Nampeyo

Hopi pots on a stand before a hotel

Hopi Indians are not very well prepared for tourists. They live in the middle of nowhere in the God-forsaken north-eastern corner of Arizona, only one tarmac road leads to their reservation. There is only one little hotel in the whole reservation and only a couple of shops selling arts and crafts. On a car park in front of the hotel there is usually also a couple of stands offering handicrafts, usually katsina dolls and artfully decorated pots. There is also a small shop with arts and crafts in Old Oraibi, but that is all.

It is very different in Taos or Santa Fe, where half of the shops in historic centres sell beautifully crafted Indian pots, often real masterpieces. The Rio Grande Indians correctly recognised the market and are aware that American tourists have to buy souvenirs wherever they go. The pots sold in Taos and Santa Fe are not fakes made in China, they are authentic locally made Indian crafts. Every pueblo in New Mexico has its own style. For example San Juan pueblo is famous for black pots decorated with incised black pattern whereas the Zuni are famous for pots painted in black and white design. The pueblos from the Rio Grande also make sure the tourists come to them. Taos Pueblo has been designated Unesco Heritage site, which resulted in a constant flow of tourists. The Hopi had a similar proposition. The Bureau of Indian Affairs suggested that Old Oraibi, a village continually inhabited for more than a thousand years (it is a record in the States) could be preserved as a monument and a new village of modern houses would be built nearby for the people to move in. The Hopi didn't want to listen. Who said that Oraibi is in the middle of nowhere? For them this is the centre of the world. A village is a living organism and a sacred place, the guardian spirits come here when rituals are performed. An idea that old houses should be changed into a museum is a strange idea of the white man.

In the Rio Grande pueblos pottery is treated as a separate art genre. In the old city centres of Taos, Santa Fe and Albuquerque, where the tourists come, shops are full of big and small pots decorated in various patterns, typical of each tribe. Very decorative, the pots have no practical use, they are not glazed inside and water would leak out of them. They are treated purely as works of art produced for collectors. This ceramic madness, however, started not on the Rio Grande, but at the God-forsaken north-eastern corner of Arizona, in the Hopi country. To be precise – all Pueblo Indians both in the Rio Grande valley and in Arizona, had been producing exquisite pottery for thousands of years, but at the end of the 19^th century white traders brought metal pots and the old art of pottery slowly died out as nobody needed clay pots any more. The process started earlier by the Rio Grande, which was closer to the cities of the white man. Transcontinental railway passed through Santa Fe and one could even go to New York on that. There was no railway in the Hopi country, there wasn't even a proper road there, it was much more difficult to reach. There were, however, people who wanted to reach it despite the difficulties. They were archaeologists, who dug out ancient ruins and found shreds of pottery there. The styles of pottery changed over the centuries but among the ruins only shreds could be found, not the whole beautiful pots. The archaeologists employed local Indians as manual workers at the excavations and one of them, Jesse Fawkes who worked in the Hopi country, asked his workers whether there is a potter somewhere who could make copies of the ancient pots. One of the workers said that yes, his wife could do it. The wife's name was Nampeyo.

Nampeyo

She was born around 1860 in a village of Hano in the Hopi country. She grew up in a place where two cultures met because inhabitants of Hano were immigrants there. They came in the 18^th century when after the failure of the great uprising against the Spanishin the Rio Grande valley. The Spaniards persecuted those Indians who joined the rebellion and some of those rebels ran away to live among other tribes. The Hano people were among them. They built their village on a top of a mesa, just next to two existing Hopi villages, Sichimovi and Walpi. The Hano people kept their separate culture and language but geographical closeness resulted in mixed marriages and a mixing of cultures. Nampeyo is the best example of this.

In her time nobody made clay pots in the village of Hano any more, Nampeyo learned the art of pottery from her aunt who lived in Walpi. She was a keen learner, liked to experiment and was fascinated by the shreds that her husband sometimes brought from the excavation. She decorated some of her pots with ancient designs. What she produced was appreciated by archaeologists who wrote about her in the press. This, in turn, was noticed by the press, who went all the way to Hano to meet her. At that time the press were almost always men. Nampeyo had a lot of charm and this charm influenced what the press wrote about her. Charm aside, the pots she produced were of the highest quality. Collectors wanted to buy them for quite a lot of money. Today her pots sell for thousands of dollars.

As Nampeyo's popularity grew, she was invited to exhibitions in the great cities in the east. It was a really big world for a simple village girl. Demand for her pots grew so she taught her daughter and later the granddaughters how to make them. Today in Hano there is quite a lot of lady potters, descendants of Nampeyo.

Even on a stand on the car park in front of the only hotel in the Hopi country one can see echoes of the style of the great artist. Looking at one of the pots I mentioned her name and the lady seller was surprised that I know it. Clearly most of the American tourists who passed this way had no idea. I must admit that I had only known about it for a couple of days as I had learned about Nampeyo a few days before in a museum in Phoenix. The lady seller said that she herself is not from Nampeyo's family but her daughters are, because her husband is.

I am not a collector. I travel with a backpack in which there is not much room for souvenirs. This time, however, I decided to acquire a little pot in the style of the great artist. Wasn't too expensive, wasn't too big, I could fit it in my backpack. To my surprise when I bought the pot the lady seller decided to fold her stand and go home. She decided she had earned enough that day and she doesn't need to stand there any longer.

When will these Hopi learn how to run a business? When will they understand that one needs to want more and more and more, all the time, without rest? Don't they realise that if they act like this they will always live in the God-forsaken corner of Arizona, a a middle of nowhere? Or maybe they really think this is the centre of the world?

Pot made by Nampeyo in the museum in Phoenix

You will find this article, and many others, in my book "ART ETHNO".

Why can't one take away totem poles from Indian villages?

Haida Gwaii islands

The boat jumps over the waves like an angry horse but there are two engines and the boat moves quickly. It is almost a gale and it is raining, the drops smack the face as if trying to stop us going there. We are sailing to a world-famous tourist attraction, which consists of a handful of half-rotten and covered-in-moss wooden poles on which something has been carved long ago. Not much can be seen of the sculptures today, an eye peeping from under the moss here, bared wooden teeth there. Perhaps in another ten years nothing will remain.

Maybe this slow death is a magnet for tourists? But to travel to the ends of the Earth to see a few rotting wooden teeth? And pay a couple of hundred bucks for the pleasure to a company which will take you there in a boat jumping over the waves in the rain?

You can only get there in a boat jumping over waves. You could conceivably get there in a yacht or a kayak, but avoid the ocean waves you can't. Even if you are rich and come here by a yacht you won't see more than the few remaining rotting totem poles covered by moss. This is all that is left from a village of the Haida people, who once inhabited the whole archipelago. They were here when the English first came in the 18^th century and named the archipelago Queen Charlotte Islands. The archipelago today belongs to Canada but is located far into the ocean and cannot be seen from the mainland. Nobody knows how long the Haida people inhabited these islands but it must have been long, because their language is not similar to any language on the continent. They built their ocean-going boats, and like Vikings assaulted villages of other Indians. They lived in long houses solidly built with cedar planks and fished for salmon which in huge numbers entered their rivers to spawn. They carved totem poles and were famous as sculptors. Other tribes also carved totem poles, each tribe had their own style. The Haida poles are most attractive for viewers from other cultures.

Skedans village

The Haida had been carving the totem poles before the arrival of white traders. There are drawings and watercolours of early European explorers to prove that. However, the contact with white traders caused this art to explode because the traders brought with them steel tools, which greatly facilitated carving. The traders wanted sea otter pelts for their steel tools. Sea otters were at that time quite common in that area, the pelts were very popular in China and could be sold for huge profit there. The Haida didn't know about the existence of China, the Chinese didn't know about the existence of the Haida and so the profits were such that the European traders could finance a journey round Cape Horn to the North pacific and then to China and back home and still get rich. As a result, however, the sea otter became nearly extinct in British Columbia.

The white traders were very friendly but they brought with them a deadly enemy: smallpox germs, to which they themselves were immune. They didn't know about the germs because neither they or anybody else knew that germs existed, because this was long before Dr. Pasteur made his discoveries. Nevertheless, whatever anyone understood or didn’t understand, the process was merciless. In the second half of the 19^th century the Haida nearly shared the fate of the sea otter. As a result of epidemics of diseases to which the Europeans were immune, especially smallpox, 90% of the archipelago population died. This is a far greater proportion than during the Jewish Holocaust. The elders who remembered old traditions died out. People left the villages where the totem poles stood amid weeds as the only witnesses of their former greatness. Today we do not always know what the symbols carved on the poles meant because all those who could explain died out. The totem poles deserted more than a century ago, exposed to wind and rain, rot and fall; they go back to their mother earth from which they once grew.

An old Haida totem, now in a museum in Vancouver

Otters died out, people died out, forests remained. Lush virgin forests; some cedars growing in them were several metres thick. Trees of this diameter could be sold with good profit. The inhabitants of these islands died out so there was no need to ask anybody for permission to fell them. In the eastern part of Canada the government made treaties with chiefs and created reservations for Indians on land that the white men did not need, but in BC there was no need for treaties. Chiefs died out, there was nobody to make treaties with. One could just go in with chain saws and rape the virgin forests. To make sure that everybody knows this is a positive activity one could call this a “development of the country”.

In the meantime art collectors learned about totem poles standing in the deserted villages. Some went there in private yachts and simply took what was there. They seem to have assumed that these things stand in the middle of nowhere and nobody appears to be interested - so one can just take this stuff. Some of these sculptures ended up in private collections, others in museums.

However, the original owners of the totem poles didn't die out completely. 90% of the population died but 10% survived. Among the Haida the law of property was highly developed and consequently the law of inheritance was very precise. Those who survived the epidemics live now in just two villages on the biggest island of the archipelago but they are very much aware of who is the hereditary chief of each deserted village on other islands. Those chiefs don't live there any more but it does not follow that they allow the totem poles to be taken by just anybody. The sculptures were created for a purpose and should be left in the place they have been erected.

The Haida society also evolved during that time. In the old days a Haida chief inaugurated his office during a ceremony called “potlatch”, a huge feast with music and dances during which the chief gave presents to all who were invited. The guests came not from just one village but from a much wider area, sometimes from quite distant localities. During a potlatch the chief gave away all he had; it was in the days when respect was gained not by what one possesses but by what one gives away. Whoever was present at a potlatch was a witness to what was declared there - it had a legal function in a society that did not have a writing system.

Gaining respect by giving away all possessions? Isn't it pure barbarity? Canadian authorities decided it was a barbarian practice and banned it in 1884. Not only for organising it but just for participating one could go to prison. Canada also introduced obligatory education, boarding schools were created for Indians where children lived far from their parents. In schools with children from other tribes, with whom they could only communicate in English, the children forgot their language. Today only a few old people can speak Haida.

It doesn't follow, though, that the Haida forgot who they were. The white Canadians didn't try to understand the legal system based on meetings with music and dance, but the Haida young people having gone through the Canadian education, understood the legal system based on meetings of men dressed in gowns and wigs. Interesting things resulted from this.

Haida Watchmen girls in Skedans

Firstly – Canadian law does not allow taking away sculptures because nobody is watching them. One day a hereditary chief of a deserted village of Skedans, who worked as a fisherman on a boat based Prince Rupert, learned that in one of the yachts mooring in the port there was a sculpture just taken from Skedans. He informed the police, the sculpture was confiscated and returned to the rightful owners. To prevent similar thefts the organisation called Haida Watchmen was set up. Its members (today mostly young people) stay in the deserted villages to make sure nobody takes away anything.

Secondly – companies logging the forest have concessions from the Canadian government, but does the Canadian government have the right to give those concessions? Is there any document stating that Canada has this right? According to the ancient law based on potlatch it was known which of the hereditary chiefs is entitled to sole use of a particular area; other chiefs respected this right, but white people came to rape the virgin forest without asking anyone for permission. They claimed that they had a concession from the government but nobody checked if the government was entitled to give it. Anyway, who would pay attention to detail if the villages in those forests were deserted anyway? Even if there are some hereditary chiefs, they work as simple fishermen on boats based in Prince Rupert.

Well, somebody did pay attention to details and with interesting results. Young and educated Haidas decided to prove in Canadian courts that the government had no right to give concessions and... won the case! On 18 Nov 2004 The Canadian Supreme Court decided that the government of British Columbia broke the law by giving concessions to log forests without any agreement with the original owners. This is a key precedent not only for the Haida but also for Indians in other parts of Canada. Earlier, during the 1980s, protests against logging of the virgin rainforest led to the creation of a national park in that part of the archipelago where some of that forest survived. The park is administered jointly by the government of British Columbia and the Council of the Haida Nation.

Guujaw, who travelled with a Haida passport

Today the Haida nation is not represented, as it was in the 19^th century, by the hereditary chiefs (who still do exist) but by democratically elected Council of the Haida Nation, which was created in 1974. At one point the Council decided that there are no treaties transferring the sovereignty over the islands to the government of Canada and therefore it is an independent nation called Haida Gwaii. The Council even started issuing passports separate from the Canadian ones, some people travelled with these passports and were allowed to enter some countries. A musician known as Guujaw (who does not use a surname because traditionally the Haida didn't have surnames) told me that he travelled the whole world with this passport, he was allowed to enter France and China. Only Hungary wouldn't let him in, but he didn't know why.

The interest of art collectors in sculptures from deserted villages had another side effect: production of totem poles for a new kind of customer. Originally a totem pole stood in front of a house in which an extended family lived and was a kind of a coat of arms. It declared to everybody which clan occupied this house. There were also totem poles marking a tomb of a great chief. Nowadays the Haida live in the same kind of houses as other Canadians. They have cars standing on a drive in front of the house instead of a totem pole. The art of totem pole carving, however, didn't die out. As a result of interest shown by art collectors the totem pole art became famous and its creators are proud of it. Recently even UNESCO declared one of those deserted villages (the one with the biggest number of not-quite-rotten totem poles) a World Heritage Site. Nowadays totem poles are created for institutions that want to put one up in front of their office block. For art collectors, a new art genre was created: a miniature totem pole carved in argilite, black rock that can only be found at Haida Gwaii archipelago.

These days the Haida – who went through the same schools as other Canadians and see the world in a similar way – are art collectors themselves. Chief Demsay Collinson became famous when in 1973, while inaugurating his office, he organised a potlatch, the first one since the ban was abolished. He passed his collection of argilite sculptures to a museum in Skidagate. This way the circle closes – the Haida produce art for themselves again.

It was a pure chance that on the same day that I sped in a boat jumping over waves towards the deserted village of Skedans, in the evening in the museum in Skidagate there was an opening of an exhibition of works of modern artists. I mean modern in time only, no bizarre post-modernist stuff there. Sculptures in cedar wood or in argilite, fabrics made from cedar bark fibre, masks used for traditional dances. Traditional music and dances were also part of that event. They weren't folk dances for the tourist market - the audience was almost exclusively Indian. The ceremony was opened by Peace Dance, during which eagle down is scattered around. Guujaw and his group performed traditional songs with the vigour of a modern folk band, not as an ethnography document.

Haida art will live as long as there are young people who create it with enthusiasm. It lives and continues the old forms even though it is created for a different purpose and for different public. Partly it is created to be exhibited in a museum and the exhibition to be opened with dances. The old art, despite similar forms, wasn't created for museums. The funeral totem poles were created to decompose and fall, to return to the Mother Earth from which they once came. This is the cycle of life, even the great and famous chiefs and all their riches have to come back to the Mother Earth. The young Indians today make sure it happens.   

Haida peace dance

You will find this text, 
and many more on the subject, 
in my book "DO THEY STILL LIVE IN WIGWAMS?":

Can one tread on the heart of Australia?

Tourists watching the sunrise at Uluru

Uluru, the Red Heart of Australia. Can one tread on it? For the people who have lived here for millennia this is a sacred place. It is an altar. Sacred ceremonies are performed at its foot. Contact with the invisible world of ancestors is made here. Contact with the world of dreamings. Stories of Dreamtime are told here.

There is a footpath for tourists around Uluru. Tourists keep shooting photos one after another but in some places there are notice boards saying: “This is a sacred place, please refrain from taking pictures here”. Some even respect these notices.

The heart of Australia. Can one tread on it? There is a notice board before the entry to the trail leading to the top saying: “Please refrain from climbing the mountain, this is a holy place”. Some even respect this notice, too. Nevertheless when the trail is open – which is not always the case because the mountain can be dangerous, many people have died there – the crowd of people climbing look from afar like ants. Mountains are there to be climbed, aren't they? Who would worry about superstitions of stone age people? Who would worry about the fact that “the owner of the dreaming” lives nearby and that the dreaming says that the mountain should not be climbed. Who would worry about the Aborigines anyway? They are probably the most primitive people on earth, aren't they? Not only they walked naked in the desert and didn't erect any buildings of stone, they didn't even have any political organisation, nobody to buy land from. The British Crown tried to act legally wherever possible and where it could be done the land for colonies was bought from local leaders. Even American Indians had their chiefs with whom treaties could be negotiated and from whom land could be bought, but the Australian Aborigines didn't even have chiefs. There was complete anarchy, every family acted on its own. Families owned dreamings connected to certain places but how can one buy a dreaming? Even if that were possible, does a dreaming entitle one to own the land? Anyway the concept of dremings was definitely beyond the mental horizon of the representatives of the British Crown in the 19^th century. They simply decided that land in Australia had no owners and was for the taking.

Aborigines watching tourists watching the sunset.

And they took it. Initially for agriculture. Later, in places where it didn't rain enough to grow any crops, for pastures. Somebody lived there already and lived off hunting kangaroos? They could work as stockmen on sheep farms, after all a position of a stockman is more prestigious than a lizard hunter. Lizard hunter, because all the kangaroos vanished from the land where sheep ate all the grass.

Some Aborigines did indeed work as stockmen, but not all. Some ran away even farther to the desert, to places where it didn't pay to keep sheep. They'd rather eat lizards than have anything to do with those intruders who come and take land as if it didn't belong to anybody, who have no respect for holy places and simply tread on them. Or erect buildings of stone on them and put up fences of barbed wire around.

In 1901 Australia gained independence. That is – the intruders gained independence and those people who had lived there earlier weren't even considered citizens of the new country. It was assumed that they were too primitive and wouldn't understand what 'to be a citizen' means. It was also assumed that the state will look after them until such a time when they do understand this. They had to be civilised. Special settlements were built in which this civilizing was to be conducted. The biggest of those settlements and certainly the best known was Papunya, situated some 240 kilometres west from Alice Springs. Nomad Aborigines from various, often very distant peoples have been gathered there. From Arrente people, whose lands used to be in the east, around Alice Springs. From Pitjantjatjara people, who used to live in the south, around the holy mountain of Uluru. From Pintupi people, who until recently lived far to the west, in the Gibson Desert. They were brought in lorries to be civilized. They were given clothing to wear because in Australia it is illegal to walk naked in public places. They were given food and told to eat at the table because only savages eat sitting on the ground. They weren't allowed to drink alcohol because 'wards of the state' are like children. White citizens of Australia could consume alcohol but the Aborigines weren't citizens. Supplying alcohol to persons not allowed to consume it was illegal and one could go to prison for that.

Uluru close up.

Missionaries came to the desert as well to provide spiritual food. The stone age superstitions had to be uprooted. Not far from Papunya a Lutheran mission named Hermannsburg was set up. Missionaries were good people, they saw the misery of the Aborigines and brought material help, although their main aim was to save souls. In their opinion the superstitions were a barrier to salvation and could not be tolerated. Beliefs in dreamings according to which a mountains was created by some ancestors had to be uprooted because all the mountains have been created by God as the Bible says. The missionaries could not tolerate wild dances to honour that ancestor. They could not tolerate treating a mountain like an altar. The Aborigines weren't daft and quickly understood that it is better not to inform the missionaries about their ceremonies. The old practices went underground, they were celebrated in secret. Civilizing meant basically that the Aborigines copied superficial behaviours of the intruders. If they were good at it they could even get Australian citizenship.

Hermannsburg lies in a picturesque area, among pink hills and greyish-green eucalypti. A perfect country to come and paint with watercolours. This is exactly what an artist named Rex Batterbee did in 1930s. He roamed the area with his watercolours and painted. He even had an exhibition in Hermannsburg. Aborigines also saw this exhibition and one of them, named Albert Namatjira, asked the artist if he could teach him his art. The artist agreed and Albert Namatjira learned it and became quite good at it. He even had exhibitions in distant cities on the coast. He became famous because he was a living proof that an Aborigine can learn to paint pictures no worse than his white teacher. In 1954 he was flown to Canberra to be presented to the Queen and in 1957 he was even given Australian citizenship. And he was earning real money selling pictures.

A picture from the Hermannsburg School

Perhaps Albert Namatjira could have became rich but for the ages-old law of the Aborigines that tells them to share immediately whatever they have. Meat of a kangaroo is divided and shared among the relatives and so is the money gained by selling watercolours. According to the Australian law Albert Namatjira could buy alcohol but according to the ages-old law he could not consume it on his own. Here the two laws came into conflict. One day Albert celebrated some occasion with his family, having bought some drinks for the occasion and was promptly arrested and sent to prison for supplying alcohol to persons not eligible. That's the benefits of citizenship for you.

Albert Namatjira shared not only possessions but also his skills. As the father teaches his sons to use a spear so Albert Namatjira taught his sons and other relatives how to paint. This is how 'The School of Hermannsburg' came into being. The painters of this school painted watercolours depicting landscapes of the desert heart of Australia. Virgin landscapes, without people and without any sign of white man's activity.

Albert Namatjira became famous but more as a curiosity than a great artist. His disciples did not become famous at all. This kind of art is considered second-rate at best, good enough perhaps to be sold to tourists as souvenirs. It certainly is not traditional Aboriginal art, in their old society there was no room for this kind of pictures. Where would a nomad without a house hang a watercolour? Anyway, what would he need a picture of a landscape for if he lived in this landscape for real?

There was, however, a secret in those pictures that was hidden from white man's eye and there was no point to explain it to him. Albert Namatjira did not choose the subjects for his paintings because they were pretty views. White buyers could think so but it was not the case. Albert Namatjira painted what he was entitled to paint. He was the guardian of dreamings connected to certain places and it was those places he painted. A landscape is not just a landscape, a mountain is not just a big rock. A mountain is a holy place, an altar not made with human hands and this is what makes it holy.

What is a watercolour depicting a holy mountain? Isn't it like an icon that tries to show us a glimpse of the unseen world? Isn't it like an icon that reminds one about a holy place? Especially if one does not live in that place any more?

Kata Tjuta rocks near Uluru.

You will find this article, and many others, in my book "ART ETHNO".

A Selfie with an Aborigine

Australian dotscape from above

The red heart of Australia is covered with dots. This is what it looks like from above, red earth and many dots of many colours: light brown, dark brown, almost black, greyish green and – when the rain falls – also vivid green. When the rain falls the riverbeds are full of water and on flat areas temporary lakes appear, riverbanks turn green and frogs crawl out of mud. All this doesn't last long, after some days the water either dries out or disappears underground, frogs dig themselves deep into the mud to sleep and the vivid green dots turn greyish again. In some places water stays underground but one cannot see it, it is hidden in places where ancestors hid it.

People have lived among these dots for millennia. They know where the water is hidden because the ancestors left them dreamings that tell them about it. The ancestors left them dreamings that have to be told and danced regularly so the next generations know how to live. For example how to find water hidden underground, how to share it and how long it will last. In some places there is water hidden in the ground but not too much of it, for a family bivouacking there it may last for a few days. It cannot be used for washing, this would be wasting a precious resource. In the old days there was no need to wash clothes because the desert people walked around naked. On special occasions they painted their bodies with coloured ochres, one has to look good on special occasions after all. They painted their bodies in stripes, dots or circles, there was a specific design for each occasion. There was the whole art of body painting that was passed from generation to generation. It was used only on special occasions, normally people of the desert walked around the desert naked. This was a rational behaviour. A rational use of what nature gave to those people.

The ground on which the dreamings were danced had to be specially decorated. Each dreaming was connected to a place and a design representing this place was created on the ground. Each dreaming was a property of a family, it could not be danced by just anybody. Dreamings were passed from generation to generation in the families, who looked after the places given to them by the ancestors. This was the ancient law.

About two hundred years ago people who didn't know the ancient law came to Australia. They had a different law which said that a man can buy land for money and then the buyer can do whatever he likes on his land. He could cut all the trees, shoot all the animals, drill a hole in the ground and suck all the water hidden in it. That water hidden in other places may then also disappear was not his concern. Anyway these newcomers didn't buy land from the people who had lived there for millennia, they bought it from their own queen. How could they buy land from people who roamed in small groups and stayed at one waterhole for only a few days? From people who walk around naked, don't wash, don't build houses and in general are incredibly primitive.

Batik design by Emily Kame Kngwarreye

The newcomers weren't primitive, anything but. They could navigate the whole world in their great ships. They could produce tools of iron and use those tools to cut down forests. In their own country they cut down all the forests so they could raise sheep. They kept sheep because in their own country they didn't walk around naked but made themselves clothes from hair stolen from animals. Sheep were perfect for that because they had warm fleece so their owners regularly fleeced them and used the hair for their own garments. Moreover, they could sell the hair so they wanted to keep as many sheep as they could. When they cut down all the forests in their own country they moved to Australia, where they even didn't need to cut forests because in the big part of the country there were no forests, only grass. They bought land from their queen and brought their sheep there.

The newcomers didn't have a custom of body painting, clothing made of animal hair was more important for them. As the Aborigines painted the right designs for the right occasions so the newcomers had various kinds of clothing used on various occasions. They also had dreamings that instructed them what to do in life, although their dreamings said nothing about where to find water (which is little wonder as their country is drenched in rain most of the time and finding water is no problem at all). They also had pictures to illustrate their dreamings, although they didn't create them on the ground but on wooden boards or on canvass stretched on a wooden frame. These pictures were later placed vertically in special buildings made of stone. Those buildings were erected especially for ceremonies connected with dreamings.

Those vertically placed pictures weren't destroyed after the end of the ceremony, they were kept in the same place for a long time, many years. Some of those pictures were very beautiful, they became famous for their beauty and people would come from afar to see them. Sometimes they would travel for many days just to see a particular picture. In time, creators of the most famous pictures became famous themselves and would receive orders to create other pictures, sometimes connected with dreamings and sometimes not. For example, they would be asked to paint portraits of people who sold a lot of animal hair and as a result had a lot of money. When those persons died their family would hang those portraits in their houses to remind of moments spent together. When more and more people lived in cities, some wanted to have portraits of beautiful landscapes of countryside to remind them of beautiful moments spent there.

The world of the white man changed because he was inventing something all the time. Machines to make clothes from animal hair were invented so the clothes could be produced much quicker and so demand for that hair grew. As a result demand for land where those animals could be kept rose, too. A machine that could paint a portrait of a person in a few seconds was also invented, a machine that could paint more accurate portraits that those made by hand. Then some painters started painting in a new, different way. One group of painters started painting landscapes not quite in focus, with visible brush strokes, very different from anything a machine could do. Those painters were controversial, much was written about them in papers, this way they became famous. As they became famous, more and more people wanted to buy their pictures and so prices of those pictures rose. Next generation of painters, seeing that controversy paid off, started painting pictures representing not distorted landscapes but simply nothing, and they called those paintings “abstractions”. If as a result they became controversial and consequently famous, so the price of their pictures rose. As the prices rose, it became fashionable to buy them and in the end on the walls of houses of rich people pictures representing nothing appeared.

Emily Kame Kngwarreye

At this point paths of two apparently incompatible cultures met.

The Aboriginal culture also changed, partly as a result of what the newcomers did. When the newcomers bought land from their queen and moved in with their sheep, the Aborigines had to flee. The sheep ate all the grass and the kangaroos, which was staple food for the Aborigines, had nothing to eat and vanished. The government of Her Majesty didn't want to be cruel and was prepared to feed the landless Aborigines, special settlements were built for that purpose. The Government also wanted to civilise these wild people, send the children to school. The first meeting of the two cultures happened on a school yard. I mean the first real meeting, not just watching each other from afar.

The first of those meetings took place in 1971 in a settlement named Papunya a few hundred kilometres west from Alice Springs. The art teacher in the school there, whose name was Geoffrey Bardon, asked the children to paint traditional patterns. A surprising response came from the children's fathers, who said the children cannot paint them but they, the fathers, can. Bardon kept encouraging and the men in Papunya painted patterns used normally for dreaming ceremonies, but this time they painted them in acrylic on canvas. This caused controversy because other Aborigines claimed these pictures revealed secret patterns that women weren't supposed to see. These pictures shouldn't be publicly exhibited. The controversy was completely incomprehensible for white men, for them the paintings looked like abstractions that could be hanged on walls in houses of rich people. However, the controversy meant that papers wrote about it, the painters became famous and prices for their pictures rose. The most famous painters from Papunya, like Clifford Possum or Johnny Warrankula, sold their pictures for tens or even hundreds thousands of dollars.

The second meeting took place in a settlement called Utopia situated a few hundred kilometres north-west from Alice Springs. There the teachers in the school noticed that Aboriginal mothers brought children to school and then waited the whole day on the school yard for the children to come out. Perhaps a program for mums could also be organised? Perhaps they could do something they could sell? If they could, they would be less dependent on government benefits. They could for example make batik designs on T-shirts. A few women took part in such a program with some enthusiasm and created fantastic designs. Later the T-shirts were sold to tourists in Alice Springs.

Rodney Gooch, the manager of the shop in Alice Springs, thought that the designs were good enough to make an exhibition and show it in the cities on the coast. It would be better, though, if they could be made on lengths of silk rather than T-shirts. The project has been discussed, materials given to the participants and in 1988 the exhibition was ready. The designs that appeared there were, of course, dreamings. The exhibition was a success, it was shown not only in Australia, but in America and Europe as well. But this was not the end.

A picture by Emily Kame Kngwarreye

Rodney Gooch wanted to use the momentum. The Papunya painters (whose pictures shouldn't be shown to women) were already well known, thousands of dollars were paid for their pictures. As it happens, in the white man's world batik is not considered art. It is mere craft, even though it is more difficult to produce than a picture painted with acrylic paints. Acrylic painting is considered real art and could be sold for much more even if it represents the same thing. Batik is not a traditional craft of Aborigine women, it was only suggested to them a couple of years earlier. Why not give them acrylics to work with? Next travelling exhibition could be made up of paintings of Utopia women.

The effect of the project was amazing. The trail had been cleared by dads from Papunya so for the organisers it was not a complete surprise, but it must have been for the participants. For a mum who doesn't know what to do with her time when her children are at school to become an internationally famous artist in a short time, must have been a bit of a culture shock.

Owners of art galleries in the cities on the coast started coming to Aborigine settlements and brought canvas and paints with them. The canvas was spread on the floor and the artists were putting their dots in the same way as when they created a sand dreaming picture for a ceremony. When the picture was finished, the gallery owner stretched it an a frame and sold it for thousands to some well off city people. For thousands, because if the fame was international, the price had to be appropriate.

Emily Kame Kngwarreye took part in activities of the batik group from the very beginning. Her batik dreamings appeared on the group exhibition of 1988. She started painting a year later, when Rodney Gooch brought paints to Utopia. She was about 70 years old at the time, although her exact date of birth is not known. From that moment until her death in September 1996 she painted a few thousands pictures. These are pictures covered in dots and strokes, like all the pictures by Aborigine artists. Emily's pictures have something which cannot be defined but which draws one's attention to them like a kind of magic. Soon she became the most famous of all the Aborigine artists. Here are the dates of her breathtaking career:

1988 – the first group exhibition of batik.

1989 – the first group exhibition if acrylic paintings,

1990 – the first solo exhibition in Sydney, followed by many exhibitions both solo and as a part of a group.

1997 (posthumously) exhibition at the Biennale in Venice

History goes in circles, ethnology sometimes as well. In 1970s white enthusiasts gave the Aborigine artists painting materials and the paintings thus created sold well. Later gallery owners looked for Aborigine artists to sell their pictures in the cities. Today those dot paintings are so popular that they are almost perceived as traditional folk art of Aboriginal Australians. Galleries in Alice Springs and in the tourist town at Ayers Rock are full of them. Pictures in the galleries cost thousands but wherever tourists come, some Aborigines from a nearby settlements come as well. They come in their old cars, sit on the ground and sell similar dot pictures for less than a hundred bucks.

How could one miss such an opportunity? Especially as one can then take a selfie with an Aborigine.

A Selfie with an Aborigine

You will find this article, and many others, in my book "ART ETHNO".

Can we learn anything from Aborigines ?

Landscape of Western Australia seen from a plane.

In the 19^th century explorers riding camels travelled to the Gibson Desert in Western Australia. These explorers suffered extreme hardships and decided that the land is inhabitable. There were places in that land where trees grew but those trees were just desert eucalypti, a downpour once a year is enough for them. It rains there only when cyclones roar over the Pacific, clouds brought by those cyclones break through the coastal mountain ranges and then the deserts are flooded. Water gathers in temporary lakes which dry out quickly and there is no rain for the rest of the year. How can one live in a climate like that? You can't even keep sheep in such a place. The land was declared uninhabitable and left in peace.

That peace was disturbed in the 20^th century when Great Britain constructed its first nuclear bomb and needed an uninhabited place to test it out. Gibson Desert was supposed to be such a place but reconnaissance planes that flew over it noticed that somebody actually lived there after all. Can one just drop a bomb over the head of that somebody? One has to do something to make sure the land is really uninhabited. Expeditions were organised again with the aim of finding those mysterious inhabitants and resettling them somewhere. As it turned out these people lived there illegally. They had no documents proving they had the right to be on Australian territory. No birth certificates, no passports, no visas. They even couldn't speak English, the official language of the country. And they walked around naked even though in Australia it is illegal to appear naked in public places.

It was a sensational discovery. Apparently these were stone age people who not only had no knowledge of the existence of white Australians, but seemed to have no knowledge at all, they just wandered in the desert eating lizards. On the other hand some people admired their ability not only to survive but even raise a family in an environment where a person from Sydney, if left alone, wouldn't be able to survive even a week. There was also consternation – how is it possible that in a modern country in the middle of the 20^th century some people walk naked in the desert and eat lizards as their staple food? This couldn't go on, settlements had to be created where these people could eat civilised food sitting by a table. They had to be given some clothing, they couldn't just walk naked there. Children had to be sent to school, in a civilised country like Australia not sending children to school was also illegal.

Aborigines who have enough food.

A few settlements were created. The biggest and most famous of them was Papunya, located about 240 km west of Alice Springs. The desert nomads – when contacted and if a language of communication could be found – were told that Papunya is a place flowing with milk and honey, or at least they could have enough food every day, which was not always the case in the desert. Despite the official good will, however, there was no mutual understanding. The white people who came to Papunya from big cities preferred to restrict any contact with those who came from the desert to official working hours. The desert people didn't really look for more contact either. For them it was obvious that the white people not only knew nothing about the desert, they did not know things a man should know and seemed not to realise there were things a man should know. Anyway there was no point trying to teach them.

Children are supposed to go to school, but how to teach them if they can't speak English? Among themselves they chatter in some incomprehensible speech and are disobedient, but how can they be obedient if they don't understand what is being said? You can't talk to parents to correct their children because the parents don't understand English either. Are the teachers supposed to learn Pintupi or Pitjantjatjara languages? Or both of them and some others in addition, because inPapunya people from various distant regions were gathered, they spoke several mutually unintelligible languages. With Arrente people, who came from regions around Alice Springs, one could communicate because they came in touch with white people earlier, some even worked as stockmen at white people's farms, but Pintupi have been brought straight from the desert and the world of white people was completely abstract to them. Can one wander why teachers treated work in Papunya as a kind of punishment?

A picture by Kaapa Tjampitjimpa in a museum in Brisbane.

In 1971 came to Papunya a man who actually seemed to want to learn something. This was Geoffrey Bardon who came to teach art in the school for black kids. He was one of the few for whom work with natives was not a kind of punishment, he actually wanted to work with them and even learned a little of their language. He was a teacher fresh from university and full of new ideas about what art can do in education. According to modern ideas art is supposed to show the personality of its creator, not his ability to copy anything. In the school of Papunya Bardon noticed that in the classroom children tried to draw human figures but when they played outdoors that drew some interesting patterns on the ground. He told the children that in the classroom they should also create this kind of art. The children went home and in the morning they came with their fathers, who said that the children can't do it but they - the adult men – can and will. They said that Papunya stands on he spot of Honey And Dreaming so they will paint this dreaming on the school wall. And they did, they painted something that according to western standards would be seen as abstract painting. For them it wasn't abstract at all, it was Honey And Dreaming.

It turned out that the black inhabitants of Papunya were experienced artists who painted according to age-old traditions, only the medium was new to them. Illustrations of dreamings had been created for generations in places where dances were to be performed. They were made of sand of various colours, often the design was very elaborate and it took a long time to create it. Then the dance was performed on it and at the end of the ceremony nothing remained. A picture of a dreaming was a bit like a musical composition, which is performed at a certain moment but when it is not performed it still exists. Honey Ant Dreaming on the school wall wasn't danced upon and remained in place a little longer.

Neither Bardon nor the painters wanted to stop at this point. Bardon suggested they paint something on movable boards that could be like western pictures. He provided the boards and acrylic paints and the space necessary in a shed behind the school building. When a few of those pictures were created Bardon took them in his car to Alice Springs, where he found a gallery willing to exhibit and possibly sell them. During the school year 1971-72 Bardon went to Alice Springs several times, each time with a new load of pictures. Tourists visiting the town bought these pictures for less than a hundred dollars. For the artists, who only a few years earlier came from the desert where they didn't earn anything – these were substantial sums. Or were they? When they roamed the desert they not only didn't need any money, they actually didn't know that such thing existed. Did they understand at all what a “substantial sum” is?

A picture by Clifford Possum in a museum in Sydney.

Whatever the case, these pictures weren't bought as ethnographic curiosities, they were treated as works of modern art. In 1971 there was an official competition for a modern picture in Alice Springs, most of the participants were white Australians but the first prize was given to Kaapa Tjampitjimpa, a Native from Papunya. In 1972 a museum in Darwin organised an exhibition of the works by Papunya artists. It was a travelling exhibition, it was shown in Sydney and Melbourne and other cities on the coast. In 1974 it was also shown in Alice Springs. There it turned out to be explosive stuff, it caused a riot, stones and spears were thrown at it by Natives from other settlements and it had to be closed after a few days. White organisers could not understand what was wrong. Isn't it good that Aboriginal art is appreciated? It never occurred to them that the Native community could have a different opinion about it, which was (as it later transpired) that these things should not be shown publicly in a place where women and children could see them! The pictures were the property of Darwin Museum, whose decision makers decided to lock them up in a cellar and never show them again.

However, galleries in the cities on the coast still exhibited works by Papunya artists and their prices rose gradually. One can guess that the notoriety helped in that price rise. Art dealers smelling money sent their agents to Alice Springs, provided paints and canvas and bought ready pictures, selling them later on the coast with substantial profits. Prices rose steadily, legend grew around the artists. In the 1990s an agent of Sotheby auction house had an idea – find those earliest Papunya pictures that were bought for a hundred bucks and auction them. The result exceeded any expectations, the pictures were fetching several thousands dollars each. At first the leader of the pack was Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri, whose picture “Love Story” sold for 60$ in 1972 and was resold in 1995 for almost sixty thousand. Five years later he was trumped by Johnny Warrankula Tjupurula, whose picture “Water dreaming at Kalipinypa”, painted in 1972, was resold for over $400 000. It was purchased by an American multimillionaire.

A picture by Johnny Warrankula in a museum in Brisbane

Some white Australians started asking themselves a question: why the best art works have to leave the country? In a free market it is likely to happen because where the purchasing power is concerned the Americans are the leaders of the pack. In European countries there are laws banning export of certain works of art, these are usually works of old masters, but Papunya masters created their earlies works were less than 40 years old! Some of those artists may even be still alive. Somebody had an idea – ask the artists themselves what they think about it. Two ladies travelled to Alice Springs – one a representative of the Government, the other an expert, an Art Historian who wrote biographies of Papunya artists and knew them personally. The ladies met one of the painters in an Alice Springs coffee shop. The lady expert opened the laptop to discuss particular pictures that were to be auctioned. As soon as the thumbnails appeared on the screen, her interlocutor sad sharply: “Shut it. We won't talk about them. Didn't you have a man to come with you?”

It turned out (when a man was found at last) that the pictures the lady expert had in her computer could only be seen by men. These were pictures normally created in sand of various colours during initiation of young men. Women and children should never see them.

But if this is the case – then why did they paint it in the first place? Why did they hang them in galleries? Why did they sell them?

It was one great misunderstanding. The artists who only a few years earlier saw a white man for the first time in their lives had no idea what a gallery was, they had no idea what a white man would do with their pictures. Very likely they took for granted that what men did would remain among men, that it won't be shown where women or children could see it. Ever since the riot in Alice Springs Papunya artists changed their subjects and tabu themes wouldn't appear in their pictures any more, but those earliest pictures had been sold already and their creators had no influence on what happened to them later.

A picture whose subject was 'tabu' – which means 'holy' – became a commodity that could be bought and sold. However many thousands it may cost, it is still a commodity, nothing more. Is this the way our new brave world is going to be?Everything just a commodity? Is it inevitable? Or perhaps the riots in Alice Springs may have meaning for us? Maybe we can learn something from the Aborigines after all? Or perhaps we never will and a time will come when even the Black Madonna of Czestochowa (a beautiful portrait of a beautiful woman and one of the oldest icons in existence) will be sold if somebody pays enough money?

Our Lady of Czestochowa

You will find this article, and many others, in my book "ART ETHNO".