For the first time in days, dawn arrived in a hazy miasma of pollen and smoke. It has been one of those yellow mornings, sky neither quite blue nor quite white, air clogged with a pall that should be golden in the light, but instead seems merely sickly.
And according to the weather forecast, heavy rains are on the way.
Now, as morning ticks steadily toward midday, it’s becoming possible to believe the predictions. No more than a steady breeze has risen yet, but it has been enough to clear out much of the haze that has veiled the faces of peaks and sun alike. The thin pearl-colored clouds of dawn have shifted into a collaborative stance, coalescing, climbing, building something recognizeable in the pale blue skies of east and south. To north and west, what should be a vast indigo expanse is fogged by an ashy brown that still holds sway, but even there, newborn thunderheads are already at work.
Who knows what the storm dreams in its hours of rest? But now, it fights, for every inch of space, every second of time in which it may deliver its rains to a thirsting — in places, dying — earth.
We must do likewise: We must dream the rain, fight like the storm, if we are to heal the world. We are called to be dreamers and warriors now.
Today’s featured work is armor for the fight. It could, by rights, inhabit the Bracelets Gallery, but Wings has chosen to list it otherwise — for while its work is perhaps more spiritual than physical, at least for the moment, it is work. Its purpose lies in protection, and so in the shoring up of courage and strength, of heart and mind, body and spirit. From its description in the Accessories Gallery here on the site:
Dream Warrior Bow Guard
Some of our fiercest battles are fought in and over dreams. Wings invokes the dream warrior and and the warrior’s art in this old traditional-style bow guard. It begins with a solitary concha from one of his old belts, a piece that has spent decades in his private collection: multiple layers of solid, heavy sterling silver hand-cut into ovals of ascending size, the base layer scalloped gracefully around its edge, all stacked atop each other in an overlay pattern. Each layer is edged with hand-stamped chased images in traditional designs — the force of the lightning, the shelter of the lodge, the power of the rising sun. The center oval is domed, repoussé-fashion, and the entire finished concha is domed yet again to trace the line of the wrist. A small sturdy column of sterling silver arises from its center to hold the bezel of the central stone securely in place. The stone itself is an extraordinary giant cabochon of high-grade Cloud Mountain turquoise from China’s Hubei District, bright teal blue and webbed in inky indigo as tightly and thoroughly as Grandmother Spider’s dreamcatcher, set into a saw-toothed bezel and trimmed with bold twisted silver. Flanking the center concha are a pair of tiny round conchas whose stampwork repeat the lodge motif around diminutive round blue-green center stones. The conchas are screwed into a band of warm golden-hued moosehide, thick, sturdy and velvety to the touch. The band extends outward three inches beyond each small concha to allow for custom cutting and lacing to fit the wearer. In its current from, prior to sizing to suit, the full band extends 11.25″ long by 2.25″ high; the small conchas are 2-7/8″ across and their cabochons are 1/4″ across; the center concha is 3/5/8″ high by 2.75″ across, and the focal cabochon is 2″ high by 1-3/8″ across at the widest point (dimensions approximate). Other views shown below.
Sterling silver; high-grade Cloud Mountain turquoise; old blue-green turquoise; moosehide
$2,500 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Note: Hard leather may be substituted for the moosehide
Colonial notions of what it means to be Indigenous persist in trying to impose binaries upon us and upon ways older than time: If you are one, you cannot be the other, and vice versa. It’s appropriative, yes, but it’s also another attempt at colonizing, and at asserting authority and control: It permits colonial white supremacy to “define” us, to “explain” our ways for future history, and to keep any resistance, any assertion of immanent autonomy and sovereignty, firmly squelched by colonial markers of shame.
Our ancestors knew better.
I defy anyone to tell Goyathlay that he was not a warrior when he was a dreamer, or that he could not be a dreamer because he was a warrior. I scorn any notion that Po’Pay was not a dream warrior for his people, any less than Wovoka or Crazy Horse or Hinmuuttu-yalatlat (who the colonial world knows as “Chief Joseph”), or any of the thousands of dream warriors whose names are unknown to the colonial world outside of their people but who were nonetheless fighters for all of their, all of our, Seventh Generations.
We have a fight ahead of us now, all of us. The current pandemic may turn out to be the least of it. Here, the drought holds particular dangers . . . but as we who live here know, so, too, does the storm. There is a reason for the warnings; elemental powers cannot be controlled by mortal desires or demands.
The same applies to us. Control of ourselves is essential, and so far, humanity is mostly failing miserably at that one small task. There is a storm coming, one that will heal, but that will also hold the capacity to inflict great harm. But Indigenous people know that we need to dream the rain, and then fight like the storm . . . and like our ancestors, the great dream warriors whose spirits are part of ours, to make it happen.
~ 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.
