Planting

The learning and doing of our family and tribal planting traditions is of the upmost importance to me as a Cherokee woman.  For years I have been wondering how to celebrate these agricultural ways through dance.  The rhythm of planting seeds, design of our traditional fields and the beauty of our crops is what I look to for inspiration.

Corn & beans & squash growing in our garden in North Carolina.

Sunchokes, Jerusalem Artichokes...our chokes.  Oldtime, southeastern Native tuber.  My family & tribe used to grow them.  Now I get to.

The Beginning is the End

Hominy is beautiful to me.

A sampling of our harvest on Saturday the 11th of October.   Cherokee turkey gizzard beans and October beans and one North African red ripper (the long pod)

We started out with digadusi, mounds, for selu tuyano, corn and beans

Baby plants growing: white hominy corn and beans (October beans I believe.)

North Carolina Cherokee seeds (white corn & beans) growing in Kansas.

White hominy corn & red ripper beans, NC Cherokee & northern African respectively.

Drying Time.  One of our hominy corns, stacked and ashed with a little cedar for good measure.

Eagle corn, also Cherokee, grown apart from the white hominy corn to prevent mixing.  It was brought to Oklahoma from the southeast on the Trail of Tears in the 1830's.  I got these seeds from folks in Oklahoma and grew them in a separate garden in Kansas.

All done

Wishing I knew how to build something from corn stalks.  They do make good ground cover through the winter though...and fire wood...and dolls

LITTLE DRAWING ABOUT SEEDS

I wrote the poem first.  

Seeds are like babies. You have to talk to them sweet,
Tsadiha!
Ma Phillis that is
 
Uncle Hoobie told me.
She whispers something sweet to them.
Right before you let them go...
and send them on their way.
It's in God's hands
at the end of the line.

Because Uncle Hoobie told me how my great grandmother used to talk to her seeds, I now have the privilege of doing the same when I plant.  They are both in the sketches.  My great grandmother (Ma Phillis):  it is said she was forever wearing long skirts and had a great mass of hair which she always wore up.  Uncle Hoobie:  he is not doing so well right now and sometimes has to sit and rest and use an oxygen machine.  None the less, his stories fill my mind.   I don't know what will become of the sketch/doodle yet, but here is the progression thus far.

CHEROKEE GOTHIC
A series of altered photographs of myself prepared to go into the field and make corn mounds.

WATER DESIGNS

I've been told how some cousin or another used to always have well hydrated crops because he diverted a little rivulet from the creek to run through his fields.  When I look at water, these are the patterns I see.  I've sketched on the backs of old paper.  I am thinking a costume pattern right now, perhaps dancer placement and perhaps???