Tension resolve and Dissonant

My senior year of school I went with a small group of friends to go rock climbing in eastern Washington. I had a lot of admiration for my friend Tony who taught me to play guitar. He had a lot of interests and rock climbing was one. Thirty years pass and I can see now how much I regarded him as an older brother. The person who would appreciate our place in a small town and not fit in even though my family had been on these lands long before settlement.

He wasn’t in that group but I felt I was going there to earn his respect and learn something new.

The group went out early and I had been writing on my guitar and I went out to catch up with them. It might have only been two or three miles and I thought nothing of it because I felt good as the sun was out and I had no gear on me because the group had it ahead of me.

Ovoid in the Wind

At the time my hair was half way down my back and I was unmistakable as Native. I may have only been more so if I had eagle feathers in my hair. As I recall, I was gifted a necklace from Doug Allards auction a silver pendant that screamed Indigenous. I had no shirt on and I was wearing khaki linen shorts so when I made it maybe half way and was over the hillside I saw a camper RV and an elderly white haired woman that looked as they were about to place camp.

I was about to say hello and she looked up at me and screamed “INDIAN”!!! and she trembled so much I could see it from fifty feet away. “George, it’s an INDIAN”!!!

At that instance I went thru my mind, what can I do? I had no phone on me and nothing but my shirt out of the back pocket of my shorts and my wallet. I put my hands up to show I didn’t have anything on me but the couple ran to the RV and blazed away. A big trail of dust that followed and I laughed a little to myself how surreal the experience was.

That could have gone another entirely and I could have found my end at the hill if the inclination had been driven from fear and miscommunication but it wasn’t. I feel asleep while carving and remembered that moment. Maybe because a climbing studio is around the corner of the shop and someone tracked sand into the shop. I hear gun shots from outside this place both my grandfathers once had breakfast at Alfred’s and it was a shot that woke me from my sleep on the pole.

I walked over to my rack for the first time in many years and picked up the knife that has my great uncles name carved into it. Holding in my hand a treasure no one can take, a story that cannot be made up. The time we are living in has it’s moments within them.

Confronted by a man one day outside of my studio with his daughter as I was trying to just get in my door. He was worked up and confrontational but he stood down because as much as he wanted to judge me and insult me, curious about my ethnicity, he looked over my shoulder to see a beaded feather in my car and he became a different person in that instance.

That recollection and his gesture where he patted me on the arm, I could tell he wanted to perhaps tell me to go back to where I came from in assuming I was foreign. That day I went back to climb that weekend and look at the sun come up with a small cloud that reminded me of the time I was just carving small things on the beach when I made a small decision to put my guitar away and devote myself to carving. It never meant I would never pick up a guitar or my climbing shoes, it just meant I understood if I had pursued music my life may have not been so open to opportunity.

Coldplay: Higher Speed

Hurt and healed

Somewhere in place between Birman

All these languages I’ve learned in effort to bring things together. I made a figure in memory of ancestry. We are woven together in time, I stand before myself in time where my brother told me Chris Cornell was gone but on that day in Tokyo I know that extension of love a singer went out to be there on stage, not Metallica, not Chili peppers but root of my heroes songx.

I hold his heart with mine the was young men sheltered Andrew Wood as pioneers.

A Language and nuance that shaped me, like ink in water I met this man once in Ballard, Whatever drove him to sing love and church rings in me to this day.

I’ve never done heroine and I never want to know that path but he went ahead of me to see that journey, his deliverance of song love and devotion are words not broken.

In arms without arrows aimed at me I am able to bring this sentiment back. I am just vessel for this journey and in time this word. Time will align.

Chaos and

Black is all I feel

when all the power of money was behind him, Church was within him.

In real talk looking beck on hurt and healing with song.

I come back to this thing that moved so many people, myself included.

At time of my youth before phones, I had heart of endurance.

The wind kicked up from an an idea of Andrea Grant when I walked down from the Burke Museum and I looked at this song of a black dog.

Patience remembered me and put back my hands in my pockets and remember I was no on once.

Go back to yourself we are no onc, we will be everyone someday, I sing with the lord deep in yourself you knove me. I am a chaos uncuntintained like this fluid in my vein, u should never be here.

I went on the deepest journey to recover him, all the songs I write can make not wrong.

I’m angry every day truly, I put myself into this water to find him, I was Reuben who pulled me back in this time to give me sense.

All these years I felt anger I was healed by conversation between him, my idea of of Tsa-qwa—support. and Tsawayuus.

Nothing can make that up. Alll the mud in the world can never cover up love for land., I have not paint to bring to you but I have church, only you who know, know what I say.

you have a family with great endurance, I am nothing but shelter on these arms, I ware the stripes of undurance for you with admiration because it’s a name I was granted,

No one can know this time we with one another to be who we are countless hour by the fire I hear the heart of this boy, a man in my heart and in tension of resolve going to

If I am anything I want to be a root the way flee was small but big in time from love.

All these world crash around me if I think of them but I can build myself back up in an idea that Wood is in my soul, he is not gone as much as Hendrix, love is nothing contained.

No tail has an end of story

Heart in my throat, I am with you with great endurance. I will howl in spirit of Chris and I will reach for Mark Arm. These boys gave me song. This work is inside me from a fire no one can know.

Edenshaw, Kranmar nothing is contained, these boys did the best they did to be cointainers for every with Mark Arm.

few if any all know what it is to stand on the shore. In my heart you see me now. this love and devotion was here all the time waves broke my heart, these boys had longing for your heart.

I am nothing without art, nothing without Arthur, George.

Black is all I feel..

Wisdom beyond time when I drive by a sign that remembers us, I think back to all these roots where I”m lifted up to be who I am.

Super island was a curse I ne never want to know.

take this journey with me hold this rope so you have a window into this.

If Steve Jobs is gone and I met founder of Vulcan and they can look to young boys for inspiration

I can sing with love of an arm far reaching, if I see a sign for my guitar hero who was just a Philippine boy with ambition, I can feel the wind on my face and have anger and also embrace this place that I am in. I am no one but I am everyone in great effort. If I could call back the echo of my heroes, I am here in this huch

nothing will erase me, I am forever in love with you, if you see me, few people will understand this.

if you go to the places I go, you will know yourself forever, I kept this world and imagination to hand off to you.


wolf around my collar, I see the hurt of resolve, I will stretch my arms out and weird everything in my voice for give you cover, I will be your uncle if you need be Black is all I feel, so this is how it feels to be free,

year of the rabbit

I can long for u the same was I do Jimi and this song you left run over that kept me going.

Am I indie. Whole of my heart if endurance. When people are afraid to open up, you had known to embrace gospel and take on singers larger than you, make yourself no one, This is the year of the rabbit. I can love and this place now to heal the wound long broken. I go to see you so many times over years, I cry for you and the only thing that heals me is a song, “Brother”, I see that song wishing you all the healing you need is a seed from I’ll be fore you. Nobody sings like you used to. I am here in time and the thorns pulled in my heart, you we're someone for me in the time I needed it to be. Time washes over me like colors no one can erase.



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Before Zen

the chaos of going into travel if there is that. It is.. That is the shortest sentient I know in our language I was forced to learn and it had an irony. My Native name ties too iron and my work of this subject had to do with the rails.

Long before visitors came here and I learned who I was by name. Somewhere in between I met this amazing woman. She was near my age and spoke with an amazing depth about the project and more importantly the people behind it.

The underssaaning and nuance of of relationship was vital to the project.

At pink point I, along with my language group called out the team on intention and reflection literately.

We were put at ease. I went there many nights and still do. This was a place I went to crossing tracks with my uncle who passed. I remember so many good songs and he’s the reason I include songs in every post. It’s to remind who ever takes time to read this far has a reward.

In reverse, I sat in his car most times waiting for a train to cross but I loved hearing every minute of Prince or, rival the Times. To this day I made a promise to my coolest uncle to not say his name.

So many years passed but I love him the same. The day my work was dedicated and we would sing songs again, I remember this one moment on the tracks where he turned the Prince down.

“you see those tracks boy”?

He asked me very clear

“I do uncle” in reply I gulped and didn’t know what was coming next, was he going to scold me? was hedging to do something bad?

He put his hands over mt head and shook me like a dog

“walk walk”, that is something your great auntie taught me but she doesn’t like me, but you know whaat?

“what”

I like your, and we gone make this car go son

sn eterinitt passes in my head but I remember wak wak.

Rails get hard and in those days I was fragile. He wasn’t patient but he did his best.

“boy be a man”

Walk the walk stand up be someone.!

he was a corrective officer in Puyallup. He understood very well what is was to make young men stand up but in a good way. “Life is gonna tread you and things are gonna be hard, but you gotta make yourself harder like the wheels of steel, you feel me”?

I never heard that term ‘you feel me’. That was new then and I was basically a lamb.

the train passed, he pat me on the head. He turned up the music and we laughed together again. I put my hand on his knee over the gear because I knew he would look after me and be my family.

When I was asked to do this work I had no idea the location and just jumped into 3d mode.

Despite all the hardship building up wish complications. My nephew, in passing of his grandfather, the one who was mentor to me not knowing, was able to give a land acknowledgment and call me by my Native name. Little did he know I broke the law and went into the third level to get 3d scans so I could ensure the ceremony would go as best it could.

On top of that were train schdeules but we made due.

All that said, I was able to share that beef story, my nephew opened the floor and we made good not unlike the time I waited on those very track.

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Hello, World!

only you know this walk, you were given this moment in time between us..

swells vs well

I want to say I’m ok and some days I am. Others I want to know who hurt my nephew and brother to days I shut in. We’ve been good at this, #hapa Nisei and all and it’s fine.

Like the time beyond you, Thunder crashes down.

blame, hurt, blame hurt.

new cars and houses. I’m happy for you.

In time I work up as a true belief, as poets promised to me this hero in my mind as those before me.

An artist with my shared sentiment with love.

in the hurt of my heat I want to heal you. Every wing pulled off is grown back.

boots

things I can say, not folllowing genius, no numbers my heart sieges war for art when he says

they keep pulling off you wings.

I call on two songs only I know that keep me alive. Everything you need to hear will find you.

toys are us.


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A blanket without a name...

As people recover from their empty investing on digital things. I had aimed at making NFS that were always part of our land and ways.

I started out an ant on the hill I’m half way up still looking up with a pack and a song in my heart with belief I will make it there. On the side I swallow my heart truly to know I wish I weren’t here at time at the foot of those before me.

Nothing artificial can take place of that or put that fire out. Years pass and I can see how foolish I was to think I knew more than I did when I was a young man posing as a man. Now that I am a man it calls for recognizing these things.

the cold tools I make warm again

I’ll never dance the masks I’ve had privilege to make or help on. I can know I am just a thread in the fiber of time. In between those times sitting aside my heroes with a small piece of alder in my hands often I never felt more alive or warm by being kept up into the sunrise . A strop made for me that no money could buy.

In place of an image of a match strike I insert a song.

Hello, World!

My life, so complicated in ways to know I learned a design language from a land born out of freedom that took it away from my grandparents, but even so there are those few anomalies that stand out and in that vein I have duty to write, carve and paint.

I know there is a story of a cod that swallows the moon, at this time of year I feel that.

I will never wear a blanket or dance of the families I peer but I can love the place I am in as much as my grandmother did. The reason I chose this song for this post is to know I was sent out to find this blanket stolen from our family that was entrusted to us, I can dream about the fires it danced


Without story there is no room for words. A tree fallen gave our people cause for shelter.

not a hammer or knife but qwalius

if you travel far enough and work hard enough a name is made for you. In my heart I believe this as I lean against this tree for a void that will never see a sun rise again but hurt me every day in this tool I had planned to give to him in spirit of of the mentors that taught me this way.

In the setting sun of the elders who know of the things I speak I offer this design.

A time for another night.

In good hands

I had to take a moment to realize that Kim Jung Gi is not making work for us to look to. I think the biggest part of hurt in this knowing as I have been carving and unable to contribute anything to Inktober and be removed from the illustration community I learned this from a video from that young and incredibly talented @pwnisher.

Genius captured in a moment.

In times I had no vision within myself I looked to peers and being that we are the same age, I felt that he’d accomplished so much more that I had but it made me happy not envy him. I found myself looking at and putting myself into his openness of sharing as much as I regard Miyazaki.

Years back when I was on the radio with Rob Satiacom asked about John T. Williams and that tragedy. Rob asked me about that passing when he asked about the art he wasn’t able to share with the world, in my heart words came out of my mouth as if my grandma B was inside me to answer

the art he made was a relationship for him and it was one few will understand. It is a healing for him as much as it is me in my experience.

In hindsight had I not gone to Prague to by chance meet a 3d artist who wanted to learn to sculpt beyond a screen, I would not have reconnected with my need for illustration. Ten years passed and that artist is making clay work and we can share the grief the same. Where we have no words there is music. In my favorite work of him an illustration of a Fox holding a newborn child wearing glasses.

It moved me to recall to tears sitting at my back porch a rare instance of a raccoon playing with a small pond in front of the nettles. In time I was able to see a relationship that would seem totally foreign and maybe it was. There were days I would see the jay fly into the nettles maybe looking to see if they were there.

Two beings in Western world known as aggressive but in the natural world only themselves.

into the fold you are in my heart

Hello, World!

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Like Iron in My Heart

It will take years to find you, maybe even decades but it finds its way there. I look back at simple things in film like Pulp Fiction today to know a scene and depiction of assassins that are reference as admiration, the genius of Tarantino with lens and music puts into focus the hard travels and peek behind the window what that life would be like.

Once upon a time one can imagine Vincent Vega was not a villain but a hero. Bolo tie and all. My father reflects on film as much as I do music and I remind him that Rumble was written by a Native hand and mind. In my way I hope I got to share that as much as the heart of River Phoenix was not able to serve the role of interview with a vampire. In Kobe I was able to see the sun rise and admire the moon all the same and be changed for the efforts of things that can never be taken from me and for this I feel incredible. I carry a weight of great responsibility from White Bird to harbor many things people needed to know and on this trip, my duty was done that no one can erase. Given training to sing I could make people see we are all but one in the same, only time stands between us.

Hello, World!

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Earned

I recalled a mentor saying once I would be the next Willie Seaweed. It put all fire of irons on me that weighed and me. As much as I wanted to embrace the sentiment it meant I would carry much weight.

When I learned our history and treasured what few pictures existed of us and our people. I had a handful of pictures of Morey Alexander and my grandma Bosshart.

I can’t pretend I know anything without the patience of my grandfather who sat to teach me to sketch things out and have love for architecture. In his way it was about keeping his mother alive in some way.

I share this today because years passed I can make what I make from the shoulders of many families that lift me up and even at service as alone as Ii feel I can see a face like the changer that can wipe the tears off my face and lift me up.

Steve Brown, John Haggen, Jerry ( dxwsq'ius) Jones looking over the pole at Stanwood.


his tool shape, shaped my world as much as young Doctor. I am nothing without them. When I am tired and worn I lean to this and in long years of working adzing away I came to this idea of bear mother. To make me humble.

Si?al to Leschi

from 7 drum this image is for the knowing.

Hello, World!

Bird of a feather

Before I was here there was the ground. Before I was here there were the animals. Before I was here there was water to feed the land to give life to the animals. From the trees fed by the waters we had a perch.

I have no clan, our people did not organize in that way. I journey was inner. It is long if you are lucky but rooted with reflection. I keep this post short today out of necessity but deep roots. Songs that give me company, that resonated with me at the time I needed them kept me alive with hope in the grasp of my hands.

As so many elders pass and youth alike that I am unable to turn a blind eye to. I was uplifted to hear old songs and see a man at the place our treaty was declared walk after much trouble with health. Be present and hug me to recognize my contribution to this world is deeply devoted.

As the smoke fills the air and impacts so many people it gave me paws to stop me in my tracks.

Look at the moon at this time and make new work that will move me forward.

A shape can mean anything to anyone and at any time. But when it sees you and takes you on, it changes you. Not unlike a song stuck in your head you hear but follows you. It can be good or bad.

Our people had to be militant at a time when I was born. Pushing back to see that the treaties written were upheld. I looked over that for a time until I sat with some who woke up those songs the kept me protected.

From connection to my roots I am moved to explore art and resistance with code.

Many languages I learned to get here, English, Japanese, Cocoa, Dreamweaver, Python.

All formed on backs of those leading to foundations that are simply aiming at the stars.

The songs that move this design and make is possible align with an understanding that I am moved by the foundation of what is a blink of an eye. But in every frame of that blink I can do my part. I reflect today on an idea that came from the Power of Now where a sentence written about time struck me.

If you ask an eagle in a tree, what time is it? The eagle would ask back what do you mean, the time is now.

Hello, World!

Hello, World!

You new you'd know now

Urchin


My first urchin was in Neah bay years ago. Sushi before there was sushi.


10 years forward on the other side of the globe I found my feet in the sand with Clarissa Rizal at a fish market looking at a fish market. She asked me there what do you want to do with your art? I told her I want our Coast Salish art to have recognition and know that I didn’t do all this work for nothing. I never forget her turning her head toward the night as the coastal wind from across our waters blew the wind in her face. I feel the same she said.


“and what gets you there nephew”.


I felt honored to be called nephew by a weaver taught by masters.


“persevering and discipline” I said


“Look at that” she said standing on the coast with me pointing to feather fans over the fish to keep flies away. “what I love about being far from home is these people that pray and give thanks for their food like we do”.


It tapped into me the core of why we have our art shaped around salmon and ceremony.


I went on to explain that I wanted to break barriers in art to recognize unsung heroes the way few painters did in renaissance.


“Like who”. she asked


worker ant

blue jay

raccoon

Auntie making be Gangsta holding fake guns in Kaohsiung




she stopped me and said “like the way people talk about mouse woman”.




“Exactly” I replied with movement I can’t explain A weaver who recognized my understanding of many languages that accepted me and understood my vision made me feel worthy.




It was 90 degrees on the low end as we worked in the coming days. We ate mostly snails and as I was growing tired of it she told me, they are like lipids sonny when she saw me grow tired of them.




Near the end of that trip she asked about my concept for art moving forward long term.




“I want this division of our people to have some resolve.”




“you will accomplish that because we are just one people after all”. She said that two days before we were left in Kaoghsiung without a translator or way to the airport. It was the artists who came together to ensure we found our way home but it was that moment of a conversation I felt committed to I never let go of.




I made it home and off the plane I was wearing a bamboo art piece on my head and countless gifts the people shared with me on our way out for sharing culture with them. A tall man with a shaved head saw how Native I was wearing all my regalia because I could’t pack it pulled up his sleeve to show me a Spindle whorl design and said “Haida”. I didn’t have any way to tell him because I was exhausted the history but I just gave him a nod.

Years later I got a phone call from her asking if I was doing what I aimed at and I told her yes.




“good” she said “keep making goals”.




from our talks I went back to the sketches I discarded and uncovered the intention I noted to her. An idea of the first otter to break Urchin and was reminded of Nuu-chah-nulth print work int eh 80’s and 90’s that had to do with the subject.




At times I find myself where I can’t carve but am able to explore some old things If I’m patient enough.  When the time is right and I feel it in my bones I can’t pull myself from the page that rights me.




Carving the pole for a destination not far from where we had that conversation. A friend recommended I listen to “Crying in H Mart” as I carved into the cedar I had to put it down after the first chapter to make this.




When Zauner talks about going to a market yearning for her experience of packages items with things written on them. I was so reminded how we have no written language. I know so many words I don’t know how to write but I know their sentiment and what I take with me in that is story itself.




I’ve admired my aunties who weave and my late uncle Bruce for knowing how to make things not packaged but treasured.




When I talked to my auntie who weaves who taught me some of the dialect I know she told me a phrase “come give me a kiss, I know you are good”




I heard this from other houses only because I earned my way into that love from being there.




Their upbringing had so much to do with hurt but they held onto the better parts of what was there. Without a package I took my idea I kept with me all these years as people sell art without meaning. I give this to those who are Salish and Tlingit because Clarissa would want me to.




Alex Jackson gave us a design and despite the way I thought of things so technical I offer this as concept.




One can own all the currency in the world but not to engage is to be like a billionaire on a deserted island.




I chose the concept of Otter and Urchin as the example of balance for an entry into a window. The black hole of urchin is to know that life is shared. From you my heart is whole. You keep me alive and I give you thanks.


I’m moved beyond words by the work of her daughters and the work Jennie fostered for this to be here and witness. It shows that endurance and discipline are not forgotten.

Hello, World!




Catching my breath

These are just words but if I don’t say them now. In scribbles and sketches. I miss you. This place I’m caught between calls for me to work myself over. Without it I am nothing to earn my way. Without downward spiral friends to back me up and have courage to say these things I have no feat.

paint from the heart

before there were heralding eagles and hawks. From the earth blelups and kai kai or skia kai along with few knew to put our hearts into the land we stand on. Be there. Wear stripes without colors but truth. Into these folds we are not lost. Hard is the work to see another day but in these arms I hold dear the treasure that you’ve kept alive with me. Nothing aside you but commitment beyond hurt.

If all I have is work I have to take a moment to know it doesn’t break me and I’m not lost without being corrected by the values I’ve not taken but the stripes I wear inside.

I lived on sense of urgency for a few years now to make me see if I can survive that I can put it all out there and play my hand at the table. Art was for those with money in the generations before us. The abundance of it makes me sad in some ways.

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I don’t want to leave this world without regrets. From a childhood friend who admired the line of INXS ‘don’t ever change’. It’s to mean to me you transformed at a time with me that didn’t align. All the same I take this design language for my kin to recognize this transformation in abstract and I can dream I can dream about you.

shadow

half full but always whole

Into the Void

If I could go back in time, the aim of my work is the work of things I cannot change. Mountains I cannot lift up and rivers far more powerful the flow I cannot see my brothers before me into the ocean. The feedback of Hendrix and far cries of music that help me move myself forward are driven like feet ahead of my step.

I’ve protested few times, In my heart I would like to think what I do behind the scenes has mad a difference.

the age of my parents gave me some calm and this song captures these waves. I have nothing behind me if I have no story. Auntie Judy talked about a Thunderbird being but the size of a Hawk.

If I am fortunate I will see that through. I cam into this world a screaming child needy and wild.

The hurt of your heart I cannot mend but in my way I want to reach back in the houses I travelled with all the aunties and grandmothers to heal that severed nerve. Before the world was with the animals, I see you my friend, a being, a light before there was time.

Few if any will understand the beautiful dissonance of song that we long for that falls on our ears. I am tragic and I am void, but I am not destroyed if you took the time to put words on a page and have the courage to rage it out.

This week I realized I lost 1/3 of my work last year. I shut it out until I read your words. I cried like this

but I regained myself from the help of the aunties and grandmothers.

This wold is whole, you are not void. Something will hold you up with the wave of who you are. When I was lost and felt I had nothing I found my energy in villains and motivation. There was a time we are that, written at convenience, lands stolen we once stood on.

Depth of my heart I resonate with hurt. I know because I know. The art I make now doesn’t sell like the marketable works but it’s true to my heart.

I want you to know, you are loved. Deeper than an ocean but the sand on you feet when you see the break of the clouds. You are an energy bigger than you know.

From the place you have been, I have been in those shoes. Let music move this with you forward. You are far from absent, you are a present and connected. In my heart you are seen, valued and loved.

Red It

I remember the movie Pee wee’s big adventure, how crazy it was on screen sitting in a seat where someone had and adventure playing a clown for amusement. A clown scene that haunts people close to me to this day but it is all but an image. A moving picture in context with sound that grips you in your seat.

I love music as if nobody could tell. It conveys a story. Across any genre like any.

Seeing color as I do, I’ve finally arrived at place I made my career open to share how I see things in recent years. Muted, tones of the water and sounds of the trees and the water. Upon reading Red Paint by Sasha Louise Lapointe. I send a message back to you now that you live here on our place. The figure that stands across from the museum in Tacoma echoes ancestry that you longed for because of your namesake. I sat beside your name before you’ve become who you are and I can witness from afar how it has become a beacon. I’m but an artist and I said it to you years before that your grandmother, your namesake would blush and who you are and how you will move many people.

Comptia Koholowish is in my heart today along with many to know it is not our day of Independence.

I am no where near the experiences you drive from your writings or honesty but I have pages inspired yet to publish god willing. Far from recess of where we came from. I’ve written in my past about my father and the Indian Relocation act and why I don’t fish. Being Indian as foreign as the word is to us and as you said, would your ancestor or my ancestor know the name “Indian” or the English names we are bound to.

Words escape me but in between us even though we haven’t met I have great respect because as I was at a fireworks stand where a Boston man bragged about his family founding Puyallup, I could turn an eye to my friends to know the river we were along is like a vein no one will understand. I don’t wear paint and many of our people don’t, I have appreciation for it and the power it is and always will be.

The art I make is driven by the many songs of many houses no one can take away from me because they can not go back in time and be there before things were different. My love for Bane in the Batman mythos comes from his single line “but we are iniated”. No one can know depth of the writing you share and I am proud of you for sharing it.

to Taqsablu from Qwalsius

Transformation

Days have weighed heavy on me for what I felt I have no endurance but from cries of howling wolves that call to the moon I know I’m moved by the shifting landscape.

Making these things that stand long after I’m gone keep me sleepless with so many decisions shaping something with the stroke of my knife in these trees. It is no more clear to me than ever, the times I take a moment because of my Uncle George and go eat something and rest.

As the trees thin and tides have shifted.

This work we do like coal miners will go away soon and this story pole reminds me our work will go away soon. In these pushes of what I do. Greg Colfax mentored me and trusted me with no judgment to bring me into his shop and I remember and never forgot a design he made so beautiful it made me tear up as a sketch.

It was an imagination of sun coming down to touch us and be the break of the day.

That was over 20 years ago and I had no money in my pocket but I was just a dog, not a stray. I valued the comfort he trusted me to be with his dachshund who connected me to humility. I was able to honor him and appreciate those far arms reaching out if I could, bounce that light back to him.

He forged for me a path to give me a path and it’s only in his journey I want him to know he is loved and inspirational and transformative. Sitting with Uncle George and Greg I carved to learn my crooked knives in my hands to make something I wanted to make him proud of his teaching because I know I would never be Makah but I was welcome into a house to appreciate and deeply value the work of the people who do it and the time it takes.

On the day the pole was raised my son held the drum I got from him and stood by him as tribute to this connection to know we are far removed but if you see me and this drum in my hand it’s a long journey earned from value.

When it rains I look at the puddles from my small boots when I was a boy, Joe David said don’t say little, say younger. You are not little.

When I met Tsawayuus, I was was taught these things don’t work in sequence and we have some way of seeing the rainbows in the rain. He gave me the teaching of the tools in my hands and sent me off to Neah Bay. I learned from George David then and without him and my Uncle Jerry I would have no leg to stand on. It was only from long time understanding these heroes are but people as I am but they held onto and hold onto a fire that comes from this land, deep roots of time.

I was moved by my family who is always a wave pushing me up from far currents.

like I noted in earlier posts, the burning in your nose of the ocean, that is nothing any screen can remake. Nytom made that clear on this day. He blazed a path and is nothing short of sharp in his innovation for knowing how to speak and keep us in focus. A brilliant designer who has spent time with my grandmother and my mother and so many people with great energy and honesty.

On this day I wanted so much for my uncle Palqatsa. I remember being young riding in an elevator me and Zisloleets will open these doors and we can talk where our language isn’t foreign. Those elevator doors opened in a hospital where I could stand up for my people and see that vision through.

Uncle Subiyay and auntie Taqsablu carried so much on their shoulders. This day I want to mark as the family in between and mostly my uncle Arley and Breezer. Teaching me to look after myself and even if I’m just learning to weave nets, it is work in my hands and do it good.

What I couldn’t say on this day is loosing family and far roots of this pole.

I had always planned to have people there that couldn’t be there. It took hugs from extensions of my roots before I hugged them to know if they are not now, in absence as my grandma Jane taught me

I went up went a long way up to a mountain only once to remember a friend lost from my heart and the friends.

We weren’t fisherman or hunters just artists that wanted to do our work. When I came down from that mountain from my trip to Neah Bay, with thunder in my heart I came back so I could revise myself. Like a bolt of lightning isn’t a straight line, this river looking back over the shoulder of the mountain is glacier fed.

If I have no money in my pocket tomorrow and my jeans are worn I love them all the same. I am seen and heard by this small universe around me. This journey is enduring, deep and beautiful as dark as the shadows of the corner of a lonely room can be.

The light can also overwhelm you like staring into the sun, from depth of all nations I am touched by, this is not an Indian song but it is just a song I echo back to my mentors and their love for lifting me up to do this work. The leaves fall from it still in my mind if I look at it but it still grows and will have stories of its own.

A new day

I never imagined I would make the work that I do today as a career. In my childhood being an artist was the butt of many jokes from teachers and it made me want to never be one. I would still admire the work of my great grandmother and her oil paintings in the houses of our family. Her small model carvings, The rattles and culture items I maybe took for granted because I didn’t know we were different that other people.

Her name was Faye Bosshart. As I gained my ranks up the ladder many people assume I learned from something handed down in training. My grandfather, my father etc. This isn’t so because of the Indian relocation act and many policies imposed on our people.

I put that away for years until it I shaped it into making music with friends. It subsided my calling but as calling does it pulls you in. In the time I met people early on there was bragging rights about slavery and our Salish lands against us. To them it was a joke but to me it was something I kept to myself and that it was nothing to do with brag about. I was consoled by my Auntie Jen at that time and she said “they ride on the wake of their ancestors but they don’t know what that means to them” Today I am rewarded that the tide has turned on knowing what is right against wrong.

I can’t say I’ve had a hard life, I’ve been sheltered and reflect on how good this life is. In art and music there is an ever long internal battle of what is good enough, putting work out for people to judge your ideas and without context they are empty. I have great respect for my peers and those before me who forged a path that gave me a leg to stand on.

Where the lightning reaches the water and the clouds break a new day dawns.

Not all songs are tuned to a beat that is not our own. It took years for me to find this song from a cousin who started to teach me language and give me a window into a world I was part of and didn’t understand.

from deep inside I felt Lummi in my heart when I heard this.

The work of of our people is not forgotten but felt by this land. From far reaches I know song and what moves me. I can say with all honesty I would have no name if it weren’t for M. Alexander. Enduring war in real life not in a game. Sent to a war he didn’t ask for but went into for defending lands of our people when he was just a boy and came back transformed like the Changer. Nothing he asked for but in my heart from my grandmother I feel his love for the people and it keeps me going. I accept I may not be a musician but I can sing.

In the rage of NFTs I’m compelled to say something about this. I want people to know our culture is NFS, not for sale. If you buy my art that is one thing but dancing a blanket or wearing paint, that is no joke.

I tried for a while to wrap my head around why headdress bothered me so much. It is because it made our culture into a joke or fodder. It reminded me of In the Absence of the Sacred

things I learned from my elders that are now in favor about connecting to the earth. My cousin shared good words with me to remind me that as Natives here we shelter the ones who are well off and need to look to the ones who need direction.

My arms can reach only so far but for the lost, my life and devotion is and always has been for recognitzing these overlaps of our people not our differences.

Our people wared once before but we are in the same canoe now thee days. I don’t know my language as much as I would like but I know enough. In this my heart is true. I’ve learned not to judge my limited view of people from this from far reaches of the people I am blessed to have met on this journey.

Most importantly, Reuben Wright Jr. and Charlie Cantrell.

Deep fans of Pearl Jam know Mother Love Bone

When I carved the story pole I made for Chief Leschi at long stretches of being nocturnal his song came on. Maybe an animal walked in that barn but all the same it kept me going. It was necessary at that time. A needle in my thread, there to teach me something I took for granted.

I had envy for my peer Jeff and had now idea what would befall him. He has been nothing but kind to me. I know I can’t reach to him but in my heart I pray. I want him to get back up and make a Godzilla for my family because it’s not what I do but he can. Like the wolves I looked up to from Tsa-qwa-supp I am in this toil and it hurts me to know this is something I can do nothing. I love you brother and I want you to make art again.

far reaches of what I can give my hand is on your head, my hand is in yours.

Hold on brother, I am far removed from you but you were there for me when I needed inspiration and positivity.

In this in between you are I feel your intention and know how much you move people with your work. We are not blood but you are in my heart. You said once you were no Picasso but I love that work inside you more than you know.

Our heroes are gone, the time before us is not written but this image made me rethink how I make art. Eventually I can make art we talked about. No Picasso but you I earn this fire from your hands and devotion to loving our people and I want a song to be with you when you come out of this. I imitate these songs and give the best I can to sing these things. This told we find ourselves I wish I could pick you ups and dust you off. All I can do is sing this song for you in this time of darkness I hope you hear me.

You break the forth wall with me and my emotions wash over for heroes we have. I want you to get out of the be who you wanted to.

Jeff in the best light

from my brothers heat, I want you to wake up and be here as you were. Push this fire forward.

Time if Nothing Else

I realize this blog is void in some ways remembering the weedle from the Northwest past but it’s here. If anyone cares to think much on the characters and shift in my design, they look up. A simple reflex but a gesture. I am nothing though without the ground beneath my feat.

I am nothing without the footing.

….

my heart slows

twisting turning turmoil and resolve I’m wrestling with feelings as we all do. This sets beside you. In far reaches from me I grasp at straws for sense of tragedy. In my teens I remember this song that never left me.

I lost my cousin when I was just a boy and thought myself a man and had no idea what it mean to look at the blood moon for the first time to know my friend who' share my memory gone.

That yaear a song clung to me, many were made and so many in it’s spirit but this comes back to me and in my belief the reason I think I make these posts at all stem from feeling and truth. That I am human and can feel and share these ideas if I am trusted.

The deepest dagger sank into my heart.

It’s not the song but the force within that gives me great heart hurt.


I will See You In the Stars