Resistance is a moral obligation in times such as these. There is a right side, and a wrong one, and we are called to choose.
Our peoples have always known that the right side requires more of us than comfort — more even than love. More than mere survival. Our obligations extend backward in time, to act in a way that honors our ancestors and their sacrifices on our behalf . . . and forward, a full seven generations, to act in a way that ensures a good world for lives not yet born nor conceived, nor even dreamed or imagined.
But how do a people out of institutional and structural power, under threat from the forces of a colonial superpower, fulfill such a charge?
One of the burdens put upon our cultures from without is the constant demand for performance of a [false] “authenticity.” What this really means is playing to stereotypes: the caricatures bound up Hollywood notions of Natives, particularly those from the fifties and sixties; the projections O’Dell and Hillerman and now Meyer and the like; the constant eliding of cultures and erasure of identities into some bland tea of faux-“shamanism” that elevates whiteness, white-savior tropes, and the literal white supremacy as essential to our existence. It demands that we comply, and then punishes us both for compliance and non-compliance with assertions that we are somehow inauthentic, all because our existence fails to match up to some external projection of what Native-ness should be like that sprang from the colonial mind of an invader’s descendant.
And it requires us to survive warfare literal and metaphorical on a constant basis.
What does such an existence mean for future generations? For our survival, long enough for them to be birthed; for their own survival thereafter?
Sometimes, it means compromise. It means walking in two worlds; it means negotiation of our every step and every breath. It means trading, a practice with which our peoples have long been familiar — but in an existential context, one that exchanges superficialities for the deeper demands of cultural survival.
It means sacrifice, and occasionally, sublimation, to ensure the well-being of future generations.
Our ancestors understood this. They made their own trade-offs, their own “deals with the devil,” and it is no overstatement at all to recognize that, had they not done so, many of us would not be here. Entire cultures and nations would not be here. And this is no reflection and those that were unable to withstand the organized forces of genocide, nor is it a moral commentary on the decisions our ancestors made or declined to make. Few of us are granted the gift of prophecy, and none of us is given the ability to withstand the laws of physics. We do the best we can with the information at hand, and pray for a good heart and a strong spirit to guide us in doing the right thing.
Today’s featured work is, in some respects, the very embodiment of such compromise and sacrifice. It appears, at first glance, to be a colonial symbol, and there is way in which it is that, too. But it is also, for our peoples, a symbol of resistance: of knowing what to trade and what to keep, what surface symbols can be exchanged in the short term to ensure the survival of our grandchildren’s grandchildren’s grandchildren in the long run. From its description in the Pendants Gallery here on the site:
In the Light of the Four Directions Pendant
In Native cultures, the cross is traditionally a symbol of the Four Sacred Directions, one that has been adopted and adapted in the face of invasion and colonization in ways that secure the future even as they honor the past. Wings reconceives the traditional Southwestern-style Native cross with this big bold pendant. Hand-cut of heavy fourteen-gauge sterling silver, the cross bears an inner edgeline scored freehand. At the center of the cross lies a square bezel-set cabochon of teal green turquoise webbed with a delicate inky black matrix aswirl beneath floating bits of translucent shimmering pale shades that hint at opalescence. The stone serves as the center of a hand-stamped Guiding Star, each of its own long, pointed spokes hand-scored on the individual spokes of the cross itself. The entire cross is edged in hand-stamped “rays,” flowing line patterns that open like a flower, or like the rays of a polar star. The pendant hangs from a pair of bails: the first is simple open wire to permit suspension from the larger bail. The second bail is hand-wrought of heavy silver, wide enough at the center to accommodate sizeable beads and lightly tapered at the conjoined ends, hand-stamped with matched thunderhead symbols that form the sacred space whose boundaries point to cardinal and ordinal points. On the reverse, Wings echoes the star motif on the front with a pair of nested stars: The inner one, within a larger diamond-shaped Eye of Spirit, holds his hallmark, while simultaneously serving as the center of a four-pointed polar star incorporating the same ray pattern as the one on the cross’s front. The entire pendant, including both bails, hangs 3-13/16″ long; the larger bail is 5/8″ long; excluding the bails, the cross is 3″ long by 2-7/8″ wide; the turquoise cabochon is 1/2″ high by 1/2″ wide (all dimensions approximate). Other views shown at the link.
Sterling silver; teal-green turquoise (most likely Royston)
$1,250 + shipping, handling, and insurance
In these dark winter days when the dominant culture is finally beginning to awaken to notions of resistance, it’s useful for us to recall that which our peoples have always known: that they are ways to stay true to one’s identity and culture and still survive — more, to aid us in building a better world for the generations to come. Whatever superficial form they appear to take, we can always call upon the powers of earth and sky, of the winds and the light, of the Four Directions, of all of the spirits that have sustained our peoples since the time before time, invoke them on behalf of the ancestors, and of our children.
Because love is survival. Love is life in a better world.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2017; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owners.
