When I'm cutting and stitching, I often think about Indigenous peoples around the world, who were ripped from their homes and taught to forget. When I listen to elders who are still connected to the sentience of the universe, I know what was almost lost, a wisdom for the present that we need for our survival. Despite the suffering, the abuse and the losses along the way, Indigenous cultures, by some miraculous triumph of the human spirit, have endured. Their memories are not meant to be appropriated into the Colonial Culture. Their memories teach us how to regain our own. Those of us Enculturated into Colonial Culture have forgotten so much. Yet, we have the memories of Ancestors in our bodies, calling to us. We are also survivors, waking up to those quiet voices waiting to be heard, when we slow down and listen.
The survivors of this world, those who remember, create a strong and beautiful mosaic of memories from the fragments that remain.
I think of the dream I had as a child, everyone around me turned to skeletons as I hid to save my skin. I can't get this dream out of my mind, my childhood nightmare haunts my waking hours. It is no wonder I sew. I sew this cloth, made of layers and layers of past and present. I am creating a new skin. It often looks like the hide of a animal. Sometimes I see earth and the fire within, and sometimes it is a topography of the soul. Other times I see rhythms of a distant dance, ebbing and flowing through the holes in the fabric of forgetting..
They are dresses of Armor, to warm us in the cold and steel our nerves when we cannot see through the darkness our forgetfulness has left us. They are the ceremonial attire for the dancer who spins to the music that brings collective memories back to the surface.
They are the wardrobe for the Nomad on her long Journey Home.
Special thanks to photographer Kara Counard http://bloomphotographybykara.com
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