Half a foot or more of snow, flurries still falling intermittently.
Our small world here feels impossibly clean, and wholly renewed.
It’s indescribable, after so many weeks’ of deepened drought, the feelings that accompany this great gift of the latter days of fall: first comes gratitude, hand in hand with an immediate sense of relief, and then slowly, the first shoots of hope flowering from a seed buried deep in the soul. We may have a hard winter after all, and thus a good one. We may even have a lush and fertile spring.
For now, though, we know better than to focus on anything beyond what is, and the truth of the matter that no amount of snow will undo twenty-plus years of a five-hundred-year drought, nor two hundred -plus years of colonial industry driving climate change stubbornly before it like a horse pulling Pharaoh’s own chariots, wheels sinking into the mud as the walls of a parted Red Sea begin to collapse onto them all.
Yes, as children we learned our Bible stories well. As adults, we recognize the role that book and its stories have played in allowing the slavers to convince themselves that they are deserving of some mythical Promised Land, that their invading forces of massacre and rape and theft and genocide were only just in their quest to overtake a land not of milk and honey but of corn and beans and squash, of deer and elk and buffalo, one they used their book to misrepresent as empty of human habitation, the better to steal it.
No, sorry, this is Native American Heritage Month, and despite the near-meaninglessness of that designation in the dominant culture, here we use it to force the facing of hard home truths. After all, we are all facing the hardest of home truths now in an earth that cannot support life as we know it, thanks explicitly to the depredations of colonialism.
We need a new earth, or rather, an earth renewed.
On a day such as this when all outside the window is blanketed in white, it’s possible to hope, even to believe, for a moment that that process has already begun: beneath the snow, a world reborn.
In our way, such rebirth occurs every time a child is born to our peoples: emerging from the waters of womb and the lands of spirit, a new hope for our people, a new chance for the world to get it right. We are not saviors, nor should the world that has sought extermination now expect us to become such. Instead, we work at the level of our individual worlds and individual lives, countless of daily acts over a lifetime that perform stewardship of the gifts that we have been granted, that seek to restore our world to harmony.
Today’s featured works, plural, celebrate these new chances and the new small lives and bodies in which they are manifest. They are baby moccasins, the most traditional of garb, protective items that comfort body and spirit alike, even in the tiniest of beings. The first pair, shown above, are nearly as white as the snow outside the window. From their description in the Other Artists: Leatherwork, Antler, and Bone gallery here on the site:
These traditional little mocs are made of regular-weight tanned white buckskin, with firm soles. All hand-sewn by Estevan Marcus (Taos Pueblo), they feature the classic tongue and ankle laces that tie in front. Sole length 4-3/8″ (dimensions approximate).
Buckskin
$50 + shipping, handling, and insurance
The second pair are more muted in color, a soft earthy beige the shade of bark beneath the snow. From their description in the same gallery:
These tiny little mocs are made of tan (and tanned) buckskin, of regular weight and with firm soles. Hand-sewn by Estevan Marcus (Taos Pueblo), they’re made with the classic tongue for on-and-off ease, laced traditionally around the ankle to tie in front. Sole length 4-3/8″ (dimensions approximate).
Buckskin
$50 + shipping, handling, and insurance
The outside world measures the new year by a colonial religious calendar, and regards spring as the season of renewal. Here, we know that the real rebirth begins with winter.
We are blessed with the knowledge that, this year, preparations are under way early. The world is already busy at the work of rebirth . . . beneath 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.
