Excerpt from Spirit Talk:

 

Excerpt from 'Spirit Talk':

Let us now assemble the honoring gifts once again, the high and personal inner gifts of qualities which only we can know, and the gifts of the known and understood common tradition such as tobacco, water or candles; chocolate … fruits … flowers; special drinks or nectars; ritual paintings, foods, cornmeal … and gifts of inspiration and the moment … 

Notice, attention, and gratitude for ‘being breathed’; 

Gratitude to the Father Sky-Sun for return at sunrise and sunset;  

Mindful Gratitude to the water beings as we drink, see, remember or feel them … 

Mindful Gratitude to the Fire Beings … 

Speak in a friendly way to the Wind Beings … 

Talk to a stone and a tree, a shrub, and the hill in the distance … 

Open the soles of your feet and invite them to ‘pick up on’ the Mother Earth as she vibrates and breathes through our bodies and connects with the upward solar rays of her lover. They are our elemental parents. 

Go outside and lie first facedown, then turn onto your back … Draw an arm’s-length circle with a stick around you, think a little introductory offering … and sit there as unmoving as possible, except for the eyes, for at least twenty minutes … Notice and follow the breath until something else engages your attention. The natural world soon comes to accept our presence … It is best if no food/water/phone enters the circle or is in sight/smell/earshot … and the sitting is best done in complete solitude … Then, when you are ready, stand up, or crawl out, noticing which direction you entered, faced, and departed. Try to make them the same. Then, make grateful farewells, and go.

Sacred Berries Ceremony

From May 15, 2020:

Bozho and a very good Rainy morning to all, from the Bodewadmin Longhouse... an early summer, ancient and current women's teaching that can all be active within ... providing valuable focus in and on the women's seat of the soul, the woman place. A proven and worthy tool by which to live in harmony with the Creator and the natural world.

 

Migwech!

My love,

Minisa


Yes, Jaguar Woman, there IS a strawberry-demen teaching and yearlong right of passage ceremony for the young girl becoming woman. The sacred berry is representative and guardian of the life carrying qualities of the womb and the potential of 'new life coming' medicine. 
 
The other berries, which follow later in the season, represent the certain cellular division 'medicines' of the 'new life coming' and as a metaphor of the young girl becoming woman capable of 'Carrying Life and the Waters of Life'.
 
In the demen-spring or early summer ceremony she and a circle of women will pray and prepare to seek, greet, offer thanks for the gift, gather and invite the 'medicine' to join in and with, the girl's body through the coming 13 moons, at which time the demen give-away ceremony will be seated and complete, with a feast prepared for all participants.
 
Through this time, the 'young woman becoming', will observe a 13 Moon strawberry fast. She will then be offered the demen and other traditional foods, at the conclusion feast to FEED and NOURISH her life and herself, the life of the circle, her people, and ALL life, 'in a good way'.
From this time onward she will be woman, having merged with this beautiful and powerful 'medicine', assisting her transition into the beauty and responsibility of an adult woman.

Migwech Creator, Sekmekwe, Gizes and all of the Demen for these and all of the gifts, known and unknown, spoken and unspoken ... mine (and) breathed alive.

Respectfully retold, in the appropriate season.
Dawn Woman 1IK

Conversation with Minisa Crumbo Halsey, Director of 'Woody Crumbo: Spirit Talk' (YouTube)

Conversation with Minisa Crumbo Halsey, Director of 'Woody Crumbo: Spirit Talk'

From: October 29, 2020

Sponsored by: Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art

Voices of the West Online Exhibition

Join artist and filmmaker Minisa Crumbo Halsey as she responds to questions about her efforts to document the career of her father, Woodrow (Woody) Crumbo (1912-1989), a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. Crumbo’s career included contributions as an artist, dancer, concert musician, arts educator, and museum administrator. During the late 1940s, he was hired to assemble the American Indian art collection for the Thomas Gilcrease Institute in Tulsa. He later became director of the El Paso Museum of Arts in Texas.

'Woody Crumbo: Spirit Talk' by Minisa Crumbo

Getegemen - Garden

Potawatomi ‘Garden’ Vocabulary:

Basket = gokbenaben
Bees = amoyuk

Beans = koje'suk

Bloom = jijen

Butterfly = memiki

Cabbage = e'shobuk

Cherries = siwswe'mnen

Circle = waye'yak

Cloud = ngwankot

Corn = ndamen

Cucumber = kokobe'

Dance = nimedi

Drum = de'we'gIn

Earth = sugmuk

Feast = wewesnakewin

Fire = shkote'

Flint Hill Grounds = shokinkik

Flower = washkone'to

Food = wisnawen

Fruit = washkbak
Full Moon = nibakises

Garden = Getegemen

Good Rain = mnogmowIn

Gourd = shishigwIn

Grapes = siwnwen

Grass = mIshkos

Honey = amo

Hot Peppers = wasgagIn

Indian Tobacco = nInse’ma

July/Month of Young Corn = We'shkitdaminkesis

Lightning = sawasmo

Milkweed = nInwezhe’k

Moon = tpukises

Mother Earth = Kumde’kwe’

Muddy = winkiwIn

Onion = shakwesh

Outside = sagec

Peace = e’tokmite’k

Plenty Potatoes = topeka

Plum = pokma

Potatoes = pInyak

Prairie = mskoda

Pumpkin = wapkon

Purple = we'je'pwate'k

Rain = kmowen

Sage = wabshkukbyag

Spider = aspeke' e'e'buk

Stars = nagosuk

Strawberries = demen

Summer = E'mnokmuk

Sun = kises

Sunset = e'pkishmok
Sweat Lodge = mdodmogumuk

Sweet Corn = wishpumnuk

Sweetgrass = wiingaashk

Sweet Potato = wishpupnyak

Thunderbirds = cigwe’k

Toad = mamkeci

Tobacco = se’ma

Trees = mtugwe'nIn

Turtle = mshike’

Very Dark (Outside) = gispuknya

Very Light (Bright Sunshine) = waseya

Warm Wind = shawnash

Water = mbish

Watermelon = ashktamo

Well-Being = matsowIn

Whole Kernel Cooked Corn = pakswayuk

Wild = pkoc

Wild Rice = pkocnomin

Wind = notin

World = otake’

Worm = mose

Excerpt from 'Spirit Talk':

This day we will consider visiting the natural world of the Mother Earth and the Father Sky-Sun … we 2-leggeds are walking erect color-beings … In the old honoring language … it is good to make an honoring prayer from the ‘grateful place’ … blow into an offering of tobacco 4 times, and then ‘put down’ the gift of the tobacco being, Se’-Ma’, onto the Mother Earth. Now offer honoring tobacco to the Father Sky-Sun in the same way … if it rains, consider collecting some of the ‘new water’, dip a finger into it and touch the top of your head 4 times, as the personal unification Water Beings blessing … If there is enough water, many things may be done with it, like ritually bathing the head, hair, face, body, eyes, wrists … If the wild green onions are up, make a tobacco offering from the grateful place: say your name and ask permission, and then you may take up a sharp stone for cutting or use your fingernail for gathering. Use no metal. Both the top and root bulb may be cleaned and eaten. 

Picturing the American Buffalo: George Catlin and Modern Native American Artists (SAAM)

Picturing the American Buffalo: A Conversation (SAAM)

Picturing the American Buffalo: George Catlin and Modern Native American Artists (SAAM)

Buffalo Hunt by Woodrow Crumbo (SAAM)

'Hunting the Spirit Buffalo' by Woody Crumbo (1930s)   

Woodrow Crumbo

Crumbo was born in Lexington, Oklahoma, the son of an Indian mother and a French father. He attended government schools as a child and showed such promise that he received a scholarship to the American Indian Institute in Wichita for his last two years of high school. While at the Institute, he became interested in expressing Indian tradition and culture through his art. After three years at the University of Wichita he transferred to the University of Oklahoma where he studied with Oscar B. Jacobson. At the early age of 21, Crumbo was appointed Director of Indian Art at Bacone College, the only institute of higher learning exclusively for Indians. Bacone offered Crumbo the unique opportunity to familiarize himself with his heritage and to instill in him cultural pride. At that time he conducted research into Indian design and revived ancient techniques of silverwork, vegetable dying, and weaving.

Crumbo’s career has been diverse; known also as a musician and Indian ceremonial dancer, Crumbo played the cedar wood flute and danced with Thurlow Lieurance’s symphony in Wichita. He also worked as a designer with the Douglas Corporation, with the Gilcrease Collection in Tulsa, and from 1960 to 1968 as curator of the El Paso Museum of Art.

A Pottawatomie Indian, Crumbo explores in his art the traditions and ceremonies of his own tribe as well as those of the Creek, Sioux, and Kiowa nations, and says of his work, ​“I have always painted with the desire of developing Indian art so that it may be judged on art standards rather on its value as a curio—I am attempting to record Indian customs and legends now, while they are alive, to make them a part of the great American culture before these, too, become lost, only to be fragmentarily pieced together by fact and supposition.

Crumbo works in oil and egg tempera, as well as in watercolor, sculpture, stained glass, and silkscreen. Under the guidance of Olle Nordmark, he also learned etching. The largest collection of Crumbo’s work, about 175 paintings, is owned by the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, although his work has been exhibited in many museums throughout the United States.

Virginia Mecklenburg The Public as Patron: A History of the Treasury Department Mural Program (College Park, Maryland: University of Maryland, n.d.)

Panel: Native American Perspectives (YouTube)

Panel: Native American Perspectives (YouTube)

Sponsored by: Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art

From: February 27, 2020

Online Exhibition: Voices of the West

 

 

 

 

A closer look at historic and contemporary Native American imagery in the museum's Voices of the West exhibition (2020). Guest speakers are Norman Akers (Osage), Lauren Ritterbush, and Minisa Crumbo Halsey (Citizen Potawatomi Nation and Muscogee).