The Ruins at Casa Grande

This is not really a performing arts event, or if it is, it is one that occurred at least six hundred years ago. The Hohokam Indians of southern Arizona had a prosperous civilization between Phoenix and Tucson between A.D. 1200 and 1450, at which time they disappeared. I took an archaeological tour of the remains of their civilization, sponsored by The Archaeological Conservancy, a nonprofit organization that acquires and preserves endangered archeological sites across America (www.americanarchaelology.org). The guide for our group of eight was Allen Dart, M.A., a professional archaeologist and Executive Director of the Old Pueblo Archaeology Center in Tucson (www.oldpueblo.org).

We began with the ruins of the “Great House” at Casa Grande, AZ. “Casa Grande” means “great house.” The town is named after the ruins. The great house was four-story public building, probably a meeting place and a center of government, built around 1300. It is made of adobe-like bricks, which essentially “melt” in the rains, so it is badly decayed. It has survived seven centuries mainly because the bricks are cut from the rock-hard caliche soil of southern Arizona. That is soil saturated with calcium compounds, the bane of gardeners today. There isn’t much rain in southern Arizona (only about 12 inches a year today – no telling what it was 700 years ago), so the building has stood up surprisingly well, considering the technology. The Park Service put a protective roof over the ruins in 1932, to slow down its rate of decay. Since the 1800’s, the Park Service has also added several structural supports to keep the remaining walls from collapsing.

The great house is interesting architecturally. Its exterior walls are not straight on the vertical dimension, but curved inward toward the top, giving the whole structure a graceful look, like a piece of pottery. This design supposedly added greater strength to the overall structure when the wooden roof beams tied the top of the walls together. At least that is what our archaeologist said, but that doesn’t fit with my intuition of how the forces would work. In any case, it would have been a beautiful building when new in 1300 or so.

The interior rooms are small. Even the large ones are only about 10 x 14, although ceilings are 20 feet high. Interior doorways are so low that you would have to be about five feet tall to use them, or bow to pass through. They are so narrow that you have to turn sideways to use most of them. I don’t know the average height of the Hohokams, but I suspect that the shape of the openings in the structure are due to a combination of temperature management and structural necessity (there are no arches or non-adobe lintels).

The rooms are now derelict, full of bird droppings and rodent holes, with the walls sporting carved graffiti from the 1800’s. The graffiti is itself interesting sometimes. Travelers apparently stopped here for shelter in the 19th century. “Carlos 1889,” carved his name about 12 feet up a wall, so there might have been a wooden floor part way up at one time, or else Carlos stood on some wooden structure, now lost, or else Carlos was a giant. Thanks, Carlos. You could have left us a little more detail.

There is some speculation that the great house was used for astronomical observations. There are a couple of interesting holes in the south façade that archaeologists say provide a line of sight with the sun at summer and winter solstices. That seems plausible, but I doubt that the entire compound would have been devoted to that single purpose.

Around the great house, on a flat site about four acres, there are low adobe walls, remnants of outbuildings, which are thought to have been used for storage of grains, or possibly as animal pens. There is no archeological evidence that anyone ever lived at the great house or its outbuildings (i.e., no fireplaces found), so it was probably strictly a government compound and a general meeting place. If the outbuildings were indeed used for food storage, that implies that they had a system of taxation, and if so, you wonder what public services the taxes supported. Probably religious ceremonies, but who knows. I guess we still have the same question today about how our taxes are used!

The Hohokams had no written language so we don’t know much about them, or even why they disappeared. One prominent theory, endorsed by archaeologist Dart, is that a long period of drought dropped the water level of the nearby Gila River so low that it could not fill the irrigation canals any more. So the crops died and the civilization collapsed. Another theory is that there was some sort of a political revolution when the rulers became tyrannical (as rulers are wont to do), leading to destruction of the social order. The revolution theory and the drought theory are not incompatible. My favorite speculation is that the Hohokam people did not disappear, but just dispersed. Their descendants are, by Native American oral tradition, the Tohono O’odham Indians around Tucson today.

One more interesting feature of the ruins site is the ancient ball court near the great house. The court is much smaller than I had imagined, only an oval depression in the soil about fifty yards long. There is some archaeological evidence that such structures were used for a kind of team ballgame, and there is some documentary evidence associated with similar sites in Central America. The speculation is that the Hohokam would have used a stone ball wrapped in leather, or possibly a ball made of a hard, plastic-like substance composed of hardened tree resin and an unidentified waxy material. What the game was like or how it was played, or why, is unknown. Was it just for fun? Was there betting? Or were they not really “games” at all, but deadly serious theater symbolically representing cosmic forces, or even contests among competing tribes? Archaeologist Dart suggested that the ballgames were discontinued in the 1300’s, so the culture must have evolved. The so-called ball courts could have been used also for theater or for speeches, as the acoustics are very good around the rim, for someone speaking in the center, as Mr. Dart demonstrated. Normally, the public is not allowed into the environmentally and archaeologically sensitive area where the ball court is found, but we were special because we had a card-carrying archaeologist with us. (The whole group was closely shadowed by a Park Service ranger the whole time anyway).

After a picnic lunch, the group drove off to visit several other archaeological sites in the area, including the “Grewe” site to the north, where the Hohokam first settled. For reasons unknown, the center of their civilization gradually migrated south to the Casa Grande site. The Grewe site is largely unexcavated, so there is nothing to see but some large, fenced-off, open fields of brush and cactus, and a large Wal-Mart. Dart told us that ancient artifacts were discovered when they dug up the area for the construction of the Wal-Mart, and to their credit, the Wal-Mart people stopped, and changed the whole plan of the store and its parking, to leave the ancient underground artifacts as little disturbed as possible.

We visited a few other sites in the area that only an archaeologist would be able to recognize as ancient ruins, and saw some building foundations and some depressions in the ground that were clearly ball courts, if you knew what you were looking at. It was interesting to realize that all around these small towns like Florence and Coolidge were ancient Indian ruins. You would have to have a trained eye to see it though.

Finally we visited a site called the Poston Butte Ruin, which I think was actually private property for which Dart had been granted access. There we walked over a featureless desert of rolling hills. Except Dart told us they were not “natural” rolling hills but ancient Indian garbage mounds. Once we knew what to look for, it was easy to see five and six-hundred year old pottery shards everywhere, some of them quite beautiful. As the rains fall, the dirt of the trash piles gradually erodes, exposing the piles of broken pots and other artifacts. I found a six-hundred year-old stone scraper tool. It was a thrill to hold it in my hand and wonder about the person who had made it so many centuries ago. Mr. Dart, with his special “archaeologist’s eyes” found a tiny bone carving of a coyote, only an inch long. I could have looked right at that fragment a dozen times and never seen it, but after it was identified, we could see it was a beautiful and detailed work of art. I don’t see how such a carving could have been made with stone-age technology, but there it was.

Naturally, we put all artifacts back on the ground exactly where we had found them. It is pointless to collect such artifacts, and illegal at most sites (i.e, in National Parks), and an anti-scientific vandalism, and a cultural desecration. As we were told. Repeatedly. See http://www.oldpueblo.org/collecting.html for the full speech/sermon.

After a long day of hiking, I got accustomed to walking with my eyes on the ground, alert to the many artifacts that are in this area. I started to develop “archaeologist’s eyes,” maybe a little, and at least, got a good feel for what archaeologists do and what ancient Indian archaeology is like in this part of Arizona.

Native American Art in Santa Fe

The Museum of Contemporary Native Arts recently had its grand re-opening in Santa Fe after a six month renovation. What I saw there was real cutting edge visual arts, nothing like the beaded-moccasin-and-turquoise-bracelet type of show I half expected.

Among several excellent exhibits in the beautiful new galleries, two really stood out. Alaskan artist Nicholas Galanin had two groups of works, both stunning, in an exhibit called "Oblique Drift." One group was “The Imaginary Indian” series. In these, traditional Tlingit masks are attached to a background of French toile, a wallpaper or curtain pattern showing a repetitive monochromatic drawing of a pastoral scene, such as a group of (white, European) people having a lovely picnic under a tree. In some cases the Indian mask is behind the fabric, smothered by it, visible only in bulging outline. In other examples, the mask is attached to the front of the canvas, but disturbingly, the toile pattern extends over the mask, as if the oblivious picnicking youth in the drawing have infected and spread over the Indian tradition like a fungus (which it did, of course). The effect is very powerful.

Another series from this same artist is called “The Curtis Legacy,” referring to 19^th century photographer Edward Curtis who photographed Indians to illustrate the noble savage. Galanin’s pieces are large, almost life-sized color photographs of naked women, many full frontal, bending over backward and literally “in your face” with it, but always covering her own face with a colorful traditional Indian mask; but not even a genuine Tlingit mask, the artist notes on the card. These are manufactured commodity masks from Malaysia, mere tourist souvenirs. (I could find only one cropped sliver of an image from this group on the web, and no photography was allowed in the show). (http://redwillow.wordpress.com)

The effect of these photographs is a startling and moving objection to the mainstream culture’s objectification of the human body in general, and the Native image in particular, and its desacralizing of Native Americans' own sacred images. The pictures are also a commentary on the globalization of cultures, to the loss of some. While these images are ostensibly humorous and ironic, there is also a great deal of anger in them. I could almost hear in these pictures the artist shouting vulgar, witty epithets to Curtis and the larger white society on the topic of the so-called Noble Savage, curses that would make you cry instead of laugh.

Another artist also showed powerfully evocative works in video, in an exhibit called "Round Up." Torry Mendoza presented a series of a half dozen or so short video works of less than 10 minutes each, in which he confronts, analyzes and excoriates the “The Hollywood Indian,” and the feelings and attitudes that have seeped into the mainstream collective consciousness as a result. In “Kemosabe Version 1.0” he remixes conversational snippets between the Lone Ranger and Tonto (from the television series), against a driving techno beat background. As the catalog says, “He scrutinizes the duo’s relationship by remixing a conversation between the two, revealing a master and servant disposition similar to the disparate relationships assumed by the nation-state with Native nations.”

In “Stupid Fucking White Men” he ridicules Kevin Costner’s wannabe Indian persona in the film, Dances With Wolves, by remixing short clips from Costner’s pseudo-Indian dance around a bonfire. The result is hilarious, but as with Galanin’s work, also deeply, bitterly angry. In Red Man and Savages, Mendoza concatenates short clips from Hollywood films in which white men and women played caricatures of Indian parts, stars such as Charles Bronson, Jack Palance, Burt Lancaster, Lee Van Cleef. The stereotypes are patently ridiculous now, but they weren’t then. A couple of the shorts were less impressionistic and more documentary in style, but all aimed to illustrate Hollywood’s history of degrading stereotypes and outright hostility toward Native Americans (think John Wayne in The Searchers). It was a compelling and moving series of short films that I sat through twice.

There were several other exhibitions of outstanding work but these are the ones that captured my imagination most. I was not able to determine if these exhibits are traveling or permanent, and if traveling (most likely) how long they might be expected to remain at the MoCNA. But anyone who has a feeling for contemporary Native Art should pop over to Santa Fe before it is too late. (You can fly direct into Albuquerque and drive to Santa Fe in an hour).

Indian Mini-Film Festival

The Seattle Art Museum put on a two day mini festival of recent films by and about Northwest Native Americans. This was part of an exhibit of arts and culture of the Salish people of Washington State which includes at least 39 recognized tribes.



Fry Bread Babes
Fry Bread Babes was a series of interviews with six Native women about their self image, especially their body concept, today, and as they were growing up. Uniformly, the women said that in their youth they aspired to the mainstream, white ideal presented by mass media, but with age came to various degrees of self-acceptance. It is the same tragedy of female socialization we see in mainstream culture, except there are proportionally more overweight Native women, due to the modern diet and lifestyle. In a way, it might be easier for them to find self-acceptance within the Native culture. This accounts for the title. A fry bread babe, it was explained, is a “round” woman, and I got the sense that it is not entirely pejorative.

Some interesting things: I noticed nearly all the women laughed when they were embarrassed, and it was not the nervous, embarrassed laugh you see in Asia, but a genuine giggle that conveys hilarity, but nevertheless was designed to cover up embarrassment. Then afterward they would say “Excuse me.” I did not know that was a cultural trait.

Another interesting point was that none of the women seemed overly concerned about skin color. It was discussed, but it did not seem a critical issue, as it is among African Americans, for example. Hair quality seemed almost more important to them than skin color. The women were generally not aware of Indian stereotypes until adolescence or later. As with all children, they did not think of themselves as “Indian” until they were identified in school. They were vaguely aware of “Cowboys and Indians” movies and short clips were shown from old movies. But these women did not seem deeply affected by the stereotype, perhaps because Indian women were seldom shown in those movies. They were much more affected by prejudice in school.

This film gave some great insight into Northwest Native culture, from a woman’s point of view, and it is pretty impressive how honest and open the women were, a tribute to the filmmakers’ skills. It would be interesting to do the same project with much younger women and girls.

Directed by Steffany Suttle. color, 30 min. See http://www.aifisf.com/aiff/2008/?fMenu=film&q=&fContent=film&id=124


Princess Angeline
Princess Angeline was the daughter of Chief Seattle. Even after the Chief died, she continued to live downtown, selling clams and baskets on street corners until her death in 1896. It was an ignominious end for a princess of any kind. The early white settlers drove the Duwamish tribe out of their homeland, which included the whole Seattle area. Houses were burned, people were murdered, and the Duwamish river, which enters Puget Sound at the heart of the city, was re-engineered for ships, killing the Salmon runs and destroying tributary rivers. This movie gives an honest historical account of the Duwamish tribe’s ordeal, including the treaty that Chief Seattle signed with the territorial governor that essentially gave the Seattle area to the settlers. It is a fascinating and sorrowful history. Princess Angeline refused to leave town, staying in her wooden shack on the waterfront at the base of Pike street until her death.

The Duwamish tribe has never been recognized by the federal government because they can’t prove that they have been a coherent culture through history. As several professors and lawyers pointed out, that is not surprising, since they were willfully dispersed and destroyed as a people by the early settlers. Today the Duwamish have an association with over 500 surviving members but they are still not officially recognized and have no reservation, rights, or government support. Beside the history lesson then, the film is an advocacy piece for formal recognition of the tribe. They did gain recognition at the end of the Clinton administration, but that was immediately reversed by GW Bush.

I enjoyed the historical photographs, especially the old pictures of Seattle, my home town. Actually, Chief Seattle is buried in Suquamish, a small town next to mine, and my house sits where the Chief himself surely trod at one time. The film made me aware of my historical moment. Had I been born 150 years ago, or 150 years hence, I would have very different attitudes and values about the Duwamish and their plight.

One criticism of the film is that it failed to address the significance of getting government recognition for the Duwamish. The people in the film said it was important for their individual and cultural self-esteem, but that begs the question, why? Nobody doubts that the Duwamish are a people. Why do they specifically need the blessing of the federal government to shore up their self-esteem? I think a partial answer was given in a scene showing a group of descendants of the pioneers, all prominent, well-dressed, rich white people, handing over a check to fund a Duwamish tribal center in Seattle. At the ceremony, a bejeweled and sequined woman said, as sincerely as she could manage, something like “On behalf of the pioneers, we are sorry for what we did.” I think that probably goes a long way in helping self-esteem, and maybe that is all the Duwamish want to hear from the feds. But I don’t think that is the whole story.

It is probably more about land, money, and natural resources. If the Duwamish were federally recognized, would that mean they could exercise land claims to most of the Seattle Area? There surely would be legal and financial consequences of federal recognition, but the film focused only on the need for cultural self-esteem. I thought that was disingenuous. I realize a short documentary must have boundaries, but it was just not believable that the only, or main thing the Duwamish would like from the federal government is an apology. I sensed a hidden agenda and was disappointed it remained hidden.

Directed by Sandra Osawa. color, 42 min. See http://upstreamvideos.com/wp/videos/princess-angeline/

Where I’m From
This was a short piece created by students in a workshop by Longhouse Media, a youth program that supports the expression of Native youth through movie making. If I understood correctly, this group of about 10 teenagers designed and produced this film in five days, which is pretty amazing.

The film was nominally designed to address the question, where is home? The question was addressed mainly in voice-over and printed titles. There wasn’t much coherence to the visuals: a girl doing tai chi or some such, interspersed with shots of seagulls, for example. That juxtaposition itself was actually interesting, and even though it did not seem to mean anything, it hinted at a style of visual nonsequitur that could be something new and interesting in the field of editing. Other pictures were of the Pike Place Market and the district there around First Avenue. I think only two of the students were in front of the camera, the rest behind the scenes.

Sadly, the projectionist was tuned out and did not realize that the aspect ratio was wrong for this showing. What a shame for such a sincere effort to not be seen under ideal conditions. It was a respectable effort and I was pretty impressed by what can be done, with expert guidance, in such a short time. They should have had a second crew film “the making of” and tacked that on the end! See http://www.swinomish.org/departments/native_lens/about_native_lens.html


March Point
This feature-length documentary followed three boys, aged about 15 to 17, from the Swinomish Tribe, which is located on Fidalgo Island, north of Seattle, as they learned how to make a video documentary. They interviewed each other about their difficult past, how they got involved with drugs and drinking, got in trouble with the law, and ended up in rehab. During treatment they found the opportunity to learn how to make videos. They took it up with disinterest at first but then became committed to their work.

Their work was to document the circumstances of the Shell Oil refinery on March Point, a peninsula that according to an 1850 treaty, belongs to the Swinomish. The executive they interviewed at the refinery explained that Shell bought the property in the 1950s from the legal, registered owners. It’s an interesting situation in which the land was stolen, but since the thieves’ society is the one that writes the laws, they had legal ownership and Shell’s purchase of it was therefore perfectly legitimate. So the Swinomish claim to the land, while valid, is hopelessly doomed.

Alongside that theme, the film documents the lifestyle of the Swinomish people, whose reservation is right next to the refinery. They are, and always have been a fishing people. They still live on a diet almost exclusively of seafood, including clams, crabs, salmon, and so on. But the water around their reservation has become so polluted that all the fish are seriously contaminated. Yet as a tribal elder says, we can’t stop eating it. We can’t stop fishing. It has been our way of life for a thousand years.

The boys film all this and I felt that I got a rare glimpse of the inside of everyday tribal life on the reservation. It’s one thing to appreciate the art and culture of Native people through museum exhibits and quite another to understand the everyday life. The view this film gave was not idealized or trying to make any political statement about tribal life. Although a lot of it was heart-rending, it was not intended to be. I think only young people could have made this film Any adults would have been far too self conscious.

The boys mount a fruitless letter writing campaign to the governor, about the status of March Point and they travel to the state capitol to interview her, unsuccessfully. Eventually, they do find an audience with Washington State Senator Patty Murray and their representative in congress. They spend a week or so in D.C. with their camera. On a park bench on the Capitol Mall, they agree that they “didn’t fit in,” mainly because they didn’t have suits like everybody else. Upon returning home, one of the boys comments, “When we got back, everything was the same, but we had changed.”

It’s an interesting, competent and inspirational film that speaks volumes about the quality of the support the project had from the Native Lens organization. Of course the boys believe the project was about March Point, unable to see that the real story is their own socialization into responsible adult life, and their journey from hopeless despair to caring about the future.
Color, 60 min. See http://www.marchpointmovie.com/

None of these movies is easily available. I could not find any of them on IMBD, Netflix or Amazon. If you are interested in documentary films about native issues, your best bet is probably to keep an eye on the American Indian Film Institute, which sponsors an annual film festival. See http://www.aifisf.com/aiff/2008/?fMenu=film&q=&fContent=film&id=124

Arvel Bird

Native American fiddler and flautist Arvel Bird presents a blend of new age, country, and folk music, interspersed with plentiful advice to follow your dream, live healthy, never give up, walk the walk, save the environment, and so on. I could have used a lot less homily and a lot more music, for he really is quite talented both on violin and flute (actually, the instruments looked like wooden recorders.

He uses prerecorded accompaniment, swelling and swooning strings, to “augment” his sound, which is totally unnecessary. He is plenty good enough to play straight folk and Native music, but he apparently knows what works best for him. Bird is well-recognized, having released a dozen CDs and was named Native American artist of the year in 2007. He has toured with Glen Campbell, Loretta Lynn, Louise Mandrell, and others. This picture is from his web site, http://www.arvelbird.com, where you can also sample his sound. He was wearing some kind of weird gypsy outfit when I saw him.

I caught him at Javalina’s coffee shop in Tucson, a mecca for regional talent. He performed with Grammy nominee Will Clipman, a gifted percussionist, who we did not hear enough from. Bird kept him strictly in the background. Bird’s act emphasizes the kind of Native American music that practically defines new age; dreamy glissandi and multi-octave phrasing. This is not hard core “Hey-ya, hey-ya” ceremonial music. We are encouraged to imagine a red hawk soaring, rather than to appreciate the music on its own merits, a disservice to both the hawk and the music. His style is at its best when blended with rhythmic country and even jazz riffs, but there wasn’t much of that. I’m afraid I do not appreciate new age music, but I was aware of Bird’s (and Clipman’s) considerable talents and wished I could have heard them cut loose. Still, Bird’s is a high-energy act worth looking for.

Javalinas' performance calendar is http://www.javalinas.com/calendar.html .

Contemporary Native American Art

The Tucson Museum of Art is the last stop on the tour of a marvelous exhibit of North American native art. The exhibition is second in a three part series called “Changing Hands”, organized and circulated by the Museum of Arts and Design of New York. The 150 pieces of visual art are stunning in their diversity, creativity, and thoughtfulness. I don’t know what’s going to happen to this show after it’s over on May 11, 2008, so maybe you should just go to Tucson and see it while you can.

I had my doubts about a show called Changing Hands: Art Without Reservation- Contemporary Native North American Art from the West, Northwest and Pacific. I expected familiar images and crafts: Kachina dolls, Haida masks, beaded moccasins, carved ivory amulets, painted Kwakiutl cedar chests, and so on. What I found instead took me by surprise.

Beaded Converse tennis shoes? Uncountable tiny blue glass beads are sewn to the canvas to make the shoes blue. Like nearly every piece in this exhibit, this also presents social commentary. These are not your mother’s beaded moccasins! The struggle for Native Americans between tradition and contemporary life is starkly expressed throughout the show.
("Shoes" [The actual title of the piece is a long Indian word I did not write down correctly, so I had to give it my own name. Sorry. Teri Greeves, 1970])

Rant: Photography is not allowed in the exhibit, a stupid rule, it seems to me. I don’t see how the artists’ intellectual property or the museum’s financial investment is threatened by amateur photography. I had to cull these few pictures from the internet. Perhaps the fear is that a blogger will show pictures of the works without proper attribution to the artist, which is exactly what happens when you have to cull pictures from the internet. Rant off.

I can only describe a few of my favorites, although there were literally dozens of mind-bending works. One was a kind of postmodern totem pole. It was a cubist oil painting of totemic images. The painting was curved into a half-cylinder and displayed vertically in a vaguely totem pole shape. It thus had recognizable totemic images in characteristic Northwest Indian style, but portraying multiple perspectives at once, as cubism can do, simulating the experience one would have of actually walking around a real totem pole. What a concept. Was it a totem pole or not? Was it a memory of a totem pole? Was it a translation of a totem pole? Again, past and present are forced to coexist in tightly wound tension.
(Totemic Theory 2, Clarissa Hudson, 2001)

Nearby was a more traditional 6-foot high totem pole carved from cedar. (This show was very well curated, as the placement of these totem-like pieces indicates.) It told a story in symbols, as all totem poles do, but a modern one. A sun figure was on top, represented as a face-like circular mask. Long cedar bark “hair” suggested rainfall, with the water collected in the base, a black wooden chest with faint images of salmon as if seen through translucent water. Between the sun and the water was an Eagle (which is usually on top) and it was doubled over, reaching down to the salmon below. There were a couple of smaller face-like circular images on stems extending from the “shoulders” of the sun. Possibly they represent humanity, and if so, having them the highest images in the totem, higher even than the sun, would further this hierarchical existential portrait. The piece was called “Rainbow People” so that’s a clue (By Tim Paul, 1999).

Near the totems I sneaked a shaky photo of “Cigar Store Indian,”a wooden cigar store Indian with a small black-and-white TV in place of its face, and on the TV were old westerns from the 1950’s – Indians attacking the cavalry and being slaughtered. (Cigar Store Indian. Doug Coffin, 1998)


Etched glass is not a traditional Native artistic medium, yet glass art is pervasive in the Northwest today so it makes sense to see a traditional shamanic amulet represented in glass. The piece is about 12 inches long and 8 inches high, far too large to be an actual amulet, yet the whale-image is covered in animistic spirit-forms. On the reverse side, not shown, is a stylized human being laid out lengthwise, as if it were either an embryo or a mummy. The modern Indian is thus contained entirely within the spiritual images and meanings of the past. Is it the frozen, departed spirit of the Indian, or is it the new Indian spirit about to be reborn from the hard, cold, modern glass? (Shaman's Amulet. Preston Singletary, 2001)


I’m not sure what to make of this large piece representing racks of drying fish, all in aluminum or steel. The circular drying hoops are about 2 meters across and the thousands of tiny metal fish are suspended from the spanning metal "sticks." The drying of the catch on such racks was the “daily bread” and sustenance of traditional people. Now it is merely a geometric abstraction in steel. I’m not sure what it means. (Eric Robertson, The Hub, 2001)

This dish-shaped pattern was called “Pieces of the Puzzle”. It is an attractive piece in its own right, with small images in Northwest Indian colors and motifs from ravens, frogs, whales, and so forth. However others are pure abstractions, just lines and gestures. Yet those abstractions are more than casual “brushstrokes.” Even the simplest of them incorporates the characteristic curves and shapes that define this kind of art, perhaps suggesting how the traditional forms are so deeply embedded in the artist’s being that even a casual gesture reveals them. (Pieces of the Puzzle. Steve Smith, 2004)

There was a surprising amount of anger in this show. Surprising to me, anyway. Of course artists always try to speak from the emotional core of their being, and I would expect reverence for the past, identity confusion, and even ironic statements about modern life. I did not expect the rage, the deep bitterness, expressed in so many pieces. I’m sure that is just my white man’s naivety, but I was genuinely taken aback.

There is also a good deal of humor, but the sense of heartfelt sorrow over what has been lost is palpable. It is a very edgy show in that regard.

One poignant piece seemed un-self-conscious. It had a rather lengthy artist’s statement on the legend card in which she proudly declared that she cared not at all for tradition and was strictly a modern artist. Yet the piece itself was sort of a Chagall-like collocation of dreamy figures and patterns, with small drawings of teepees and huddled people, all on a large scraped hide. (Native Woman's Dreams. Juanita Padhopony, 1994).

Indian Powwow

On New Year’s Day, 2008, I joined hundreds of Native Americans at the Rillito Race Track in Tucson, to usher in the new year with a Powwow. Several dozen tribes of “Indians” (as they call themselves) were represented, most from the southwestern U.S. but many from Mexico and some from Central and South America.

There was a fancy dance competition extending over several days. “Fancy” is when the performers are dressed in brightly colored regalia including feathers, furs, masks, shells and bells. It is pretty spectacular. Music is mostly tom-tom but sometimes flute and chanting as well.

There were also some serious “ceremonial” dances designed to help the New Year find its feet, I guess, and I was not allowed to photograph those. I’m afraid I did not understand the cultural significance of these dances but admired them nevertheless. They were just as complex as the fancy dancing but less flamboyant and conducted almost naked, which had to be chilly.

I noticed that it was usually the older men who were the expert dancers. Their skill stood out dramatically from the others. They lifted their legs high and stomped the earth like they really meant it. But there were a few young people who were also extremely talented and I was pleased to see that the culture is being effectively transmitted.

There were several tent stalls selling fantastically beautiful jewelry. The silver work is extremely fine. I had to tie my wife down with ropes. There was one Dineh (Navajo) craftsman whose work could be in a museum. I think coral and turquoise are colors that really look wonderful together. The prices were not cheap, it seemed to me: small earrings for $200 and bracelets up to $600. But according to my wife, these were very reasonable prices for fine jewelry such as this was. While I would have liked to have seen some bargains, I’m glad that the crafts people are getting paid what they are worth. They did manage to pry a few bucks out of us.

Other stalls sold Indian blankets, tom-toms, clothing, pillows, toys, knick-knacks, cosmetics and medicines. I especially appreciated the hand-held tom-toms, some of which have a deep, resonant tone with complex overtones. I should have bought one, as they good looking and under $100, but what would I do with it? I listened in on a conversation with an older Indian who was considering buying one. He inquired about the hide, whether it was deer or elk, and how it was scraped and stretched. He listened to the sound and I noticed that after striking the drum he very gently touched his fingernail to the underside of the skin to produce a variety of sounds. Who knew? He didn’t buy at that time though.

We walked around for half a day and enjoyed the sights and sounds. There were quite a few white folks there although mostly Indians. The festival actually went on for ten days with dancing, singing and crafts competition. My feeling was that I had participated in an authentic Indian celebration, not a show-biz representation of an Indian celebration, so I was glad to have experienced the real thing. At the same time, I’m sure with more organization, marketing savvy, and showmanship, this event could be a huge tourist draw for a much wider segment of society, a big money-maker. But then it wouldn’t be real.

(It's a shame I don't understand the dances, but even I could see that this fellow represented death, or ancestors, or possibly even the just-past year, now dead. Notice the skull at the center of the headdress. His white painted face suggests a ghost, and his costume, with the white fringes suggests a skelton. Notice how extremely light he is on his feet, almost floating above the ground, like a ghost. The shell-rattles around his ankles punctuated his every step. The incessant tom-toms put you into a kind of trance until you start to half-believe you are watching a ghost! It was a fantastic performance.)


Here are a few other scenes from the Festival:
This woman was weaving a pattern so fine, I couldn't even see the threads when I looked right over her shoulder!

A very nice tattoo. Looks Mayan to me.

My wife resisting the urge to purchase a leather shawl.