Shared+Wisdom

//Who are we as people without ecology?//

Becoming artists within our ecosystem is what we do as humans. Working with natural elements—skins, feathers, primal designs—is an expression of our universal ecology.

In the United States, however, this kind of art is too often automatically stereotyped as “Native American art.” Yet artwork generated of natural materials springs from the natural world. The materials are at once present in our immediate environment and ancestral to all humans.

As Americans—whether we are Native American, European-descent, Latin American, East Asian, African American, or any combination of races or cultures—disassociating ourselves from natural systems, natural elements, and ecology restricts not only our creative potential but denies our humanity.

All people of all backgrounds have an intrinsic knowledge of and creative relationship with the primal elements of nature. When we cut ourselves off from the environment, we throw ourselves out of balance. When we are out of balance with the natural world, we become presumptuous of our resources. Exploring this relationship is key to enlightening our humanity and re-balancing ourselves with the earth.

//I am not teaching you a song. I am sharing with you a song that teaches me.//

Gifting is a tradition that is sacrosanct the world over—why? I believe one of the most powerful characteristics of gifting is that it relies on sharing rather than claiming. In sharing there is a flourishing of life. Sharing a gift, such as a story or a song, means carrying it forward, releasing it to its destiny. Gifts are to pass through our hands like water—we do not own them, and we gain not from keeping them, but from releasing them, from facilitating their flow. In water there is a flourishing of life. Just as water follows a cycle, and stagnates when shored up, gifts can sour when owned. //Gifting//, therefore, means attributing the gift not to your self, but to the person who gifted it to you, and to the origin story from whence it came. This keeps the gift alive within its cycle. This keeps the water life-giving and pure. We are stewards of the gift, of the song and the story. What is sacrosanct about a gift? It has the power and the wisdom to change us. But if we exercise a power to change it, we lose the gift; we lose the wisdom it had destined for us, and for all the generations to come.



Jennifer Foerster is a graduate of the Institute of American Indian Art, and the United World College.