“Art for me is the capacity to transform fear into hope, it is the innate creativity that all beings have to express and share who we are. Movement, words, gestures, songs: what we create with our being is art. Art is what allows us to dream and build our world, it allows us to be bridges of memory and knowledge, sharing with others our way of being, thinking, and existing. For me, art is the expression of the spirit, it is that which saves us from fear and destruction, it is healing in times of darkness.”
In the following video that the artist Sayari Campo Burbano (Yanakuna Mitmak nation) has shared with Siwar Mayu, voice-over and scenography are crafted by Sayari, while the script is an adaptation of “Relatos y pensamiento yanakuna” (“Yanakuna Stories and Thought”) by poet Fredy Chikangana / Wiñay Malki. Following the video, we have included the translation of the original text.
The uterus ~ Yanakuna Story. By Fredy Chikangana / Wiñay Malki (2012)
The first beings that populated this land came in the form of steam and were called Tapukus because they arose from the bottom of the earth and when they came to the surface, some made the sound tapuk…tapuk…tapuk… and others responded ku…ku…ku…. So they kept jumping and trying to fly.
The Great Father Waira, who was the wind, took them by the hand and carried them to his realms, and soon they were brightening the earth.
However, some tapuk and other ku did not want to follow the Great Father Waira and they came together, forming a great shadow, from which arose a mass that formed the first body, who had the sounds and the traits of both Tapuk and ku.
Father Waira, feeling rejected, blew strongly over this mass which gradually caught the form of a big drop, and then took on the shape of a woman. Father Waira continued blowing and threw it through the air, but the mass already had the body of a woman.
With the force of the wind, the shadow was making both sounds of tapuk ku, tapuk ku.
So the Great Father, observing that it was a woman, decided to call her tapuku and accompany her in her flight to form with her body the bellybuttons of water: the lagoons, the rivers, and the streams.
She was singing, brushing her body against the darkness, with her sound and breath the warm and cold waters were forming, the Great Father Waira blew gently and thus the waters bursted and began to flow through the universe.
This is why the Yanakuna grandparents say that the first mother is a Tapuku, and her territory is the uterus, where life germinates to be watered by the universe.
Sayari Campo Burbano is a descendant of the Andean Yanakuna culture. She was born on September 4th, 1991 in the territory of the Colombian Massif. From an early age, she was interested in dance and movement, something that later led her towards being part of native dance and music groups. Art has always accompanied her, since her parents and relatives have instilled in her this knowledge from a very young age.
Sayari grew up in the indigenous community of Río blanco (Sotará, Cauca) and studied in the city of Bogotá. She has a degree in biology from the National Pedagogical University and today is a midwife apprentice, dancer, and pedagogical facilitator in her territory.
She is also a guardian of the Munayki –Uma House in San Agustín (Huila), a space dedicated to the investigation and the exchange of ancestral knowledge, where she has been developing work from art and ancestral medicine. Sayari collaborates in pedagogical processes aimed at strengthening the art and language of her community.
She is the creator of the Warmi Samay project (spirit of woman), a pedagogical initiative around issues that involve the feminine body, the cycles of life, and caring for the territory.
More about the Warmi Samay project and theYanakuna Territory
Anya Skye is from the Ashe end of the New River, the second oldest in the world. She likes getting to know bellybuttons of water and the other beings of the earth.
Bilingual Cristian Cayupán is recognized as the poet with the most potential in the area of Mapuche and Indo-american Literature Studies. He lives in Southern Chile, in the city of Temuco, in the José Cayupán community of the Mequewe area. Cayupán has published several collections which include Poemas Prohibidos (prohibited poems) (2007), Reprimida Ausencia (repressed absence) (2009), Usuarios del silencio (users of the silence) (2012), Tratado de Piedras (treaty of rocks) (2014),Terruño (homeland) (2014), El hombre y su piedra (the man and his rock) (2016), Apología del barro. Fotra ñi llellipun (clay’s apology) (2017). In collaboration with Ana Ñanculef, Cayupán has also co-authored a book of ethnographic research entitled KuifikeZugu. Discursos, relatos y oraciones rituales en mapuzugun (discourses, stories and ritual prayers in Mapuzugun)(2016).
He is the manager and editor of the Magazine Comarcas. Literatura sin Fronteras. (borderlines, literature without borders)which has been in continuous publication since 2011. Above, Cayupán brings together the unedited poem Piedra Humana, an ontological project that continues the path of the poet’s previous works and is immersed in an “aesthetic of the sacred” that brings traditional Mapuche knowledge and types of speech into the present. He includes epew (mythical tales) and other ancestral canonical forms in which beings are one with the cosmos dissolving and fusing in the energies which they inhabit. This perspective is part of the art and literature of present day Mapuche, whether as a challenge to preserve and represent this mode of inhabiting the cosmos as a vital experience, or as cultural revitalization and/or political stand of cultural resistance.
Throughout his texts, Cayupán achieves a challenging and complex project, that writes into its core a cosmogenic narrative from the rakizuam Mapuche –ancestral traditional thinking– which creates a transformative reality that expands from the rüme fütra kuifi, the time of origins, until it returns to itself in the events of the fantepu mew- the present. Between these axes, Cayupán maintains a constant movement without end. In this cosmic happening the poetic voice seeks to express how life transforms and how humankind goes through the world, establishing the immeasurable as a measure and border of all beings.
Word
I
It first dwelt in caves
where the myth emerged
it was the fire of every foundation
domesticated heat
Cloistered shadows
danced naturally
chasing away darkness
II
It was a pillar of every fire pit
rite of all mortals
Indissoluble matter
primary tool
natural conjure
Absolute clarity
III
It deserted from silence
It stripped its old garments off
It paraphrased within a breath
the first thing it said:
– here is water
flour and yeast
(In other words: The Word)
IV
Then the stone spoke harshly
Filtered voices through wind
strained its design
Presage of becoming
immortal light
V
Was the word perhaps
continuation of fire
and mediator of stones?
Wherever you go
you will find the word within you
Sacred ceremony
divine worship
VI
We are fire and earth still
carved stone
Word – People
pilgrim of empty fields
the earth our room
The night finally became day
transparency of all words
light of future
Path of humanity.
Things… Its meanings
A person was just a single handful of rocks thrown to the ground
that mystery of always being in the world
searching for a meaning in things
as if things give meaning to people
The four seasons of life
give a specific use for objects
which become part of people with time
expanding their way of conceiving the universe
The newly made figures
always look like the first light
described by a prophet
They began to name objects in a different way
languages were born and thus crafts
All things originated in the shadows
The saddlemaker, for example, learned to write knife with his blood
thus the craftsman sculpted the sad heart of the forest
the blacksmith crushed his noble fists in the forge
because shadow is the soul of things, ones own marrow
I withdraw from time
and I start a new one
with my own way of interpreting things
If destiny was to go back to the beginning
naming things with the forefinger
Then, people take
what a life on earth takes
in sprouting their seeds.
People are garments of ancient gods
Shadows that are pushed to the ground
with that bestiality that we do not comprehend
they are not a premonition of another creation
but auspice of our own existence
Who do we stop being when we are born
lighting up that mysterious hand?
The gods, on their behalf, hid their shadows
on immovable rocks
The one who manages to move the mother rock
also find the secrets of that species
But gods extinguished when people emerged
their deities were deposited in clay tombs
Then the written word came
next to the text of the forbidden fruit
The fear of snakes were developed in remote memory
in the first letter of the family tree
that is why today people seek something that they have never lost
but have been led to believe that they’ve misplaced it.
The Tree of Life
The first path was a handful of rocks
emerging from the earth
where Man depended upon himself
to give direction to his steps
seeking the valley of life
Upon discovering language
he traced a map in the soil
and in the same clay he wrote his history
The tree of life
is a path carved in the memory of Man
where its wood shavings celebrate
as they reunite with the early memory
A tree founded upon the root of the Word
where its trunk rises to the height of being
A strappy well-built tree rising up to the universe
Man is a path with no way out
seeking his days without end
On that same crossing
the way grows longer and burns out within
like a dull hand seeking the origin of the paternal light
The tree that we seek each day is within us
in the most intimate realm of our being.
The ceremony of each day
The boy swallows his father as usual
and it seems that every day
the father comes out from the depths of that child
to help knead the bread that the mother leaves in the oven
because she wants to see that someone eats that ancient food
placed on the recently set table
That is the purest rite of passage from child to man
Be swallowed from the guts
and allow the father live inside his own son
so that the past that remains in his memory is alleviated
which is the origin of all family communion
When one makes a pact blood trembles
how the spell reenacts
because in the end each ceremony has its own time
where people last as long as their family tree endures on Earth.
I Am Not Here Yet
I am a wounded word
lacking in language and space
An unspeakable word
without dictionary
or homeland
A word
that did not find a human group
to be spoken by
A word unsuspected by any mouth
In which era did we cease to be plants
to incarnate the word
matter and spirit
naked, docile, humans?
The House in the Rock
If I made this rock my home
it was merely to discover the light that is born within her
for in every home there is a lamp made of words
that lights up with the beginning of each season
I stopped to observe the light that emerges from the stone
for in the eve of a man
things are valued in a different way
Upon speaking it, the light becomes more ancient
for there is something within her that makes us susceptible
upon seeing her through Man
I see myself in the stone when I see her foundations
because her light courses through the hands of the stonemason
and transcends the efforts of those who raised her up
with just one word written upon the earth
This rock is the shadow of a place that does not exist
a half closed door that illuminates the craggy knob
in a manner that precedes the light
When one looks at the beams with the eyes of another
it is to make his household sturdy
for from the roots of the rock is a roof sheltering clarity
I walk around its outskirts seeking an answer
that sign that we recognize from before birth
and one feels some footsteps within
such ancient tracks within himself
it was as though he knew them by heart
for those footsteps were made by his ancestors
Someone calls to me through a mirror
and this voice seems to approach
but as it moves, it moves away within me
When the mirror that was permanently in our house cracks
the mystery that lies within it breaks apart as well
for it is a cave of glass now living within the human genus
Who but time rebuilds its walls?
deepening it each time
The time that scarcely passes is nothing more than a delayed present
and the past that begins there is another layer of ash in the memory of Man
because the house goes back to the origins of being.
She is an academic at the Universidad de la Frontera (“the University of the Border”), located in the city Temuco, Mapuche territory, in Chile. She is a State professor of Spanish, with a masters in literature and a degree in applied political sciences. She has investigated, written, and edited books and numerous articles about Mapuche literature and art in mainstream magazines.
About the translators
Lorrie Jayne, a collaborator in Siwar Mayu, teaches Spanish, Portuguese, and Personal Narrative in the Languages and Literatures Department at University of North Carolina Asheville (USA). She lives with her husband and daughters in the Appalachian Mountains where she enjoys plants, people, and poetry.
Juan G. Sánchez Martínez grew up in Bakatá, Colombian Andes. He dedicates both his creative and scholarly writing to indigenous cultural expressions from Abiayala (the Americas.) His book of poetry, Altamar, was awarded in 2016 with the National Prize Universidad de Antioquia, Colombia. He collaborates and translates for Siwar Mayu. Recent work: Muyurina y el presente profundo (Pakarina/Hawansuyo, 2019); and Cinema, Literature and Art Against Extractivism in Latin America. Dialogo 22.1 (DePaul University, 2019.)
Visual modern art in the Mapuche cultures emerges strongly in the early 1990’s. Linked with the processes of cultural resistance and the recovery of identity, this art establishes a symbolic border with the cultural and political production that has been imposed by the Chilean State. Nevertheless, like all modern art from this community, it adopts materials, techniques and canons from outside cultures, particularly those which interweave with those from the ancestral symbolic realm. Within this process, Francisco Vargas Huaiquimilla (Calbuco 1989), under the pseudonym Kütral (fire), manifests himself as a multifaceted creator who, within a short career, has contributed a solid and disruptive project to the Mapuche artistic scene that problematizes the ethical, sociocultural, and political dimensions and neoliberal version of colonial culture.
Vargas’ proposal highlights a constant search to break canonized forms and settle on the borders of artistic genres, generating a bridge between literature, the visual, and performance. Operating from the insistence of complaint, Vargas aims to recreate multiple versions of feeling and meaning in his work.
In the literary field, Vargas has three books: the poetic “book object” Factory (2016), the collection of poems Troya es tu Nombre (“Troya is your Name” 2019), and the narrative text or “book-script-installation” LaEdad de los árboles (“The Age of the trees” 2017). In the field of the visual, his installations and photographic works expose the violence of a State that marginalizes and endangers the existence of the Mapuche peoples.Conscious of the process of the invisibilization of these events, Vargas constructs a viewer-oriented visual narrative, through a textual strategy that anchors details of the context in a composition of realistic images poetically stitched together.
The images we have selected here evidence the conflict between the Chilean State and Mapuche nation: original peoples whose territory has been invaded and stripped, later privatized, enclosed with wire, and, through an economistic logic of production and land depredation, has been seen for its market value alone. This perspective opposes the community vision of the Mapuche cultures, whose worth is found in subsistence and a sacred connection to and respect for the natural environment.
The aesthetic device of Francisco Vargas’ images emphasizes the neoliberal imprint of Chilean culture on Earth Mother (Ñuke Mapu) and the Mapuche. The artist accentuates this imprinting process with irony, through the resources of corporeality and advertising. He gives rise to a visual strategy that operates through inversion, by reiterating how superficial ethics proceed. The reinterpretation of the symbols of merchandise stands out in his work, for instance, when he transforms the logo of the multinational business Nike to Ñuke (Mother Earth), or of Puma to Pangui (puma, in Mapudungun, the Mapuche language); thereby alluding to the invasion of the radiata pine and eucalyptus monocultures that are carried out by the transnational forestry companies established in the territory, monocultures that progressively push back the native forest, dry the soils, and consequently strip wildlife and Mapuche communities from their native land.
In the words of Francisco Vargas Huaiquimilla:
“The performative exercise Cosecha(“Harvest”) is an investigative work about the Mapuche Huilliche body and movement in closed spaces, the structures of the trees, timber, forests, and systems of mass production: a study of the breaking of the body, memory, and their movements” (Dossier Notes 2020).
This provocative work impacts the public space through its stark realism, insofar as it seeks to affect the senses and through them shock spectators, making present the memory of an everyday violence which is quickly consumed in the news, but does not transform cultural relationships. The work opens with signs that mobilize the synesthetic associated with the physical and psychological pain of the victims and offers testimony to this particular historical relationship. An example of this artistic proposal is the work La edad de los árboles (“The Age of the Trees”), a video-script text that exposes repression on the part of the police. The work alludes to a Mapuche minor, who despite being subdued by the police, is shot with 180 pellets from a distance of fifty centimeters (one and a half feet). This event is one the artist prints as a tattoo on his own back, denouncing the territorial conflict that has been maintained since the founding of the Chilean State.
About Mabel García Barrera
Mabel García Barrera is an academic at the Universidad de la Frontera (“the University of the Border”), located in the city Temuco, Mapuche territory, in Chile. She is a State professor of Spanish, a master of literature, with a degree in applied political sciences. She has investigated, written, and edited books and numerous articles about Mapuche literature and art in mainstream magazines.
About the translator
From the Appalchian mountains, some of the most ancient in the world, Anya Skye Tucker has studied at the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics, and the University of North Carolina at Asheville. Usually, you can find her scooping ice cream and learning from the beings of the world.
Inin Niwe (Pedro Favaron) and Chonon Bensho (Astrith Gonzales) are spouses and enrolled members of the Native Community of Santa Clara of Yarinacocha, Shipibo-Konibo nation (Peruvian Amazon), where they founded the Nishi Nete Traditional Medicine Clinic, and an ethnobotanical garden. In recent years, through community work, Chonon and Pedro have shared their oraliture, documentaries, paintings, embroidery and conversations, with those who believe that creativity and clear words can heal the environmental and social imbalance in the Amazon and the world. As a response to the difficulty of making the Shipibo-Konibo ways-of-being intelligible, Chonon and Pedro have chosen a myth-poetic vocabulary to build an intercultural bridge: “the visionary doctors”, “the keepers of the medicines”, “the world of the Inka”, “the liquid wisdom”, “the kené designs”, “the perfumed people”. In constant learning with the Onanya –the community doctors/healers–, Chonon’s images and Pedro’s words/songs seem to be forged in a “vegetal time”.
Today, with the permission of the Ibo –the Keepers of the medicinal plants–, we present the poem “Chaikonibo”(translated into English by our dear Lorrie Jayne), where Chonon and Pedro translate into a “clear language” a complex experience of purging and reverie. In times of neo-shamanism, cultural appropriations, and migrations of the plants themselves, Pedro and Chonon remind us of traditional understandings of fasting and the link with the forest, as well as the responsibility of the legitimate doctors with the healing of the world. In this poem, the roots are not planted on ethnic, racial, national or religious identities, but on the Earth Mother and memory. Whoever forgets the territory, the river, the community, is at risk, because how can the forgetful-one use the visionary plants?
Thanks to Chonon Bensho and Inin Niwe (Pedro Favaron) for sharing this poem with Siwar Mayu. Inin Niwe (Pedro Favaron) has published Caminando sobre el abismo: vida y poesía en César Moro (Lima 2003); the novel Puka Allpa (Lima 2015); the poetry collections Movimiento (Buenos Aires 2005), Oeste oriental (Lima 2008) and Manantial Transparente (Mexico 2016); and the research Las visiones y los mundos: sendas visionarias de la Amazonía occidental (Amazon Center for Anthropology and Practical Application, 2017).
1.
Moatian jonibo
koshi shinayabo ikana iki,
ani shinayabo,
metsá shinayabo.
Jatibi jaton koshi,
jaton onan shinan,
joa iki Nete Iboibakeax
jainoaxribi rao meranoax.
Jaboan onana iki yoyo iti
ani jiwibobetan,
niibobetan,
isabobetan, parobetan,
ianbobetan, baribetan.
Jatona iká iki koshi joi.
Tsoabi yoyo ibiresyamakatiai
Moatian ikatikanai yoyo iosmabo,
tsokas shinan-omabo.
Non yosibaon
noa yoikatiai
nete benatian.
Nai iká iki
mai ochoma;
jonibo yoyo ikatikanai
baribetan, wishtinbetan.
Jatibi ikatikanai jaskara joiyabires.
Yapabo,
maimeabo,
peiyabo,
jiwiboanribi
ninkapaokatikanai noa yoyo ikai.
Jaboribi yoyo ipaonike.
Ani ianmeran
Inka japaonike
noa ochoma.
Jakon Inkan
jonibo axea iki
jakoni jati,
jakon akin shinanax,
jatibi menianani,
yoashitima,
jaton mai oroti,
yoá banati,
yoá aki,
jakon akin chopa saweti,
jawetianbi sinakanantima,
jatikaxbi teti.
Moatian jonibo
ikatikanai yoitibo,
raro shinayabo.
Jabo japaonike jaon rarokanai
Papa Baribetan,
Inkabobetanribi.
Jaskara iitibi
Ikana iki
yoshina bakebokeska.
Jakon akin shinayamakana iki.
Ikana iki yoitimabo,
jakonmai yoyo iki.
Jaskatax Inka pikota iki,
Kaa iki janbiribi jai
wetsa neteoribiribi,
jakon netenko,
metsá netenko.
Kakin boa iki
ainboyabi benbobo
jakon shinanyabo,
jakoni jaabo,
jan jato axeakeskati jakanabo.
1.
The ancient ones
had strong thoughts
grand thoughts
beautiful thoughts.
The unfathomable strength
of their wise thoughts
came from the Great Spirit
and the influence of medicinal plants.
They knew how to speak
with the greatest of trees
with the forest,
with the birds and the river,
with the lakes and the sun.
For them, the word was strong.
No one spoke just to speak.
The ancient ones were silent
neither anxious nor restless.
Our grandparents
told us of the time
when the world was new.
The sky was not
far from the earth,
mankind could speak
with the sun and the stars.
Everyone spoke the same language.
The fish,
the beings that walk upon the land,
the beings that fly
and the trees
listened to our word.
They spoke too.
In a great lake
lived the Inka
near to human beings.
The kind-hearted Inka
taught the ancient ones
to live well,
thinking well,
sharing everything,
without stinginess,
tending the land,
planting food,
cooking,
dressing well
without ever quarreling,
working together.
The ancient ones
were obedient,
with happy thoughts.
They lived with gratitude
toward Father Sun
and with the Inka as well.
But after some time
they began to behave
like bedevilled children.
They no longer thought well.
They were disobedient
and they spoke in an improper way.
So the Inka left,
and went to live
in a different world,
a good world,
a beautiful world.
He took with him
the humble and generous
men and women,
those who had lived well,
as he had taught them.
2.
(Bewá)
Eara bewai yakake
Inka mai masene
nete xaman paniax
nai neten paniax
paniake kainax
nai nete xamanbi
jakon nete kepenkin
inka nete kepenkin.
Ea bewa bewai
mato non ninkakin
nato bewa bewai
nato metsá bewakan
nato jakon bewakan
koshi shinan bitaana
ani shinan bitaana
non Inka netenxon
non bari papaka
koshi Inka meraya
rao ibo meraya
jakon Inka meraya.
Ea riki Onanya
inkakeskaboribi
jakon xawen Onanya
Inka bake Meraya.
Nokon metsá maiti
inkan metsá maiti
nete maitishoko
keneyaki maiti
Jaton neten yakaxon
bewa bewabainkin
metsá bewabano
bewa bewashamani.
2.
(Song)
I am seated and singing
in the perfect land of the Inka,
in the depths of the heavens,
suspended in the sky world,
hanging in the most high,
in the depths of the firmament,
opening with my words
the perfect world of the Inka
I am singing a song
To the health of the sensitive beings
Intoning a profound song,
a song of unfathomable beauty,
a compassionate song that heals
that carries the strength and spirit
and infinite thoughts
from the world of the Inka,
from the soul of our Father Sun,
and the great and wise Inka.
from the spiritual Keeper of the medicine
from the wise and generous Inka.
I am a great healer
as were the Inka
a wise and good man,
a son of the enlightened Inka.
I wear a beautiful crown,
a beautiful Inka crown,
that holds the whole world
in its lovely designs.
In that good world I am seated
while my soul journeys
with the force of my beautiful song,
with the depth of my song.
3.
Nato neten
Banekana iki non papabo
kachianakeskabo
noibatitishokobo,
kikini teti
ja jawekiatikopi
jawen awinbo, jawen bakebo
waiai, xoboai.
Jaskatax jatikopi
non papabo
kikini tetaibo ikatikanai.
Jabo oxas oxayamakatikanai
neteamabi,
bari pikotamabi.
Moatian ainbobo
tsinkikatikanai karo jan yoa ati aki,
wai oroi,
xobo matsoti,
mapó akí,
yoman timai,
keweai.
Moatian jonibaon
akatikanai nonti akin,
yomerakatikanai yoinabo, yapabo.
Paro, niibo
Ikatiai jainoa jawekiatibo
jawebi maxkayamakatikanai.
Moatian jonibo
Ikatiai rao jaweki onanbo
chikish raonti onanbo.
Janin bichin
rayatikopi.
Benakatikanai janin jiwi
taweneshaman
janbi wenen-ai.
Tsekakatikanai ja bichi
pachikatikanai
nete beamabi.
Ja xeakatikanai
jaixon samakatikanai
bariapan kaman.
Bakeranonbaon xeakatikanai
rayá inoxon.
Jainoaxribi
manxaman kawati
taxbakan xoxoai.
Ininshaman jiwi
chitari ininkeska
jaonmea onantiribi.
Jawen bichi
iki kinanti
janra poró chokai,
yora jishtiai
rayá itikopi,
mecharibi
manxankeska
ja iki nato jiwi ibo
nama meran noa axeai.
Jaskarakopi non yosibo
ipaonike mechabo.
Jiwibaon raomepaokanike.
Nii raobo ikatia jan raomekanaibo.
Jawetianki ja bichi tsekakanai
wetsa jiwimea
yoyo ikatikanai ja jiwibetan,
jakon akin yoikin
onanmabo ixon:
“Ea mecha imawe,
ea rayá imawe,
jakon shinaya ea inon,
koshi shinaya,
nokon kaibobo jawebi mashkatimakopi”
Ja jiwi ibon
ninkakatitai,
jawen jointi oinxon;
jakon shinayarin ixon
koshi meninoxon,
jawen ani onan shinan.
Jiwi taponbora
boai maixamaori
jainoaxribi jene xamaori.
Jawen poyanbo aniai
neteori.
Maimeabo,
jenemeabo,
oimeabo,
bari papa neteorikeabo,
naixamaoriabo
jainoaribi ochaoma Nete Ibora
joai jawen jakon raoboya
jawen onan shinani
niimea raobo.
Moatian jakatikanai
nii ochoma.
Ikatikanai onanbo.
Westiora yakatibo jakatiai
ochochashokobo
jatonbiri jakoni jaabo.
Jawin kaiboboiba merati
Bokatikanai nontin.
Paro ikatiai moatianbi
jaton bai
jaskatax jaton kaiboboiba merati.
Jonibaon shinan,
jaton jointi
ikatiai rarobires
paro oinax,
wetsa kaibobo shinantaanan.
Yoikatikanai non yosibaon
nete benatian
moatian onayamakatikanai
keweti.
Iikinbi westiora ainbaon
meraa iki parokexakea
metsashoko jene ainbo oxaa
iká iki jawen yora
kewekanbi rakota
kikin metsá.
Jainoax ainbo jawen xobon karibaa iki,
nokoxon tanaa iki ja oina kewebo.
Jainxon peokana iki
chopa keweakin.
Parokeska iki kené
Ja iki ianki tekitabo
jemaboribi.
Jatiribibo iki mayakené,
mayá mayabaini
parobokeska.
Jatibi jawen metsabo,
jawen raobo,
jatibi jakonbo,
jake jawen mestá kenebo.
Noa riki paromea jonibo.
Shipibo-konibo
noa jati atipanyamake
paro ochó.
Yosiboan yoikatitai
paro xaman
jake wetsa jonibo
ani shinaya.
Moatian Merayabo
jeneori bokatikanai
jain jakatikanai
ja paro jonibobetan
jatonmea onani.
3.
In this world
our parents remained
like orphans
suffering greatly,
travailing
to feed
their wives and children,
building homes, planting gardens.
In order to live
our parents
were hard workers.
They woke
before dawn,
before the sun had risen.
Women of old
gathered kindling to cook,
tended the gardens,
swept the house ,
moulded the clay,
wove their clothes
and embroidered them with designs.
Men of old
built canoes,
hunted and fished.
The river and forests
gave them all that they needed,
they lacked nothing.
The old ones
knew the medicinal plants
that cured laziness.
The bark of the Tangarana kaspi
made them hard-workers anew.
They searched for a Tangarana tree
tended well
by its own ants.
Cut the bark
and soaked it
before dawn.
This is what they drank
and later they fasted
until noon.
The youth drank as well
(the bark of the Tangarana)
so they could be hard workers.
They also knew
the Sarcha Garza tree
that grows on the edges of lakes.
A fragrant tree
that smells of cinnamon
and holds great knowledge.
A purgative is prepared
with it´s bark
that cleans the stomach
and wakes the body
and makes a good worker
and makes a good fisherman
like the heron,
who is the Keeper of that tree
who transmits his skills and knowledge to us
through dreams.
This is why the old ones
were good fishermen.
The trees cured them.
The old ones healed themselves with the land.
When they stripped the bark
of a medicinal tree
they talked with the tree,
they spoke with respect
and asked to be taught:
“Make me a good fisherman,
Make me a hard-working man,
a man of good thought,
strong thought,
so that my family may lack nothing.¨
The spiritual Keeper of the tree,
listened to them,
looked into their hearts:
if they had good thoughts
he transmitted his strength to them,
and his great wisdom.
The tree roots
bury themselves in the water
and beneath the water as well.
Their branches reach to the sky.
From the earth,
from the rain,
from the light of Father Sun,
from the depth of the sky
and from the Great Spirit
come the good medicines
and understandings
of the plants of the forest.
The old ones lived
close to the forest.
They knew it well.
Each family lived
a peaceful life
far-removed from the others.
They traveled in canoes
to visit relatives.
For the old ones, the rivers
were the paths
that united families.
In their thoughts,
in their hearts,
they felt happiness
contemplating the river,
remembering their relatives.
Our grandparents told
that in the beginning of the world
the ancient ones were not familiar
with the kené designs.
Until a woman
found a gorgeous siren sleeping,
on the river’s shore.
Her body embroidered
with designs of great beauty.
The woman returned to her home;
upon arrival she drew the designs.
From that time forward
the ancient ones began
to embroider their clothes with designs.
The kené designs are like rivers
that unite the lakes
to the people.
Some are circular,
turning and flowing
like rivers.
All that is beautiful,
all that is medicinal,
all that is good
is covered with kené designs.
We are people of the river.
The Shipibo konibo
we cannot live
far from the rivers.
The grandparents used to tell
that in the depths of the river
live other humans
great wise ones.
The ancient Meraya
sunk in the water
and they went to live
with the spirits of the river
so to learn from them.
4.
(Song)
Binding myself to the depths of the river
forming a deep connection
with the depths of the water,
with the deepest depths of the great river.
My song finds its way
toward the depths of the water.
Beautiful woman of the waters
with a body embroidered with designs
of indescribable beauty,
embroidered with lovely and deep designs.
We speak to her (the woman of the water)
that she might grant us
her infinite knowledges
her strong thoughts
that she might welcome us in the world of water,
open the wisdom of the liquid world
that we might receive its strength
and its beautiful medicinal songs.
Beside her we learn
the wisdom of the water world
of the world of embroidered designs,
the depths of the river world.
Over the spiritual boat
(of the woman of the world of water)
I am walking
receiving strength
from the hidden territory
in which she became a human being,
where the spirit of the water world was born,
the strong spirit of water,
who cares for the rivers and lakes,
the depths of the aquatic world.
The wise water woman
is an enlightened being,
with extraordinary gifts
who rules over the dragons,
Those colossal serpents
live in the world of designs,
in the lovely landscape,
in the depths of the river.
5.
Jawetianki moatian jonibo
Onanyakasi
bokatikanai ochó
niimeran peotashoko akax.
Tsekakatikanai jiwi bichibo,
koshi jiwibo,
ani onanyati jiwibo,
inoaxatankeska,
anakeska.
Jakoni yoyo ikatikanai
ja rao ibobobetan:
“Ea ani shinan meniwe,
min panati ea meniwe,
maton bewá ea onanmawe,
isinaibo en jato benxoanon,
nokon kaibobo akinon,
Maton neterao ea kepenxonkanwe,
eara raomis ikasai
moatian jonibokeska”.
Rao jene xeakatikanai
jainoaxribi peibaon nashikatikanai.
Piamakatikanai
jaweti netebo
jainxon samakatikanai
oxebo winoti
tashioma pii,
bata piamai,
yoranyamai,
jaskati noibatiti
koshi shinaya ikasi
yoitanan:
“Eara ikai ani Onanya joni,
Kikin koshi Onanya,
Jakon Onanya,
Nete Ibon bake”.
Jawetianki jawen yoraxama
moa kerasma iketian,
jawen shinan jakon-ira
rao jonibo
jaimashaman
nokokatikanai.
Jawen namameran axeai,
jaton koshi menii,
jaton onan shinan menii.
Jaweratoboki Onanya ikasai
iti atipanke jakon shinanya
jato raonkasai
jawen kaibobo
jaton rao bewakan.
Jawetianki samatai
non kayara kai
jatibi netenko:
mai xaman kai
rao taponbomeran;
onanti jawetio chichorin ixon
jawen jene neteoribi;
jainoariibi mananmeran,
shanka neteo,
nai xamao.
Ja samataikaya
kai jemabotiibi
rao nete ibobo,
Chaikonibaon jeman.
Nokokatikanai joni
ja basi samata jonibo,
inin peiraon
nashiabo.
Ja joné jonibo
kenyamai non jakonma itsa.
Xeteti jake raopei inin
jaskaaraxon chaikonibo
nokotikopi.
Jatonra biai
jakon shinaya jonibo,
jakoni jaa jonibo,
jakon joe Netemeran
jawen jointiabi .
Ja joné jonibo
jawetianbi ramianayamakanai.
Kikin raro shinayabo jakanke,
Rao inin poataibo
Nii xamameran
ani jema ochó
weanbotiibi.
Jatibitian raota.
Akanai jatonribi ani xeatiakin
metsonananax ransai,
mashá bewai.
Jawetianki westiora Onanya
Chaikoniboiba meratai
aribakanai jaton bake bimakin.
Jabaon jawetianbi potayamai,
akinkanai
isinaibo benxoatikopi .
Kikin metsashoko ainbobo
Joxo tena yorayabo.
Jawen rayos Onanya
meniai jawen koshi,
jawen onan shinan,
raonai itikopi
yokakanaibo.
5.
When the ancient ones
wanted to be healers and wise on
they would go live far away (from their families)
in small retreats in the forest.
They cut the bark from the trees
which had spiritual force
and from the trees with great knowledge
like the ayahuma and the catahua.
They spoke with them respectfully,
with the Keepers of the medicine
(to ask them to give them their strength,
their knowledge):
“Give me a grand thought,
give me your protection,
teach me your songs
to cure the sick,
to help my family.
Open the medicinal world,
I want to be a healer
a wise one like the ancient ones.”
They drank the medicinal water
(in which the bark chips had been soaked)
or they bathed with the leaves.
They ate nothing
for many days
and then fasted
for some months
without salt,
without sweets,
without sexual relations,
in this way they suffered
with the strong thought
saying:
“I am going to be a great healer,
a strong healer,
a good healer,
son of the Great Spirit.”
When the depths of his body
were clean
and his thoughts were peaceful
the medicinal spirits
nearby
approached,
In dreams they taught,
they gave him strength;
they gave him wisdom.
Those who wanted to be healers,
had to have a strong mind
and want to cure
their family
with the medicinal songs.
During the fast
our spirit travels
through diverse worlds:
sinks below the earth
with the roots of the medicine;
knows the deepest depths
of the world of waters;
as well as the mountains
the world of rocks
and the depths of the sky.
The spirit of the faster
travels through spiritual territories
of the Keepers of the medicinal world,
and visits the village of the Chaikonibo.
Where only those
who have fasted a long time,
who have bathed
with perfumed leaves may arrive.
The hidden spirits
don’t like bad smells.
One must wear the scent of a perfumed plant
to approach
the Chaikonibo.
They welcome only
those who think well,
who live in harmony
with the light of the Great Spirit
in their heart’s thoughts.
The hidden beings (Chaikonibo)
never argue among themselves.
They live contentedly,
emanating their aroma of plants,
in the deep forest,
in the creeks
far from cities.
Their clothes are adorned.
They hold celebrations
and dance hand in hand.
singing mashá.
When a healer
comes across the Chaikonibo
they give him their daughters to marry.
They will never abandon him
and will help him
to heal the sick.
They are beautiful women
with very white skin, that gleams.
His wise father-in-law
gives him his strength,
gives him his knowledge,
to cure with compassion
all who ask help.
6.
(Song)
With the depth of my song
with the deep connection of the song,
with the profound medicine
of the beautiful song
I open the path singing
I go forth twirling and twirling
forming a song with designs,
with deep and lovely designs.
I am a traditional healer
a good and healing man,
an Onanya of great wisdom,
with a beautiful crown.
I have a profound crown
that vibrates resplendently
perfumed and brilliant
with a design of indescribable beauty.
I have a tunic as well,
a beautiful tunic,
a white tunic,
with lovely embroidered designs.
It is my embroidered tunic
that the hummingbird gave to me.
My soul rises up
and hangs in the boundless sky
opening the deepest depths
of the medicinal world.
I open the limitless world,
the beautiful, inexpressible world.
the world without evil, the world of good,
the world of medicinal aroma.
I link myself with the perfumed people,
with the soul of the Chaikonibo,
with the profoundness of this village
with its beautiful houses;
happy and fragrant women
twirl and twirl, dancing the mashá.
In that beautiful world
I have my wife
she is a lovely bird
everything in this world shimmers.
And my dear grandparents
sing with great happiness.
The spirit Keepers of the medicine
turn round and round from the deepest depths
curing sickness
with the soul of our beautiful songs.
I have the knowledge of the Meraya
just as the ancient ones had
and I am curing this man
and I am curing this woman
with the depth of my song,
and the depth of the medicinal world,
and the good word of the Great Spirit,
the medicinal word of God.
7.
Moatian jonibo
ikatikanai koshibo onan jonibo.
Jakatikanai Inkan jato axeakeska.
Rama Inka jake
wetsa neteori,
wetsa paroori,
noakeskama netenko,
jakon netenko.
Jabo mawayamai,
keyoisma Inka.
Noa riki bakebo
moatian Merayabo.
Noa iti atipanke jatokeskaribi.
Non yosibo
jake non jointiainko;
bewakanai
Inkabobetan.
Non rao onanketian,
non jakon akin samaketian,
yosibaon noa namameran noa benai.
Noa bokanai
non onanyamaa parobaon;
noa onanmakanai icha jawekibo
jatibi raomeranoabo.
Noa koshi menikanai,
jaton onan shinanbo,
jaton ani shinanbo,
jakon joi
tsonbi noa paketimakopi.
Ramara noa jake “moderno” netenko
ikaxbi noa shinabenoti atipayamake
non rekenbo.
Jaskatax jatikopi
jemabotiibi nato ani paron,
jatibitian koshi itikopi,
noa jati iki non rao ochoma,
ani nete namati.
Rome koinman
non atipanke yoshinbo ishtomakin
noa ramiakasaitian.
Non jakon akin samaketian
Chaikonibaon noa axeati atipanke,
jaton koshi menikin,
jaton jakon shinanbo,
noa jakon jatikopi,
ikonshaman jonibokeska itikopi.
7.
The ancient ones
were strong and wise.
They lived as the Inka had taught them.
The Inka now live
in another world,
in another river,
in a world that is different from ours,
in a good world
He never dies,
He is the Inka eternal.
We are children
of the ancient healers
and we can be as they have been.
Our grandparents
live in our hearts;
and continue to sing
along with the enlightened Inka.
If we know our plants,
if we fast well,
the grandparents will visit us in dreams.
They journey with us
to unknown rivers
and they teach us many things
about medicinal plants.
They give us their strength,
their wise thoughts,
their infinite thoughts,
a good word
so no one can defeat us.
Now we live in the modern world
but we can never forget
our ancestors.
In order to survive
as a nation of this great river
we must remain strong,
close to our medicines,
dreaming of the boundless worlds.
With the smoke of tobacco
We must dispel the demons
that would destroy us.
If we fast well
the Chaikonibo can teach us,
give us their strength,
their good thoughts,
that we may live well
as true human beings.
About the translator
Lorrie Jayne, a collaborator in Siwar Mayu, teaches Spanish, Portuguese, and Personal Narrative in the Languages and Literatures Department at University of North Carolina Asheville (USA). She lives with her husband and daughters in the Appalachian Mountains where she enjoys plants, people, and poetry.
For more about Chonon Bensho, Pedro Favaron and the Shipibo-Konibo nation
Manuel Tzoc Bucup is a poet, visual, and performance artist from Iximulew (Guatemala). His work is intersectional, using poetic language and visual art to explore social realities, focusing on gender, identity, the body, origins, memory, language, image, object, sexual dissidence, and all possible combinations of these. He is self-taught, having learned through workshops, certificate programs, and readings of contemporary art and literature. In addition to self-published poetic objects, he has published a number of books in alternative presses, and his texts have appeared in literary magazines and anthologies throughout Abya Yala. Further, he has presented his visual art in galleries and contemporary art shows locally and internationally.
He is one of the founders of Maleta Ilegal, a cartonera editorial, that is a small, independent and handmade publishing outfit that carries out limited print runs. He is well-known for his queer, erotic poetry and his poetic book objects, and recently he spearheaded the publication of one of the first queer poetry collections in Central America, Antología LGBTIQ+ Guatemala (e/X 2018). Tzoc’s overall approach to the edition and publication of his verses is informed by both the practical need to forego censorship and to ensure that his work is also experienced in a sensory manner. This also means that he shortens the distance between creator and public, lending his verses a physicality that they would otherwise lack as mere printed words. For the poet, the feel of the paper, the impact of the images, and the experience of handling the poetic object are all a part of the experience, and the reader is prompted to reflect on the fetishization of the book, and, ultimately, the word.
His latest collection, Wuj (December 2019), recreates an epistolary experience of sorts. The poet-maker crafts a mere fifty copies of a loose-leaf poetic object, made out of richly textured paper, with font resembling typewritten text, all enclosed in an envelope that has been sealed. To obtain a copy, one must contact Tzoc directly, and its delivery is done by an international courier (Guatemala has no national postal system) or in-person (it should be noted that getting hold of a copy of Wuj has been impacted by the current global pandemic). The verses therein reflect on our relationship to social media (“Adiós Facebook! Cierro mi cuenta contigo ☹️” Goodbye Facebook! I’m closing my account with you ☹️) and the internet (“San Google cómo se encuentra tu espíritu cyborg en este momento?” Saint Google how is your cyborg spirit at this moment?); to writing and being read (“Ejercicios de escritura” Writing exercises, “A los lectores” To the readers, and “Wuj”); to Maya dress (“Kat Waj” I love you); and to urban life (“Memoriales urbanos” Urban memorials), to name a few. For this edition of Siwar Mayu, Tzoc presents us with unpublished verses that reflect on the current global pandemic: what it means to be alone, to face fear, illness, and death.
A selection of 5 poems from an unpublished collection tentatively entitled, “Strawberries and Failure” by Manuel Tzoc. Written during the COVID-19 global pandemic for the electronic magazine Siwar Mayu, Guatemala 2020.
Please follow this link, and enjoy four more of Tzoc’s poems. They cover a wide range of topics, written over many years. They speak to the complexity of the human existence, touching on everything from the inner child to medicinal plants and queerness.
For eight more moving poems by Tzoc, each steeped in emotion, please visit Vagabond City, a digital space which features “poetry, art, nonfiction, interviews, and reviews by marginalized creators.” (Vagabond City 2020)
Explore the galleries of Maleta Ilegal, learn about the philsophies behind “texts without borders,” and get to know the authors and artists. They support creators through their alternative publishing style, allowing for unedited and uncensored content. You can find more of Tzoc’s work there, including De Textos Insanos (From Insane Texts).
A few weeks ago, we shared words with Edinson Quiñones, an artist of Nasa ancestry, from Cauca Colombia. Edinson spoke with us from his Nasa territory, where he is currently “unlearning” at the Universidad Autónoma Indígena Intercultural (UAIIN) and leading the trans-indigenous project, “Popayork.” Through the earpiece of my cell phone in Tokiyasdi/Asheville (Cherokee territory, the United States), I can hear the clucking of chickens and the hustle and bustle of the Andean countryside. Edinson holds a degree in Visual Arts from the University of Cauca and a Master’s degree in Integrated Arts with the Environment from the same institution. He has held twelve individual exhibits and participated in more than fifty collective exhibitions. He is a member of the Collective 83 with whom he has curated and maintained the Salón Internacional Indígena Manuel Quintín Lame (2014-2020). Currently, Edinson is studying the series, “The Rehabilitation of Mother Earth,” where his first objective is to unlearn the colonial notions that isolate art from the community and create the false idea of a “select public.”
Anyone who has attended his performances and workshops knows that, since 2003, Edinson has been recovering the steps of his elders through a visceral creative process that includes not only identity but also the faces of the war. “I was a spirit without a guide, Brother”, he says to me, “carrying out rebellious projects to heal myself.” In 2012, after multiple trips and exhibitions, Edinson’s grandmother, a midwife and traditional Nasa medicine woman, died. While he and his mother processed this loss, Edinson began to approach, in a deeper way, the coca leaf, and the wounds from narcotraffic in the territory of his own ancestors. His umbilicus and placenta, as is the custom of many of the ancestral peoples of Abya-Yala, were buried by his grandmother, healer, and pulse reader in the community—Edison’s art blossoms at the crossroads of coca, death, and territory.
For Edinson, using the wood and pigment of coca looks into the poetics of nature. But to do so also means confronting global misinformation regarding the plant, the twisted reality that surrounds the consumption of cocaine (0.5 gm of alkaloid from 100 gm of the leaf), as well as the trafficking, and violence that radiates from this imbalance. Those who have visited the Gold Museum in Bakata/ Bogota (Colombia) or theCasa del Alabado Museum in Quito, are aware that many of the ancient pieces, from more than 2000 years ago, represent the poporo and the zocalo (instruments still used today for the ingestion of coca among the peoples of the Sierra Nevada of Santa Marta), and the faces and bodies of the elders seated, cheeks stuffed with coca.
Quimbaya region. Colombia.
Nariño region, Colombia.
For Edison, as for millions of native people from the south of Abya- Yala, coca (ayu, mambe, kintu) has been and continues to be the key to composing themselves, in order to find and share the right word, to analyze and weave communally, and to show gratitude for the abundance of the Earth Mother. To call coca, “a drug” is a form of disorienting, uprooting, and distancing ourselves from ourselves. The responsibility of the European pharmaceutical industry in the decontextualization of the ancestral sense of the sacred leaf is revealed in the installation, If it’s Bayer, it’s good. This art teaches the importance of returning to ourselves.
When I asked Edinson which project he would like for us to highlight in Siwar Mayu, he responded that, curiously, he always returns to the year 2006 at the VI Festival de Performance de Cali (Colombia), where, after tattooing the image of a god jaguar/Spirit Lord of coca on his right shoulder blade, he performed the removal of the image by scarification. It seems that what remains of the performance is a photograph of an event. But what happens to the artist’s body? And what happens in the collective body? Talking with Edison, I learned what happened next: nine months of healing and dialoguing with his mother, a painful process through which he had to re-learn every aspect of daily life (how to sleep, how to bathe himself), and later, the constant remembering in his own body of the primary intention. A memory to last a lifetime. Those works around the God of Coca forcefully break into the physical body to destabilize the Western epistemology. “You have to uproot the past from behind in order to see it in front of you,” he tells me, and I think about the Andean nayrapacha, “My mother, also a healer, didn’t understand why I harmed myself.”
This is what’s hard for a public that lacks care and respect to process. How do you perform with bullets? Quitexa is the name of this work of Edinson’s. It means, “to bloom” in the Nasa Yuwe language. How to perform with a “coca” (the word carries a double meaning: it names the leaf, but also a wooden toy) made with the bones of victims of the war? This work is called, Violent Games. Not Everything Is a Game. “The community calls me crazy,” Edinson says laughing. “Mine is an autobiographical work that goes through distinct phases: trauma, healing, and positive transformation.”
Edison believes that this is a strategy for persisting in a society as conservative as Popayán. After centuries of internalized racism in Cauca and throughout Colombia, when words such as ‘Indian’ or ‘Paez’ were used to shame those who were native to the place, today is a new day, when Edison can say, laughing, “I was searching in the air and not in the earth.” Now is the time to build from the collective, with the permission of the elders, making offerings before beginning projects, chewing coca, and taking the yajé medicine, to inquire into the deep questions that arise from the ceremony itself. “From the law of origins there are secrets that should not be taken out of the community; the artist struggles to understand how they should share,” he explains.
This is why, in this bridge between spirituality, art, and academia, there are pieces that are not for exhibit and words that are to be shared only at the exact moment, since “the intention begins in the seed,” as he tells me. The richness of the Cauca territory is now in the eye of extractive and private industries. Manuel Quintin Lame was one of the Nasa leaders who put up a fight against the wealthy sugarcane landowners. “Freeing the land”, Edison explains, “is to free her from the monoculture of sugar-to recover sovereignty over our food.”
Popayork Artistic Residences
“That’s why Popayork is my dream,” says Edinson, “Five years ago I began this vision and today the fruit trees are flowering, we have 30 chickens, and the bunnies have been born!” Popawork is more than a space for artist residencies- it is a life project that became clear to Edinson while taking yajé medicine. The way Edinson tells it, he intended to take a long trip outside of Colombia, but during the yajé ceremony he saw the place where he is now as if it were already his, that is to say, he saw the need to concentrate upon his own territory and to continue the spiritual processes that he had already been taking. Edinson invites me to reflect upon the figures that underpin the Colombian reality: out of 104.2 million hectares of territory, 48% is currently devoted to extensive cattle ranching. That is only one clear example of the socio-economic imbalances brought about by the large landowners and the absence of an agrarian policy that would provide incentives for the farmworkers and Afro-Colombian and Indigenous communities.
Today, after five years of weaving Popayork together, Edinson is in the process of raising the maloca (ceremonial house) and seeding the sacred tulpa (fire pit). “And we must stoke the fire and never let it burn out,” he tells me. The elders come to Popayork and offer their medicines- Yanakuna, Misak, and Nasa communities pass through, and nothing leaves Popayork without permission and guidance. The materials that Edinson has used in the past, such as those in his work, Violent Games have been through a purging process, since bullets and bones need to be cleansed also. Before closing our conversation, he from the Andes (my territory as well), and I from the Appalachian Mountains, I asked Edison about the project he is currently working on. He answers: “Seeing a garden in bloom is pure collective magic, Brother. That’s how it goes these days…” At the publication of this text, the indigenous guard of Cauca is leading the national Minga (community work) in Colombia, demanding that the government of Ivan Duque assumes the responsibilities of the state and protect the lives of social leaders besieged by armed outlaw groups.
For more about the Manuel Quintín Lame Exhibition / Collective 83
Colectivo 83– Curaduría Salón Internacional Manuel Quintín Lame (2014-2020)
Curators, mingadores (collaborative workers), philosophers, and elders like Taita Lorenzo, are all welcome in this living, portable exhibition, which includes video, audio, poetry, copy, photography, and conversation. The objective of this effort is not only to make indigenous art visible, but to create a trans-indigenous dialogue that addresses the territory. In 2019, sixty-seven artists from twelve indigenous communities participated in the Salon which was held at the Universidad de los Andes (Bogotá, Colombia).
Mikhu Paul (1958-) is a Wolastoq poet who lives in Portland, Maine, USA, where she is an educator, artist and activist. Of mixed ancestry, she is a member of Kingsclear First Nation in New Brunswick, Canada. Her collection 20th Century PowWow Playland was published in 2012 by Bowman Books and poems have been published in various journals. She is also a multi-media artist whose work has been exhibited in museums and galleries, and auctioned off to fundraise for charitable causes.
In both her art, writings and life, she highlights the abuses and consequences of systemic racism of the traditional ways of life of Indigenous peoples. The Indigenous teachings were passed along to her by her grandfather in Penosbscot Indian Island Reservation near Old Town, Maine. Her palimpsestic reflections on the passage of time are sensitive and striking, alluding to assimilation and heritage at the same time. The poems chosen for this selection are exemplary of these characteristics but the most famous poem from Mihku Paul’s collection of 34, “Jefferson Street School” speaks of her personal experience with White education, discrimination, social inequalities and cultural difference.
By René Alvarado Martínez y Juan G. Sánchez Martínez / Translated from Spanish by Lorrie Jayne
René Alvarado Martínez hails from San Andrés Hidalgo, Huautla de Jiménez, in the northeast region of Oaxaca, México. As he tells it, from the time he was a child, René has created from earthen clay and reproduced images that he saw in free texts and books. He also remembers being seven and beginning to notice visitors arriving at his house in search of his father, a practitioner of traditional medicine, who guided the community with candles and, on a few rare occasions with the “sacred little ones”: the medicinal Mazatec mushroom. His mother, born in Rio Santiago, Huatla de Jimenez, the birthplace of the celebrated priestess María Sabina, also plays a part in his work.
Through the course of thousands of years, indigenous peoples throughout the world have kept track of their experiences with visionary plants and mushrooms, and have represented their spiritual knowledge through different codes and mediums. However, in recent years, the use of these medicines has made its way into the imagination of “arts and literature”in mainstream languages and circles. “Mushrooms and visionary plants,” have been referred to as “drugs” (from the Spanish-Arabic root ‘hatruka’ meaning lie), or “hallucinogens” (from the latin ‘alucinari’, to ramble senselessly), as “psychotropics” (from the Greek ‘psyche,’ mind/spirit, and ‘topein,’ an altered state), as “psychedelics” (from the Greek ‘psyche,’ mind/spirit, and ‘delos,’ to manifest oneself), and as “entheogens” (from the Greek ‘en,’ within, ‘theos,’ God, ‘gen,’ to be born) as plants that allow God to flower within- this latest expression has been proposed by Gordon Wasson, Jonathan Ott, and Carl Ruck. René Alvarado Martínez’ work is inspired by the Mazatec practice of ingestion of “the sacred little ones,” the mushrooms/medicines, who René uses the word “entheogens” to name.
René Alvarado Martínez
Once he was in high school, René forayed into techniques such as acrylics, pastels, and stained-glass. Later he migrated to the city of Tecamachalco, in the state of Puebla, where he developed oil painting and other mixed techniques. René has participated in more than fifty collective and individual exhibitions. His work (paintings textured with Mazatec dyes and earth, carvings with obsidian on clay, ritual sculptures, and lamps) can be found in private collections in California, New York, Colombia, Argentina, Japan, Australia, and in multiple cities in Mexico.
“During my career I have painted with colors, watercolors, acrylics, pastels, ink, drypoint, oils, mixed techniques, engravings, and natural dyes from the Mazatec region. I am also currently sculpting with clay, branches, and corrugated cardboard. Through painting I am planting an awareness of ”Human Being” in every extension of the word. I believe that through art a new world can be built. Art is an expression, a feeling, a language, a spirit of the soul made matter.”
His own iconography runs throughout René Alvarado Martínez’ work: beneath the moon, the seeds of corn align with the corners of the universe; the “sacred little ones” and the candles guide the trip and the trance that reveals the spiraling snail, that primordial image that René identifies with unity and flow; beneath the stars, the serpents, wisdom and renovation, interlace man and woman, the last protectress of the “the sacred little ones,” the creative force, the cosmic mother. Just as it does in María Sabina’s songs and evening ceremonies, Christian iconography and vocabulary sometimes superimposes itself upon the visions of the sacred mushrooms. Today, some of the elders of the community celebrate René’s work.
As in mystic poetry, René’s work captures the ecstasy of the curandero who looks into the abyss of mystery, and brings back with him knowledge of the origin of illness, the root of the cure. But these works also reflect the pillars of Mazatec celebrations that are related to the agricultural calendar- the seven maizes, the offerings to the hills and mountains, and the huehuentones, groups who dress for the Day of the Dead, whose songs and drums travel house to house, carrying advice and awareness, greeting everyone as if they were their ancestors, their family.
In my works I give expression to our ancestral knowledge and the elements that are used in a ceremony that includes entheogens: the candle, the sahumerio or copal burner, and the mushrooms. I also bring forth the sacred elements: the moon, the sun, and the stars! I immortalize and share our culture, our roots, our people, our town, our customs and traditions, the connection with our surroundings, nature itself, the supernatural, such as the chikones, guardians of the mountains, the rivers, the caves, the wind- manifesting within as well as outside of ritual, in our history and our cosmovision which contains the Sierra Mazateca. I rescue our mother tongue, since it is the net of communication between the living and the dead, along with our ancestors, deities and guardians and the knowledge that they emanate. Visionary art.
More regarding “the sacred little ones”and mazatec art
The art of Filogonio Naxín bets upon the freedom of shapes. Reaching beyond galleries, museums and art schools, Naxín dislocates definitions of “traditional” and visualizes bridges in oil, acrylic, and watercolor with which he crosses from the Mazatec language to the techniques of Western art.
Kitaay Bizhikikwe ndizhinikaaz, waabizheshi ndodem. Anishinaabe miinwa Métis ndow, bezho Mide kwe ndow. My name is Kitaay bizhikikwe, my English name is Amanda Myers. I am of the marten clan, Three Fires Midewiwin Lodge, and of Anishnaabe and Métis lineage connecting to Indigenous communities across northern Michigan, Wisconsin and Ontario (Madelaine Island, Bad River, Sagamok, Garden River, and Walpole Island) My ancestors of the Cadotte/Cadeau and Myers/Mailette lines lived off the land, travelling, trading and trapping, before settling here in SW Ontario. Connection to land and identity is what inspires my visual artwork. When I consider our mother, the earth beneath me, I know that spirit is all around me. I know that when I speak, all of creation is listening. When I have conversations with nature and I consider who I am and who my ancestors were, I can see things out on the landscape, so I paint what I see. My work represents my conversations with the landscape around me and how that looks to me visually.
The painting titled They Know Better, came from a conversation with water activist, Tom Cull. He asked me to collaborate on a performance for the upcoming Culture Days Festival. While we looked out into the downtown of London, Ontario, I could see through the buildings, and I thought of her, Deshkan ziibing (known colonially as the River Thames). He talked about his work with the water, and I talked about my responsibility to the water as Anishinaabekwe. The forks of the river came to my mind and the stories that I knew about it. I considered it now, the commerciality of the space, the concrete, the metal, and the way that people here talk about this beautiful life force. They often comment on how dirty she looks, how polluted she is, instead of telling her that we are grateful for her work, that we love her for what she does for us. Without the movement of this river what would happen? That’s when I could see her, Midewanakwe spirit. She was wondering, what is happening here, why don’t they pay attention to what is around them? If we pay attention, our grandmothers are always here reminding us, that is what I could see in this work, that is what I tried to show.
I often use the technique of overlapping images digitally to create the foundation of my painting, here I overlapped a historic image of the Thames River in London, England, with the current image of the forks in London, Ontario. I wanted to go back to when humans started to interfere with the landscape here. I use many layers of transparency in my work to create the images that I can see in my mind’s eye.
Kimberly Blaeser served as Wisconsin Poet Laureate for 2015-16. She is the author of four poetry collections—most recently Copper Yearning and Apprenticed to Justice; and editor of Traces in Blood, Bone, and Stone: Contemporary Ojibwe Poetry. A bi-lingual collection of her poetry, Résister en dansee/Dancing Resistance will be published in France in 2020. An Anishinaabe activist and environmentalist from White Earth Reservation, Blaeser is a Professor at UW—Milwaukee and MFA faculty member for the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe. Her photographs, picto-poems, and ekphrastic poetry have been featured in various exhibits including “Ancient Light” and “Visualizing Sovereignty.” She lives in the woods and wetlands of Lyons Township, Wisconsin and, for portions of each year, in a water-access cabin adjacent to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness chasing poems, photos, and river otters—sometimes all at once.
Artist Statement
I see my work in writing and photography as an “act of attention,” as a way of seeing and re-seeing the universe around and within us. My poems and photographs often call attention to the wounds in our world—environmental degradation, race and class-based inequities, human suffering. But they are equally as likely to take notice of the intricacies of the everyday world—“the translucent claws of newborn mice”—or to varied pathways of spiritual connection. Art, in centering our attention, can change perception and invite a re-imagining of meaning.
My writing often traces a process of becoming, of learning how to be in the world. In Anishinaabemowin, we speak of minobimaadiziwin, the good life. Because I am invested in this becoming, my work in literature and the other arts evokes search, or the feeling of leaning toward the light. In my practice, the lens through which I refract experience often involves justice. It brings together the artistic re-seeing or vision with the Latin spiritus as in breath to speak. For me, spiritus, the gift of voice, involves not only the ability, but also the responsibility to speak.
This obligation of voice, however, can sometimes manifest itself in restraint. Poetry, at its finest, leaves room for the unsaid or unsayable; photography leaves room for the unseen or unknowable. Art is all about question and gesture. It invites a reader, listener, viewer into a dynamic process. Poetry, by its very nature gestures beyond itself; wants to crack open the surface of language and invite us into experience itself. Likewise, photography can gesture beyond mere representation. Both lean close to all borders of being—balance on the verge of vision.
Artists do not simply represent the world – although they do that work too; but on our best days, we create a pathway that ultimately fills with silence. We arrive at the edge of the known and peer beyond. In the midst of immense wild places like the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, for instance, we know—not by reason, but by instinct—that this is sacred. We taste our own smallness. In such moments, our experience or “truth” remains on some level inexpressible. How do you say “human insignificance” in writing and mean “belonging”? Art, at its best, leaves space for this ambiguity, for this complexity of feeling.
A White Earth childhood water rich and money poor.
Vaporous being transformed in cycles—
the alluvial stories pulled from Minnesota lakes
harvested like white fish, like manoomin,
like old prophecies of seed growing on water.
Legends of Anishinaabeg spirit beings:
cloud bearer Thunderbird who brings us rain,
winter windigo like Ice Woman, or Mishibizhii
who roars with spit and hiss of rapids—
great underwater panther, you copper us
to these tributaries of balance. Rills. A cosmology
of nibi. We believe our bodies thirst. Our earth.
One element. Aniibiishaaboo. Tea brown
wealth. Like maple sap. Amber. The liquid eye of moon.
Now she turns tide, and each wedded being gyrates
to the sound, its river body curving.
We, women of ageless waters, endure;
like each flower drinks from night,
holds dew. Our bodies a libretto,
saturated, an aquifer—we speak words
from ancient water.
Art by Kimberly Blaeser
Nibii-wiiyawan Bawaadanan *
Wazhashk
agaashiinyi memiishanowed bagizod
biwak-dakamaadagaayin
mashkawendaman
googiigwaashkwaniyamban
dimii-miinaandeg gagwedweyamban.
Gigoopazomigoog
ninii-chiwaawaabiganoojinh akiing
ogichidaa Anishinaabe
awesiinaajimowinong, aadizookaanag
dash debaajimojig onisaakonanaanaawaa
nengaaj enji-mamaanjiding
gdobikwaakoninjiins
miidash gakina Nibiishinaabeg
debwewendamowaad.
Waabandan negawan
aah sa ongow eta
maaaji-mishiikenh-minis
minwaabandaan aakiing maampii
niigaanigaabawiying
agamigong
Wazhashk waabamang, niikaaninaanig
zhiibaasige zaaga’iganan gaye ziibiinsan
mashkiig zhawendang
mikwendang
waawiindang
ezhi-bagosendamowaad
ezhi-googiiwaad
agaashiinyag memiishanowewaad begizojig
dibiki-miikanong.
Nangodinong enji-nibii-bawaajiganan
gidimagozijig aakiing endaaying
bakadenodang
dash nagamoying
jiibenaakeying
noosone’igeying
bakobiiying.
* Translation by Margaret Noodin
Dreams of Water Bodies
Wazhashk,
small whiskered swimmer,
you, a fluid arrow crossing waterways
with the simple determination
of one who has dived
purple deep into mythic quest.
Belittled or despised
as water rat on land;
hero of our Anishinaabeg people
in animal tales, creation stories
whose tellers open slowly,
magically like within a dream,
your tiny clenched fist
so all water tribes
might believe.
See the small grains of sand—
Ah, only those poor few—
but they become our turtle island
this good and well-dreamed land
where we stand in this moment
on the edge of so many bodies of water
and watch Wazhashk, our brother,
slip through pools and streams and lakes
this marshland earth hallowed by
the memory
the telling
the hope
the dive
of sleek-whiskered-swimmers
who mark a dark path.
And sometimes in our water dreams
we pitiful land-dwellers
in longing
recall, and singing
make spirits ready
to follow:
bakobii.**
**Go down into the water.
Poem for a Tattered Planet: If the Measure is Life
Born
under the canopy of plenty
the sweet unfolding
season’s of a planet’s youth,
in the trance of capitalism we take our fill
content with the status quo
pull our shades on encroaching collapse
say something about Anthropocene,
the energy barter and the holy fortress of science.
But beyond
the throat of commerce,
beneath the reflection
of the celestial river,
within the ancient copper beauty of belonging
we stand encircled
inhabit the Ish,
navigate by the singing of songs.
Though money fog settles around,
confounds measure
today veil of mystery shifts
lifts for momentary sigh t.
Here
find rhythm of a tattered planet,
feel on panther mound
a pulse. Listen—don’t count.
Feel small life drum beneath ______.
My core. I am ancient refracted light
or sound
traveling,
my frequency a constant
my voice
bending at angles
to become whole in another surface—
say a poem.
Say a poem
perpendicular to the boundary
of meaning,
make it a prism or possibility
sing of turtle or cast the mythic lumen
of thunderbird here
on the flat f alter of words:
This page not contract
but covenant.
Sacred where.
When neither image nor voice
will twin itself,
In the thick moist cloud
of being
if the measure is life
each limb a nimble test of tree
glimpse not see nor calculate.
This Shroud of Commerce shrouds meaning.
In the technology of documentary genocide
in the destructive bonanza of the industrial age—
declare the death of planet
as it passes through a sound speed gradient
comes out on the other side
a lost echo of human greed
repeating itself
repeating itself
repea t in g
Each splinter of language
bent in complicated formulas of inference
of ownership
as fog forgets then remembers form.
But we find measure in metaphor
vibration earth timbre.
Amid endless metric errors
of science or prayer
speak the ninety-nine names for god:
Gizhe-manidoo, Great Spirit, or longing,
Knower of Subtleties,
trembling aspen, the sung bones of salmon,
braided sweetgrass,
the sacred hair bundles of women,
this edible landscape—
aki, nabi, ishkode, noodin,
the ten little winds of our whirled fingertips,
this round dance of the seasons—
the ineffable flourishing.
With mind as holy wind
and voice a frog’s bellowous night song
we arrive.
Here sandhill cranes mark sky.
If the measure is life—
their clan legs the length of forever.
Here mirror of lake a canvas of belief.
If the measure is life—
refraction the trigger of all knowing.
Only this.
Now we place aseema,
the fragrant tobacco bodies of our relatives.
A sung offering.
To make the tattered whole.
A question of survival.
Of correlation.
Of vision.
The measure is life.
Because every earthdiver nation somersaults in origin waters
I claim the holy swimming—dark becoming we share.
Because all the begets and begotten separate by sect
I smudge every line feet dancing each side, erase the divide.
Because we come from everything
from copper earth and the untranslated songs of air
from deep and ancient fires burning now in each traveler’s eye
from water’s fluid whispers and uncounted beats of silence
the held breath
between border and freedom
between wave and shore
between boat and land
between leaving and arriving.
Because we come from everywhere
from White Earth and Somalia, from Yemen and Cuba and the Yucatan
our mythic pockets stuffed with blessings for safe passage.
Because alphabet measures of entry and exit
document power
because documents: CDIB Passport Visa DACA Green Card,
block barricade segregate fence enclose—
wall.
Because bans
because directives executive orders
because paper decrees say detain say deport.
Look in the mirror and say Halt!You are under arrest. There must be a law.
because within your bodies illegal blood migrates
because air sneaks through narrow passages
because water seeps into every pore—
build a wall! remove the bad elements, keep nasty out.
Because color-coded dolls and pop-gun mentality teach empire
Because the tweeting talleys of alternative fact infect like plague
Because for some fantasized greatness equals uniform whiteness
Because power, greed, and fascism live on the same block
Because good fences make better metaphors than neighbors
I say wrong to “right-of-way,” no eminent domain, no wall.
Because I breathe in your air, you breathe in mine
You give me your breath, I give you mine
Because we share the same elemental dependence
belonging together to this alive place—aki, nabi, noodin, ishkode
earth water air fire and the blessed arrival and departure of seasons
the comings and goings of each animal relative
skies hung now with bineshiinyag* winged songs of return
no paper trail of identity; only this—
the essential migration of all being.
Because we come from everywhere
We claim this safe earth for all,
in every language—Anishinaabemowin, Arabic, Español, Braille, Dakota,
English—we say provide shelter, grant a haven
name me a sanctuary city.
* bineshiinyag: birds
The Solace of Forgotten Races
Once more ogitchidaa* light pipes:
fragrant ink snaking into atmosphere,
a mark upon the solstice sky—ascending
audible as December deer sign.
While today the dow rises falls rises,
truckdrivers sleep to idling engines—
an oasis between eighteen-hour shifts,
and America revs her biofuel frenzy
to conjure from a politician’s hat
bypass after DOT bypass, this sleight
of hand, progressive contracted erasure
of rice beds, sheep pastures, clapboard family homes,
and the riverwest Red Owl.
Now in the quiet of the archival moon,
the lost tribes of many nations gather
decipher mythic glyphs hidden
beneath the folded corners of oversized books.
Skillfully we levitate the ochre—ancient
stories meant to be burned painted sung.
Medicinal plants, shields, eclipsed dances,
assembled here in sweetgrass fields of the forgotten.
Outside the bleeping reach of GPS geocache,
beyond the longing of a drive-by economy,
under cover of the intelligentsias’ “folk culture”—
a healing drum, the scent of cedar
and origin fires still copper with life.
* ogitchidaa: warriors.
The Way We Love Something Small
Vowel sounds from a land
language not yet lost:
Mooningwanekaaning-minis. *
My tongue an island, too
swimming where Miigis ** rises.
This ache tiny but growing—
the place I keep it.
* Mooningwanekaaning-minis: Mooningwanekaaning means “home of the golden-breasted flicker” and Minis means “island”. This is the Anishinaabemowin name for Madeline Island.
** Miigis: This refers both to a cowrie shell and a Mide shell. The great cowrie/Miigis figures in the story of Ojibwe migration. It is said to have risen out of the water, appeared providing both light and warmth and guiding the people on their journey.
Manoominike-giizis *
Ricing moon
when poling arms groan
like autumn winds through white pine.
Old rhythms find the hands
bend and pound the rice,
rice kernels falling
falling onto wooden ribs
canoe bottoms filling with memories—
new moccasins dance the rice
huffs of spirit wind lift and carry the chaff
blown like tired histories
from birchbark winnowing baskets.
Now numbered
by pounds, seasons, or generations
lean slivers of parched grain
settle brown and rich
tasting of northern lakes
of centuries.
* Manoominike-giizis:the full moon of ricing, occuring in August or September.
For more about Kimberly M. Blaeser
Interview on her creative process, Wisconsin DPI, 2015.
“Rosetta Stone, Two” and “The Dignity of Gestures” & Picto-Poem “Eloquence of Aki.” About Place Journal: Dignity as an Endangered Species in the 21st Century. Ed. Pam Uschuk, Cindy Fuhrman, & Maggie Miller. May 2019.
Radio Poetry Performance, “A Song for Giving Back,” at “Making Waves: Live in Milwaukee,” To the Best of Our Knowledge, May 05, 2018.
Hosted by UNC Asheville and the Diversity Action CouncilScroll Up