Returning to Homelands--->Contemplating Displacement

Returning to homelands---> a decolonizing imperative. This is what I've been more literally approaching recently in my studio. I have been thinking of homelands as the places, spaces, spirit of food sustenance, ceremonial grounds, lost or disconnected attachment to a specific part of earth. I was born in my ancestral homelands, I've traveled back there and visited, but never spent meaningful durations in those sacred spaces. I am painting my ancestral homelands and through art making I transport myself to those places, returning. The part that is interesting and confusing is that through contemplating this return, I realize the displacement that exists and this contemplation of displacement makes sense through abstraction. Is returning to homelands a mental exercise, a spiritual journey, a physical act of travel, an experience possibly had through the act of painting a memory of place? I know that I return to the home of my ancestors through many paths, singing, painting, telling stories, remembering, smelling the earth. This is important to my artistic exploration, life journey, and mainly in relearning how to be a human being.

Remembering Ceremony---> Art as Remembering?

Decolonizing imperatives---> Remembering Ceremony & Returning to Homelands, as liberation from the myths of colonialism, these are imperative to personal decolonization of the mind and life. I am working on creating zones of refuge, where one can practice these indigenous ways of being (human), away from the forceful, dominant walls of colonization. I am practicing and working with members of my family, tribe and inter-tribal indigenous spiritual community at remembering and creating ceremony. I have been apart of this struggle and constant battle to remember since I was born. Tying this into my art conceptually has been difficult (mainly to describe and discuss with cohorts and professors), but I believe that my art practice has become a syndicate and stand in for the loss of regular ceremony (ceremony meaning ways to remember what it is to be human, humans connected to land, relatives, cycles, elements, through prayer, songs, sweatlodge, dances). Approaching these abstract ways of deconstructing and decolonizing my thinking and making art, the practice is in a way remembering the essence of the ceremony and what that represents in indigenous people hood's identity. I am still working on how to discuss this aspect, I know it is apart of my process and is important to continue delving into describing, regardless of how emotional, personal and difficult it can be.

S.H.M--->Modoc Protection System's

From 1872 to 1873 the Modoc tribe and the United States Army engaged in an armed conflict in southern Oregon and northern California . For nearly 7 months, a handful of Modoc warriors and their families held off hundreds of U.S. Army soldiers, by using the lava bed terrain for protection and hiding. Kintpuash (or Captain Jack) led 52 warriors in a band of more than 150 Modoc people (who left the Klamath Reservation) to occupy defensive positions throughout the lava beds south of Tule Lake. For months those few warriors waged a guerrilla war against United States Army forces sent against them and reinforced with artillery. The Modoc's took advantage of the lava ridges, cracks, depressions, and caves, all such natural features being ideal from the standpoint of defense. At the time the 52 Modoc warriors occupied "Captain Jack's Stronghold," Tule Lake bounded the Stronghold on the north and served as a source of water. After long drawn out warfare with reinforcements of US forces, finally some Modoc warriors surrendered, and Captain Jack and the last of his band were captured. Jack and five warriors were tried for murder; Jack and three warriors were executed by public hanging on the Klamath reservation to show the tribes what happens when they resist occupation and colonization. My great-grandma Emma Ball was six years old when her mom brought her to "town" to witness Captain Jack's death by hanging. She never forgot it and told this story to her children and grandchild, Al, my father.

S.H.M--->Al & Skinny Chip's Escape from the Christians!

Al had run away before but was busted hopping freight trains at the station in Eugene. The priests from the Catholic boarding school in Beaverton came and got him, returning him to the school destined to Kill the Indian and save the Man. Shortly after he was forced back between the cold institutional walls he choose to run again, this time he was determined to make it all the way home to his mom and grandma. Just while he was getting ready to run again another Klamath kid, Skinny Chip's came over to his cot. “Al” he spoke in a meek voice, whose whisper of strength came purely from his overwhelming desire to flee, “can I go with you? Back home? I want to go home to my mom…” Now, Skinny Chip's was a really fat kid and that’s why everyone called him Skinny Chip’s, but he was from Modoc Point as well, he lived just down the road from Al. Al didn't think this was a good idea and had doubts that Skinny Chip's could even get his fat self up on the train! He felt bad for him though and didn't want to leave him behind, alone in the dread of the cruel, Christian school. This place breathed a subversive terror, where they were beaten until they spoke English, taught to fear a strange God and forced to forget their families and voices. “Alright Skinny Chip’s! But you better hustle! I don’t want you holding me up, believe me I will leave you in that train yard, you hear me?” Al’s stern voice commanded fear and attention in Skinny Chips, but he was ready to flee with all his might. So Al decided to take Skinny Chip's with him. That night they ran from the brick squares and slapping Nun's, headed for the creaking cacophony of the train yard. Just as Al had predicted, Skinny Chip's couldn’t get on the train, he reached down to pull him up, but the train started to move, jarring his attempt. He reached out again, this time grabbing hold of Skinny Chip's thick arm, he was so heavy, but Al pulled him aboard and they were off! He thought, "I should of never brought Skinny Chip's, I knew he was gonna hold me up!" But inside he was glad he let him come along, he had a friend to be with, who went through the same journey and now their paths were heading home. No priests found them in Eugene this time and their escape was successful. Traveling towards their mom's, towards the marshy lake full of wocas (lily pad seeds) and c’wam (sucker fish), towards their ancestral homelands, they were only nine years old.