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.
STORYTELLING
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.
5 Rs.
Life was good when I was growing up, we had respect for the land, we took what we needed and gave thanks for what we used. Our respect for the land and water was clear, it was a direct connection with our survival. We were taught that you nurture and nourish the land and it will take care of you. Respect was critical for survival and it was our responsibility to care for the land and water while working to minimize any damage that might befell her. Many people depended on her for survival and we knew that. People have become disconnected from the land, they often don’t have the day to day connection, growing, harvesting and preparing food directly from the land, or living with a well for water. Many times, children don’t understand that blueberries grow on a bush; they believe they simply come from the grocery store or that there will always be water when you turn of the faucet. Children are often told don’t go into the forest or too far from home because the bad people are there, their fears keep them from exploring the world around them. And prevents them from making amazing discoveries of reciprocity in nature. When they grow up they want their fears to go away by getting rid of the forests. The land is now gentrified, it produces as much as it can to serve a faceless “market.” There is more food to go around the country and sometimes abroad. Greed plays a role here in this people-defined relationship to the land. This greed makes some people feel better, while others will despair over what has been taken from the land and never replaced. Reciprocity is missing.
So, what happened to that respect and responsibility, and what of reciprocity? A lot has changed in 50 years. The more change we experience, the farther away we got from respect and responsibilities to the self, to the families, to the land, to the water we drink, the air we breathe. Has change created a world where people want more than what they need? Have people created a world where what they take does not equal what they need? In some cases, has change happened for no apparent reason except for greed?
I think so, we never had a television set when I grew up. I remember going to the neighbors to watch the Beatles first appearance on the Ed Sullivan show on February 9, 1964, the day before my tenth birthday. It was amazing, it was a birthday gift I’ll never forget. Now people have a TV in a multitude of different rooms and some people even have their very own cinema in their homes. Why? Do people know what they are missing when they are not exploring outside, and not developing relationships? Do they understand the difference between a need and a want? They want a TV in every room but they do they need a TV in every room?
I believe there is a misunderstanding in our world today as to reverence. Reverence is a very deep understanding and love for the land that gives us so much. Without reverence we lose connections with the other 4 R’s, respect, responsibility, reciprocity and relationship. We don’t understand respect or our responsibilities to the land, we don’t know how to develop a relationship or how to reciprocate. This is exactly why I’ve added Relevance to this tapestry. The time is now, the time is relevant for us to use these 5 R’s in our daily life.
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.
Institutions
Institutions have shaped Native people since the beginning of the colonizer’s arrival. Like it or not, right or wrong, natural or unnatural the goal of the colonizer was to educate and model us in their likeness. The tenets of colonial education were:
1. That Native Americans were savages and had to be civilized
2. That civilization required Christian conversion
3. That civilization required subordination of Native communities, frequently achieved through resettlement efforts and
4. Native people had mental, moral, physical or cultural deficiencies that made certain pedagogical methods necessary for their education. [1]
This tapestry shows the different institutions in Vermont that worked to ensure these tenets were followed. If education was not to be for whatever reason relocation or death seemed to be the answer. These words were composed by a Choctaw man while emigrating to the west, in 1831-1832. They help you to understand there was no choice to be had.
Jackson sent the Secretary of War
To tell the Indians of the law
Walk O jaw bone walk I say
Walk O jaw bone walk away
Eaton tell us go away
Here no longer you can stay
Walk O jaw bone walk I say
Walk O Jaw bone walk away.[2]
[1] Next Steps research and practice to advance Indian Education Edited by Karen Cayton Swisher and John W. Tippeconnic III, page 3[2] Unworthy Republic: The dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to the Indian Territory by Claudio Saunt Page 84
Lessons from the Blue Heron
The image of the Blue Heron was inspired from an original woodcut believed to have been carved around 1880. The carving was on the end grain of a fruitwood panel, probably apple and exhibits considerable craftsmanship. The word gedakina translates to “our world, a way of life” in the Abenaki language. We look to the Blue Heron who symbolizes; self-determination / nihlôji chajigwôgan, self-reliance / nihlôji chidokazwôgan and balance / nolidahôôbatta.
Gedakina is also a multigenerational non-profit organization located in Essex, Vermont and Princeton, Maine endeavoring to strengthen and revitalize the cultural knowledge and identity of Native American women and their families from across New England. We work to conserve our traditional homelands and places of historical, ecological and spiritual significance and to educate others as to their importance.
Founder’s Tree/Witness Tree
In Vermont, the Eugenics Survey was a formal program that ran from 1925 to 1937. Eugenics programs were in 31 states in the US and many other places around the world. It was a program that was run by so-called progressive thinkers to determine which humans they deemed defective, delinquent and dependent. Although Eugenicists believed their programs to be the latest, modern science, it was later deemed to be a pseudo-science simply because it was based on subjectivity. That realization came far too late -- the damage was done, their goals to institutionalize those deemed defective, delinquent and defective, break up families and hereditary continuity and sterilize many had been achieved. After Hitler praised and thanked the eugenicists of this country and began his work based on what he had learned from scientists here, eugenicist began to distance themselves and change their working organizational names to Human Betterment. This distancing stayed primarily under the radar. You now see and hear today identical words and programs within the boundaries of the US. This targeting continues with a sharpened lens on those that are different, those that speak another language and those that are poor. These tapestries depict the 1921 propaganda/advertisement for an international conference. The Wisdom Tree represents my thoughts about what should be happening now – a healing and a reckoning.
Eugenics (various definitions):
Greek meaning well born.
The science of improving a human population by controlled breeding to increase the occurrence of desirable heritable characteristics.
Developed largely by Francis Galton as a method of improving the human race, the practice aims to reduce human suffering by “breeding out” disease, disabilities and so-called undesirable characteristics from the human population.
Dictionary.com
The practice or advocacy of controlled selective breeding of human populations (as by sterilization) to improve the population's genetic composition.
Merriam Webster
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.
