One reason why I prefer our more nuanced comprehension of the world around thus than the rigid binaries colonialism demands is their sheer immanent logic.
Colonialism insists that the first day of summer was Sunday, except that time zones worldwide beg to differ, and so do temperature and climate. It’s like the difference between “seasons” and meteorological seasons, the difference between what words on a page say and what the evidence of one’s own senses knows.
When it’s ninety-five degrees day after day while the entire West burns up around us? It’s been summer for a while now.
It underscores one of the major differences between colonial cultures and Indigenous cultures the world over: Ours are not required to shove the facts in a box with a particular label, even when none of them fit. A natural, factual, active understanding of the world, one driven neither by colonio-religious demands for authority and dominion nor by the fetishization of capitalist proprietariness and profit, allows the world simply to be: what and who and how it is, unfettered by the distortions and depredations of artifice. Yes, we all have our own cosmologies, our own old ways and origin stories that explain the universe in terms symbolic and otherwise — but our ways require less control and more adaptation by us to the actual circumstances the world presents.
Colonialism, of course, upended all of that, and it did so world-wide, which is why Mother Earth is so ill and injured now.
Our languages reflect our worldviews in ways that give form and shape to them, and vice versa. Here at Red Willow, one of my early lessons in local Indigenous understanding came from Wings himself, one not so very different from my own peoples’, yet specific to the scape and spirit (and spirits) of this place. It has to do with that most elemental of elemental forces here, the water.
There was a time, not so very long ago (four years, to be exact; just prior to the deepening of this drought that is slowly but surely killing the land here) when we irrigated every spring and summer. It was essential, both to the crops in our gardens and to the hay in our fields that kept our horses healthy and well. And irrigation here is done the old way, by hand, bringing down the water from an upstream source, routing it through ditches dug by hand and cleared anew every year, to flow across the fields in directions determined by the hand-turning of earthen dams. Yes, I’ve done the hard labor of it, too, which very often involves donning a jacket and waterproof boots at eleven o’clock at night, grabbing a flashlight, and trudging out to some distant point in the fields to remove some dams and create new ones so that the water will continue to flow properly overnight. It’s hard work, often dirty, and both hot and sweaty in the heat of the day and shiveringly cold at night.
Yes, it’s work.
And yet, on the first day of the water’s appearance here, Wings never refers to it in relation to himself, never “I brought the water down.” No, it’s always “the water came,” a recognition that to a great degree, such elemental forces go where they will, and an honoring of its willingness to come to the place where it’s needed.
It’s the language of the water: the language of medicine, the language of humility and respect for the forces and spirits with whom we share this earth, forces and spirits who ensure our own survival.
Today’s three images come from exactly this context, on a day some eight years or so ago when Wings had gone upstream to do exactly this: bring down the water. All of them were shot minutes apart, as he chose various stages of the process as his subjects for the informal series. For those unfamiliar with traditional methods of irrigation here, they would seem to have no meaning: a little stream of water below the strands of barbed wire; more wire holding weirs and rusted plates in place; the water itself bubbling over twinned surfaces of earth and heavily rusted metal.
Here, these are all a part of the language of the water, as it has flowed and grown and adapted over centuries, and all have specific and significant meaning.
The photo above is actually a personal favorite, for it shows much more than first appearances indicate. It’s a stream tracking its way overland, on a downhill grade so slight as to be invisible here, one that finds its way with assurance beneath the barbed wire and between the stands of piñon to meet up with deeper ditches and faster flows. The aspect of it that pleases me seemingly out of all proportion is the color and clarity of the water itself, the deep blues of the summer sky visible in it around the silvery glimmers of reflected light, surrounded by piñon sentries and earthier shades.
And it reminds me of the extent to which water is medicine.
It’s a set of shades, and a spirit, too, found in the first of today’s two featured works of wearable art. Both are from Wings’s signature series, The Coiled Power Collections, and are found in that section of the Bracelets Gallery here on the site. We begin with the one that echoes the natural summer shades in the photos above, one whose identity and spirit are embodied in the water itself. From its description:
Medicine Coil Bracelet
We find truth in medicine, from the plants and the animals and more ephemeral spirits. Wings pays tribute to the power of traditional medicine to heal the body and restore harmony to the spirit by way of this coiling, curing circle of color. It begins at either end with the first medicine, water, that which gives and restores and is life itself, as embodied in bold bright blue nuggets of the Skystone, in the form of Sleeping Beauty turquoise. The water flows into the world of healing plants, beginning with wild freeform nuggets of malachite that become round polished malachite orbs. Small spheres of beautifully translucent jade stretch toward the large globes at the center, an expanse of small worlds in the form of unakite, gems manifest in the brilliance of new green aswirl with the red clay of the earth. Memory wire expands and contracts to fit nearly any wrist. Designed jointly by Wings and Aji.
Memory wire; Sleeping Beauty turquoise; malachite; jade; unakite
$325 + shipping, handling, and insurance
This piece holds all the shades of the image above it: jade of grass and deep forest evergreen; the coral accents of dried leaves and petals and sunlit earth; the reflected turquoise of sky in water. More to the point, it holds their spirit: water, the First Medicine, the one in which we all are born, including this earth whose modern peaks and valleys were sculpted by the flow of the sea.
That sea seems impossibly distant now, here in this landlocked colonial state bounded by borders as artificial as the dominant language and its efforts to explain and define it.
But the language of the water is healing.
I left the graf above as it was, immediately above this image, deliberately. I wanted to show the contrast between the bubbling current, full of oxygen and beautifully clear, and the heavy ropes of barbed wire, the weathered wood, the rusted steel plates.
Healing, indeed.
Of course, these days it takes more than an open ditch and hope to get the water where it needs to go, hence the old weir system. And it is old; the rebar on the right is probably the newest part of the whole assembly. But there’s no need to add expensive new technology to systems that work perfectly well, and so Wings and others take care of them in their turn, ensuring that everything is in working order for everyone. Weathered metal and weathered wood are of relatively little concern in this place where the homes have stood a millennium and more in the original form, and in fact, the aesthetics of such wear hold their own timeless beauty.
The second of today’s featured works of wearable art link the shades and spirits of the images immediately above and below, of resilience and strength and, yes, that same timeless beauty in the face of raw elemental power. From its description:
Weathering the Elements Coil Bracelet
Little teaches us humility as effectively as extremes of weather and climate. With this spiraling spangled coil, Wings calls upon these powerful forces for aid in weathering the elements. Each end begins with tiny polished free-form nuggets, little more than chips of sky blue turquoise in earthy matrix, each separated from the brilliance of more valuable blue turquoise by the golden artifice of iron pyrite — fool’s gold, a gift of the spirits to keep us humble when greed threatens to overtake good sense. Beyond the blue of Skystone and rain comes the power of fire — first amber, representing the golden edges of the flame, then bright red Mediterranean coral nuggets, the fire itself, all flanking a center row of bold doughnut-shaped rondel beads carved from impossibly chatoyant red tiger’s eye, like the very heart of the sun. Beads are strung on memory wire, which expands and contracts to fit virtually any wrist. Another view shown below. Designed jointly by Wings and Aji.
Memory wire; red tiger’s eye; Mediterranean coral; amber; blue turquoise; blue turquoise in matrix; iron pyrite
$325 + shipping, handling, and insurance
It’s the tensile strength of metal, and mettle, in spiraling jeweled form, the colors of rain and rust, air and light.
All of which appear in our third and final image today.
If you look closely at the center photo, and then back at this one, you’ll see where it comes from: the oxygen-laden water pouring over the rusted plate. It’s the sort of image that colonial culture would never even notice, unless it’s to lament that lack of new and costly technology unnecessary to the process at hand.
But I have always found this image stunningly beautiful.
It’s not just the reminder of the old ways that it represents, although there is that, too. No, the real beauty here lies in the bubbling course of the water itself, like a thousand thousand tiny translucent beads, more valuable than diamonds all . . . and in the recognition that water is active, water is medicine, and our words for it reflect that.
This is the language of the water: medicine; acts of healing; the work, the labor, of love and prayer and community. It’s why we pray on its behalf, today and always.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2021; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
