All the world is somewhere else

'All the world is somewhere else... I am the mask. I am the bird. I am the animal. I am the spirit... I transcend with the being of the mask.'
Chief Robert Joseph, Kwakwaki'wakw (Kwakiutl), recalling his youthful experience as a ceremonial dancer, 1998

'There are three things that maintain a culture - language, religion and art. You lose these three and you lose the culture completely.'
Jackie Paisho, Pikuni (Blackfoot) bead artist, 2005

'You say prayers when you start a basket and you let it know that it is going to be started, to be created and when you are finished, you end with prayers to let it know that its birth is complete.'
Frank Turtle, Yubi-Wailaki, painter and basket maker, 1999

'Art comes from a deeper source somewhere - it's part of the act of just living; you know, let's put on the beans and get the clay out.'
Rina Swentzell, Tewa-Santa Clara Pueblo artist, author and schollar, 1994

For Rina Swentzell, clay can be 'a gritty reminder of the land, a way to hold the places of her ancestors between her fingers.' I tried my hand at gritty reunions last week with a lunge at gardening. Soft and green at the work, my blistered palms sent me to the sidelines to let the weeds have their ancestral way.

The same hands scribbled quotes, shards of artist truth scattered through Art of the American Indians: The Thaw Collection last month. At the time, I felt the author-artists pushing me out of my complacency, where everyday tasks outweigh the urgency of grappling with my far, forgotten roots. Then of course those same tasks led me down the road of practical oblivion, my bits of penciled wisdom moldering in the dust.

My people were Swiss and English, poor orphaned clans. My clay - my songs, my words - forget or deny their sacred worth. Ironic, and perhaps deserving, that the peoples who appropriated this land often sacrifice the very ties to Europe that might redeem their streak of stubborn independence. Stark individualism relegates our heritage to a wan relic of a lush communal presense just beyond our consciousness.

Prayerful art, say the land's native prophets, might yet be our salvation.

Photo Edward S. Curtis, Blackfoot Bear Bull