After a beautiful day yesterday spent mostly on the road in pursuit of a long-scheduled errand, today our spirits have come crashing back to earth. It was inevitable, given the date yesterday and the events involved, even moreso given the fact that we have known that there would be no resolution for some time yet.
And yet, despite this unsettled feeling that surrounds us, being home this day feels as though we are sheltered in an oasis of sanity, a place of refuge, of sanctuary.
It won’t last, of course; there is too much evil abroad for that. For the remainder of this month and this year, we will be fighting the ravages of climate change and drought, the dangers of viral pandemic, and the depredations of raw and violent fascism, none of which can be divorced from their origins in genocidal colonialism. But on this day, we feel inexplicably optimistic, ready to face what comes and to fight, yes, but also ready to survive and somehow sure of our ability to do so.
It may not seem logical to others who do not share our worldviews and lifeways, but it is there all the same. We take our cues from our natural world, from this earth and sky that hold us in their collective embrace, from the spirits who animate it and who emerge to rise from it.
Our peoples’ traditional teachings, belonging to Indigenous cultures and ways all across this land, are filled with stories of emergence: of the earth as we know it, of the spirits, of our very selves. Sometimes it’s emergence as metaphor, birthed in the waters or descended from the skies; sometimes it’s emergence in the mot literal sense, and upward climb from the underworld into a new world in the light.
Such journeys are their own process of birth and rebirth, of metamorphosis and transcendence, and they are unquestionably arduous, for both body and spirit. They are also necessary, and in times of great evil, they become more necessary than ever.
That time is now.
And so, as we watch yet a third fire burn in the wooded slopes outside the window, this one right at the base of the mountains, sufficiently close to the send the smoke plume directly to us on the morning wind, we feel the earth shifting beneath our feet: an awakening, a turning, a rising to a new emergence.
These are the days of prophecy, and our ancestors prepared us for these times.
Today’s featured work embodies the times, and the prophecies, and the spirits that will be our partners in this new emergence, and does so in powerfully beautiful fashion. From its description in the relevant section of the Bracelets Gallery here on the site:
Earth Rising Cuff Bracelet
It is a time of elemental change, Earth rising to link past and present and future in a sacred hoop of protection and survival. Wings links them in more tangible ways with this spectacularly complex cuff, one that fuses one of his very early pieces into a whole new work that honors elemental powers, sacred numbers, and ancient spirits. It begins with a solid sterling silver cuff, scored freehand into eight separate lines, the number of the cardinal and ordinal directions. At either end, a sterling silver overlay in the shape of Grandmother Turtle, she who holds the world on her back, climbs steadily upward. Each turtle is cut, freehand, with a tiny jeweler’s saw, articulated head, legs, and tail each stamped with traditional patterns to form scales and provide texture and dimensionality. Each turtle’s shell is gently scalloped with stampwork around the edge, a Morning Star stretched across the shell’s center. Wings brought old to new and melded them together at the top of the cuff with the addition of one of his very early pieces from his personal collection: a hat pin in the form of a medicine shield that doubles as a medicine wheel, cut freehand and centered by Buffalo’s skull, our Elder Brother of the Earth. The horizontal spokes of the medicine shield are sculpted and stamped in the shape of a ceremonial pipe, eagle feathers suspended at either end. The entire wheel is overlaid onto a backing of hand-hammered sterling silver. Cuff band is 7″ long by roughly 1-1/8″ across; turtle overlays are 1-1/4″ long by 15/16″ across at the widest point; buffalo medicine wheel overlay is 1-7/16″ high by 1-3/8″ across at the widest point (dimensions approximate). Other views shown above and below.
Sterling silver
$1,900 + shipping, handling, and insurance
I have said elsewhere this day that I am numb, and that’s true, so far as it goes. We have had to numb ourselves to the rollercoaster that is this colonial country’s politics, because when you are on the receiving end of the extermination efforts those politics are designed to enforce, it’s the only way you survive.
But being numb to what colonialism tries to demand of us does not mean that we are numb to the world around us.
Indeed, it’s exactly the opposite: The more the colonial world tries to bend us, to break us, to kill us outright and on the down-low, the more deeply we feel the roots that hold us, the more starkly we recall the lessons of ancestral memory, the more acutely we perceive the light of the world we are charged with creating . . . and the more attuned we are to the microscopic shifts of our Mother Earth and the spirits who are both her creators and her children. They are rising now, as in the old days of prophecy, to a new emergence.
Whatever the rest of the world does or declines to do, we are rising with them.
~ 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.
