good morning everybody:)
i am listening to this conversation and hopefully what i have to say is taken in peaceful friendship and sharing.:)
as a young child, the conversation about "art", among the elders (gramma and her son, my dad)sometimes became whispers. one had to *lean-in...because hindsight says...it was meant for the children to hear...but not the whole world.
art: our Living Histories were who we were, for as far back as anyone could remember...it was all told in our beadwork, shells, pottery design, *jewelry* and in part, our hair(braids, etc), paint. all the stories, including recording the lives and deaths of our ancestors, all the way into today, are _alive_, with spirit, remembrance, good stories, bad stories, teaching stories, paint, all of it....how many times did it take *the others* to destroy the living histories of the indian people? all the beadwork...burned...the stories of marriages, wars, births, all the symbols that LIVED, are STILL LIVING and FULL OF SPIRIT? all burned, or stolen, or kept in vaults as private collections....even our bones speak/cry out.
*art* was not a word, during my young childhood. not that i can recall, anyway..i think the closest we came to *art, *creation of art...would be...remembering the living histories that remind us of who we are, where we have been, what all the limitless possibilities are for our future, which is now, and forever! all from creator. all from our hearts and the remembering...the remembering to say something about what happened and when:)am remembering the talk about the *calender sticks* was a pretty complicated system and full of recorded histories..all burned/destroyed.....all done up in a polished shell with perhaps a few scratches on it...a cooking stone that has all the stories, a beautiful beaded something or other....nice to look at, but what is the story of the beaded something or other? whose hands made it? where has it been?:)
gramma said it all came from the great mystery(all bug-eyed, of course, to help us kids along with a better understanding. lol!). all hushed tones, of course. she also knew about the little people, but was at her best, with the living histories, that she was telling her son, especially whilst us nosey kids were *eves dropping*! lol!
i am not trying to step on any toes in this conversation...just could not help but start remembering some things that seem to be fading from view....mine, mainly. i thank you all helping me to remember some things, best remembered, and putting up with me about it:)
in spirit and remembrance of our ancestors who lived it, and experienced the burnings of all the living histories of their lives(past, present, whatever), go up in smoke....sunrise is sometimes, a sad time for me...not always, just sometimes.:)
in the spirit of crazy horse in the spirit of king philip oho!