What was a fifty percent chance of precipitation for the day at sunrise has been reduced to no more than thirty now. With the rain’s reduced prospects, the haze has returned, and sky and air are both an odd shade of pewter, dull, but with a slight shimmer as the sun’s rays meet the particulate matter behind its veil. If all indications hold, it will be another scorcher, too: hot, humid, wholly unseasonal and utterly oppressive.
This is not a normal August at Red Willow. Then again, nothing is “normal” here now.
It’s not one single thing, not the alterations caused by climate change in general or the specific hardships of the drought, not the deadly risks of a new pandemic nor the rising tide of fascism and neocolonial efforts at genocide in a nation whose leadership prefers us dead. It’s all of those things and none of them, for we have been here before, and the prophets of old long ago warned us that these days would come.
The prophets warned us, too, that we would need to be ready: to recognize the dangers, to resist and also to fight. Colonial appropriation wastes many words on false notions of love and light, but what it calls compassion is merely genocide by another name. It’s yet more proof that in their efforts to erase us, they have never taken the time or trouble to know us, for they misunderstand, in the most profound and fundamental ways, what love means in our ways.
For us, love is an active thing. No passive paeans here to “acknowledging one’s truth” (especially when that “truth” is a lie that harms those from whom it steals and whose very selves it attempts to erase): In our way, love is all the daily steps and acts and words and prayers and songs and dances and offerings and medicine and land stewarded and battles fought and ceremonies held and the very breath of life itself.
Indigenous love is sacrifice; it is resistance; it is the greatest of medicines. All of it is manifest in today’s series of four images, pulled from nine years past and locked in memory, and in today’s three featured works of wearable jeweled art, each one its own coil of power and animating spirits: an offering, a dance, and medicine for the earth.
But first, the images: some of my favorites, from this very month nine years ago, August of 2011. It had been a long, hot, hard day of getting the hay in, in a year when we were granted the great gift of an ordinary monsoonal season, daily rains to feed the land. In such years, the rains typically began in early afternoon, and would trade space with the sun in waves, small sharp bursts of heavy weather passing through in bursts lasting from five to twenty minutes apiece scattered throughout the latter half of the day, before moving out between the peaks to joint together, gathering force and speed as they raced across the plains to the east. It was, back then, entirely a phenomenon of the afternoon, occurring sporadically between the hours of the sun’s highest point and its setting, And on that day, the weather had held off until late, allowing us to get the biggest share of the work completed, but as we began to stack the last load, the storms moved in overhead.
The rains were relatively short, intermittent scatterings of drops interspersed with momentary cloudbursts, and we were hot enough from our labors not to care. We tarped the trailed for a time until the last full shower passed, then resumed unloading and stacking as twilight moved in on all sides. But in those few moments between the last few drops and the falling of the light, Wings grabbed his camera and captured the medicine of a Red Willow summer.
All three of today’s photos were taken from the same spot: the first three, facing east, mere seconds apart. And when I say “seconds,” I mean exactly that; the light here shifts in the beat of a hummingbird’s wing. It is, essentially, the exact same image, shot in succession, one, two, three, to show the rapid alterations in color and light. The fourth photo is taken from the same spot, too, and likewise only seconds later, but facing in the opposite direction: westward, to capture the shades of the post-storm sunset sky.
The first of the images is, to me, one of the gifts of greens and golds: lush grass in the colors of jade and emerald, the eastern sky, normally deep blue at that hour, turned to the shimmering gold of the moments just before twilight. It felt — feels — like one last offering to the sun before it cedes its space to night.
It’s a feeling, and a spirit, too, found in the first of today’s featured works of wearable art. All three come from The Coiled Power Collections, found the Bracelets Gallery here on the site. The first represents one of the traditional sacred medicines, one offered to the spirits at prayer, or to others when seeking a favor. From its description:
Tobacco Coil Bracelet
The spirit of generosity compels us to offer a gift when we seek a favor; it shows respect. It’s customary, when seeking the blessing of the spirits or the assistance of our fellow man or woman, especially an elder, to offer a small gift in the form of tobacco. It shows respect and gratitude, and assures the recipient that his or her assistance is not taken for granted. In our cultures, indigenous tobacco is its own plant, or mix of plants, and Wings summons their spirits with this coil bracelet in the colors of the plants themselves. Dark green fluorite nuggets, as deep in hue as raw emeralds, trace the center of the spiral; to either side, crystalline nuggets of bright lime green peridot, the color of the new plant, stretch outward; and at either end, the strand terminates in tiny green turquoise chips. Each segment of gems is separated by a short length of brilliant amber that glows like the lit bowl of a ceremonial pipe. Beads are strung on memory wire, which expands and contracts to fit nearly and size wrist. Jointly designed by Wings and Aji.
Memory wire; green fluorite; peridot; green turquoise; amber
$325 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Tobacco’s shades of green leaf and fire, though, deepen here in less than an instant. The second of today’s images shows the passage of perhaps no more than a second or two, when the grass darkens to the teal of the forest and the skies turn shadow blue, when the gold of earth and light deepen and acquire the faintest hints of red. It’s a clear demonstration of how fast, by our lights, the world turns, the speed and grace and stark beauty with which it moves around the sun.
I have no actual favorite among this series of photos; each speaks to me in a different way. But I confess to loving the otherworldly qualities of sky and atmosphere in this one: a haunting, elegiac blue, the last steps of the day’s dance, the feel of the spirits hovering protectively after the battle has been fought, ready to grant the warriors a night’s rewarding rest. And in puts me in mind of the second of today’s featured works of wearable art, one manifest in the colors of the cosmos and the animating ancestral spirits of resistance. From its description:
Rotation and Revolution Coil Bracelet
Our world, and our place in it, are powered by the twin forces of rotation and revolution, keeping the earth anchored in the proper space and time. Rotation keeps us humble, ensuring that we do not lose our place in the universe, while revolution teaches humility in the form of requiring us to look outside ourselves to greater things: a process essential to readying us for its counterpart, the other kind of revolution to which we are called. Wings honors these forces in all their forms in a rotating hoop of radiant light. At the coils center rest fourteen large round orbs of beautifully chatoyant tiger’s eye, the gold and bronze of pure flame glowing with life. At either end, four doughnut-shaped rondel beads of iron pyrite, fool’s gold, separate it from the next strand and caution against arrogance. Next come long strands of red tiger’s eye in large doughnut-shaped rondels, each shimmering with maroon chatoyant fire. These red flames of the sun flow into the cool watery expanse of the earth’s own atmosphere, smaller rondels of teal-colored kyanite lit from within with the silver of a million stars. Each end is anchored with a small length of pyrite rondels, once again, a caution against human frailty and a means of keeping us firmly grounded in the earth. Beads are strung on memory wire, which expands and contracts to fit virtually any wrist. Another view shown below. [Note: Kyanite beads are teal-colored in natural light, not the cornflower blue they appear above.] Designed jointly by Wings and Aji.
Memory wire; tiger’s eye; iron pyrite; red tiger’s eye; kyanite
$325 + shipping, handling, and insurance
The work above finds expression in the image below, too: the blues of fading day adance with encroaching night, the reds and golds of the sun’s fire, all limned in pure light.
For those who wonder why “Southwest” “desert” color schemes so often include shades of purple: This is why. A summer’s sunset here can, and frequently does, feature skies shaded in the entire spectrum of the rainbow, greens and violets included, but in a season when the storms find their path here? Coral and rose, magenta and lilac, plum and violet are all the order of the end of day. Storm and sunset set the summer sky aflame, and as the colonial population is learning now, fire is indeed medicine.
And what is medicine but an expression of the spirits’ love? As our peoples have always known, love itself is medicine, too; the two concepts are bound together in a braid that cannot be unraveled. And it is these animating spirits, and the colors associated with them here, that put me in mind of the third of today’s featured works of wearable art. From its description:
Love Medicine Coil Bracelet
In some cultures, it’s a charm; in others, more literal medicine; in still others, something more elemental yet. It’s love medicine, an aid in the seeking of love, sought for its talismanic power and ability to inspire love in the object of one’s affections, or at least in one’s confidence to approach him or her. Here, Wings brings together elemental medicine motifs in a charm that assumes a spiraling shape and power. The coil is anchored at either end with earthy round onyx beads that flow into larger round beads of sardonyx, red and orange and brown and black and white marbled together like the elements and the winds all melding in a powerful storm. Bright orange carnelian in polished nuggety chips lead toward a second length of sardonyx, all leading to a center segment of seven large round beads of deep red jasper, each highly polished and aswirl in mysterious wisps of color. Beads are strung on memory wire, which expands and contracts to fit virtually any wrist. Jointly designed by Wings and Aji.
Memory wire; red jasper; carnelian; sardonyx; onyx
$325 + shipping, handling, and insurance
And it is this work, the one that is love medicine, that brings us to today’s final image, captured from the same spot as the other two, but facing in the opposite direction — a radiant gradient of bands of carnelian and sardonyx, the scarlet of jasper and plum and onyx in a seemingly impossible scape of color and light. It’s not the same one featured in this space yesterday, but on taken within a second or two of it, from a slightly different angle.
We so often associate romance with the fall of night, and that’s perhaps natural. But love exists in many forms, none wholly separate from any other, and they are all medicine, too. And while we have not had these post-storm skies this season, we have still been granted the copper and crimson, the scarlet and plum. Our skies now are medicine, too, not of the rain, but of the fire: cautionary, yes, but also a reminder of its elemental necessity.
A reminder, indeed, that, had colonial forces heeded it, would have spared us the smoke haze now.
And thus, they become emblematic of sacrifice — and of our resistance.
In a summer when all that is without brings endless danger, it is good to look within again, to ancestral teachings and timeless ways and the earth and sky, the cosmic spirits that have sustained our peoples forever. And it is time to honor that — with an offering, a dance, and medicine for the earth.
She has never needed it more. Nor have we.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2020; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
