I said yesterday that in our cultures, dreams are a world unto themselves.
That much is true. What is also true is that dreams are an integral, essential, elemental part of our daily lives.
In the outside world, dreams are defined variously. One definition is those states that occur during sleep when our subconscious minds process the reality of our days. Such dreams may be good, neutral, or very bad indeed, involving nightmares or even night terrors. For those who have experienced trauma, the two latter forms are the way in which the mind seeks to come to terms with what it has experienced. Some cultures are like our own in that they believe that the ordinary process of dreaming during sleep can at times produce extraordinary results, dreams of prophecy and foresight, of wisdom and vision.
Another definition adds to the word and subtracts from its most essential meaning: the daydream. This is most often regarded not as a genuine dream, but rather, a flight of fancy, a frolic of the mind that diverts it from duller tasks.
Then, too, there is the use of the word that involves neither sleep nor fully conscious flights of fancy: dream as objective and goal. It may be something as elevated as the dream of collective humanity articulated by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., or something as mundane and individual as a dream of acquiring a particular type of training or position.
All of these are present in Native cultures, and thus find expression in Native arts. But there are other dreams, and specifically, other forms of dreaming as act that are an elemental part of the lifeways of many of our peoples. It is this definition of dream and this act of dreaming that informs so much of the world of indigenous art, and thus is what likewise informs today’s post.
We sometimes use the word “dream” interchangeably with the word “vision.” Depending on culture and context, they can mean the same thing, or something very different, although the differences will probably not be apparent to those outside our cultures. First, though, we need to dispense with some common misconceptions.
There are a great many sites on the Internet that presume to interpret “Native dreams.” As a threshold matter, what they’re “interpreting” are not Native people’s dreams at all, but rather, the dreams of non-Native persons who are seeking reassurance that there is some deep Native symbolism in them. What this means, of course, is that they are not “Native dreams.” The “interpretations” are also hooey. Support of such sites and efforts is both appropriative and racist. They trade and traffic in “Hollywood Indian” stereotypes and pretend both to knowledge they do not have and to a universality that does not exist. As I have reiterated so frequently, our traditions are not something that has any meaning for those not of the blood. The ways of one Pueblo differ in some respects from those of other Pueblos, and from the Diné and the Apache, and certainly from the tribes of the Sioux Nation and the Cherokee and the Anishinaabe peoples of the Three Fires and every other ethnic and social grouping indigenous to this land. The medicine traditions don’t transfer between such groupings, and certainly not beyond them; they have neither meaning nor efficacy for those outside the culture.
This is why our cultures are so vibrantly disparate, and so are our origin stories. So are our dreams, and our meanings of and uses for them. Some nations recognize “dreamers” as a particular identity: medicine persons, spiritual leaders, or even simply ordinary people to whom the spirit have granted the gift of dreaming. For some, this may include prophecy; for others, it may be simply a skill at interpretation; for still others, it may be a way of realizing particular goals or filling specific needs.
Which brings us to the use of the word “vision.”
As I noted earlier, “vision” may be interchangeable with “dream”; it may also be used to describe a different sort of experience, one that does not necessarily require a state of slumber, and one that may be more prophetic or predictive in nature. It’s also half of a phrase that has become common in non-Native usage: “vision quest.”
This is not phrase that either Wings or I ever use.
Generally speaking, it’s widely regarded in the dominant culture as the translation of specific phrases common to languages of the Upper Midwest and Northern Plains. It’s refers to a young person’s (generally speaking, a young man’s) rite of passage into manhood, in which he leaves the village and enters the wilderness for a period of time, specified or not, to fast and pray and seek a vision that will guide his adult life. In some cultures, it is this process that gives the young man his name; in others, it tells him what his vocation will be; in still others, it delivers a message for him to take back to his community.
But “quest” is a word of European origin, one that evokes images of crusading knights and castled damsels in distress. it is also the root of the word “conquest,” a word that is anathema to our peoples. To us, use of the phrase “vision quest” implies commodification of visions and dreams, taking them out of the realm of our spiritual traditions and fundamental lifeways and turning them into something to be sought and seized, conquered and exploited for personal gain. And, in fact, that is exactly what has happened, from every fraudulent and cult-like “shaman” pretender selling artificial indigeneity to the terrible 1980s movie of the same name.
I have been told, by those fluent in the language of the culture with which the process is most often associated, that a more accurate translation of their own phrase for it is nothing like “quest,” but rather, that it is best understood as “crying for a vision,” with all the humility and abnegation of self that that phrase implies. It is a supplication to the spirits, a petition and prayer, one the supplicant hopes devoutly will be granted, but not one that can be taken for granted.
This brings up another point. It is true that in some cultures, there are dreamers and visionaries for whom such experiences are simply a part of daily life. There are also those for whom it is a rare or even one-time occurrence. But for those who seek the aid of dreams and visions, either as a right of passage or as part of their own duties to the community, it is no easy process. At a minimum, it typically involves extended fasting and much prayer. And, yes, for those who insist that there must be a “scientific” explanation for everything, fasting does make one more susceptible to sensory disruption, and there are those who will always classify dreams and visions accordingly. But in our cultures, most of us have seen the tangible results of such practices, and have cause, grounded in firm reality, to be not nearly so dismissive.
Dreams manifest in Native arts in myriad ways. Some might even say that the entire body of indigenous art is itself a collective manifestation of dreaming. Part of that is due to how some of our cultures conceive of what the rest of the world might call “inspiration”; part of it is grounded in the historical fact of our collective survival in the face of impossibly long and genocidal odds.
But however any of us conceives it, the fact of the matter is that visions and dreams are elemental to the world of indigenous arts. Sometimes the connection is express, where a work of art explicitly evokes a famous dream, such as that of Wovoka, or of Chief Joseph, or of other well known Native historical figures. Sometimes the link is explicit, but refers to the artist’s own dream, or to the idea or ideal of a dream that inspired the work in one form or another. Sometimes, the work of art is itself an object of a dream, or otherwise linked to the process of dreaming; an example of this phenomenon is the dreamcatcher. And sometimes, the relationship is representative: the embodiment of famous spirits who are dreamers and visionaries; or who guard the threshold between dreams and waking, between this world and the spirit world; or who manifest is wholly symbolic form, such as the motif known as the Eye of Spirit.
Last week, I wrote in this space about the role of dance in Native art and in our broader cultures, when I summarized briefly the stories of Wovoka and of the Sundance:
Sundance, along with other culturally important dances, were until relatively recently outlawed entirely by the U.S. Government, who feared that such dances were precursors to “Indian uprisings” and attempts to exercise sovereignty that might result in gaining back their land and their rights at the expense of the invading and occupying culture. One of the most powerful such dances that was outlawed in the Nineteenth Century was the Ghost Dance, a dance of prophecy led by Wovoka, a spiritual leader and prophet of the people known today as Northern Paiute. Thanks to the invaders’ wanton wholesale destruction of the buffalo, his people were decimated, living in circumstances of harsh privation, famine, and starvation, and the disease that accompanies all three. To Wovoka was given a vision that prescribed that the people should join together in a new and highly specific dance called the Ghost Dance, along with changes to their way of living life that were said to require a approach of universal love and peace and cooperation. If they did as instructed, Spirit said, they would be freed from the white man’s control and persecution, able to resume control of their lands and their lives and return to the old ways, free of disease and pain and death. The Ghost Dance spread across the Plains peoples, each adapting it to their own ways.
It was, of course, put down quickly and violently by the U.S. Army, an event of needless, heedless, monstrous slaughter. Among those who had adopted it were the Lakota, for whom it would become one piece of the larger rationalization of the U.S. Government and its army for its 1890 massacre of Native men, women, children, and elders at Wounded Knee.
It is against this backdrop that the contemporary practice of Native dance must be understood. As I said at the outset, dance is wholly a part of our cultures, inseparable, at least for many (most? all?) of our peoples. As was the case when government agents outlawed the drum, long hair, braids, traditional dress, traditional languages, all the other aspects of our very selves that made us who we were, outlawing dance stripped us, body and spirit, and stole a fundamental piece of our existence and identities. Given that history, it’s today impossible to understand the role dance plays in our cultures, including our arts — even those dances born out of pain and suffering far older than that which accompanied and flowed out of the arrival of the Europeans — without first comprehending that today dance is an act of resistance and existence, an overt expression of indigenous sovereignty and survival.
The Ghost Dance was born directly of Wovoka’s dream and the prophecy it contained. And what I said last week about the outlawing of indigenous dance would have applied equally, perhaps more, to indigenous dreaming, had there been a practical way for the invaders to bring it to a halt. But dreams come and go outside of the dreamer’s control, much less that of an occupying force, and there was little the Cavalry, or the government, could do to control the spirits’ transmission of such messages.
I said above that one of the definitions of “dream” involves no need for an altered state of consciousness, but simply an 
objective, a goal. This is no less true of our own peoples, who have always worked to actualize goals not only for themselves, but for our communities as a whole. Such was the case with Hinmuuttu-yalatlat, who the rest of the world recognizes as “Chief Joseph.” He was a warrior and a leader’s leader, one who came to the position both by birth and by skill. And while he was not able to re
alize his goals for his own people in the face of an invading onslaught, the world has come to speak of his objectives as his “dream,” or as a “vision”: one of tribal sovereignty and independence, of living in peace . . . to no small degree, of simply being left alone.
Now, “Chief Joseph’s dream” is a phrase coopted and commandeered by non-Natives in the service of some nebulous “peace and harmony” mantra, but to be understood correctly, the great warrior’s goals must be placed within the context of his own people’s dire situation and the desperate need and privation they faced at the hands of unscrupulous invaders. It was a dream of independence, of the ability to live their lives in the traditional way, unassailed and unafraid.
It’s a dream that finds expression in the collage at right by Yakima/Assiniboine artist Preston Bellringer, a work he entitled Chief Jo’s Vision. It’s a dream that also inspired the art of Wings’s own tattoo, shown at left, a tribute to Hinmuuttu-yalatlat himself. You can read more about the man here.
Of course, some dreams are inspired by the spirits — and some spirits become the substance of the dream.
Collectively, we often refer to corn as the first among the Three Sisters (corn, beans, and squash, the three plant spirits who have fed and sustained our peoples since the time before time). It’s become something of an intertribal moniker now, and one that Natives all over Turtle Island recognize instantly. But many of our peoples also have other stories of how corn came to be. In some related cultures, it is a decidedly male spirit, one that gave itself to the people by way of a dream, the vision accorded to a young man at the end of the fast that marked his rite of passage into adulthood. During his fast, a spirit visited him repeatedly, which is common. what made this visitation unusual was the spirit’s repeated entreaties to a form of ritual combat. The spirit promised the young man that he would give him the gift he sought, one of the ability to help his people, after the young man proved himself by winning the final contest. The seeker did as he was bid, an emerged from the last round of combat victorious, only to find the spirit collapsed upon the ground . . . dead. He was overtaken by a series of dreams that told him what to do, how to bury the spirit being and care for its resting place, and by so doing, honoring the memory of his spirit friend. After some months, green shoots appeared; eventually, they grew tall and strong, and sprouted jeweled ears with silken tassels: Corn. The young man did as he had been instructed, and took the corn to the people, showing them how to plant it and how to prepare it as food, and the people never went without sustenance again.
One of the best known “dream” spirits, however, is Grandmother Spider. Depending on the culture and tradition, she functions in different ways, some of which overlap. To some peoples, she is Spider Woman, and she may be benevolent, or may be an obstacle to one’s progress in navigating the space between worlds. In this iteration, she is guardian and gatekeeper, one who sits at the threshold between the dreaming and waking worlds, between this world and the one beyond. In some cultures, if one has lived one’s life in a good way, once the person walks on, she will show them the road to the spirit world; if one has not, she may send the spirit on a detour, or simply refuse passage.
But for many other traditions, she is perhaps best known as a Grandmother, one who assumed the role of guardian of the people’s dreams. It is this version of Spider that gave rise to the creation and story of the dreamcatcher. Many cultures lay their own claims to specific versions of the story. Some of them vary between peoples; some within various groupings of the same people. With the old stories, much depends upon geography and proximity to other cultures, since stories, like all else, have long been traded among our peoples. I’ve written about the dreamcatcher here before, too:
The story of the dreamcatcher is one that appears in many tribal cultures, and many, my own included, take credit for its invention. The stories are remarkably similar, sometimes with an inversion or two on fundamental points. Depending on where among our people you travel, you may hear different accounts. An abbreviated version of the story that was related to me as a child is told thusly:
The People had strayed from the path set for them by Spirit. They had grown ungrateful; they neglected their duties; they failed to give thanks for all that they had been given. Exasperated, Spirit at last withdrew his protection from their sleep. Their sleep became troubled by bad dreams; eventually, they grew afraid to sleep, or were unable to sleep at all. The entire village became ill. One young mother, afraid for her infant, went outside her tipi to pray to Spirit for help, but she felt no answer. Grandmother Spider, seated nearby weaving her web, saw the young mother’s tears and asked her what troubled her. She explained that she was worried for her infant, tormented by nightmares, unable to sleep, and now so ill that she feared the child would not survive. Grandmother Spider understood what it was to fear for one’s children, and, taking pity on the new mother, gave her two gifts: the first, her own web; the second, instructions. She told her to fashion a hoop of red willow bark, and stretch the web across it, making sure to leave a hole at the center; she was to hang it above the child’s head. Grandmother Spider told the young mother that the bad dreams would fly through the hole, but the web would catch the child’s good dreams, and those would be the ones the infant remembered. Thanking Grandmother Spider, the mother did as she had been instructed, and her child recovered. She then shared the secret with the rest of the village, along with the lesson that they must be thankful and return to the correct path. The people followed the young mother’s example, and their sleep was untroubled by bad dreams from that day forward.
There are variations that say the dreamcatcher works in the opposite way: that the good dreams fly through the hole in the web, while the web catches the bad dreams and neutralizes them, so that the sleeper cannot remember them. Either way, it’s a beautiful story, and an important one. Modern medicine, including psychiatric medicine, knows well the importance of sound sleep and healthy dreaming, and the effects of an unsound lifestyle on both.
In the old way as I learned it, the dreamcatcher is only a real dreamcatcher if it is made of specific materials, and fashioned in a specific manner. First, the hoop must always be made of red willow, like the one shown above. This means that the hoop itself will not be a perfect sphere; it will perhaps be a little lopsided, and most definitely irregular in some form or fashion. Ironically, if one sees the hoop as a representations of our Mother Earth, science has now caught up with the old ways: We now know that the actual land mass of the planet, the earth that lies beneath the smoothing effects of the oceans and atmosphere, is not in fact a perfect circular orb, but a rather oddly-shaped object that bulges here and there, with concavities and convexities and all manner of irregular lines and arcs and angles and surfaces.
An example of just such a dreamcatcher appears at the beginning of this post: one made of a red willow hoop webbed with sinew, irregular and wholly natural in shape.
Of course, Grandmother Spider appears in other contexts, as well,including in Wings’s own work. He has, over the years, created two specific homages to her spirit: a pair of cuff bracelets that embody Spider Woman, her eight legs as the two sides of the band, gemstones and ingot beads giving her head and body form and shape. The current one appears at left: Spider Woman, wrought of sterling silver, lapis lazuli, and Sleeping Beauty turquoise. In her first incarnation, she appeared as Grandmother Spider, shown at right, in sterling silver, fiery apple coral, and sugilite.
Of course, for Native silversmiths and jewelers of this area, there is a built-in homage to Grandmother Spider, and to the dreams she protects, in one of their primary materials: turquoise. Turquoise, known in this part of the world as the Skystone, is thought to have talismanic properties: It protects against evil spirits and other forms of harm. It’s one of the reasons that turquoise jewelry is so popular among the peoples of this region. It’s also why we paint our window- and doorsills blue, to keep harm out and to protect the family within.
But the most valuable forms of turquoise tend to be those that are shot through with significant amounts of matrix — particularly when that matrix manifests in a fine criss-crossing tracery of fine lines known as “spiderwebbing.” It turns such turquoise instantly into its own tribute to a guardian spirit, one that protects dreams and sleep. One particular outstanding specimen of such turquoise appears in the cuff shown immediately above: ultra-high-grade black-webbed Kingman turquoise. The name of the cuff was Spiderweb Dreams, an homage simultaneously to the stone and to the dreamcatcher it represents.
In silversmithing and gemwork (as in most other art), there’s an argument to be made that most works are inspired by dreams, whether of the sleeping or waking variety. That is certainly the case with Wings’s work.
Over the years, Wings has created a number of signature series, collections inspired by aspects of his life as a Native man and indigenous artist. One of them, however, was the direct and literal result of a dream: his Spirit Horse series, one that I discussed here recently:
I’ve written about these ethereal beings before. It’s a design that Wings has been creating for years, even decades — the product of a visionary experience. One night, the Spirit Horse visited him in a dream, and he saw the image whole and complete: the whimsically stylized form, the hooves racing across the sky, the head held high, mane and tail flowing behind on the winds of night. Each is unique, with varied stampwork and any of a broad assortment of possible gemstone cabochons. Common accents are celestial symbols, as befits a horse of dreams and visions, as well as such elemental motifs as hearts.
Finally, there is one other traditional form that the motif of dreams and visions assumes when it comes to silverwork: the Eye of Spirit.
Sometimes, the symbol appears naturally, in the very earth itself, as was the case with the beautiful piece of Botswana agate that formed the focal point of the piece shown immediately above. It’s rare to find such an obvious “eye” shape in a stone, and the agate’s natural banding magnified the appearance of this one to truly spectacular effect. This was a work commissioned by a dear friend (with a pair of coordinating earrings). She gave Wings a general outline of what she wanted the set to mean for her, then allowed him to create as he felt led to do. The result was this work (with its coordinating earrings), entitled Dreams of the Night Spirits.
The Eye of Spirit is generally conceived in geometric form: a diamond shape, meant to evoke the rough form of an eye. It appears in numerous indigenous cultu
res, including those in other parts of the world, as a symbol of a gift of the spirits. The form such a gift assumes varies, but is generally understood to include wisdom and guidance. For some, this takes the form of visions and dreams, of Spirit’s willingness to bestow knowledge upon the individual by way of such altered states of consciousness. It has rendered the diamond a popular motif in Native arts, particularly in weaving and silverwork. This is, perhaps, understandable: After all, it is beneath blankets that we sleep, and thus gain access to the world of dreams. We likewise wear silverwork in the form of jewelry on our very bodies, transforming symbolism wrought in silver into adornment with talismanic properties, a means of wearing “medicine.”
Wings uses the symbol frequently, finding power and inspiration in it. Sometimes, it’s the shape of the stone, such as the lime jade stones in the earrings at left or the black-lip mother-of-pearl cabochons on the pendants of the earrings at right. Sometimes it’s stampwork or an overlay expressly wrought in the diamond shape, as on the pendants of the pair at left, entitled Spring Dreams. And occasionally, the shape works in concert with other stones, as in the pair at right: the Eyes of Spirit combined with the tightly spiderwebbed turquoise stones that anchor each drop, a pair commissioned by another dear friend and entitled Dream Web.
Of course, as I hinted at the outset, most of Wings’s work can be said to be the product of dreams and visions. I suspect this is true of most indigenous artists, who call upon their own traditions and ancient stories to create their own work. But our cultures are grounded firmly in dreams, both of the otherworldly, visionary sort, and of the variety that are a product of the fight for survival.
Our existence is a dream, and its realization. That alone is enough to inspire and inspirit our art.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2016; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owners.
