Today is always a day rife with internal conflicts. The colonial government has denominated it “Native American Heritage Day.” The culture’s capitalistic arm calls it “Black Friday.”
For our peoples, these days are often black in the sense of mourning, a marking of grief and loss stretching back now 500 years and more even as that road continues to unfurl before us, no end in sight. It does not mean we give up; we have been this land’s resistance for centuries before “The Resistance™” coined itself, and we have fought against forms of violence the current self-styled “resistance” cannot even conceive (except as the body inflicting it, which it continues to do daily). There is no “resisting” where there is no willingness to face, much less engage with, root causes.
And so a weekend the world outside our doors celebrates with obeisance to colonial mythologies and orgies of consumerism leave us with a dilemma: Withdraw, and refuse engagement while we mourn and remember and otherwise mark our histories and observe our traditions? Or participate, knowing that this one weekend is the one that, for most Native artisans, is likely to provide the single largest income base for the entire year (and, in our case, go far to keeping us alive in the first half of the new calendar year, too)?
For most of us, it’s not a contest; our ancestors knew well that survival comes first. You cannot fight what you are not here to oppose, nor preserve and protect what you are not here to appreciate.
In truth, there is no contradiction. While colonial cultures love to appeal to notions of “ideals” and “principles,” to “first things” and “the greater good,” the fact of the matter that, in the down and dirty realities of daily colonial life, it all winds up being so much theoretical hooey. Such allegedly lofty aspirations presume a level playing field, with no differentials in privilege or authority among the entire population, and whatever else “America” may be, it is certainly not that. And on one of the few weekends when a significant portion of the population that possesses the privileges of authority and control is forced at least to acknowledge our existence, however barely? Using the official and officious “heritage day” to ensure our own peoples survival is a good thing, not a bad one.
There’s no conflict otherwise, either, because what the colonial world fails — or perhaps more accurately, refuses — to understand is that our lifeways are so fundamentally different that we need no official, government-recognized reminder, either to honor our heritage or to give thanks. Both are a way of daily life: It’s not so much that they infuse everything we do as that everything we do is immersed, from birth or emergence or the very dawn of time, in such practices. Our existences now are still a beaded hoop: heritage, history, healing, and harmony. Our ways are simply these values as daily process, practice, praxis.
Because this day falls by definition on a Friday, in this space it always features work by an Indigenous artist other than Wings. There will plenty of opportunity elsewhere on social media to promote his own work today, but in this space, we adhere to our usual schedule. And today’s featured is work is one I’ve been saving for precisely this day, because it suits the themes so well: eminently traditional in design; an object of protection for the young, our future generations of leaders; made via ancient skills and composed of traditional colors that reflect those of the hoop, but that also remind me invariably of that deeply tooted relative who sustains us, Indian corn. From eits description in the Leatherwork, Antler, and Bone gallery here on the site:
These beautiful baby moccasins take the colors of the medicine wheel: white, yellow, red, black. Hand-sewn of lightweight white deerhide by Anespah Bernal Marcus (Taos Pueblo), each is beaded carefully by hand around the edge of the sole. Two bars of beadwork in traditional patterns in gold, dark red, and black accent the top of each moc. Sole length 4-3/8″ (dimensions approximate).
Deerhide; beads
$50 + shipping, handling, and insurance
I abandoned beadwork at the age of nine or ten; the eruption of inflammatory arthritis in my hands at such a young age made many tasks requiring fine motor skills impossible. A change in treatment allowed me to resume it just shy of three months ago, and while it is a joy to be able to do it again, it also gives me a renewed appreciation for the talent, skill, artistry, and labor that go into it. And these baby moccasins, aside from manifesting in the jeweled shades of the First Sister, also protect tiny feet in all the colors of the hoop: Leather as white as the snows of the north; lane-stitched rows alternating the gold of the dawn with the red warmth of the southern sun and the black of nightfall in the west. But the edges themselves are beaded, too — in the bright glowing shade of the sunrise, a beaded hoop of protection in the color of the new day, fitting for a spirit similarly new and that which is most precious, our future generations.
And so on this day, as we protect those generations in pursuit of our collective survival, we honor our heritage, remember our history, pray for healing, and work for harmony.
It’s a good way to spend the day.
~ 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.
