laxayam khanawi nayka shikish
I am sorry that I am getting this off to you so late. I’ve been struggling to write the newsletter during the holiday season. On the bright side, I have been pouring a lot of energy into my MFA. I’m happy about the feedback and push I am getting at the Institute of American Indian Arts.
Though I haven’t decided on the final form, I am continuing to write essays around potlatching culture. I want to steep these stories within my family history and experiences growing up in the Pacific Northwest. To write about these topics, I revisit these stories as sources of knowledge and sit in place with them. For example, I was writing a piece about wood carving tools, specifically an elbow adze. When my father taught at the University of Washington, one of his classes was Northwest Coast carving. The first thing he’d do was help each student make their own adze handle. I had accompanied him a couple times and through the class he taught me how to make one as well. There are many instances like this where I put myself back in time and revisit the memories to ground and inform my writing on potlatching.
Carving tools are essential for interacting with potlatch culture. When we give away wealth, that wealth is sometimes in the form of art, canoes, or even tools themselves.
More recently, I have been thinking about how I write about my father’s art. I rarely talked to him about it and instead had to absorb the meanings through conversational osmosis. One of my favorite pieces of his was commissioned through Perugia, Italy and Seattle. Titled Sister Orca it served to strengthen our communities as sister cities. Perugia is a small hillside town in Umbria, a region just north of Rome. It’s surrounded by travertine blocks that were placed around the 3rd Century BC. Perugia is very pictursqeue. This past holiday break, I had a chance to revisit Sister Orca after it was installed in 2008.
As you can see below, Sister Orca is a piece that centers the stories of our non-human kin Orca and Salmon. The rich patina highlights the the Salish Sea greens and rich golden browns of our supernatural being Thunderbird. Sister Orca traveled physically and figuratively across the Atlantic Ocean to arrive in Perugia. You can tell that Sister Orca is Coast Salish art because of primary shapes being filled with circles, crescents, and trigons. Whereas Northwest Coast art uses the same shapes in addition to the ovoid to create the primary, secondary, and tertiary space.
It was amazing to be reconnected with Sister Orca about 15 years later. As a kid, I understood the importance but nowhere was close to comprehending the process and logistics of the piece. It continues to be one of the only, if not the only, public art pieces in Italy done by a Native American. When I greeted Sister Orca, I thought about the importance of thunderbird as our catalyst to creation. It’s fitting that Sister Orca is in Perugia because they too have a mythological kin that they embrace. Perugia is decorated with griffins. These griffins are depicted as the body of a lion and the head and wings of an eagle. One scholar theorizes that the griffin “was born in the haunted gloom of the forested mountains of north-east Russia”1 around 500BC and moved through stories to the shores of the mediterranean sea. The griffin in the Perugia crest itself was adopted at the waning of the classical era around the 13th century. It was then that the Griffin “was accepted as being the vigilant guardian”(ibid).
I’d like to think that the kinship that Perugia has to the griffin intrigued my father as he was thinking about his relationality to thunderbird.
Sister Orca’s Mystical Journey
To the far ends of the world that reach beyond the horizons of time... Sister Orca and family venture north to seek her native village.
A village where the mystic wind carries upon her breath the myths of yesterday. She gently whispers through the ancient forest of cedar and pine
and dashes upon the elaborately carved poles...
Upon the sandy beach, some lay asleep...weathered and decayed
and covered with mossy blankets of teal green, pale blues and golden browns. They too will return home.
It’s a cool summer evening...
In my long house, I nestle among my soft woolen blankets, warmed by the fire I wait for the bellowing sounds of breaching whales and that of Sister Orca. Suddenly a thick, dense fog appears overhead.
Fog, he laces through our village as if to cover us with a mysterious spell of the unknown. It muffles sounds of every kind,
to silence us from our most inner thoughts of mysteries yet to come.
Moments later I hear a loud noise which I’ve never heard before...
Loud sounds of thunder crackling high above the mystic Blue Mountains ... and rolling through the lush valleys below.
I’m nearly blinded by the flash of light that penetrates my entry door.
Dazed and confused I peel off my blankets
and crawl slowly upon the earthen floor towards the opening of our whale house. I peer high above toward the deafening sounds of clapping wings.
Lightning bolts of cobalt blue lash and pierce through Fog’s thick cape ... Creating immense transparent holes steaming with fire...
The sky is painted wildly with brushstrokes of brilliant oranges and crimson reds
I gaze up ...I see Thunderbird
With accuracy he once again hurdles lighting bolts towards Fog ... Breaking the spell...the spell is broken.
I regain consciousness...
and harmony prevails once again over our village
As the new dawn arrives
the sun breaks through the misty morning veil
it shines brightly...
I peer towards the ocean with amazement...
I see Sister Orca gently nudging her son on their Mystical Journey home
He stays close to her side for comfort and protection...he will someday be Chief.
With her home in view ....
She joyfully breeches and gracefully glides toward her village.
Welcome songs resonate from distant drums.
She's guided by the sounds.
Her gifted songs are carried upon the prevailing winds
that echo across the oceans rippled face
And whisper to her the ancient melodies of yesterday as if to say its time to come home.
The village rivers are fed by nearby towering waterfalls
that release streams of ivory ribbons
which cascade down the dark grey cliffs of mother’s earthen armor Flowing softly down upon the pebbled beds
feeding the rivers thirst for water
Pooling... the salmon prepare to journey upstream. To travel to their native spawning grounds
To the village of the silver salmon people.
To spawn a new generation...
To feed the village...
The newborn salmon travel downstream to the oceans entry below ... And enter the headwaters
The deep blue ocean sparkles like diamonds...
Thousands of fingerlings surround Sister Orca with a velvety silver cape She shines brightly as she glides closer and closer to her village
Which is nestled in a nearby hidden cove protected from the elements... Newly carved poles stand tall as if to penetrate Mother Earth’s skin
that surround the village to honor her return...
From her travels around the world
seeking wisdom wherever she went...
With a sudden surge ...
She breaches once again to say... At Home at last...at home at last!
By Marvin Oliver, 2008
https://www.studietruschi.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/SE30_13.pdf