Indigenous Peoples Day
This weekend and today, there has been singing and dancing on the Santa Fe Plaza in celebration of Indigenous Peoples Day. Not just today, but for the last several months I have been reflecting on my relationship to Native Culture and how it has evolved. From early family stories of Tootsie Stripped Squirrel, the Blackfoot girl who was born the same day I was in the Toole County Montana Hospital, to the Ethnopoetics Symposium at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee where as a graduate student I met leading native poets like Simon Ortiz to here in Santa Fe experiencing the living culture all around us.
While I am not of the culture, I am listening, paying honest attention:
Jeffrey Gibson's The Body Electric show at Site Santa Fe
Sarah Ortegon, the jingle dancer's stunning performance at Site
Lightening Boy hoop dancers on the Plaza
Photographer Will Wilson’s portraits
Sherman Alexie on my bookshelves and in my inbox weekly
Poet Laurate Joy Harjo
Tommy Orange's There There, the National Endowment for the Art's Big Read program
The Dark Winds Series
Grounded in Clay: The Spirit of Pueblo Pottery at the Museum of Indian Arts + Culture
The Institute of American Indian Arts
In honor of the day, I share my New Mexico still life—vintage Navajo rug, Navajo Spirit Bear and Shakalo and the fired clay vessel by Santa Fe artist Bonnie Lynch.