Growing up, I did not understand the exhaustion my mother must have felt raising a young native woman in this contemporary settler colonel society. When I was in seventh grade I remember I used to cry every time she brought up the foundations of where I came from, mostly because I wanted to be “normal” but also because when I acknowledged my nativeness I felt as though I was a ghost of the past, straddling two worlds instead of one. When people talk about natives or indigenous peoples it is always in terms of the past, in terms of loss. This narrative of loss is synonymous with nativeness. We are always losing something our past, our futures, our language, our culture, native people always exist in this last stage of existence, always one step away from extinction. When I was eleven I started menstruating and my aunt insisted on taking me out to dinner to celebrate this new change in my life, and I will never forget it. In many native tribes, this was a time in my life that should have been celebrated, many tribes upheld women, and held dances or other ceremonies during this time in a young girl’s life. The best contemporary example of this is the Hupa tribe, which holds the flower dance, a principle dance of their tribe, for girls when they blossom into womanhood. So when my aunt, and later other members of my female relatives asked me if I wanted to do something more to celebrate this moment in my life, if I wanted to celebrate me, I didn’t understand what it was that they were asking. I wish I had known that these celebrations had not been performed in many years that after the destruction of the gold rush era, the boarding schools, the policies enforced by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and other lasting traumas of colonization, these celebrations were no longer practiced. Boarding schools and other government agencies taught us that they were bad, that it was part of our ‘primitive” ways. These dances and moments of celebration were tied to savagery and oppression, we were told over and over again that our celebration of menstruation proved that were dirty, stupid, primitive people. Because why would you ever celebrate that? There are many things I did not consider at eleven, including these. My response was “absolutely not, periods are gross I don’t want anyone to know”. This message of the dirty, polluting, and embarrassing side of menstruation was an internalized message I received from western society, puberty as a whole was seen as shameful, bad, and a curse specifically for youths. Nobody ever talked about their changing roles in life or what this meant for our future and who we would become in life, just the negatives of growing up. This moment of rejection of my culture, and beliefs is something I recall often, it is something I have carried with me through my adolescence and into my adult life. It was years later when I sat at my kitchen table with my mother and told her about how I felt I would never be loved, about the man who hurt me and then told me that I was worthless, that at that point in my life I believed him. My mother looked at me at first with silent fury, and then it looked like I had broken her, and all she said for a long time was  “oh, Malea, we should celebrate you”. I have felt that sentence echo in my head ever since. Female celebrations are something I wish all young women could have, personal self celebrations are a close second. It is not only important for the individual being celebrated but for the community, the family, because these celebrations can heal. You are being honored and uplifted instead of demonized, someone comes along and says I think about you enough that I will think of you and sing over you for two days or five days or whatever it may be. It is a very positive experience. Celebrations can look different for every tribe, for some, it is a dance, for others a name change, or a new experience, a song. But the one uniting force is that you and your family, your loved ones come together and celebrate you and the person you are becoming in life. And I had been so consumed with erasing half of my identity that I forgot to honor myself. It is this moment that I was reminded of this week when we read about using art to tell self-stories. It is through my mother, my aunts, and the female side of my family that I trace my lineage, my tribe, my story. And these moments in my life made me want to learn more about my tribe, our customs, why we celebrate women. Why I should celebrate myself, and my own story.  Many early Choctaw women were fantastic artists. They made basic, everyday utensils and articles of domestic life with creativity and artistry that are truly inspiring. Women were the primary creators and custodians of the Choctaw arts of basketry, textiles, and pottery, we were the givers, the tellers of our stories, our traditions. When I started making Art, when I decided what I wanted to be in life and how I planned on incorporating Art into it, I felt more connected to my tribe than I ever had before. It allowed me this opportunity to express my personal story, my culture, my tribe with others who may not know the issues we face, the traditions we have lost. I do straddle two worlds, and I always feel as though I don’t quite fit into either but Art has allowed me to bridge the gap between my identities, to celebrate my traditions.  And Art education made me realize I can share these traditions with my students. 

 

Visual storytelling can help make complex stories easier to understand and, as a result, deliver a more impactful message. It makes stories as imaginative, modern, and relevant for viewers and artists as they could possibly be. Art became a medium for me to tell stories, my personal stories, and connect to my heritage my people, and the world around me. It became a safe space for me to tell stories and connect to others and share those stories with others, art can do the same for all people. In chapter 1 of teaching meaning in Artmaking, it is discussed how big ideas can become personal, how they can expand the purpose and the depth of Art, it can be more than just a landscape it can also make you feel something. This is how we can connect and build from art, but more than that Art can mean different things to different people, it is subjective and it can allow you to connect to something someone else might not have, so when you are creating something you can know that another person might see the same thing or they may find a completely different meaning. But the story you tell can allow someone to see that feeling, and see how you are visualizing your own story which makes it narrative and much more powerful. The biggest connection to this past way that I thought about my personal art-making, and education and those changes is connected to integrated Art making, this connection of taking a big idea something like culture, and then pushing that idea to expand your knowledge of your own identity, or other subjects. I was able to use art to bridge the gap between my own history, culture, and beliefs by doing in-depth research and consuming as much information about my culture as possible including interviews, readings, and statistics. This sort of learning is crucial to expanding artwork, granted students can do this by just deepening their knowledge and development from a big idea to give meaning, and personal stories to their artmaking which allows for a deeper understanding and connection as a whole. This is the importance of the big idea, of integration in Art is it allows the students to delve deeper into why they are making it, how it is connected to them, and why they should care about their art or just art in general. 

 

Used by birds, angels, insects, and planes, wings enable a thing to soar and reach heights that would otherwise be unattainable. This function has given wings deep symbolism, making it a perfect symbol to represent a variety of meanings, including aspirations, and freedom. That is why this week, my addition to my ongoing art piece is a birds wing, I wanted to highlight that art and art education has given me the opportunity and freedom to tell my own stories, to reconnect to my culture and past, and utilize that perspective within my practice and to connect with my students who also have their own past, stories, and cultures. Who I am and my cultural identity is a strength in my art and in my teaching and so that is what is represented here.  

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For a long time in my life I viewed my heritage and the foundation of where I came from as a weakness, I did not want to be a native I did not want to connect to my people, my tribe, or my history. I pushed those traditions and ceremonies as far from me as I possibly could until I realized they had always been with me, they will always be a part of me. I do not want my students to be ashamed of their heritage, of who they are, or where they come from. And so this, my own differences, my own traditions can become a bridge. They make me feel more confident in my stories, and if I am open to them, to sharing my personal heritage, traditions, and knowledge they may see my class as a safe space to share their stories, their histories, their knowledge. It will allow us all the space to be ourselves, and so I no longer see it as a weakness but a strength, a connection that allows me to understand the importance of personal connection to art, and feeling like you have a space to belong.