As we wind down the first calendar month of the new year, I find my thoughts turning increasingly to the idea of love.
I know why, too. Part of it is, of course, the fact that we are about to enter the month known, in the dominant culture, specifically for love: February’s chief holiday is Valentine’s Day, and the hearts and flowers have been on display in the stores at least since December 26th. In a way, though, that’s the least of it.
Romantic love is a wonderful thing, and as clear-eyed as we both are about the nature of the world around us, we’re also both romantics in the idealistic sense. Even as we daily see the worst of humanity (on the rise in the news once again), we can’t help but hold out hope for a better world . . . and so we take the next step, which is to put in the work required to make such a hope a reality.
That’s a different kind of love.
And that’s partly where we turn our attention today: a love of community, yes, but one expressed through the obligations of family.
Some have been more fortunate in that regard than others of us. One of the deadliest side effects of colonialism is the cultural destruction it visits upon indigenous societies, and that begins with tearing apart the fabric of family, of unbraiding the hoop in such a way as to cut people off from the love and connection of their communities.
Some families never really recover.
That’s as true in our cultures as any other; indeed, given the importance of kinship in our traditions, perhaps moreso. I should know.
But even for those of us cut off from our cultures and communities by circumstance, it’s possible to appreciate the extent to which these dynamics are still in force, still effective. Because for our peoples, “love” is so much more than a word: It is an act, a whole lifetime of acts; it is the raising up of children in ceremony by an entire community, and the passing down of tradition and language and history and blood. It is song and dance and feasting; it is teaching in the form of stories and skills and the ephemera of dreams.
Love is the link in the chain, the lock woven into the braid that connects us to past and future, that shows us our place in the world even as it gives us the means to build a better one in the process.
In this space, we will spend this month on indigenous understandings of love — and we begin with the first way that most of us encounter and experience it: the love of family.
Here at Red Willow, family remains fundamental. Most people still speak the language, and even now, well into the Twenty-First Century, Tiwa is as likely to be a child’s first language as English. Mothers are offered assistance through a tribal program that focuses on infant wellness, but unlike the programs available outside the Pueblo’s borders, this one is grounded in specific cultural norms. It’s helpful to new mothers to be able to call upon other women who share their background and can speak the language of child-rearing with cultural as well as clinical fluency.
Motherhood — parenthood, irrespective of gender — is important in indigenous cultures. It is a matter not only of passing down the DNA of blood and bone structure, skin tone and eye color, but of the genetic material of an entire culture, of history and ancestry. It is also such an integral part of our lifeways that it’s not particularly highlighted in our artistic and cultural expressions, at least no more so than anything else; there doesn’t tend to be an analogue, in our worlds, to the Madonna-izing of motherhood in European cultures.
Even so, once in a while, an artist will create a work designed specifically to honor the mother-and-child relationship, such as the small spirit cup, or bowl, shown below.
This one is by Jessie Marcus, and the style is of a piece with the series for which she is perhaps best known, a sprawling collection of small micaceous spirit mugs with one of more humans or other beings emerging from the far side of the vessel’s mouth. She has crafted such cups to feature everything from elders to singers to buffalo and eagle dancers to young lovers to animal spirits such as horses. Almost four years ago, she created this one (long since gone), a mother and child mug depicting a young woman holding an infant, the pair wrapped traditionally in a blanket.
More common to the art of this place, however, is a genre that features children a few years past infancy: the storyteller. Storytellers today assume a variety of forms, from figurative works of all sizes to Christmas tree ornaments to pendants on strands of clay beads. One of the Pueblo’s most outstanding storyteller artisans is one who invokes family in another way: She’s Wings’s aunt. Her name is Juanita Suazo DuBray, and while she’s best known for her micaceous corn pots, her body of work also includes an extensive repertoire of traditional storytellers.
We’ve carried a number of her storytellers in the gallery over the years, but for today’s purposes, I’ve chosen only two: one that is perhaps as traditional as it gets; the other, one that departs from the usual form significantly, even while remaining very traditional in the details.
I’ve written fairly extensively here before about storytellers as a genre of Pueblo art. I won’t repeat it all here, except to note that they usually appear in one fundamental form: an elder, whether grandmother or grandfather, seated, and with a number of grandchildren sitting on his or her lap to hear the old stories. Generally speaking, what distinguishes them between the various artists 9ad what dictates market value) is in the detailing. And Juanita’s are exceptional in their level of detail.
The one above shows a traditionally-dressed grandmother figure, long white dress edged in black Pueblo patterns, high white moccasins, and a shawl, holding three small children in her arms and on her lap. She wears a bead necklace summoned from the same clay as her body, and earrings made of tiny turquoise nuggets. Her hair is pulled back and tied in the traditional bun, with bangs on her forehead. And she and each of the children adhere to the common form for storyteller figures with regard to the story itself, mouths open in a roundish “O” to indicate speech.
As an aside, those open mouths would prove to be a lesson in cultural norms where children are concerned. Every Pueblo child knows exactly what they represent; they are simply an ordinary part of life. But one day, a white woman walked into the gallery with her adopted (a fact that came out in discussion) non-Native child, approximately four years old. The little girl saw the storytellers on the shelf and promptly hid behind her mother’s legs. She looked back at me, then tugged at her mother’s skirts and asked in a loud whisper, “Mommy, why are the little kids scared?”
To her, a mouth open in an “O” meant fright.
I had to bite down hard on my tongue to keep from laughing (her mother already was, because she was so very serious and it was so very cute), but I didn’t want to embarrass the child, nor to make her more apprehensive than she clearly already was. I explained to her that the “O” was just a shape that showed that they were all talking, and that the grandmother was telling stories to the children. It mollified her a bit, but she seemed still unconvinced that they were not afraid of something.
Perhaps I should simply have told her that the shape of those open mouths meant love.
Because that’s what it is: a manifestation of love, this passing down of the old stories, most of which have a lesson buried somewhere in them. It’s time with grandparents, but it’s also teaching, and both are loving acts.
It’s even love when all it is is play, as with the other work by Juanita shown here, below:
In this work, there is no actuals storyteller figure, unless you count the pot itself. But the Pueblo’s micaceous pottery tells many stories, and perhaps for children at play around its room, they are able to hear them anyway.
Of course, as Native children grow older, their lessons become more pointed, and their obligations more specific. By preadolescence, they are learning traditional ways, which may or may not be allocated according to gender roles as the outside world defines them. In this part of the world (and, I suspect, nearly universally across Indian Country), young boys are taught to hunt and fish from a fairly young age. Girls may be taught cooking and other skills deemed more traditionally “feminine,” but such definitions are not universal; some of our cultures raise girls as well to be warriors as well as boys.
Nevertheless, such activities sometimes make it into traditional art, whether the teaching aspect is the focus or not. Above is one of Frank Rain Leaf’s small acrylic paintings, one that depicts the traditional rabbit hunt, part of the formative training of Pueblo boys (and a traditional practice that they will continue as men). It is, however the outside world might see it, another expression of love, this training in the old skills that will also leave young men well-situated to provide for the families they will most likely have one day.
Both boys and girls learn to plant, to till and cultivate, to harvest. The peoples of this area have been agricultural specialists for millennia — as, indeed, have many of our other peoples derided (incorrectly) as “nomadic.” It’s not nomadic to maintain a particular set of homes that exist in harmony with the land, with the wildlife, and with the patterns of crop and plant growth. But that is, mostly, a lesson for another time.
Many of our peoples have been blessed by the love of three spirits in the form of sustenance. We call them The Three Sisters: Corn, beans, and squash. All three are indigenous to this land mass; al three have sustained our peoples since the time before time. Most years, we plant all three. But perhaps none is more revered, nor more welcomed, than the first sister, the spirit of the corn.
This was our garden some eight or nine years ago, in a particularly lush, rain-filled year. We are already planning for a large set of gardens this year (we normally have two or three spread across the land, plus one for herbs and at least one for flowers). But for our peoples, corn plays very specific, integral roles in our cultures and lifeways.
Corn is sustenance, of course: eaten straight from the cob; as part of tortillas or frybread or corn cakes or cornbread; dried with lime and turned into hominy for posole. Ears of corn, particular the colored variants we call Indian corn, are offerings and art. And the planting and cultivation of it is an art, too, one that is passed down through families along with the seed kernels. Here, there are Corn Maidens to personify and protect its spirit, and Corn Dances to honor its gifts.
That was, in fact, the name Wings gave to a simple pair of slab earrings, ajouré cornstalks extending upward across the surface: Corn Dance.
They embodied the gift of the corn, an expression of the love of the spirits for us in the first instance, and of those in our families who turn the corn into food in the second. But they were also a nod to a different act and expression of love: that of dance, which functions in multiple ways. For us, dance is many things: an expression of joy or sorrow or resolve or honor; a way of showing respect to an elder, an ancestor, the spirits, even a horse; a means of community participation and engagement; a method of teaching the younger generations about tradition and culture.
I mentioned the Corn Maidens above. They are spirit beings of a sort, ones specific to Pueblo peoples, protectors of the corn of givers of its gifts. They have also long served as the model for one of Wings’s signature series, The Mona Lisa On the Rio Grande.
This series represents a distinctly feminine ethos and identity, one grounded in spirit even as it emerged from the earth itself. It’s a collection of necklaces that serve as the head, face, and headdress of a Maiden: a gemstone (mot often turquoise, but not always), bezel-set and held firmly in the embrace of a bold sterling silver setting. The stone serves as head and face; the silver setting, the traditional heavy tablita headdress. Much like carved katsinam, they are designed to embody powerful spirits, and to imbue the wearer with the qualities for which they are known. Wings also infuses each with unique symbolism and power, and a unique identity related directly to the spirit powers she represents. This one he entitled Moon Spirit: so named for the crescent moons that edged her “face,” and for her protective feminine nature, much like the moon who we call Grandmother.
Of course sometimes it’s simpler than that, the symbolism more attenuated from form and shape, but no less powerful for that.
Wings has created a number of works that invoke the power and identity of Mother Earth, whether by allusion or directly by name. Sometimes, he refers simply to “Earth,” without a parental descriptor, but the meaning remains. Such was the case with one of his more recent works, shown directly above: From the Heart of the Earth. It’s a nod in the direction of her identity as woman, as mother, as a spirit connected to a physical being with, in a manner of speaking, blood and bone, mind and heart. And it’s a reminder of her love for us, expressed through her many gifts to us, even though we, like spoiled children, are too often dismissive and ungrateful.
Sometimes, however, the expressions of love run the other way.
One of the works Wings was most honored to create is the rose pin shown directly above. It was a very special commission from a very dear friend, a work that she intended to (and eventually did) give to her mother as a Christmas gift. She is non-Native, but her love for her elders and ancestors runs no less deep, and she had come to a point where she was feeling deeply the separation from those who had walked on. She wanted to give her mother something that would embody the spirits of both her own mother and father, our friend’s grandparents, and she settled on a pin in the shape of a rose.
It’s not clear from the photo, but the very center of the flower is solid gold. That bit of ingot was once her grandmother’s wedding ring. The rose itself represented her grandfather’s most-loved avocation, raising and tending his prized roses. And she asked Wings to create something that would bring together both motifs in a way that would honor their spirits and her love for them and for her mother, as well as her mother’s love for her parents. This pin was the result, and to this day, it remains one of the works of which he is most proud.
There is, however, one other collection in his body of work that represents love, and familial love at that, at the most personal of levels.
It’s the Warrior Woman series, mostly pins but on rare occasion, as with my own, a pendant. I’ve written at length about this series on a number of occasions: He made the first one nearly twenty years ago as a gift for his mother. She was, at that time, engaged in her own very personal war with diabetes that had gone too-long undiagnosed, and he was the one who took her, four or five days a week, to dialysis. Growing up watching her manage her large family and keep to the old ways even as she was forced to walk in two worlds, he always said that he was the strongest woman he knew; that was only reinforced by the courage and strength with which she met the final challenge to her health and well-being.
The pin he made for her was so well-received that he was inspired to make additional versions, each unique, for sale in his gallery. He has always believed that women are stronger warriors than men, and he created the first grouping to honor women, and to continue to honor his mother, as well. When she walked on eighteen years ago, he began creating them in her memory. The most recent is the one shown here, a pin entitled The Butterfly’s Song. It’s a call to remember the songs that are sun even as they go unheard by most, to honor the work that women and those less visible do, work that ensures the survival of the people, even when it goes uncredited in a dominant culture that better values male “warriors.”
There is one image shown here today that I have not mentioned yet: the one at the very top of this entry. The photo is of an ancient petroglyph found not far from here. It’s one of a series of images Wings shot on film at the same time as he took the one we featured here yesterday. As always, it’s never wise to assume that one can interpret literal meaning at a remove of a millennium and more, but for the people descended from the artists, it’s perhaps a more reliable interpretation, one grounded as it is in ancestral memory. The name of this photo is Mother Earth, so-called because it appears to show a female figure, one that seems to be [rather hugely] pregnant. What is interesting to me is that on either side of her round body are symbols that are widely regarded as representing the Four Sacred Directions (or, in some cultures, the Four Winds). To me, she looks like the original Earth Mother: she whose body begat the world, the winds and the directions with it. If so, it’s an expression of a great gift, and one of great love and love of family, too, albeit in perhaps a slightly different form than how we usually conceive it.
But in our cultures, the love of family extends in all directions: forward and backward in an infinite sacred hoop.
~ 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.
