A picture is worth a thousand words.
There are two sides to every story
Two statements that come to mind while thinking about the experience of quarantine. Although admittedly as an artist a lot of our time is spent in the studios or garage or home office space creating. The shock to my system was knowing that what I had taken for granted were the little things of venturing out to the store and general interactions.
During this time I’ve been carving in a new space that has no windows and it’s been quite an experience. In times carving you can find yourself working away and what some call ‘the zone’ where you find a place where moving forward feels effortless and you are learning from persistence and feeling the work, you understand something and feel it all at once. Although, when you don’t have a window to tell you when the time changes it becomes a whole new world indeed.
A fellow creative shared the idea of how damaging it is that Native people are written largely in fiction, most recently along side the Twilight saga. Then I recall the writings of Karl May who wrote fiction that influenced generations to this day. A fictional Native character called Winnetou was a hero archetype fighting alongside Old Shatterhand. These writings spanned a very long period of time of which I have limited exposure to but overall what troubled me in my experience traveling in Europe to exhibit mainly in Prague and blind romanticism.
One evening over dinner in the country side at the table I was joking about the absurd flat aspect of this hero with a small group. I had learned that Karl May had claimed to people that he visited the US when he had in fact not. I noticed one of the men in the group growing increasingly upset and he finally broke to tell me I was insulting his hero of his childhood.
He explained to me that Winnetou was needed to provide a moral idea about connecting to the land and fight oppression. It intrigued me to hear his view but I had to come back to my point with it all. A fictional writer who never came here lead millions of people over time to think of us as one group. So wherever I travel and my friends who are Native that go arrive with expectations of being a hero archetype on horseback with long black hair. A role that has always been an actor wearing red paint to ‘play Indian’.
This brings me back to the Bane character who like many Natives endured great tragedy and suffering. I told him about the fishing rights movement to protect our treaties broken and the people who were under siege. That life was not entertainment. It is a bigger picture. I told him about our weavers who sold their basketry for pennies on the dollar to survive. How much work it takes to harvest material from the land and not take too much. At that time Christopher Nolan had written Bane into the third franchise of Batman. It gave us a reference point of discussion and I could reference Bane as an example. He was ex military and I noted his shemagh that he was wearing. He said it wasn’t something standard issue but one he had received in trade. He admired an abalone necklace I was wearing that was a combination of a shell my uncle had given me and beads hand rolled the old way by cousin.
It seemed appropriate to make the trade and I told him and the others at the table to be sure to tell the people they know that we aren’t as we are written in movies. I knew they would likely search online about the Coast Salish people and there wouldn’t be a lot on their at that time.
As we exchanged items and the guests seemed happy about the resolve I had to point out something that stood out to me. Knowing he was ex military and that he must be familiar with “false/stolen valor”. I informed them that where we come from what bothered me about people wearing headdresses at festivals we insulting for that very meaning of what it symbolizes. That in our region the items we own aren’t manufactured for a fashion statement but earned. Let them know my culture is not a costume. Think about the companies to make those items so you can play an idea of being wild. The wild west always implies a world without order when the people were connected not fictional but living by survival.
I went on to talk about our cedar capes and hats that they frowned at because they looked Asian in appearance. Yet I pointed out the purpose of them and harvesting cedar from what I know of it shedding rain from us and being so effective. And that in time of assimilation many of our people fell ill because they were forced to wear cotton that didn’t suit the region. Giving way to my best guess hypothermia. If we are on the water and one were to wear a cotton hoodie if would hold in the cold more than anything.
It also allowed me to tell them about the small pox time. The devastation of our people and losing 90% of our population. I noticed the group become uncomfortable about the subject after all we were at a dinner table but I figured it was necessary to share knowing I was only going to have a limited time to communicate a perspective that would otherwise be a missed opportunity. So I acknowledged that it wasn’t a pretty story but one they should be aware of. That fiction and romanticism can be dangerously deceptive vs intention.
I’m reflecting on this and it brought to mind the importance of having talks that aren’t easy. That using filters may make things appear pretty and appealing at times. It also reminds me that putting on a mask may not have saved our people from plague but we had the technology long ago then to know the clothing that suited our landscape and kept us safe.
When the lock down came. I gave my son the shemagh that man gave me because we didn’t have any dust masks left in the shop. But I showed him how they are tied and how I learned about them. I had an older face mask with filters that felt overkill and my son said “Jesus dad you look like Bane, you’re gonna get us shot”! And it struck me how he was aware of the news and people buying guns and hoarding toilet paper. I was glad he was aware though of the reality we face not the same as some people
After I told him this story about Prague and where the shemagh came from and the cedar we wear and why. He reminded me he’s gone up to harvest cedar with his aunties. We were ready to go out to the store at night leaving the studio. He unlocked his phone and as we got into the car he said in his best Bane imitation “nobody cared who I was until I put on a mask” and it made me laugh.
It gave me insight to a way to teach history in perspective and for us not to be written into fiction by sharing stories that aren’t easy to tell.