “Indian summer” came to be so-called because, as the white population deliberately, intentionally viewed the Indigenous population they sought to exterminate, it was false, a fraud, tricky. As Natives were tricky, or so they had to convince themselves to sleep at night.
And so, today, when younger people are more astute than ever when it comes to such nuances, there are plenty of Indigenous folks who, understandably, loathe the term “Indian summer,” and refuse to use it.
But for us older folks, who came of age at a time when simple representation, even the kind that on balance was mostly negative, was mostly absent . . . for us, having something “named for” us seemed like being seen. It didn’t hurt that the phenomenon itself was indeed one of import to traditional families all over this land mass, because “readying for winter” was a thing even in our childhoods, and in places like this, still very much is. And, too young to know that it was intended as an insult, we understood it as recognizing us in relation to a great gift of the spirits: warmth and light and the joy of the chance to play outside in it before winter settled in for the long haul, and us with it. “Indian summer” the seasonal phenomenon, as we understood it, was a gift. And in our young, innocent minds, the association that meant that we were a gift, too.
So while it’s not a term that I would suggest non-Native people readopt, it is one that Wings and I have both reclaimed, one of our childhood dreams and adult memories.
And today’s featured work is one of both memory and dreams, one of blue skies and silvered light and the small wingéd spirits that inhabit it for the days or hours in which the warmth returns. From its description in the relevant section of the Bracelets Gallery here on the site:
Indian Summer Dreams Cuff Bracelet
Before the snow flies, spirits of earth and sky dream Indian Summer dreams. Wings honors these visions and the spirits who dream them with his newest masterwork, a piece conceived in the deep symbolism of tradition and executed with 21st-Century élan. The focal point is a large, beautifully spiderwebbed rectangular cabochon of ultra-high-grade Black-Web Kingman turquoise, a robin’s-egg Skystone tightly matrixed with complex black chert webbing. It rests in a saw-toothed bezel, elevated atop the center of an exceptional hand-made band, flanked on either side by three separate rows of hand-stamped arrowhead symbols pointing down either side of the cuff, each stamped individually via more than one hundred separate strikes of the jeweler’s hammer. This edging is flanked on either side by a pair of lodge symbols, their apices pointed toward paired inverted sunrise symbols motifs that form an embrasure down the remainder of each side of the band. In the center of these rays of silvery light are the dreams and dreamers: a trio of late-summer butterflies alternating with the flowing waters of seasonal rains, all cascading downward to paired blossoms holding a heart at their center. Together, they bring a reminder that summer returns, life renews, and love outlasts all. The band is 1-1/16″ across; the cabochon is 1″ long by 13/16″ of an inch across (dimensions approximate). Other views shown below.
Sterling silver; ultra-high-grade Black Web Kingman turquoise
$1,750 + shipping, handling, and insurance
The butterflies that dance down this band, beneath the spider’s web of sky, remind me of these spirits that attend our small world here now. The tiny wingéd beings still flutter and float through the sharp clear air, spiraling around the changing leaves, stopping to drink from the late wildflowers still in bloom.
And the webs are here, too, of dreams and otherwise. A whole clan of orb weavers has taken up residence beneath the deck, three or four on the east side and one or two to the west. They rappel down through the air and rise back up, spinning elaborately beautiful webs that shine like diamonds in autumn’s low-angled light. And both, we imagine, bring us luck: good fortune, prosperity, abundance, whatever label one wishes to put on it.
Because like the seasonal label, others intentions define neither us nor our ways. And in this beautiful season we see a web of fall dreams, of warmth and light, one last gift of the spirits before the snow.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2019; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
