The parades have ended. So, too, football (until the weekend, anyway). The turkey and pumpkin pie have been relegated to “leftover” status.
Thanksgiving is over for another year.
Today, America’s cultural rallying cry is “Shopping!”
You couldn’t get me anywhere near or a mall or store today. I spent too many years locked in them on this holiday weekend, working retail to put myself through school. And that was before the modern-day madness of opening at midnight, or worse, on Thanksgiving itself. Back then, opening early on Black Friday (which, back then, was simply called “the day after Thanksgiving”) meant opening at 8 AM, 7 for those unlucky enough to work at a discount store.
Now?
It’s a stampede of greed, each massive corporation trying to outdo the next in hors open (and onerousness of working conditions for employees).
Our traditions have something to say about greed.
So for us, the focus is on the day’s other observance.
Because today is Native American Heritage Day.
There have been a smattering of Native American/American Indian Heritage Days/Weeks/Months over the last century: formal, semi-formal, informal; official and unofficial; national, state-sponsored, municipal, educational, sponsored by private entities; one-offs and those that recur annually. As I once wrote elsewhere about a little of the history, in context:
November 1 marks the first day of Native American Heritage Month. It’s a 30-day period set by Congress via joint resolution, marked on a recurring basis every year since 1994, to recognize and celebrate our peoples’ identities, cultures, traditions, and histories. The history of such an observance is of course much longer (and the route it took much less smooth), dating back at least to 1915, when the goal was simply to set aside one day out of the year for such recognition.
It’s no coincidence that the month chosen is the same in which the dominant culture marks its own Thanksgiving celebration (and mythology). Childhood stories of the so-called “First Thanksgiving,” however incomplete and inaccurate, are a part of the national consciousness, and are inextricably intertwined with its perception of our peoples.
For us, thanksgiving is a way of life, a part of daily prayers, expressed in offerings and in countless other ways as we go about our business daily. It’s not something to mark on one day out of the year, or even one month; it’s an integral part of existence.
I wrote about that cultural divergence in Thanksgiving perception and practice only yesterday. But today, the focus is on this day’s observance, which is, as a national institution, far newer (for the dominant culture; for our peoples, it’s as old as time itself).
It appears that Native American Heritage Day marked its first formal, official, national occurrence in 2008, when a bill introduced by Congressman Joe Baca (D-CA) was signed into law. The 110th Congress’s House Joint Resolution 62, denominated the Native American Heritage Day Act of 2008, was introduced on November 13, 2007, and signed into law nearly a full year later, on October 8, 2008. Since that time, it has been marked annually on a recurring basis.
For us, of course, every day is “Native American Heritage Day.” I’ve written about that before, too — notably, here, on another day marked by the dominant culture for a very different purpose.
And so, this morning, I was faced with a dilemma: How to reconcile two diametrically opposed cultural markers in today’s post? This is, after all, a blog designed to promote Wings’s art and the work of our other artists, and so it would be nonsensical (and counterproductive) to avoid the day’s “shopping” associations entirely — particularly when it falls on the very day we present our Friday Feature, to highlight an artist, a medium, a set of materials, a technique, or a particular historical or cultural association or significance. And it’s also an educational blog, and one of the overriding goals is to give the outside world a greater and more accurate understanding of our peoples, our cultures, our histories, our lives. And for us, art is inseparable from all of those things.
I finally decided to meld the two. Yes, I know the “Black” part of the “Black Friday” name refers to money, to being “in the black.” But for today’s purposes, I decided to take it on very literal terms: the color black itself.
When I thought about it, I realized that it’s not a color that is given dominance in a lot of our art. For some peoples, it appears in cultural contexts as a color block in the medicine wheel or medicine shield; it’s a frequent accent color on painted objects, such as the hair and the eagle-feather detail on katsinam and the hair and clothing of storytellers; it manifests in subtler, more muted form in the very stone of sculpture (and jewelry) made with local Pilar slate; it appears in mysterious clouds and whorls on the surface of the Pueblo’s micaceous pottery.
And it appears in gemstones and beadwork. Jet. Onyx. Obsidian. The matrices of other stones. Each has its own cultural associations, and its own unique beauty.
There are far too many items in our inventory in which the color black appears for me to cover them today. I’ve linked to some of them where I can in the preceding two paragraphs. But for today, I’m simply going to feature Wings’s own work in which the color black appears, whether in the materials themselves or in the accents chosen.
We begin with the piece featured in the photo at the top of this post. The black of the jet beads shows more clearly in this image of the reverse side of the piece:
Nature’s elemental powers assume tangible form in stone and silver. A fiery rosarita cabochon, precious gold given new form, sits atop a gigantic lapis oval, connected by a pair of hand-stamped silvery wings. All three interconnected pieces reveal more of their identities on the reverse in a tribute to the sacredness of the directions and their role in our emergence, in the sacred hoop of our very existence. The pendant hangs from a strand of graduated heishi-style jet beads strung over fine sterling silver chain, its bail flanked by two green Skystones with delicate black spiderweb matrices, its findings edged by a pair of silver and copper-colored trade-style beads on either side. Rosarita cabochon, 1-3/8″ high by 1″ across at widest point; lapis cabochon, 1.5″ wide by 1.25″ high; strand of beads, 19″ long; pendant including bail, 4″ long (dimensions approximate). (Front view shown above and at link.)
Sterling silver, rosarita (gold slag), lapis lazuli, green turquoise, jet, trade-style beads
$1,850 + shipping, handling, and insurance.
A delicately-patterned skimmer spreads his paired wings, an overlay atop this old-style sterling silver ingot pendant. To his right, a single water drop is solidified in a cobalt blue bit of denim lapis; to his left, the tiny blossom he pollinates industriously. The vintage-style medallion hangs from an equally vintage-style multi-strand necklace, six strands of tiny matched tube beads in red, white, and black, the blue of the lapis cabochon providing the traditional fourth shade.
Sterling silver; denim lapis; traditional tube beads
$325 + shipping, handling, and insurance
The moon symbolizes the Sacred Feminine in cultural traditions the world over. Among our peoples, she plays her own role, as counterpart to the sun, in sustaining the people through each night. Even when she is new and dark, like a sacred hoop of mysterious jet, still she gives off ripples and waves of shimmering light in which the night flowers bloom. Here, she appears in her new dress, as a sphere of glistening onyx, casting hundreds of tiny and shining reflections of her essential light. The cuff’s gentle anticlastic shaping and hammered effect created by hundreds of tiny individual strikes magnify the shimmering effect; the onyx stone rests in a layered bezel with scalloped edged, trimmed with delicate twisted silver.
Sterling silver; onyx
$725 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Female spirits are often associated with sustenance — with bringing gifts of rain, and with it, fertility and abundance. The moon, the archetypal feminine symbol, likewise connects them to the powers and blessings of night. Here, a large liquid pool of onyx, a stone of earth and evening, rests atop a hand-scored silver cuff. Smaller pools of silver, hand-texturized with hundreds of tiny “ripples,” flank either side of the center cabochon.
Sterling silver; onyx
$525 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Fire and Ice Bracelet
In the interstices inhabited by the elemental powers, Spirit catalyzes fire and ice, bringing them to life in our world, their full strength and power yet held back: a reminder that if we are careful, we may use their gifts rather than be consumed by them. Here, Spirit’s Eye traces the length of the band of this heavy-gauge cuff, accented on all sides by traditional symbols. At the center, two fiery garnet cabochons flank three larger oval stones: snowflake obsidian, representations of ice born naturally of the union of earth and heat and flame. Companion piece to the Fire and Ice solitaire ring in the Rings Gallery.
Sterling silver; snowflake obsidian; garnet
$725 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Fire and Ice Ring
In the interstices between worlds, the spirits and elemental forces afford us an occasional glimpse but do not admit us entry, lest we be consumed by their power. Yet Spirit catalyzes fire and ice, as in this solitaire, where earth and flame join to create a stone named for water frozen by the winter air. Conjoined lodge symbols trace the length of the band; the snowflake obsidian cabochon rests in a scalloped bezel. (Top view shown at link.) Companion piece to the Fire and Ice cuff bracelet in the Bracelets Gallery.
Sterling silver; snowflake obsidian
$325 + shipping, handling, and insurance
A large oval cabochon of White Buffalo magnesite, bezel-set and trimmed in twisted silver, rests at the center of this dual-strand sterling silver cuff. Hand-stamped directional arrows lead two and from the stone; while tiny round hoops accent the band’s underside. (Side view shown at link.)
Sterling silver; White Buffalo magnesite
$385 + shipping, handling, and insurance
He’s an elder among elders, a dancer, a long-haired spirit being. This figurative piece combines multiple natural elements with an inspiriting sense of motion to create a single dynamic, unifying form. Head and upper body are hand-crafted of sterling silver bearing images of power: His head bears the forces of the sacred directions; his body, elemental forces meeting in the sacred space. His lower body is a single very old piece of deer antler that diverges naturally into the two prongs that form his dancing legs. His traditional long hair is made of genuine horse hair, light in color as befits his elder status. Like his namesakes in the spirit world, he wears an “eagle” feather at the back of his head (in this case, produced by one of our Barred Rock chickens and carried by the winds directly into Wings’s hands). He stands atop a cedar wood base. Entire piece stands 9.5″ high; figure alone, 5″ high excluding feather and base; feather adds another 3.5″ in height; base stands 2″ high by 3-3/8″ wide by 2-1/8″ deep (all dimensions approximate). (Close-up and back view shown at link.)
Sterling silver; horse hair; deer antler; cedar
$2,200 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Fragility requires special handling; extra shipping charges apply
Of the above, all are truly amazing pieces, each calling on Wings’s own history, culture, tradition, and imagery in its own unique way. My personal favorite, the one I covet, is the Moonlight cuff; those of you who know me will understand why. But each piece featured here, as well as those by our other artists, linked above, honors our peoples’ heritage, individually and collectively.
I chose to close with the figurative piece for a reason. The presence of the color black is subtle in the extreme: It appears in the tiny pores and chinks of the antler itself that forms the figure’s body, and mixed with browns and grays to form the bars in the “eagle feather” of his headdress. In many traditions, indigenous and otherwise, black is a color of darkness in many forms, some benign, others not. Its presence here shows its importance anyway: In the proper proportions, it creates balance.
Harmony.
It’s a good lesson to keep in mind on this busy first day of an even busier season.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2015; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owners.
