Speak: Hearing the Stories from Yesterday in Yesterday’s Tongue

By B. L. Eikner

As the Living Arts staff, exhibition curators, and participating artists prepare to put this show together for the September 4, 2020 opening, the famed Cherokee National Treasure, linguist, author, scholar, teacher, ordain minister, and veteran passed from this earth to the next life: Durbin Feeling (1946-2020). We honor you and your gifts to us.

“The works in this exhibition make clear that our languages are still—and will always be—an integral part of our identity as Native peoples. Equally important is the reality that time is not on our side—fluent tribal speakers are passing on, and the race is on to ensure the survival of these heart languages for future generations. As the title Speak: Speak While You Can makes clear, these artists have an urgent message: that we must speak up with our art, proclaiming with visual voices the message that our languages are the lifeblood of our cultures.” —Curators Tony A. Tiger (Sac & Fox/Seminole/Muscogee) and Bobby C. Martin (Muscogee/Creek)

This exhibition, Speak: Speak While You Can, consists of twenty-five artists, representing twenty-one Tribes of various lineages. The exhibition contains paintings, ceramics, mixed media, sculptures, and photography, all focused on preserving Native languages and history.

Capturing one’s ancestry with the naked eye is hard and sending the message on canvas in one’s native tongue is even harder. People across the globe have embraced men and women with certain hair textures and position of cheek bones and have slaughtered families because of nose sizes and skin color, political posturing, and land ownership. They call them Explorers, Invaders, and Strangers from other worlds. Some civilizations perish never to be heard of again and some quietly at the evening meetings of survivors, tell the stories from the elders passed down to descendants and capture by the hand, soul, and mind of the artist lives created through an image on a cave wall or the organized efforts of Elders committed to keeping their culture alive. And so, it is, at Living Arts of Tulsa. In Bobby C. Martin’s work, But You Don’t Look Indian…, the artist captures the portrait of a Native woman. But, this woman does not respond. Her eyes say it all, I do not have to respond. What does an Indian really look like? Where is the evidence of the actual people, on the license tag on ones’ car, in the small piece of cloth tucked in a child’s hand and passed down for generations, in the fragile doilies left my one’s grandmother or in the story she is about to tell?

In Muscogee Creek Ribbon Dance by Tom Fields, you can almost hear the song and feel the vibrations of the chords as the young ladies move in the circle. Singing in Native tongue for all the world to hear. The texture of this black and white image gives the photograph a feel that it has survived many ages.

Another work, Turtle, by Kindra Swafford, uses vibrant colors in its rendering of the animal. This very regal turtle has the letters in the Cherokee language spelling out ‘turtle’ stacked on its shell. The artist has ensured its beauty by decorating its legs and head. Slow but sure, lasting for always.

This is a show that you and all your friends, families and communities must see and it is appearing at the right time in the universe when all eyes are on Oklahoma.

The show, Speak: Speak While You Can runs from September 4, 2020 through October 16, 2020. Check the website for opening hours due to current Covid-19 conditions.

Living Arts of Tulsa is located at 307 East Reconciliation Way, Tulsa, Ok 74120. For more information, visit www.livingarts.org.

B. L. Eikner is author, journalist, poet, and event planner. She is owner of Trabar & Associates, regular contributor to Art Focus Oklahoma, and The Oklahoma Eagle, has published two books, ‘How Do You Love… When? and ‘Dirt and Hardwood Floors’ and can be reached at Trabar@windstream.net or Twitter @trabar1.

FEATURED ARTISTS

Marwin Begaye (Diné), Antonia Belindo (Kiowa, Diné, Pani, Chahta), Jay Benham (Kiowa), Roy Boney, Jr. (Cherokee), Maggie Boyett (Shawnee, Delaware, Kiowa), Leslie Deer (Mvskoke), Chase Kahwinhut Earles (Caddo), Michael Elizondo Jr. (Cheyenne, Kaw, Chumash), Anita Fields (Osage, Muscogee (Creek)), Tom Fields (Muscogee (Creek), Cherokee), Kristin Gentry (Choctaw), Keli Gonzales (Cherokee), Brent Greenwood (Chickasaw, Ponca), Lester Harragarra (Kiowa), Lokosh (Joshua D. Hinson) (Chickasaw, Choctaw, Mvskoke Creek, Cherokee, Euro-American, enrolled citizen of the Chickasaw Nation), Ruthe Blalock Jones (Peoria, Shawnee, Delaware), Bobby C. Martin (Muscogee (Creek)), America Meredith (Cherokee Nation), Melinda Schwakhofer (Muscogee (Creek)), Amber DuBoiseShepherd (Diné, Sac & Fox, Prairie Band Potawatomi), Kindra Swafford (Cherokee), Candessa Tehee (Cherokee), Tony A. Tiger (Sac and Fox, Seminole, Muscogee Creek), Randi Narcomey Watson (Muscogee (Creek)), and

Margaret Roach Wheeler

(Chickasaw, Choctaw).

ABOVE: Tom Fields (Muscogee (Creek), Cherokee), Muscogee Creek Ribbon Dance, Hoktak Pvnkv Nettv (Muscogee Creek Language), photography, black & white digital print on archival paper, 16” x 20” LEFT: Bobby Martin (Muscogee Creek), But You Don’t Look Indian…, oil, encaustic, paper, cloth, license plate, teeth, grandma’s crocheted doilies mounted on birch panel, 68” x 51”

ABOVE: Tony Tiger (Sac and Fox, Seminole, Muscogee Creek), Borders and Boundaries: Muscogee Creek to Seminole, etching, serigraph, hand-tinted stencil on Rives BFK, 22” x 30” LEFT: Maggie Boyett (Shawnee, Delaware, Kiowa), M’kaweeletamaakwe, woodblock, oil-based ink, Akua ink, mud, pastel on paper, 45.5” x 41.5”