You new you'd know now

Urchin

My first urchin was in Neah bay years ago. Sushi before there was sushi.

10 years forward on the other side of the globe I found my feet in the sand with Clarissa Rizal at a fish market looking at a fish market. She asked me there what do you want to do with your art? I told her I want our Coast Salish art to have recognition and know that I didn’t do all this work for nothing. I never forget her turning her head toward the night as the coastal wind from across our waters blew the wind in her face. I feel the same she said.

“and what gets you there nephew”.

I felt honored to be called nephew by a weaver taught by masters.

“persevering and discipline” I said

“Look at that” she said standing on the coast with me pointing to feather fans over the fish to keep flies away. “what I love about being far from home is these people that pray and give thanks for their food like we do”.

It tapped into me the core of why we have our art shaped around salmon and ceremony.

I went on to explain that I wanted to break barriers in art to recognize unsung heroes the way few painters did in renaissance.

“Like who”. she asked

worker ant

blue jay

raccoon

Auntie making be Gangsta holding fake guns in Kaohsiung

she stopped me and said “like the way people talk about mouse woman”.

“Exactly” I replied with movement I can’t explain A weaver who recognized my understanding of many languages that accepted me and understood my vision made me feel worthy.

It was 90 degrees on the low end as we worked in the coming days. We ate mostly snails and as I was growing tired of it she told me, they are like lipids sonny when she saw me grow tired of them.

Near the end of that trip she asked about my concept for art moving forward long term.

“I want this division of our people to have some resolve.”

“you will accomplish that because we are just one people after all”. She said that two days before we were left in Kaoghsiung without a translator or way to the airport. It was the artists who came together to ensure we found our way home but it was that moment of a conversation I felt committed to I never let go of.

I made it home and off the plane I was wearing a bamboo art piece on my head and countless gifts the people shared with me on our way out for sharing culture with them. A tall man with a shaved head saw how Native I was wearing all my regalia because I could’t pack it pulled up his sleeve to show me a Spindle whorl design and said “Haida”. I didn’t have any way to tell him because I was exhausted the history but I just gave him a nod.

Years later I got a phone call from her asking if I was doing what I aimed at and I told her yes.

“good” she said “keep making goals”.

from our talks I went back to the sketches I discarded and uncovered the intention I noted to her. An idea of the first otter to break Urchin and was reminded of Nuu-chah-nulth print work int eh 80’s and 90’s that had to do with the subject.

At times I find myself where I can’t carve but am able to explore some old things If I’m patient enough.  When the time is right and I feel it in my bones I can’t pull myself from the page that rights me.

Carving the pole for a destination not far from where we had that conversation. A friend recommended I listen to “Crying in H Mart” as I carved into the cedar I had to put it down after the first chapter to make this.

When Zauner talks about going to a market yearning for her experience of packages items with things written on them. I was so reminded how we have no written language. I know so many words I don’t know how to write but I know their sentiment and what I take with me in that is story itself.

I’ve admired my aunties who weave and my late uncle Bruce for knowing how to make things not packaged but treasured.

When I talked to my auntie who weaves who taught me some of the dialect I know she told me a phrase “come give me a kiss, I know you are good”

I heard this from other houses only because I earned my way into that love from being there.

Their upbringing had so much to do with hurt but they held onto the better parts of what was there. Without a package I took my idea I kept with me all these years as people sell art without meaning. I give this to those who are Salish and Tlingit because Clarissa would want me to.

Alex Jackson gave us a design and despite the way I thought of things so technical I offer this as concept.

One can own all the currency in the world but not to engage is to be like a billionaire on a deserted island.

I chose the concept of Otter and Urchin as the example of balance for an entry into a window. The black hole of urchin is to know that life is shared. From you my heart is whole. You keep me alive and I give you thanks.

I’m moved beyond words by the work of her daughters and the work Jennie fostered for this to be here and witness. It shows that endurance and discipline are not forgotten.

Hello, World!

Out of the Red into the Black

It took years for me to understand the term “black Friday”. Growing up Black was always ominous. Red equally so. Black as darkness, red as urgent and dangerous.

It was only years later when my father shared his explanation of a bigger picture about accounting that it made sense and for anyone who doesn’t know I’ll make it brief. Business in loss not making money are ‘in the red’ and those profiting are ‘in the black’.

I’m opening this post this way on premise of a crossroads of sorts.

On this day I want to share one of my early memories of witnessing a billboard sign that read "Letting an Indian Fish is like letting a fox in the Chicken Coup". Somewhere someone has got to have a photo of that. I remind my son that this time of year while we are a focus of inclusiveness we have been deemed villains for many years by no means of our own making. I feel if the phrase holds true 'survival of the fittest' , we are here because the land and values are a part of who we are. There was a time Uncle Reub shrugged off some of our people wearing gear from the army surplus although it he was proud. Our fisherman were warriors on the water for years while people cut up our nets and damaged boats. History doesn't lie and this day I ask my friends who follow my work it would not be possible without the efforts of my people where bullets flew overhead and rocks were thrown at men who were all within their right to provide for their families for survival.

I truly believe in alliance and the need for it in time where the word ‘tribal’ has become a negative phrase. It builds a narrative of negative response now and has for some time. Yet here we are advanced with technology like no other with means of communication separated from the very ground we stand on regardless of where we are. To quote the fictional character, Tyler Durden “the things you own, start to own you”. I think that’s how it goes.

I’m not big on politics because I feel it’s bigger than me but as an artist like a comedian I can have commentary so this is just that.

I’ve always admired the works of Chris Rock and Dave Chappelle. With Rock, on his first album, when that was a thing noted in his bit about a comparison of fighters. That ‘the lower you are on the social latter, the better fighter you’ll be”. As they say ‘it’s funny because it’s true’.

When I was on a consulting job a pitch was made where a man got up to with his opening slide of his powerpoint in bold words stating “we are all immigrants here'“. To which I was shifting in my chair, this was in Tacoma the land of my people and this guy was from Philidelphia and non-Indigenous. Little did I know a fellow consultant chimed in to point out she was Indigenous. Much to my surprise she grilled this guy for saying what he did and outlined why to the table. I felt a relief because all eyes were on me because I was labelled coming in as the Native artist and she didn’t carry the label herself. I backed her up of course and I made an ally, not because we had gone into something with a plan but the very fact that our histories and identity would be overwritten as a script that fit a narrative.

There are people and there will always be people who want things to be as they were in the ‘good ole days’ when ‘fill in the blank’. The idea we are free of racism is a long way away and as Chappelle once stated, America has to have an honest discourse with itself. This is to me what I hear people talk about so often in the mainstream of pop culture when they hate Thanksgiving having to deal with relatives they don’t see. On the flip side of that Native people in our confined spaces have learned to make room for different personalities and deal with our differences. This isn’t to say it’s perfect because as a result of disconnection with our language and our practices have adapted.

Alcohol and drug use is a part as it is in any colonized people. It’s an escape and impoverished people all over know this.

I’m asked so often annually as I expect when Thanksgiving rolls around what I feel about it and I’ve grown from it not unlike Chappelle’s skit he talks about as the person he was at stages in his life.

When someone asked me about Thanksgiving in my teens I’d shrug it off because I didn’t think anyone would listen honestly.

When asked about it as a man in my twenties I was ranting and angry for what I couldn’t explain because I didn’t have the way in to explain how backwards the notion was.

As a father of a teen now I am writing this with hopes that my son won’t have to deal with the question in anguish.

The world is not black and white alone, it’s many things and America as we know it is a work in progress. There are so many things one could lose themselves in diving into rabbit holes. If this experiment is to work it means shying away from sweeping ‘dark’ history under the rug and having a willingness to acknowledge atrocity in order to move forward.

As I’ve said time and time again ‘consider what the phrase “land of opportunity” means from an Indigenous perspective’ I say this because I’m grateful that at a young age when I didn’t feel right not standing for the pledge of allegiance in elementary school because I was beat up and called ‘an Injun’ in my homeland that I had support of my grandmother along with a small group of friends who were from different ethnic backgrounds. It gave me hope in my small town as a possibility of what we are seeing unfold today as we acknowledge injustice and solidarity.

work in progress…

There will always be differences and one cannot out match the other on the side of who was slighted more because that’s equally unproductive.

What matters is communication and to acknowledge the land you stand on because it’s a foundation that grants you a place to be.

Returning to the lessons of my father if we are indeed looking to get out the red into the black there remains a lot to be accounted for.

When Tribal Became a Four Letter Word

It's puzzled me for years to not understand how people didn't see the world as I did until I realized I am a part of an ethnic group that despite living in the land of my ancestors feels a stranger more often than not. I suppose my first experience of this came in fourth grade when I met my first 'white' friend who became my long time friend who I was even best man for in his wedding no so long ago. On the elementary playground looking for something to do I decided to take a stab at joining a basketball game. After all I was at Native basketball tournaments all the time on reservations. I should point out at this juncture that although I lived on a reservation and my school was on tribal land it was a public school and I was one of maybe four kids in a modest sized school district comprised of mostly rural kids in what was mostly farm land. 

I approached the group some others lined up to be picked for a team. I'll never forget a kid who would be classified as a stereotypical looking bully form an Adam Sandler movie stand as one of the team captains choosing. Looking back in my memory it seemed more like he was choosing for each side even though it's highly doubtful but that's how it felt. I should also mention I was an elevation challenged child, skinny at that. What stood out from this however is the reason I wasn't picked from the mix to be even teams and I'll never forget what followed. 

"I'm not picking him" he said to everyone even tho I was last.

"why not"? on of the kids asked.

"Because he's an Indian". Again I should point out how this was a predominantly white school. Others were frustrated because recess is a time limited activity so each second is precious time, especially in youth where time is eternity. I was thrown back for realizing for the first time that I wasn't perceived as everyone else but something different. It wasn't that I was short or skinny it was that I was a Native American.

"Screw that man" came from the boy who shoved him in front to challenge the sturdy framed bully who stood tallest of the group. The shove came from one his height but maybe even 1/3 less his mass, tall but skinny for our age group.

"Let's just play" he said, a fight broke out and we never got to play that day but it gave me my first long time friend. I eventually played with them all but with the awareness that I was different from that moment forward.

Another example stemming on a new level of that very experience came on the Monday where on the same playground one of the boys asked "what did you guys do this weekend"? and I was first to reply "I went to a pow wow with my grandma and grandpa"

"what. no no no." the boy replied without missing a beat "pow wow's are for Indian chiefs ONLY, my dad told me so"

I had to ask although be it confused "are you and Indian"?

"No" he replied "but you guys know right that's how it is"? looking to the group who I had been accepted as one of. And to my great surprise, they all nodded their heads in agreement.

I share this as the intro to this topic as a display of taking sides or playing on a team. In my youth and throughout my life I have had the Native American experience first hand, not in some version of watching "Dances with Wolves" or "Avatar" and before that "Little Big Man". I live as a Native American in a time that exists outside the cowboy western complex.  My life consisted of social responsibilities that I was raised in relating to ceremony and protocol. By the age of 11 I'd attended many funeral services and even if not in person, knew the people who passed in some way as members of my tribal community. I learned the practice of our community roles in those things, the cooks who prepared the food, the fisherman who caught the food, or the hunters who provided the elk, the weavers and artists who made works to gift to witnesses of the community. The practice of potlatching that I grew up with as a sense of belonging. The ceremony that tied us to other tribes and tribal communities. 

Taking long car trips with my family to honor the passing of someone important to another tribe was a practice that I grew up with as a sense of what I understood as a foundation. I never thought of this as foreign because it is a practice and tradition that long stretches before the word America itself.

Flash forward many years forward becoming a father myself and seeing what the present day looks like I've arrived at a new basketball court. One without a bully but an equally powerful authoritarian idea that shapes a new playground. One who uses the very word tribe and tribal in condemnation for a game where the goal seems to be to win favor of opinion more than anything. The game of who is right and who is wrong and not the players involved. Politics are not foreign to myself nor many Native Americans. My grandfather was a member of our tribal council throughout my childhood. His shared some fairly complex ideas with me as a child what I see now as his way of his sense of urgency to entrust me with such knowledge. At the age of 10 I'd already known a lot of struggle that affected our community as 'tribal' people.

A key example is the act of fishing. A long pass time act one might think of as what it is to be American. Although my uncles and grandfather fished on the river of our family property along our tribes river, I didn't go very often. I wondered about this when I would hear other kids at school talk about fishing with their fathers. Until one day I wanted to go on the boat with my dad and my uncle, standing at the side of the river bank with my grandfather. My grandfather started cursing and I just remember him say "Not again, dammit". I didn't understand as he told me to get in his truck. I just remember a lot of yelling and confrontation with white men on the lower bank of the trees where I couldn't see them.

On that car ride back up to the family property. I was told about the time he'd hoped we were passed. I was educated on that car ride about being shot at, having our nets seized and our boats stolen or damaged because we were Native American but in his words "Savage". 

"That's what they call us grandson" he muttered with clenched hands at the wheel "It drives me mad no matter how much we work at this."

I listened to him and listened on. If you asked me though now I wouldn't be able to tell you all the details but it kept me from going out there again for years. He was my hero and still is like a lot of grandkids who grow up close to their grandparents which to be honest is probably just as rare as being an Indian in a public school at that time. My understanding of tribe came from a closeness of family and extension of my families relations and tribal ties.

Back to the present day. I've been at many services and travelled to many tribal reservations to visit and participate in ceremony. Perhaps what sparked this blog post alone was that passing of my friend who was a diver and great example of a single father upholding culture pass early in his life. I was moved at his service by the number of tribes from other nations come to attend. I had seen larger attendance to services before but something struck me there. I loved him dearly as a friend and something in me regretted never being able to tell him although we went to the same high school how I was proud to have him as a member of my tribe. I knew him as selfless and one to really extend himself in his efforts to be available to others in what he could offer as a fisherman or singer to families who had lost someone in their community.

To me that is what I hear when I hear the words 'tribal'. So today when the culture climate of the larger population talks about polarization and how we've become 'tribal'. I am again that confused child wondering why the larger group can't play the game and just call it 'teams' because that is what it still is to me. A game of opposition where the teams are at odds to win something. Native people and to be clear "Tribes" are fighting for something that is clear, to protect lands and our environment that has been an underlying value of our way of life that has become known as a cultural practice. It's only in a political climate that I see the divide happen as we veer from our very 'tribalism'.

I am but an artist sharing thoughts reflecting in a sea of mass media but it's something that has been on my mind as an avid listener of podcasts and political news thinking of my grandfather and at a larger scale, my tribal community who is largely marginalized on the sidelines at others fight for something that isn't clear to me while the recess bell is short from going off. Are we not looking at the clock and enjoying this game of life or are we consumed by who is right?

Happy International Women's Day

So it's been quite some time and after a few people asking it's never a better time to start a blog than to get behind something dear to my heart. I love the women who have shaped my life in ways I can't even begin to understand but I will try in a brief post for this fine day.

Let's make no qualms with this posting, this is not a countdown in any particular order per say but more of a personal acknowledgment of women I have known and admire for their iniquities unto their own powerful senses that have captured my fascination and  admiration.

Barbara Earl Thomas

Barbara Earl Thomas is a visual artist, a writer, and a community activist with a longstanding record as an arts administrator. She has overseen programs for Seattle’s Department of Arts and Cultural Affairs, Bumbershoot a Seattle Arts Festival, and the Northwest African American Museum where she served as executive director from 2008-2013.

I met Barbara when she was a consulting artist to a small group of artists seeking know how of how to survive the business of art. She opened with a story as a child making art that made her grandmother smile which in turn made her feel good about herself and I was hooked. She was the first woman I met in the art world to mentor with absolute honesty about the day to day reality of being an artist for a profession and all it would entail. She and her work are both powerful as they are captivating.

Clarissa Rizal

Clarissa Rizal was an amazing artist who left us too soon. She was a member of the Tlingit weaving community apprentice of Jennie Thlunaut. Her work in woven material both customary in the way of Robes and regalia were and remain exceptional. Her fearlessness to explore her artistic creative appetite lead to great break throughs and I was ever so fortunate to learn from her openness about that creative process.

Her work is significant to the weaving community and her absence is very much felt in her recent passing but she serves undoubtedly as an inspiration in the legacy she left for us to learn from.

Ramona Bennett 

Ramona Bennett is a member of the Puyallup Tribe. She is one of many tribal members who collectively helped to ensure the rights that so many sacrificed their lives for. Ramona has been an activist for much of her life and a major spearhead in securing fishing rights for the Puget Sound tribes. She continues to be an instrumental figure including the recent need for awareness when it has come to #IdleNoMore and #NoDAPL. I had the pleasure to visit with her at an event hosted in Muckleshoot that acknowledged the warriors who fought to defend the territory and rights of our Native people in which she was acknowledged as a true bearer of the torch in keeping that alive.

Matika Wilbur

photo by Kevin Gradey

Matika, a Native American woman of the Swinomish and Tulalip Tribes (Washington), is unique as an artist and social documentarian in Indian Country- The insight, depth, and passion with which she explores the contemporary Native identity and experience are communicated through the impeccable artistry of each of her silver gelatin photographs.

I had the honor and privilege to create the logo for her 562 project that has gained world status acclaim. Her project has a goal to document all Native Nations of the United States in a collective that will give voice that Native people are very much a part of the modern world and will share their stories with a fellow Native citizen that will acknowledge them in a way that perhaps others could not and share that with the world.

susan point

For anyone who ventures or takes interest in Coast Salish art, it's understood it would not be where it is without her high driving ambition to create works of art that carry that heritage. Susan proved that carving is not strictly a mans arena but that she could really dig in and make waves.

arianna lauren

Founder of Quwutsun made Arianna has shown change starts by start up. Although it's only been a short time since she's launched her line of products she's made an impression in her community and has a promising future where the sky is the limit. She's modeled for various designers and continues to explore the creative fields of opportunity as a force of nature and ambition.

Mother, Aunties, sisters, cousins and grandmother

photo by Steven Miller

If there were a secret to my success in life and this career I have come into, it wasn't just hard work alone although that was a large part. I learned to work hard from the women who raised me. They have taught me all I know about love, life and forgiveness and understanding. I was blessed in this life to be born into a family and even more so a tribe of strong women leadership that goes back many generations. There are so many women in my family they all know who they are and I've grown up to see them become amazing mothers and at times still have the strength of our grandmother to call me out when I need to be brought in line with our teachings.

It's impossible to capture all the women who have changed the world and continue to so I can only share a snapshot before I lose your attention with what came to mind on this day in March 2017.