#Athabascan

[formlines]

Salmon Boys

Crystal Worl

from the website: This giclée is one illustration from the book Cradle Songs of Southeast Alaska, published by Sealaska Heritage Institute in 2019.

[superinjun]

Let Us Have a Story - Mask

Kathleen Carlo (Koyukon Athabascan)

bass wood, pigments, buttit shells, hair, feathers, mexican milagros, copper tacks. 24” x 21” x 2”

This mask features a number of non-traditional objects that are hallmarks of Kathleen Carlo’s style: bullet casings, Mexican milagros charms, and automobile inspection mirrors. Each of these elements is significant: the halo of mirrors is a tribute to the passing of fellow mask-maker Lawrence Beck (Yup’ik) who taught Carlo at a seminal two week workshop at the Institute of Alaska Native Arts and helped her on the path to her career. The milagros charms in the mask’s mouth are traditional Mexican prayer charms: a parishioner would buy one in the form of a trouble or ill in their lives and take it to church with them. For Carlo, her masks speak of these troubles and ills, perhaps solving them through prayer, story or song. The addition of bullet casings–or buttit shells–signifies the importance of hunting for Carlo and many natives in Alaska. Raised on a subsistence diet of gathered and hunted foods–such as salmon, berries and moose meat–Carlo adds the shells to connote the human element in the more spiritual world of the mask.

The title of this piece, “Let Us Have a Story” is taken from a passage in the diary of Father Jules Jette, a late 19th century priest who first codified the Koyukon dialect into a dictionary. One evening Jette and a number of Native men were at his cabin telling stories to each other. As the end of each story drew near the Koyukon men built up their excitement and would shout “Ani!”–an expression of surprise and enthusiasm–and would call out, “Let’s have another story, let us have a story!” Reading this passage, Carlo was inspired by this historic, peaceable scene, and created this mask to commemorate it.

[charring58]

#Aleut, #Athabascan, and rom 1899 to 1921. Treaties opened the land for resource minerals In exchange for land, government promised food, education, property rights, and to

[ironysgrace]

Anyone else struggle with going from a cool beige in the winter to a warm brown in the summer?

Like I get an identity crisis when the seasons change 💀

I mean not only do I need to change the way I dress and apply makeup but also I go from white passing racially ambiguous to very obviously not real MaYoNnAiSe

And idk it’s just a weird way to exist? From white people who know me grabbing me randomly to freak out over how tan I suddenly got and/or asking if it’s real, to the up tick in people wanting to play the “what are you game”

And because of my curls a lot of people make the assumption that I’m part Black or Hispanic/Latinx and that feels weird cause I’m being assigned like complex weighted social identities that I don’t really have anything to do with while never having the ones I actually do be recognized?(I’m Athabaskan, Alaskan native)

I honestly don’t know how to word all the feelings around that or if it’s even worth trying for or if it’s more just internalized issue that I need to work on personally and not worry so much about other peoples perceptions

Which is a bit of an identity crisis in its own way because being able to clearly articulate nuanced ideas in a meaningful way is something I’ve had grafted to my idea of self since I was a child

And I mean struggling with the reverse of this when the sun leaves and my melanin recedes with it is also really hard because instead of being conflate with the wrong minority I start to wonder if I still have one at all

Which is weird because it’s not like I turn ghost white or my hair is turns straight so it’s not like everything disappears but also those aren’t even really things that I associate at all with my native identity at all, in fact the curls are from my Irish side of the family, they’re simply things I know others use to gage my otherness

I guess I just feel I’m constantly trying to juggle having cultures that aren’t mine handed to me and then exchanged for another while never getting to really hold my own, I wanna be so careful because if either I drop or hold anything I’m handed I can easily hurt and offend people

even holding the white culture I’m actually kind of a part of feels not only disingenuous but dangerous

But there is one thing growing up like this has taught me, if all that I am can appear subjective, then why would I ever take anyone’s appraisal of my beauty as written in stone?

If all the pain, love, and knowledge passed from my ancestors to me can be mistaken for blood sweat and tears of another with the passing blase of small talk then how on earth could I take another’s word for what is or isn’t beautiful about me?

You can’t tell me my features aren’t beautiful if you don’t know who’s beauty they were born from

[abellinthecupboard]

There is No Word for Goodbye

Sokoya, I said, looking through 　　　the net of wrinkles into 　　　wise black pools 　　　of her eyes. What do you say in Athabascan 　　　when you leave each other? 　　　What is the word 　　　for goodbye? A shade of feeling rippled 　　　the wind-tanned skin. 　　　Ah, nothing, she said, 　　　watching the river flash. She looked at me close. 　　　We just say, Tłaa. That means, 　　　See you. 　　　We never leave each other. 　　　When does your mouth 　　　say goodbye to your heart? She touched me light 　　　as a bluebell. 　　　You forget when you leave us; 　　　you're so small then. 　　　We don't use that word. We always think you're coming back, 　　　but if you don't, 　　　we'll see you some place else. 　　　You understand. 　　　There is no word for goodbye.

— Mary Tallmountain

When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through: A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry (2020)

[anxiousdemifaemess]

The first time I remember being told about my culture, I do not know how old I was. That's the fun part about trauma impacting my memory- I remember certain events, but never an age or time of year, not really. I know I was still pretty little, I know my bio mom was out of the picture. I do not remember if this was before or after I learned the ASL word for bathroom. I do not remember if I had this conversation before.

What I do remember- I was at my grandma's house, and she had so many dolls, and she had pictures on the walls, and I think I asked about one of them. Or maybe I didn't ask anything at all, and my grandma wanted to share something. I don't know, I don't remember the specifics.

There were- little things, before this. "Oh, you have a spirit animal, [demi], it's a white siberian tiger." It was the dreamcatchers my grandma and aunt had hung all over, it was the color of my cousin's skin, of my skin in the summer, of my grandma's skin. It was- little things.

But the first conversation about it I remember having was about my many-times great-grandfather, about how he was lucky, about how he was able to say, "I am a white man, and my children will be white as well." He was not white- I don't even think he was mixed. But he lied, for years and years and years. And he had good reason to lie- racism was alive and well, and I don't know if he was able to stay away from the 'schools' or if he had been to one- he died long before I was born. I do not blame him for lying. It may have kept him alive.

and over half a century later, he now has grandchildren who are still native. I wonder if he would be apalled that I cut my hair so short. If he knew any dena'ina at all. If he would be glad, that any of us are able to make those connections with our culture and heritage.

And at the same time- I was not raised by my aunt or grandma. I was raised by my white father, and my white, irish mother. In a strange reversal of that great-grandfater, I reject the white heritage in favor of the native. I take no pride in my father's family history- colonizers and slave traders and plantation owners. I am not Irish, in any way. The only part of my heritage I have ever felt hungry for was my grandma's. That is the only part I ever wanted to claim.

When I was little, I wanted so badly to find a book of fairy tales that my grandma would be able to tell me more about, the way my dad could tell me more about cinderella and snow white. I know one story from the Kenaitze Athabascan culture- and I cannot be sure it is. After all, I was maybe seven.

I do not know any Kenaitze names- I do not know if naming myself Storm fits into the naming practices. I want tattoos, but if there are cultural practices, or tattoos connected to my ancestors, I want those.

I am starving for a culture I was given scraps of- I want to reconnect to that heritage. My family didn't mean to deny me, we were poor, and they were working, or too far away, or they didn't know where to take my sister and I for these things. I don't blame for this- other things, yes. But not this thing.

[paulpingminho]

[smol-ish-rose]

Feature artist Friday!!

Hi guys! As an art student who spends a lot of my free time looking for interesting contemporary artists to study, I thought I could create a little series on some minority artists whose work I personally find absolutely amazing, to hopefully share their art with a wider range of people, since appreciating indie/contemporary minority artists is something that is extremely important and not particularly accessible to the general public.

This is especially important to me as a minority (lqbtq+, disabled/chronically ill, afab, neurodiverse) artist myself. My goal in making these artists and their work more accessible to everyone may include explaining things that many people already know, including art terminology that many artist will be familiar with but not the general public, and explaining the artists minority backgrounds in detail as I feel as though a major step in minority inclusion stems from wider-spread understanding. I am white British and obviously not a member of every minority that I will be covering so if I get things wrong, especially in regards to ethnicity, please feel free to correct me and edits will be made to the post. 

Our first artist is, drumroll please…

CRYSTAL WORL

Tw//Animal skin

We’re focusing on Alaska and its native populations today with Crystal Kaakeeyáa Rose Demientieff Worl (She/her), who is an absolutely amazing multimedia, multidisciplinary artist. She also shares part of her name (Rose) with me! (this isn’t important I just find it cool). 

She is Deg Hit’an Athabascan from Fairbanks Alaska and Tlingit from Raven moiety, Sockeye Clan, from the Raven House, (Groups of native Alaskan people) as well as Filipino (People from the Philippines).

-Check out Crystal’s page on the First Peoples Fund here and find out ways to give here

-Find out more about Athabascan people here and here (wikipedia page here)

-Find out more about Deg Xinag, the extremely (like very extremely omg) endangered native language of the Deg Hit’an people here and here (wikipedia page here)

-Find out more about Tlingit people here (wikipedia page here)

-Find out more about Philippine history here (wikipedia page here)

Her work centres strongly on her ethnic background, as she recreates and modernises her clan's stories, as well as focusing on relationships and bonds between her people, the land, and the animals. One of her aims is to  bring attention to Indigenous issues relevant to Alaska, such as protecting the environment and wildlife in Alaska.

Now this woman is absolutely amazing. I have never seen anyone who employs such a range of multimedia (different types of art) techniques the way she does. She does things like graphic design (a type of art that’s about communicating things and transmitting messages), printmaking (which is- like stamping designs you make from  a rubber stamp to something like fabric or wood) , and painting. Those are pretty common forms of visual art, but that's not all she does! She also does less typical forms of art! Beading (art created using beads), stuff in fashion design and also traditional skin sewing (which is all about sewing animal skins into clothing (source)) She also makes jewellery and does some awesome things with glass.

She’s painted some pretty weird (and massive) things, like a basketball court in Sitka (a part of Alaska), a mural that’s 125 feet by 48 feet in Anchorage (Alaska's largest city) and some resin panels which were installed as guard rails in the newly renovated Juneau (Alaska’s capital city) International Airport. Some other strange and cool things she's designed art for include an ambulance, and an entire plane!  

She also has some art that you can use as your Google Chrome background!

Here is a link to her website, and you can shop her work here. You can learn more about and find out ways to donate/support Alaskan native people here.

[tasksweekly]

[TASK 300: ALASKAN ATHABASKAN PEOPLES]

In celebration of Native Heritage Month being November (info in source link below), there’s a masterlist below compiled of over 20+ Alaskan Athabaskan faceclaims categorised by gender with their occupation and ethnicity denoted if there was a reliable source. A list of the specific peoples/ethnic groups that are Alaskan Athabaskan is also included with the list below. If you want an extra challenge use a randomizer to pick a random number! Of course everything listed below are just suggestions and you can pick whichever faceclaim or whichever project you desire.

Any questions can be sent here and all tutorials have been linked below the cut for ease of access! REMEMBER to tag your resources with #TASKSWEEKLY and we will reblog them onto the main! This task can be tagged with whatever you want but if you want us to see it please be sure that our tag is the first five tags, mention us or send us a messaging linking us to your post!

THE TASK - scroll down for FC’s!

STEP 1: Decide on a FC you wish to create resources for! You can always do more than one but who are you starting with? There are links to masterlists you can use in order to find them and if you want help, just send us a message and we can pick one for you at random!

STEP 2: Pick what you want to create! You can obviously do more than one thing, but what do you want to start off with? Screencaps, RP icons, GIF packs, masterlists, PNG’s, fancasts, alternative FC’s - LITERALLY anything you desire!

STEP 3: Look back on tasks that we have created previously for tutorials on the thing you are creating unless you have whatever it is you are doing mastered - then of course feel free to just get on and do it. :)

STEP 4: Upload and tag with #TASKSWEEKLY! If you didn’t use your own screencaps/images make sure to credit where you got them from as we will not reblog packs which do not credit caps or original gifs from the original maker.

THINGS YOU CAN MAKE FOR THIS TASK

Stumped for ideas? Maybe make a masterlist or graphic of your favourite faceclaims. A masterlist of names. Plot ideas or screencaps from a music video preformed by an artist. Masterlist of quotes and lyrics that can be used for starters, thread titles or tags. Guides on culture and customs.

Screencaps

RP icons [of all sizes]

Gif Pack [maybe gif icons if you wish]

PNG packs

Manips

Dash Icons

Character Aesthetics

PSD’s

XCF’s

Graphic Templates - can be chara header, promo, border or background PSD’s!

FC Masterlists - underused, with resources, without resources!

FC Help - could be related, family templates, alternatives.

Written Guides.

and whatever else you can think of / make!

CLICK HERE FOR MASTERLIST!

[slidesworthseeing]

Found slide: To mark the 60th anniversary of ‘Love me do’, here’s a fine fan-art Fab Four papier-mâché display at the Anchorage ‘Rondy’ festival, circa February 1965 (photographer unknown)

[formlines]

Moon Song

Rico Worl

from the website: This silkscreen print represents eagle and raven in an embrace.  Tlingit society is divided into two moieties (halves): the eagles and the ravens. Balance is always maintained between the two.

[superinjun]

Fish On in Spirit - Mask

Kathleen Carlo (Koyukon Athabascan)

basswood, feathers, bullet shells, hair, brass tacks, gold lear, fish tackles, ribbons from the stickdance pole. 26” x 27” x 3”

[book0ftheday]

Two Old Women, an Alaskan/Athabascan legend interpreted by Velma Wallis, cover design by Jarrod Taylor, cover photograph by Cornforth Images, illustrations by Jim Grant.

[rage-city]

i want to share with you all an exciting development at the intersection of renewable energy, ecological restoration, and Indigenous sovereignty.

Tyonek is a remote Dena'ina Athabascan village located 40 miles from Alaska's largest city, Anchorage. for time immemorial, the Dena'ina have stewarded and honored the land. but the legacy of settler-colonialism and extractive capitalism has impoverished the people of Tyonek.

Indigenous people have been disproportionately affected by climate change and pollution. i encourage you all to be a part of the renewable energy transition and support the Tribal community of Tyonek as they advance the engineering, procurement, and construction of a decentralized solar microgrid.

https://bit.ly/Tebughna-Solar-Program

[telekitnetic-art]

Have you seen the formline art in splatoon? It's present in a variety of salmon run decals and on some of the locker graffiti. Idk if the Devs just googled "salmon art" and got indigenous art and decided to copy it or what. Not sure how I feel about it personally.

Long post incoming, gonna put a break here. Also sorry for the late response, I wanted to take a couple days to formalize my thoughts together before responding fully.

I have, I remember noticing in 2018-2019 (when i first started playing splatoon 2) how much one of the decals/graffiti located on the ruins of ark polaris back in 2 sort of resembled a formline bear and salmon. (near the logo in this screenshot, I couldn't find a clear picture online)

Back in 2019, it was pretty easy to think of it as coincidence or a stretch for a comparison. But with splatoon 3's salmon run decals, the resemblance is far easier to see, specifically with the TS-ORBRS graffiti and the TS-SCHL graffiti.

(also this was the best image size I could find for the graffiti images, sorry)

A couple of the banners have the designs on them as well:

The website Sealaska Heritage has info such as textbooks and an online doc about formline art (specifically geared towards Haida, Tlingit, and Tsimshian nations' style) with lots of info about formline art, and the Seattle Art Museum website has an info sheet (with credits listed as being from the Sealaska Heritage site as well) breaking down some of the basic shapes of formline art.

with this chart, you can definitely begin to notice the similarities between the Salmon Run graffiti and formline art. the ovoids, crescents, and u-shapes appear noticeably in some of the graffiti such as ORBRS and SCHL.

For perspective, here are some formline pieces featuring salmon or fish from various Indigenous artists from various nations.

"sk’ug sdang" (Two Dog Salmon) by Robert Davidson (Haida)

"metal medallion", by Crystal Kaakeeyáa Rose Demientieff Worl (Tlingit Athabascan)

"Salmon People" by Alano Edzerza (Tahltan)

"Jumping Chum" by Stephanie Anderson (Wet'suwet'en)

"Salmon" by Art Thompson (Nuu-chah-nulth)

And that's literally just the surface of dozens of Indigenous artists from the PNW.

With these pieces, you can begin to see the resemblance that the graffiti designs have. A lot of the heads follow the pattern of utilizing ovoids for both the head and eyes, and u-shapes for the bodies and crescents to fill in specific areas are also common. For example, TS-SCHL has a small school of fish where the bodies are entire ovoids.

However, there are a couple flaws in the graffiti designs too. With a few of the designs, you can see they utilize the u-shape (see the formline shape breakdown from Sealaska again) in designs like TS-WHP and TS-SMFR. I can't speak for every Indigenous formline artist ever, but from how I've been taught to design formline art from my family, the u-shape should connect to the rest of the form instead of free-floating. I drew a quick example here:

you can see similar mistakes with a different kind of u-shape with TS-RLPL and TS-C0HK.

Another very specific mistake that takes a bit of squinting to make out is that ovoids are sort of top-heavy, for lack of a term I can't think of right now. The line or the area should be thicker on the top then the bottom. This mistake is frequent in the graffiti designs utilizing ovoid or ovoid adjacent face or body shapes, like TS-ORBRS, TS-C0HK or TS-SCHL.

Full disclaimer, I am not an expert at formline art. I've been practicing it under the tutelage of my aunt and father for about 3 or so years now, and there are definitely cultural variations that come into play as well. My culture's formline art style can look completely different from someone who is Haida or otherwise. This critique of the graffiti designs is based off my knowledge and skill at formline art, as well as critique and feedback that I've gotten from family. Formline art isn't just something you look at and replicate, there is a specific process of utilizing the shapes and negative space that you need to account for too. Some shapes have their own rules for how they're used as well.

Despite the beginner mistakes, the clear resemblances are pretty definitive proof that a good section of the sticker/graffiti designs for the salmonids are meant to be, or at the very least based off of or inspired by, formline art.

Splatoon's lore has a lot of elements of taking inspiration from real life culture (which is sort of one of the main elements of the story, the squids and octos are basing their society off long dead humans). Hell, Shiver and Frye are two prime examples of Splatoon working in real world culture into their setting and characters.

With that in mind, using an art style that's exclusive to an ethnicity of people as inspiration or baseline reference for the game mode that's all about taking natural resources from a species that in-game dialogue tends to treat as dangerous and lesser-minded is... not a good choice. Especially an ethnicity that has historically been ravaged and attacked by settlers for natural resources.

Now, technically if you do digging into lore for salmon run, you can find out that the salmonid are not as simple-minded as the dialogue in-game (I am staring directly at the deep cut big run announcement dialogue we've gotten so far -_-) makes them out to be. The salmonids do trades and commerce with the octarians for equipment and gear. That's why they have such technically high tech gear, like the scrappers with their shields that actually resemble octarian shields and the flyfish with their missiles and flying aircraft. That's also why power eggs show up in the story mode; they're from the salmonids' trades with the octarians.

So the salmonid could technically be as just as smart as the inklings, which is why the dialogue and some of the portrayals of the salmonid are confusing and contradictory (shiver's dialogue from the first big run, that one promo picture of an inkling walking a smallfry on a leash????). I think a good bit of the fanbase sort of thinks of the little buddy we get during the game as a pet, and I'm sure that much more of the fanbase/playerbase doesn't really care about the lore whatsoever. Salmonids sort of have a similar vibe to me as hilichurls from Genshin Impact, where the lore tells you that they're smarter than people assume while NPCs talk of them as less intelligent monsters. And you're also caught in this paradox where killing/fighting them feels morally wrong but the gameplay loop has you continuously doing that while also telling you on the downlow that you should sort of feel bad about it.

Rassicas did a really good video on translating salmonid lore from various interviews, which is where I learned a lot about the salmonid lore that doesn't really get explained/brought up in the game.

The usage of formline art in Splatoon has me sort of mixed on my opinion, because besides using an Indigenous art style for an enemy species that are considered lesser in intelligence by the NPCs, Indigenous art and culture as a whole has suffered a lot under colonialism. I don't know how much awareness whoever is reading this has about Indigenous history and colonialism, but Indigenous culture as a whole was banned in North America by the respective governments from being practiced by the respective cultural groups. Things such as ceremonies, regalia, and even practicing formline art were banned from being used by Indigenous people. Non-Indigenous people however were free to use it, which is why a lot of bastardized versions of Indigenous regalia and culture exists. You can see it in non-indigenous spiritual practices utilizing Indigenous practices and terminology like spirit animals and dreamcatchers, and sports teams utilizing Indigenous culture in its labelling and mascots. That is where cultural appropriation comes into play. And before I get anybody commenting about this, the salmonid formlines don't count as "cultural appreciation" because as far as the info available is concerned, there wasn't any Indigenous people that were consulted for the designs. And even if there were, I again have mixed feelings about Splatoon utilizing an Indigenous art style as a design piece for an enemy character in the franchise.

On another note, this isn't the first time Indigenous cultural appropriation has popped up in the Splatoon franchise. There was actually a headgear that was unreleased in the first Splatoon game called "Warrior Headdress", and you can guess what it looked like.

Yeah. That was all levels of yikes and I'm thankful as hell that it didn't make it into the game (technically it's not in the game as a wearable item, but you can spot it at the very back of the headgear shop ingame)

So Splatoon has utilized Indigenous culture as inspiration beforehand with the games, so it's not much of a stretch anymore to think that the salmon run graffiti designs were based off formline art or was an attempt at formline art.

I'm not really sold on the idea that the salmonid are meant to be representative of Indigenous people though, nor do I believe that utilizing formline art for the salmonid was a malicious decision. But it was a slightly ignorant decision at best, because again using Indigenous specific art for a species of enemies that gets fought for their natural resources and is referred to by some of the NPCs as basically being lesser-minded animals is really not a good decision.

This whole thread is not meant as a guilt trip for anyone who likes the salmonid lore, has bought any of the salmonid graffiti stickers, or enjoys salmon run, nor is it an accusation of the devs for maliciously misusing Indigenous culture. I actually really enjoy salmon run for it's PSP and concept, but this design aspect gives me mixed feelings as an Indigenous person. And to be honest it's hard to label intentions or the thought process because there isn't any info available on the development of salmon run and those graffiti designs specifically. So it's hard to know if the devs employed an Indigenous artist for feedback or if they indeed just looked at some formline art of salmon and tried to replicate it or used it as inspiration. I'm inclined to believe the latter judging by the beginner formline mistakes seen in some of the designs. There is an art book coming out soon for Splatoon 3, so maybe that will give more info.

To wrap this all up, I don't think there is really anything to be done about the designs. The game has been out for a while and I don't know if the game would change the designs at this point. I also don't think this should stop people from buying the sticker designs in game or playing salmon run. However, it is important to learn about the context of these designs so that you know why they exist and why they can be harmful, and so devs and creators can avoid making the same mistake in the future, and so Indigenous issues with cultural appropriation can be made more aware in the public space and not be ridiculed by non-Indigenous people. And again, I am just one Indigenous person so there may be other opinions from other Indigenous people on the graffiti designs and how they should be handled or viewed.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading and have a good day!! Be sure to check out some actual Formline art made by Indigenous people, like the ones I listed near the top of the post!

[paulpingminho]