Judy Dow’s Tapestry Exhibition and Storytelling
The stories that you see woven into the baskets and sewn into the tapestries were done by Judy Dow over the last decade, in this art, Judy has told stories from her personal life that ties into Indigenous life in North America. Time is not a constraint here, many times something from 80 years ago is still relevant and an issue today. While others over 14,000 years ago tell the story of coming events.
Dow has made baskets and told stories for over sixty years now, each one with its own lessons. We hope they bring you insights into the worldview of the storyteller, Judy Dow, a teacher, scholar, writer, activist, basket maker and textile artist.
The Beaver Tail Hill People (or, The Formation of Lake Hitchcock).
The Beaver Tail Hill People are the Pocumtuck People and they have a story about the creation of lake Hitchcock. The salt and pepper shakers tell the story in the colors of the twine with a row representing railroad tracks, then the river and then terraces which can be miles wide in some places between Vermont and New Hampshire after the river receded. The basket is an image of the giant beaver when he came to rest at Mount Sugar loaf after a huge battle between Hobbamock and The Beaver over who would take control of the river. The terraces are remnants left behind as the receding glacial water backs up onto the Connecticut River . This story was taken and recalled from a revolutionary soldier’s diary found in Albany, New York.
Image: Story Basket: handwoven and hand painted basket.
Image: Woven salt and pepper shakers depicting layers of the Connecticut River Valley, one representing Vermont’s land formations, the other New Hampshire’s.
Going Through the Narrows.
We live in a world with limited amounts of birds, fish, animals, and plants. We’ve grown to understand the sun rises every morning and sets every night at a set time and that we travel through seasonal weather patterns. We’ve learned to live with these predictable events along with the many other natural events we experience day to day.
Many of us have come to peace with the world we live in -- assuming this is the way it will always be. Many of us have grown up never getting intimately involved in the world around us unless we are directly impacted. But we have been ignoring a larger picture. Our world is changing. We are beginning a journey from the world we know through the narrows passing into a new world. It’s different then we could ever imagine. Life will be difficult for some and unbearable for others and for everyone it will be costly. In this new world every system we ever knew will be broken or disrupted.
Roads will be torn up, electrical lines will lay on the ground next to broken poles. Homes will be destroyed along with electricity, access to drinking water, heating and cooling, basic communication systems. There will be a shortage of food, and the land will not look like what we remembered. Life will be arduous. Those with extreme wealth will reign free, for they will control power and access.
Image: Aerial photo of Lake Champlain at the place where the Lake narrowed between two islands, which she calls the narrows. That’s where Ms. Dow would watch the currents changing, the winds switching directions, and the seagulls shifting their flying patterns with the seasons. If you knew how to read the narrows, you’d know where fish were spawning and when it was the right time to go fishing. The narrows made transitions visible.
Lifeways, Migration and Adaptation.
It’s traditional to adapt to change, social, environmental, economic and political change. And adaptation is traditional. Adaptation is the way to survive. Every year we would move to our camp on a dead-end road living next to aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents. It was a wonderful way to grow up, it certainly helped to have a village to raise children. We barely ever had electricity, but we were fine without it. We adapted. We fished every day for food and raised our fruit and vegetables. My father hunted and supplemented our food with venison. We shared the responsibility of providing food for the elders and, in turn, the elders taught us their stories.
The migration we traveled every year during our April vacation was from school to camp and every Columbus Day (a long weekend) we traveled back home to Burlington. The migration back to Burlington was difficult each year because of the way we were discriminated against by Burlingtonians, but we survived. The summers we spent with family and with the land was critical for upholding and passing on our lifeways.
IMAGE: The photo is from approximately1943 of Ms. Dow's grandfather (Pepé) and father in Burlington, Vermont likely at Arm's Farm.The Creation Story of Lake Champlain.
A long time ago Ktsi Niwaskw (its ee nee wa skw), the Great Spirit, made this beautiful world that we walk upon, giving us the trees, plants, animals, fish, birds and much more. The sounds we hear, the colors we see, the things we taste, smell and touch were all created. When everything was just the way it was meant to be the dust began to softly float from Ktsi Niwaskw’s hands to the earth below. After the work was finished Ktsi Niwaskw proudly surveyed the beautiful land and everything on it. One little grain of sand slowly began to move, then another, and still another. One by one, the little grains of sand began to gather themselves together. Deliberately, over time, they began to take the shape of a head, torso, and arms. This unusual looking shape sat there for a long time just looking around, wondering how he might get up. He sat there just thinking. Tired of looking at the same thing and very curious about traveling at the same time, Odzihozo (o dzee o zo), or The One That Gathers Himself Together, decided to try and get up. Pushing to the west, he began to form huge mounds of earth, unlike that which Ktsi Niwaskw had intended. But still he could not get up and freely walk about. Looking at the huge mounds of earth, he stretched up with all his might to try and grab something that would lift him up, but sill he could not get up instead he formed huge gouges in the earthen piles as his fingers plowed through the dirt and rocks.
Listen to the complete story.
IMAGE: The artist, Esteban del Valle’s depiction of Odzihozo scraping the earth forming huge gouges in the earth. This painting on plywood was approximately 24’ in length by 6.5’ in height and was displayed during an outdoor summer reading of the story shared here.
Melting Pot.
My father and grandfather were both plumbers from Burlington, Vermont. My Grandfather, Joseph Etienne Fortin, worked for a company called F.S. Lanue.[1] His job in the early twentieth century was to bring indoor plumbing to the houses of Burlington. The elite wanted the old outhouses[2] to disappear from the streets of their Queen City[3]. Pépé[4] worked at Lanue’s for decades. The stories of going into old tenement houses and installing their first toilet, bathtub, and sink were numerous and often, very humorous. In one story, Pépé’s job was to install a complete bathroom in each apartment in a tenement house called Tammany Hall[5] and then to return one month later and fix any leaks or problems that may have occurred during the previous month. Upon his return the following month, he noticed signs in the apartment windows that read “bait for sale.” When entering the apartments he found sinks, bathtubs, or both filled with various types of fishing bait ready to be sold to people headed to catch something in the Burlington Harbor. These people were amazing; they were so creative and adaptive in times of change. Pepe’s stories were not only about the past, but also lessons on how to embrace and understand change or recognize that it will simply pass you by if you don’t accept it. Sometimes it took a long time for the lesson of the story to sink in for me, but I eventually got it. In those cases where the lesson didn’t come fast enough, Pépé would simply tell me the story again.
[1] Frank .S. Lanue was a plumbing and steam fitting business located at 90 St. Paul Street, in Burlington, Vermont. [2] An outhouse is a little building with a toilet separate from the main house.[3] Queen City was a term originally used by the WASP
of Burlington to describe “their” city, the largest in the state of Vermont. The term Queen City is still used today.[4] Pépere is a French Canadian word for Grandfather. Pépé was a little kid’s nickname name we gave to our grandfather.[5] Tammany Hall was a democratic political organization in NYC founded in 1789 as a benevolent society known as the Tammany Society. In the late 1800’s and early 1900’s this society was associated with corruption and abuse of power. For the elite of Burlington the name implied “the place where you could get the best “back door deals”.IMAGE: The image is a graphic with a range of light reds and blues and swirls filled with graphics of figures standing inside the swirls. The Statue of Liberty is to the left side of the image. A pot is in the foreground. The figures appear to be walking toward and into it. The text reads: The Great American Drama by Israel Zangwill. The image is a poster for the play that Zangwill penned.
Sturgeon.
A summer highlight for me was sitting in the boat for hours listening to the old songs that my father and grandfather would sing depending on who I was fishing with. I can hear them now, “Little fishies in the lake come and bite upon my bait.” When the fish weren’t biting and we were about ready to move on, Pepé and my father would let us jump overboard and cool off. I always worried the fish would nibble on my feet but because the water was so deep, I couldn’t see the bottom, nor the fish. Lake Champlain is 400 feet at its deepest point with an average depth of 64 feet. I think I was relatively safe from fish biting my feet. Plus, Dad used to say I didn’t have to worry because if the fish were down there, we would have caught them by now, so into the cold refreshing water I would jump.
IMAGE: Photographic image of a young sturgeon, its body is a light brown with slight silvery overtones and irregularly spaced, small black markings. Scales are visible as is it’s black eye. The fish is pictured on a solid black background.
White Monsters.
Pepé lived on the edge of town, high up on the bluff overlooking the Winooski Intervale and the Winooski River in a place called Moccasin Village. Moccasin Village was built on the top of an ancient sand dune nestled between the Intervale and Lake Champlain. All twenty or so families living in Moccasin Village were French Indian people who had decided to stop traveling back and forth to Canada and settle down in one place. In 1886 this place is where my family called home. “Times were changing,” Pepé used to say, but living next to the Intervale was perfect because people could still hunt, fish, and gather off this open land. An intervale is an Old English word that describes a long narrow valley between two high points with a river running down the middle. Outside of New England, I have rarely heard the word used to describe this type of land feature. To us, it was the common pot, a huge bowl of food source. The Winooski Intervale hugged by the towns of Winooski, Burlington and Colchester takes up 1700 acres of land. And, with this intervale, the Winooski Intervale, our family has had a multi-century relationship.
IMAGE: Blocks of ice pile up at the edge of Lake Champlain. In the background is the Adirondack mountain range.
Tapestries
Angela Davis.
When I was working on my Master’s degree I was required to read five of Angela Davis’ books and write a report about her words. The most striking thing to me from her books was that her words did not only motivate and speak for Black Americans, but her voice echoed previously spoken lessons. This is a cross-stitch project to meet the requirements for my class room assignment. In my tapestry, I have matched statements from around the world from powerful activists’ with Davis’ words.
400 Years of Land Theft: Tools of Genocide.
This tapestry tells the story of 400 years of Indigenous land theft. Everything you can think of is still being used to steal our land, history, heritage and culture. Treaties have been broken for centuries, and they are still being broken with the loss of education and health support by the present administration.
In 1830 the Doctrine of Discovery was written into US law. Using a series of papal bulls* issued in the 15th century most notably in 1493 with Pope Alexander VI’s Inter Caetera. This doctrine provided a religious and legal justification for European colonial powers to claim land they “discovered” and subjugate the inhabitants that were not Christian.
In recent times Ruth Bader Ginsburg, referenced the Doctrine of Discover to support the denial of the Oneida Indian Nation’s claim to regain sovereignty over lands previously held by them but later acquired by non-native individuals and entities. Ginsburg’s opinion argued the Oneida Nation waited too long to reclaim these lands using the Doctrine of Discovery as the precedent for refusing an opportunity to revive their ancient sovereignty.
a “papal bull” is a type of formal document issued by the Pope, typically with a lead seal (or bulla) attached to authenticate it. These bulls are used to communicate significant decisions, proclamations, and decrees from the Pope, often concerning weighty matters within the Catholic Church or even broader issues. The term "bull" originates from the lead seal, which was historically attached to the document.
King Philips’s War.
This tapestry tells the planning story of Metacomet’s battle with the colonizers. For fifty years Metacomet’s father kept peace with the new arrivals. But after years of taking land and killing and destroying food supplies the people were upset. After a raid in Lancaster, MA in which the village was raided by Metacomet and his followers, Weetamoo (Metacomet’s sister- in-Law) traveled north with a group of elders, women and children along with a few captives, including Mary Rowlandson.
Mary Rowlandson was brought to safety by Weetamoo along the Ashuelot River into present day Vermont. While Metacomet met with nearly 2,000 warriors in The Brattleboro area to plan what would become his last stand to protect the land of his ancestors.
Upon release of her captivity Mary Rowlandson was paid to write a book about her adventures. Nearly every section of the book complained about food supplies and the quality and quantity of food. I wondered about this, so I packed up and moved to Brattleboro for the same months Weetamoo and Rowlandson were held up there.
That’s what this tapestry is all about. It’s small but meaningful. There was plenty of food. Fish, butternuts, groundnuts, deer were among the foods that were available. This area is also known for the 4 caves that were food caches and held many supplies from the bountiful season before including dried corn, and yet Mary would have nothing to do with this food. She felt she was starving because her diet lacked the food she had been dependent on as a new arrival. Her captivity narrative is a perfect example of cultural differences and misunderstandings and the graphic, one sided stories people of the time craved.
The feather represents the location where Metacomet, known by the English as King Phillip planned the war. The wampum necklace represents Weetamoo, a female Wampanoag Sunksqua or leader with at least 300 warriors under her command. The rolling hills of greens and browns, are the many terraces along the Connecticut river and at the confluence of the Ashuelot River. The food is scattered along the hill sides and in the river, where one will still find them today.
Backyard Counting.
When my grandchildren were little, they always ran about the woods and fields of our yard counting and learning to name the new things they saw. As they got older, we began to enter an art contest on a regular basis. Their art was beautiful; the backyard tapestry was my attempt to enter the art contest the same time they did. On one particular year our theme was the backyard. We saw one partridge in the tall grasses, two crows under the flowers, three swallows flying above the ferns, four wrens siting in the tree with a full moon above them, five geese flying north and six turkey tracks in the mud. Our trips in nature always revolved around observations and giving a name to everything we saw. To this day they love walking among the trees, birds and plants. The backyard is ones’ first moment where you begin to learn how to read the land.
The Three Sisters.
The Three sisters garden represents the traditional way of farming. First you plant the corn after, the corn has popped through the ground and is a few inches tall, plant the beans in a circle around the corn. The corn stalk will become the stake that will allow the beans to wind her way up the stalk. The beans are a legume, this means that they are a nitrogen fixer and will put nitrogen into the ground for others to grow healthy. A few days to a week after you plant the beans it’s time to plant the squash. The squash will grow long vines that will cover the land with large picky leaves. They will shade the ground to preserve water, and their picky leaves will stop raccoons and others from getting to the corn that they so love, simply because they do not like to touch the picky leaves. If you plant a fourth sister sunflower on the predominately windy side of the garden they will act a windy break to stop the wind from knocking over the corn over with the weight of the beans. The sunflowers also draws the heavy metals out of the ground creating a healthy ecosystem that lives in a symbiotic way.
Industrial Agriculture.
The Industrial Agriculture corn – represents a modified plant, one that has been genetically engineered to grow corn that is sterile. Modified to prevent a healthy ecosystem from being grown. Row after row of modified seeds grow straight and tall modified to control pest and weeds there is no balance here, there is an incomplete ecosystem built for an economy and greed only.
Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918.
In 1918 the Migratory Bird Act was passed. The Migratory Bird Act administers to four different international conservation Treaties that the US entered with Canada in 1916, Mexico in 1936, Japan in 1972, and Russia in 1976. It intended to ensure the sustainability of populations of all protected migratory bird species (1100) that had been over hunted by wealthy sport hunters. The unexpected consequences were disastrous for Indigenous peoples. The law and its amendments impacted hunting laws for Indigenous Peoples, and laws pertaining to Eagle feathers etc. used in religious ceremonies. Indigenous Peoples were now told when they could hunt duck, geese, loons and various other migratory birds. The law stated when it was out of season to hunt, this extremely limited survival for Indigenous people who have hunted in a sustainable way for generations. In addition, Eagle feathers were now determined to be illegal to have for ceremonies. However, after a 1940 amendment it was determined only “Enrolled members of federally recognized tribes may apply for an eagle permit for use in bona fide tribal religious ceremonies."
Backyard Path
This is a trail that goes about 1,000 feet into my backyard. I ‘ve tried to teach my grandchildren how to read the plants on this trail. It runs from the meadow around my house through the forests and opens up into another meadow – all in all it is about 42 acres. This tapestry tells the story of plants in the spring. Every season is a different story since the plants are different. Telling the story with plants is ever changing with each season.
Storytelling
The following are an additional collection of stories written and recited by Judy Dow over the many decades she has been sharing and teaching her stories.
Bonfire.
The People.
