Some days, it feels as though the small space around us is all we have.
In one sense, it’s absolutely true, but I’m referring to the larger scope of existence now — the existential questions that have become so greatly magnified in recent years, when genocide takes new and opportunistic forms with the full backing of the supposedly sympathetic party, when it’s on the ballot and in the courts, when we know that in the months to come, his country will most likely once more steal our children and our water with full federal aid and comfort even as the world dies around us.
It’s hard to get excited about this day when we have been so thoroughly betrayed, in so many ways at once new and very old, particularly over the last seven or eight years.
You thought I was going to say “six,” didn’t you? Yes, that was indeed a marker, but I invite you to cast your mind back to a little something our cousins to the north hashtagged #NoDAPL, and to recall precisely who it was who permitted our peoples to be kenneled like dogs, assaulted with water and sound weapons, have their bodies torn apart, arrested, jailed, dead now as a result of the violence and abuse inflicted by a literally fascist enterprise, government and extractive, earth-killing corporations working hand in glove.
No, none of this is new, and it didn’t start with the 2016 electoral theft.
The outside world always misunderstands our reaction, as well. Such circumstances provoke in us a turning inward, but not in the way the colonial world understands that phrase. We know better than most what’s coming; we are, after all, living climate change, crisis, catastrophe, collapse in the realest of real time, and we, collectively — Indigenous peoples around the planet — now steward more than eighty percent of the earth’s biological diversity. We are on the front lines of the resistance in ways others need never be, on the front lines of both the attacks from without and the return of the fight.
No one can sustain such efforts for long without deep roots, a strong heart, and a brave spirit.
And so we turn inward, in the sense that we return to our own roots, to ancestral ways and teachings, to the examples set for us by generations of elders of warriors long since walked on, to the dreams and visions and prophecies that inform our peoples’ works and words, especially now that too many of them have come to pass. We know well the value of such histories, of their protective power and strength and medicine of light and shelter from ancient spirits.
And we know, too, that warriors are needed on every front now.
These are lessons with which we were raised, and we find not merely proof of their truth, but also the more practical tools of their use, everywhere.
Here at Red Willow, signs of shelter are everywhere; it’s part of the animating spirit of the very architecture of space and place. But it’s more than that: In this land of high elevation and (once, at least) wide open spaces, of safety and sanctuary from the dust of the earth and the bones of ancient trees, this land where the light is itself an animated and animating spirit, we find not merely tools but teachings, reminders of what we know deep in ancestral memory and the reflection and recognition of our own inherent strength when it comes to what will be required of us.
This week’s edition of Red Willow Spirit pairs two related images and links them by one masterwork of wearable art in more than mere silver and stone. The images were captured a year apart, on almost identical dates: the one above, on this very day, November 8th, in 2019; the one below, on November 6th a year prior, in 2018. They demonstrate, indifferent ways, the protective uses to which poles and posts here are put: the trunks of trees that by the outside world would have been long regarded as simply dead, yet still capable of serving other, essential uses — capable of doing work that is desperately needed.
It’s a fallacy to think that the Spanish brought latilla fencing to this place; indeed, all they brought was a label, the name by which the rest of the world now knows it. A people with some of the most sophisticated multistory architecture of ancient times, people who knew well the utility of well-made walls and fences and arbors to shelter from the hot summer sun, are the ones who taught the invaders how to protect themselves from external threats.
These days, latilla fencing and arbors can be found around any faux-Pueblo Revival frame house in town or outside of it, but here, such structures still function for their original and intended purposes. We expect them to keep out certain predators, of course, but one of their incidenal gifts is what they do in the light: These are old trunks, often felled natural via windthrow, dried naturally over a period of years so that the bark eventually sheds equally naturally, like a winter coat. And that bark, old now and dried, crackling above wood as smooth as old bones and nearly as pale, becomes a catalyst for the autumn sun. An immensely utilitarian object of protection is transformed, aainst the blue of the November sky, into a thing of beauty.
But no amount of beauty lessens its protective value, nor its inherent strength. One of the great gifts of such trees here is the height and straight lines of their trunks, and the strength that is magnified by lashing (or now, nailing) them together. It reminds us of the importance of such qualities in ourselves: a refusal to be bowed, an insistence on standing tall but also on stepping up, and the magnifying power to be found in communal efforts, in which their strength together is far greater than the sum of their parts.
Of course, collective work still and always requires individual effort and labor. It’s not a way to elide or elude responsibility. Our ways have always made space for special talents and skills, qualities of character, capacities for the specific work of protection and defense, of ceremony and healing, of dreams and visions and prophecy and more. Today’s featured masterwork combines the work of protectors and prophets into one powerful piece. From its description in the Accessories Gallery here on the site:
Dream Warrior Bow Guard
Some of our fiercest battles are fought in and over dreams. Wings invokes the dream warrior and and the warrior’s art in this old traditional-style bow guard. It begins with a solitary concha from one of his old belts, a piece that has spent decades in his private collection: multiple layers of solid, heavy sterling silver hand-cut into ovals of ascending size, the base layer scalloped gracefully around its edge, all stacked atop each other in an overlay pattern. Each layer is edged with hand-stamped chased images in traditional designs — the force of the lightning, the shelter of the lodge, the power of the rising sun. The center oval is domed, repoussé-fashion, and the entire finished concha is domed yet again to trace the line of the wrist. A small sturdy column of sterling silver arises from its center to hold the bezel of the central stone securely in place. The stone itself is an extraordinary giant cabochon of high-grade Cloud Mountain turquoise from China’s Hubei District, bright teal blue and webbed in inky indigo as tightly and thoroughly as Grandmother Spider’s dreamcatcher, set into a saw-toothed bezel and trimmed with bold twisted silver. Flanking the center concha are a pair of tiny round conchas whose stampwork repeat the lodge motif around diminutive round blue-green center stones. The conchas are screwed into a band of warm golden-hued moosehide, thick, sturdy and velvety to the touch. The band extends outward three inches beyond each small concha to allow for custom cutting and lacing to fit the wearer. In its current from, prior to sizing to suit, the full band extends 11.25″ long by 2.25″ high; the small conchas are 2-7/8″ across and their cabochons are 1/4″ across; the center concha is 3/5/8″ high by 2.75″ across, and the focal cabochon is 2″ high by 1-3/8″ across at the widest point (dimensions approximate). Other views shown below.
Sterling silver; high-grade Cloud Mountain turquoise; old blue-green turquoise; moosehide
$2,500 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Note: Hard leather may be substituted for the moosehide for a separate charge
This is an extraordinary work in so many ways: in the silversmithing of the concha that forms its focal setting; in the stunning beauty and intensity of the turqoise cabochon; in the old, old smaller conchas that flank it on either side; in the golden glow of the buttery-soft moosehide. This is, of course, a replica bow guard, intended for ordinary wear; the moosehide is spectacularly comfortable, albeit not especially resistant to the points of actual arrowheads. Then again, I know of no one who would risk a stone and setting of that beauy and value in literal combat; this is a work for dream warriors, and their inspiration and armor alike exist on wholly different, less tangible planes.
The dreamers, the visionaries, the propehts among our peoples, ancestral and otherwise, would certain attest to the truth that what is required of them is work. It’s combat, too, but their armor tends to be of this variety, more talismanic than practical. And their work requires space, as well — for the seeking of what the spirits intend them to see and know.
Not all posts are palisades; some are the beams of arbors, a place for the body to rest, even if mind and spirit may still be at work.
And this is the view from beneath our own arbor on that November afternoon four years and two days ago. Wings was not trying for a compositinaly perfect shot;rather, he wanted to capture the interplay of of wood and sky, of space and light at a time when the chill in the air portends the danger of bitter cold to come.
And it’s true that an arbor, left as bare bones like this, offers precious little protection from the elements in winter. But hides and other materials are a fix . . . and, of course, those who use it most need neither. The dogs often lie under it in summer, but the wild birds make use of its structure and substance year-round.
For us, these days, the protection of the arbor is more spiritual than physical. Shade and rest, of course, at times a place for prayer and offerings; several years ago this month, a place for exchange of vows. It is, in a word, sanctuary, and it is fitting that it remains uncovered, allowing the sunlight to filter through the latillas. It, too, is a place of light and shelter from ancient spirits, and a place to shore up our own dreamers’ and warriors’ hearts.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2022; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
