Imagining an Indigenous Future

"A Native Hope" C. 2016 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It's not everyday that the future knocks on your door, although it would seem the past echoes out like an endlessly ringing telephone and when you go to pick it up there is nobody there. In today's setting of a society, globally it remains transfixed upon the Latin-based cultures in their dominance of maintaining the established order of Neo-Roman-Greco civilizations. I am emotionally pained to type these very letters out to relay to you ( our esteemed reader) the very reality upon which you enjoy. It began with a question in my childhood: "if all the world would know peace at the cost of keeping but one solitary soul secluded from it all, locked away in a closet - would it be peace?" Look out your window and obviously there you will have it; for all the people locked away in cages, corners, and those unfortunate closets - we have not achieved the prosperity we were intended to. To some, peace means to be pacified and submit. For those invested in a finer future, peace means love. A love of one's culture in its history, lessons, and blessings provides enough to be directed to the moral whole of any society, but when the call to civilization is only limited to the few in dues to their culture over yours... There goes another to the metaphorical closet. The indigenous future was stolen they'd say, but I think what makes it indigenous is beyond us. They say that most of the natives were wiped out by disease, but were they who remained offered up any better? The black plague of Europe in the 1400's was considered a good thing by then survivors for the sake of depopulation... sound familiar? So as eclipse covers the land, a blood moon represents the death star. Under these themes I started drawing this piece. Interest took by storm when imagining a Native Star Wars, as there had been a Shakespearian Star Wars I saw before at Mac's Fireweed that had offered a cliff note of what could be achieved. The belief that this might have been possible in the slightest of alternate realities only excited me to draw out the design all that much further. The design for Luke Skywalker came first with my own culture of the Tlingit coming back to remind me of the minor conflicts between the Russians then that almost escalated to war. It was the heroic look I was going for, with a long dagger having the significance of a light saber since metallurgy then was rare. Concerning Han Solo, I only had to look back to what was considered the wild west with its world of cowboys & Indians, sharpshooters and quickdraws, of bullets and arrows. I didn't dig too deep into the design drawn as history would show me looking to the plains people of the Apache and Comanche. Concerning C3P0, the character being ever vigilant to the assist, I thought it best to have him drawn as a Lakota wise man with R2-D2 being the tricky raven totem pole. Darth Vader is represented with a helmet and neck guard of Tlingit design in origin, seeing how Luke was also drawn in that way. Of the native tribes under the States of America, the Hopi among others have had the hair bun style in their culture for some time so as to be accredited with the origin of Princess Leia's hairpiece in the film. To quote: "Princess Leia was adopted by Senator Organa, played by Jimmy Smits, a Latino (or mestizo), who takes her to the Planet Alderan where she assimilated to the local (American south western) culture. She wears the Hopi and Zuni hair style of her adopted family as she watches the evil Empire destroy her planet (genocide of the native Americans) with the first test of the death star." Ray Martinez • a month ago Star Wars Costumes exhibit. 2016 Denver Art Museum. http://www.attendly.com/the-ultimate-analysis-of-where-princess-leias-buns-came-from/