A Conversation Among Indigenous Artists Across Space and Time

For many years HOCK E AYE VI Edgar Heap of Birds has explored relationships between this country’s living native cultures, contemporary society, history, and indigenous cultures from other continents. When Eagles Speak was created as part of a 2002 residency for the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, Rhode Island, he brought these different elements together quite literally by asking three other artists to join him. Heap of Birds (HOB) sat down for a discussion with two of the artists: Thembinkosi Goniwe (TG) of South Africa; and Everett Tall Oak Weeden (TO), a Mashantucket/Pequot/ Wampanoag artist. Also participating were David Henry (DH), Head of Education at the RISD Museum, and Stephen Oliver (SO), Art ConText coordinator. Cynthia Listens to the Wind Ross-Meeks (CRM), a Narragansett/Wampanoag artist, responded to some of the questions the following week.

DH: Edgar, for years you have been traveling around the world looking at ancient drawings done on cliffs, in caves, and at ancient ceremonial sites. I’m curious to know how that research has influenced your art.

HOB: First, it is an interest I have in my own culture–sharing it and expanding into other indigenous cultures. It isn’t reflected in my art so much as it is in my life and values. I am personally very interested in renewal and in issues of ceremony and honoring and respecting traditions. In addition to my own research, I have been collaborating with artists from different cultures, too.

DH: What are some of the different connections you have found as you travel from culture to culture?

HOB: There is an awareness of our positioning on the globe–how the earth is moving beneath us and how the stars are moving above us. My thesis has been that we really have a lot to share and understand without even leaving home, in the sense that we have the same star systems above us.

DH: Does your interest in working with other living artists come from a similar interest in finding connections?

HOB: Yes, Collaboration has been so natural; I don’t pursue it. Indigenous artists tend to be very welcoming to each other and to respect one another. We share a disadvantaged perspective from being colonized, which is a unifying factor. Reservation life in Oklahoma is similar to life in Australia for Aboriginal artists. If I am in a township in South Africa or if I am in Zimbabwe there is a certain kind of style of living and circumstance of domination that has to be struggled through. I think artists who work hard to deal with the market system of art in the world, and still speak their mind and get their work done, share in the same struggle. In Eagles Speak, I hope to articulate this experience to the public. Artists are some of the best people to put forward that issue and demonstrate that we have this alliance.

DH: Perhaps now would be a good time for the other artists to describe their work and discuss whether collaboration has played a role in their art in the past?

TO: I guess I would have to say that it hasn’t. In my work, I like to express the things that are important to me and that I feel are important to the world. I want to find the best way to make the improvements that are mandatory–not simply necessary, but mandatory–to our survival!

TG: In my early years, I did lots of murals, and I also facilitated the painting of murals by young people. In terms of working with other artists, it is a new experience in a way, although I have helped other artists with some of their projects. I’ve also been a performer in videos or collaborated with artists in terms of building ideas from scratch. In my own work, I’m dealing with my experience as a South African person and as a young person growing. My art is informed by what I see, what I hear, what I touch, what I feel, and lots of reading. One thing I like to do is listen to people’s conversations, and then I come home and interpret those stories and they become my stories.

CRM: My art draws on themes from various cultures, as well as my own Native American background. I work with others continually, both at the school where I teach and at the Rites and Reason Theatre at Brown University. There, I do costume design and collaborate with the entire production staff on such elements as lighting and set design. I’ve gotten to work with some pretty remarkable people, including the famous play- wright Ntozake Shange.

DH: Where did the title Eagles Speak come from?

HOB: It comes from my life experience. I’m a Cheyenne/Arapaho person from Oklahoma, and in our Warrior Society–I’m one of the leaders of the Elks Society–the eagle has a huge prominence. We have been living with the eagle and its value system for hundreds of years. As I travel the world, I am looking for things that are shared by many, such as the stars above us. Once, I was in Botswana in a boat on a river. It was raining. I saw a big fish eagle sitting on the reeds near me. I have this vision that as I travel and witness other cultures and bring to them my own culture, it is like eagles talking to each other. An eagle from a ceremony in Oklahoma could speak to the eagles in Africa. Then I went to Great Zimbabwe and did some research on rock art, and I found these wonderful carved eagles that were the prominent symbols of freedom in that culture.

DH: What are your hopes for the collaboration?

HOB: One of the best things about it for me is letting people in different communities represent themselves. Collaboration fosters self-expression. People think collaboration joins you together–one object, one voice–but it can be different and alive at the same time.

TG: I believe art can transcend boundaries. The theme itself, the beauty of birds flying from one place to another, is symbolic of the whole project: how to transform boundaries, how to move from one location to another.

DH: Is there a question that each of you would like to ask each other?

HOB: What are we going to make?

TG: One of the issues that I want to deal with is how history and tradition have positioned me here at this point in time. Looking back now, I am able to see South Africa from a distance; with no fixed ideas, but with a base of cultural and political issues.

TO: I have been focusing on the history of slavery here in America, but specifically here in New England, and how that affects we who are as a direct result of that reality. I hope to help people see the connection between what happened historically to our people and what is happening right now. There is a legacy.

HOB: I have been traveling for a long time. You have a freedom; you have restrictions; things change often. Maybe racially too, you have more freedom to just be yourself. There are all kinds of perceived freedoms. I made a small drawing years ago of airport codes. Places were reduced down to three letters: JFK, YYZ. For Eagles Speak, I am working right now on a thirteen-foot-wide drawing that will have the airport codes of all the places I’ve ever been, including Cape Town, South Africa (CPT), where Thembi comes from. It will be a drawing of three-letter codes, as though I am an eagle flying on aluminum wings.

DH: What are some of the other aspects of this project?

HOB: This exhibit has traveled to the Association for Visual Artists in Cape Town, South Africa. We also worked with the children of the Fox Point Branch of the Providence Public Library, and with the after-school program on the Narragansett reservation. I brought the artwork of the children to South Africa. We had this full circle from Providence to Cape Verde–where a lot of the Fox Point kids are from–to South Africa and back again.

SO: We are here on Martin Luther King day, and I am wondering: if you could do anything for the world, what would it be?

CRM: I would like to create greater understanding between people. There must be a way, a word, a concept or some sort of signal that could help people see inside each other, rather than relying on preconceptions or quick judgements

TO: For me it’s an easy question. We try as hard as we can to make this a better world. That’s all any of us are here for. None of us are going to be here forever, so future generations are going to inherit what we leave them. That is why it is so important for us to use our time here well, so that we can leave them something really worthwhile. We can use our experience of injustices to try and eliminate them.

TG: I try to see that love takes place. That’s my wish in life. With my art I try to produce images that both celebrate life and at the same time try to shift people’s perceptions. I can’t change people, they have to change themselves. I can only affect the way they see things. It is up to them to take the responsibility for changing themselves.

HOB: I think we are already doing what I would wish for. For me, very specifically, it is contained in our ceremonies to renew the earth every year. I guess my wish is that we’ll continue to do this and leave it for the next generation. My sons are already in there with me, so they’ve already got it in their psyche as a priority. That’s the main thing: the circle keeps spinning and renewing itself.

TG: It is necessary to get young people interacting with their elders. That is where the chain has broken down today. There are so many lost histories. The true stories are told by the elders. If that can continue, life will be much better. I don’t know my spirit unless my father teaches me.

Thembinkosi Goniwe received an MFA from the University of Cape Town in 1999 and subsequently taught there for three years. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Art History at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. He has been an artist in residence at Wrexham, North Wales; London, England; Tallahassee, Florida; Johannesburg, South Africa; and Albuquerque, New Mexico. His work has been exhibited in Africa, Japan, the United States, and the United Kingdom.

HOCK E AYE VI Edgar Heap of Birds is one of the leaders of the Tsistsistas (Cheyenne) traditional Elk Warrior Society. He is a Professor at the University of Oklahoma, Norman, in the areas of Native American studies and fine art, and has been a visiting professor at Yale University, New Haven, CT. Exhibitions of his work have been held at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia; and the National Gallery of Art, Ottawa, Canada, among others. Heap of Birds has lectured in Thailand, Indonesia, Australia, Puerto Rico, Canada, Sweden, England, Northern Ireland, Spain, Western Samoa, South Africa and Zimbabwe. He has received awards from the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Please see: heapofbirds.com.

Cynthia Listens to the Wind Ross-Meeks has a BFA in Fashion Design and an MAE in Art Education, both from RISD. She serves as the Resident Costume Designer at Rites and Reason Theatre, Brown University, and as a teacher in the Providence Public Schools. She currently teaches apparel design in RISD’s Continuing Education program.

Everett Tall Oak Weeden is an education consultant who has been actively lecturing over the years, giving speeches and performances at various universities and public educational institutions. He has served as a consultant for the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology, Brown University, and at the Boston Children’s Museum. He has devoted his life to the survival of the native people of the Americas, with emphasis on the United States.

Eagles Speak is an Art ConText project. A partnership between the Providence Public Library and the RISD Museum, Art ConText is designed to introduce new audiences to contemporary art; to bring art and reading programs to library branches throughout Providence; and to provide opportunities for RISD students to apply their talents. Funding for Art ConText is provided by Pew Charitable Trusts and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Thanks are extended to the following individuals and departments for their assistance and support of public programming in connection with the Kenyon College venue of Eagles Speak: Marcella Hackbardt, Art Department; Susan Spaid, Faculty Lectureships; Janet McAdams, Hubbard Fund, English Department; Roy T. Wortman, History Department; and Chris Kennerly, Multicultural Affairs. Thanks are also extended to Olin Art Gallery assistant, Ruth Woehr, administrative assistant, Beth Staats, 2004-05 work study students, and Jack Esslinger.

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Everett Tall Oak Weeden, God Bless America,
digital photo mural print, 2002.

HOCK E AYE VI Edgar Heap of Birds, CPT, marker on rag paper, 2002.

Thembinkosi Goniwe , Too Much Talk, polyptych, pastel on paper, 2002.