Power of Place — Strength of Being - The Oneida Nation of Wisconsin

Power of Place —
Strength of Being

We Gratefully Acknowledge the Support Of
The Ontario Arts Council,
the Sovereign Oneida Nation of Wisconsin,
and the Oneida Nation Arts Program
Power of Place — Strength of Being
Kuba Cloth, East Africa, 1940-Present – Raffia and Natural Pigments

Power of Place –
Strength of Being
5 Power of Place—Strength of Being
Samuel Thomas
9 The Magic of Beads—The Beadwork of Sam Thomas
Shelly Niro
13 Powerful Art for Powerful Places
Trudy Nicks, PhD
17 Cayuga Cosmopolitanism: The Beaded Art of Sam Thomas
Ruth B. Phillips, PhD
21 A World of Materials: The Beadwork Art of Sam Thomas
Richard Green
25 Kasatste: Through The Eye of a Needle
Susan M. Hill, PhD
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Foreword:
Amazing. That is what people feel when they see Samuel Thomas’s
beadwork and especially amazing are the pieces of beadwork created
in his latest project Power of Place – Strength of Being. The authors of
the essays in this publication clearly agree as you will see when you read
what they have written about Sam and his ambitious project. In addition,
the essay writers, internationally recognized artists, professors, and
museum professionals, are pretty amazing people themselves. All
are experts on Haudenosaunee art including beadwork, many have
published on various aspects of this increasingly appreciated art form.
Most have followed Sam’s career for twenty-five years or more. They
not only see Sam’s artwork as amazing, they see his career from a selftaught
teenager from the Six Nations of the Grand River Reserve to a
world traveler as amazing also.
Sam visited six places of power, created six pieces of beadwork inspired
by those six places, and includes six essays in this publication. Each
essay describes the writer’s impressions of the beadwork that Sam
created during his journeys to powerful places in Africa, Europe, and
the Americas.
Shelley Niro, who like Sam, calls the Six Nations of the Grand River
Reserve home, is a talented Mohawk artist who recognizes the art form
and both the historical and contemporary aspects of his work. Dr. Trudy
Nicks, Senior Curator for the Royal Ontario Museum’s Department of
World Cultures, points out the common experiences of indigenous
people, including the Haudenosaunee and those people native to
the places Sam visited. Dr. Ruth Phillips, Canada Research Chair in
Modern Culture, Carleton University, a cosmopolitan herself, and an
internationally acclaimed academician praises the broad scope of this
cross-cultural project. Richard Green, of the Birmingham Museums
& Art Gallery, Birmingham, England, expresses his appreciation of
Sam’s project in light of his own international expertise in the globewide
history of beadwork and trade. And Dr. Susan M. Hill, Assistant
Professor of Indigenous Studies & Contemporary Studies at Wilfrid
Laurier University, who shares Sam’s Haudenosaunee philosophy of
life, emphasizes the importance of places of power throughout time. In
the sixth essay, Sam describes his vision of Power of Place – Strength
of Being, a project that allowed him to explore places of power to
create these amazing pieces of bead art.
Dolores N. Elliott
Binghamton, New York.

Preface
After thirty years of research and creation, I thought it was fitting to
commemorate a milestone of thirty years and rather than a retrospective
of where the work has been – I wanted to give a perspective of the direction
the work is going. Throughout the years the journey beads have taken me
on has been exciting, a journey which would not have progressed so far
without the support of not only certain individuals but also the support of
The Ontario Arts Council (OAC) over the past seventeen years.
The creative phase of this project was funded through the OAC’s Individual
Crafts Projects Program and the Canada Council for the Arts Aboriginal
Traditional Visual Art Forms Program. My sincerest gratitude to Lisa
Wöhrle, Associate Visual Arts Officer from the OAC, and Louise Profeit-
LeBlanc, Aboriginal Arts Coordinator and Jim Logan, Visual Arts Program
Officer both from Canada Council. The exhibition was made possible with
the financial support of the OAC’s Aboriginal Arts Projects and Aboriginal
Curatorial Projects Programs. Thank you to the OAC’s Sara Roque, Aboriginal
Arts Officer and Carolyn Vesley, Visual and Media Arts Officer. A special
thank you to certain individuals who were instrumental in the planning
and development of this project, Individuals such as Denise Bolduc, and
Ruth Phillips, who was always willing to lend her support whether at home
or abroad, Trudy Nicks for her curatorial mentorship and guidance, Judy
Harris for consulting throughout. The writers who contributed essays to this
publication, Dolores Elliott for writing the foreword, Ruth Phillips, Trudy
Nicks, Richard Green and Susan Hill and a special thank you to Shelley Niro
for both her essay and more importantly, for taking on a curatorial role.
Thank you to editors Deb Kolch and Gail Bird Necklace. Thank you to Crystal
Drakeford for the graphic design and layout. Thank you to Naomi Smith for
providing additional graphics, printing and fabrication services. I must also
acknowledge the cooperation of the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e
Historia: Mexico, the English Heritage Department, the Hellenic Ministry
of Culture: Delphi, The Niagara Parks Commission, and the Egyptian
Military and the Supreme Council for Antiquities – all whose support was
instrumental in the creation of the works featured in this exhibition. Thank
you to the Oneida Nation Museum for agreeing to present this exhibition.
Thank you to all the unmentioned individuals who were not only part of this
project, but offered support and guidance over the years. Special thanks to
Jean Knox for her encouragement and mentoring since the beginning. Last,
but certainly not least, none of this would have been possible without the
support, knowledge, guidance, teachings, patience and understanding of
my mother Lorna Thomas-Hill whom I will forever be indebted.
Samuel Thomas
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Size: 15" L x 15" W x 24" H 37.5cmx37.5cmx60cm
Materials: size 8o seed beads, 14 gauge wire, liquid acrylic,
Queenston shale, clay

Power of Place –
Strength of Being
Samuel Thomas
Aboriginal languages have no word for “art”; rather the concept of art
is spoken about through a combination of words describing the act of
creating, functionalism, emotionalism, formalistic approaches, and
imitative description. Be they functionally utilitarian or decorative, the
designs and symbols and the act of creating all have deep rooted often
– universal meanings throughout Aboriginal communities and other
World art traditions. These creative works layered with meaning are
meant to “speak” to the viewer.
Power of Place – Strength of Being is an exhibition that explores
World Indigenous and Western bead techniques, textiles, and various
material objects. It includes contemporary, traditional, and historical
examples, and their cultural contexts, and how ideas and methods
have changed over time while acting as a visual reminder of a diverse
creative expression that shows a vibrant mixture of culture, tradition,
and exchange informed by ancient fundamentals, philosophies, and
values that continue to be embraced today. The works connect various
social, political, and cultural responses through metaphor, symbolism,
and decorative element, and engage issues that are reflective of
identity and place, forming a connection between art and tradition
allowing the contribution of new meaning to the concepts of memory,
reality, and responsibility.
This exhibition marks a pivotal moment as I approach the forth decade
of my career with a new direction in my craft. Featuring a body of work
that has been created in environments outside the museum archives
and research centers where I have worked in the past. Over the past
two-years I traveled to various “power” places around the world,
places such as the inner circles of Stonehenge UK, Delphi Greece, the
Great Pyramids of Giza and Chichen Itza Mexico. I investigated power
places known only to locals in sub-Saharan Africa such as East Africa’s
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Kwangoma Kyanzasu, Kwasyokimgu Kathiiani, Mbavani Kiatineni,
Mbitii Nzaui Makueni, and Nzamboni Kitui. The final location for
creation was Niagara Falls, bringing the project full-circle. At each
location, I allocated various periods from ten days to thirty days.
While on location, I created at least one “new” piece of work inspired
by the surroundings using glass beads and local materials such as
papyrus, bark, Egyptian cottons, English wools and locally made beads
of amber, ceramic, bone, gold, sterling silver, and turquoise.
The works have been inspired by historic sites around the world, sites
that have been the sources of centuries of creative stimulation. They have
been created from the sub-self conscious; allowing the sites to speak
to me experientially, through the senses at a sub-conscious level, while
in part being a result of my conscious reflection on my own beadwork
traditions. The works were made while directly aligned with different
global places of power, learnt from the earth and from the natural
surroundings that resulted in the creation of new pieces developed
through human rhythm aligned with the rhythm of the universe.
This exhibition is based on a personal journey; providing a sense of
interconnection on both creative and personal levels. This exhibit
provides an analysis of works of art from diverse cultures and
demonstrates how interrelated conditions influence the development
and reception of thought, ideas, and concepts in the arts from an
artistic vision, providing a deeper understanding of Aboriginal cultures
in general.
One of the goals is to assist in changing perceptions of Aboriginal
traditional art forms and how they are presented. Bringing indigenous
Canadian traditions into direct conversation with a wide range of
world art traditions, not only other indigenous ones, but exploring
the universal quest for relationship to land and power through art.
The objects featured, have been chosen to illustrate and emphasize
the need for re-evaluation and re-contextualization of Aboriginal/
Indigenous arts within the framework of contemporary art on a
broader level. Since Canada and now other places are today inhabited
by people from all over the world we need to find these inter-
connections amongst our ancestral cultures and in particular, to see
how they relate to the indigenous cultures and arts of Canada itself.

Culture is our legacy from the past, the way we live today, and what
we will leave behind for our future generations; it is an irreplaceable
foundation for existence and inspiration. This exhibition will be valuable
in the development and promotion of traditional arts in all their
dimensions. It will help in the preservation of traditional heritage
while introducing new innovative creations in other Indigenous forms,
contributing to the development of a sustainable cultural preservation
for future generations.
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Size: 13" L 3" W 5" H 32.5cmx7.5cmx12.5cm
Materials: 14 K gold seed beads, turquoise, ceramic beads, velvet,
Egyptian cotton, Egyptian cotton thread, papyrus, silk
tassels

The Magic of Beads
Shelley Niro
The beadwork of Sam Thomas
Samuel Thomas is a contemporary Haudenosaunee artist whose work
is infused with Haudenosaunee indigenous knowledge of his community,
the Six Nations. His work can be viewed in a gallery setting, on a
table at a pow-wow or in his own creative domestic environment. The
viewer becomes acutely aware of his incredible devotion to tradition
and what tradition allows. There are no perimeters of the elements
and resources he has chosen.
The original people of Turtle Island love the magic of beads. If given
a chance we hold them, touch them, run our fingers over the texture
created by tiny little circular glass sewn together to make images
reflecting our immediate environment based on nature and the
celestial domain.
The other side of the magic is the visual. We are offered creations
pushing the boundaries of the imagination to the extent we forget we
are looking at simple beads. These beads are used to take the place of
natural resources that have come from Haudenosaunee traditional art
practices grounded in spirituality.
The first beads were wampum; wampum has always been a part of
the story. Oral history describes Hyenwatha as making wampum out
of elderberry branches soaked in different berry juices to give it colour
and variation.
When Europeans first arrived they saw Haudenosaunee people
exchanging strings of wampum. This mistakenly was seen as monetary
trade, in reality it was tradition to pay respect to each other through
ceremony. Beads were individual structures carved out of Quahog
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shells, each bead symbolized time spent on earth. By giving wampum,
acknowledgement was bestowed on the receiver as if to say “I am
giving to you a part of myself, I am also receiving a part of you”.
The placement and arrangement of the small shell cylinders were
made to record history, serve as legal documents and in times of grief
used as conduits to eradicate sorrow and clear messed-up minds.
Through the passage of time, we have held onto the pleasure this time
consuming activity has given to our communities. Ancestral wisdom
has been passed down through the ages and has made us aware of
the technique needed to create objects that symbolize our collective
ideas, our histories and our aesthetics.
Thomas is a teacher. He shares his wealth of knowledge with any
group or individual who wishes to know the technique and application
of the materials. He is, however, an exacting and serious professor of
beads. He knows what they can offer and what narrative they can tell.
Thomas’ commitment takes on this endeavor as one where he continues
to perfect the application while allowing invention. He participates
in the contemporary world and seeks to understand it through the
exploration of creativity.
Sam Thomas has figuratively traveled the universe and gathered
theological motivation transformed into items fabricated on the spot.
These articles have been brought back to the community as works of
art inspired by those travels. He is giving us a glimpse into his soul.
Sam’s generosity allows us to share with him in his discovery about
this planet’s “Power of Place – Strength of Being”. With the Magic of
Beads, we become momentary citizens of the world through these
three dimensional creations of Sam’s travels.

“The Final Judgement”
2008
Natural pigment on papyrus
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Size: 21" L 5" W 5" H 52.5cmx12.5cmx12.5cm
Materials: wool, size 8o seed beads, size 8o cut beads, bone, bark
cloth, Turkana metal chain, amber

Powerful Art
For Powerful Places
Trudy Nicks, PhD
Royal Ontario Museum
Listening to Sam Thomas talk about his project to create beadwork at
spiritually powerful sites in Kenya, Egypt, Mexico, England, Greece and
at Niagara Falls I am struck by the openness and confidence with which
he undertook the two year project. The sites would tell him what he
needed to make. The materials he needed to complete his work would
be found locally. Many people have undertaken such journeys variously
described as vision quests, pilgrimages, grand tours, even odysseys.
Perhaps Sam’s search for artistic inspiration included elements of all
of these. Unlike most travelers, however, he translated his experiences
into art.
The six pieces of beadwork created in the course of his journeys, like
the sites he visited, are powerful expressions of social and cultural
knowledge – wisdom – that frequently transcends local experience.
The works are dialogues that draw on the artist’s own Iroquoian forms,
techniques and metaphors, and incorporate materials and insights
inspired by the sites that he visited. The works are at once immediate
and universal. The use of local materials such as Egyptian papyrus and
scarabs, Greek prayer and eye beads, or Turkana hand made chains,
and local forms such as Greek columns and Egyptian pyramids, may
function as souvenirs to mark encounters. But the use local imagery
also marks parallels between cultures as in the silver Aztec calendar
medallion at the centre of a bowl depicting the annual cycle of
Iroquoian Longhouse ceremonies.
In the Stonehenge blanket, the wool cloth and shell buttons signify
the long history of contact and exchange between North American
indigenous peoples and European fur traders. The form of a Northwest
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Coast button blanket itself is an illustration of active indigenous
responses to contact, in this case by integrating trade goods into
traditional local social and ceremonial culture. The art work calls
into question a master narrative of cultural contact which focuses
on the decline, assimilation and ultimate disappearance of pristine
and passive indigenous populations.
Together, the art works are an argument for principles essential to
the survival and empowerment of indigenous cultures in a global
world. Stonehenge is rebuilt in its original form, a metaphor for
the rebuilding of aboriginal cultures. The Kenyan box juxtaposes
elements of indigenous and colonized culture to emphasize the
need to respect cultural differences and to maintain boundaries,
symbolized by the hand made chain between the elements. There
is an implied warning of the dangers inherent in accepting external
value systems, represented here by the silver shillings. The respect
shown by modern Greeks for their ancient heroes inspired the
beaded vase — a common Iroquoian beadwork form — bearing
images of Sky Woman, the Twins, the Winds and the Thunderers,
who are responsible for the creation and order of the Iroquoian
world. The bowl created at Chichen Itza speaks to the importance
of preserving the ceremonies which give structure and meaning to
life, and the role of mnemonic objects, in this case documenting
the correct order for the annual cycle of Longhouse ceremonies, in
oral traditions.
The final art work created, a dramatic representation of Niagara
Falls in reverse flow, refers to an end-of-time event in Iroquoian
prophecy. The piece is intended not so much as an omen as it
is a plea to respect and protect the natural environment. The
importance of indigenous perspectives on the intimate, causal and
reciprocal relationship between humans and nature are central to
this argument. Whether or not the scientific world can accept the
possibility of an animate natural world, indigenous environmental
knowledge has a basis in millennia of experience and should have
an integral role in projects aimed at restoring balance to nature.

References:
Ferris, Neal
2009 Native-Lived Colonialism. Challenging History in the Great Lakes.
Tuscon: University of Arizona Press.
Herman, RDK
2008 Reflections on the Importance of Indigenous Geography.
American Indian Culture and Research Journal. 32(3):73-88
Smith, Claire and Graeme K. Ward
2000 Indigenous Cultures in an Interconnected World. Vancouver:
UBC Press
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Size: 25" across 62.5cm across
Materials: velvet, coated paper, 14 k gold seed beads size 10o, 14 k
and sterling Charlottes 8o, sterling 8mm facetted beads,
sterling wire

Cayuga Cosmopolitanism:
Ruth B. Phillips, PhD
The Beaded Art of Sam Thomas
For some years now, the academic airwaves have been buzzing with
celebrations of the renewed cosmopolitanism that has resulted from
globalization. Cosmopolitanism, in this sense, brings acceptance,
enjoyment and a readiness to be enriched by the diversity of world
cultures. It also holds out the promise that we might, against all the
odds, transcend the narrow nationalisms that have led to so much
intolerance, war, and suffering. The global circulation of goods and
people, as historians have also been reminding us, is not new and has
been equally formative in earlier historical periods – no less for
indigenous people than for Europeans. From the earliest years of
European contact, Sam Thomas’s Onkwehonwe ancestors and the
things they made were part of these flows, sometimes transported
abroad under compulsion, but also through voluntary acts.
Onkwehonwe traveled as diplomats, political representatives and
performers to see and be seen, to intervene and exchange. The arts
they made – and above all, beadwork – have also traveled widely,
many of them serving as prized souvenirs of travels in North America.
To my knowledge, however, there is no historical precedent for the
kind of cross-cultural engagement or the comprehensive scope of the
suite of beaded art work Sam Thomas presents in this exhibition. The
products of his latest and most ambitious project of global artistic
exchange, they bring Onkwehonwe civilization into direct dialogue with
some of the most ancient and famous monuments of world art. The
project builds on the sustained and disciplined self-apprenticeship to
the Onkwehonwe beadworking traditions on which Thomas embarked
more than thirty years ago, at a time when beadwork traditions were
regarded as minor arts at best and as tourist-oriented kitsch at worst.
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Thomas, with prescience and courage, has insisted on the central
importance of this medium as a source of strength and artistic
vision for Onkwehonwe. In the nineteenth century, beadworkers
produced innovative domestic ornaments and dress accessories
for the souvenir trade and ceremonial clothing and performance
costume for use by members. Both kinds of production were sites
for the development of uniquely Onkwehonwe techniques and
styles, and both served critical needs for economic survival and
cultural preservation. “Iroquois beadwork,” in Thomas’s words,
“is not a mere craft; it symbolizes the continuity of a fundamental
belief system making connections between both social significance
and spiritual conservation.”
Through his current project and the equally visionary project that
preceded it, Thomas has sought to share the cultural strength
and power for peace-making that beadwork has constituted for
Onkwehonwe with peoples around the world. Between 2003 and
2007 he collaborated with thousands of individuals in Kenya,
the United States, and Canada to create a monumental, six-foot
embodiment of the GA-NRA-DAIS-GO-WA’H. “The Great Tree of Long
Leaves,” the central embodiment of the Onkwehonwe ideal of peace
and harmony among nations, His new work extends these principles
of cultural exploration, dialogue and sharing, still more broadly.
Journeying to placing himself in communion with sacred sites of
world heritage in Kenya, Egypt, Greece, Mexico, and North America,
he has made beadwork art that responds to each from his own
uniquely Onkwehonwe and Cayuga sources of knowledge and beauty.
Each of the pieces incorporates images, symbols, genres from the
place it addresses, but each remains at the same time unmistakably
and distinctively Onkwehonwe. Each also leads the viewer on a
voyage of discovery that ends in the simultaneous apprehension of
commonality and difference. In the piece Thomas made in Mexico,
at the Mayan site of Chichen Itza, for example, is expressed through
a large shallow bowl made up of eighteen sections that fuses the
great cosmological schemes that govern the ritual cycles of Meso-
American and Onkwehonwe civilizations. At the centre of the
concave surface, covered in blue-black velvet is a silver miniature of
the great Aztec calendar disk.

Around the outer rim, the beaded birds and flowers familiar from
Onkwehonwe souvenir beadwork reveal themselves as belonging to
a parallel cosmological understanding through their positions under
the domes and spirals that represent the sky world and the top of
the Great World Tree in Onkwehonwe iconography. On the reverse
side, Thomas has represented in turn starting with Gai’ni’yhwa’hgai,
the ceremonies that mark the Onkwehonwe ritual calendar. Each
radiates out from the glowing orange sun at the centre. The
companion pieces in the exhibition invite similar explorations of
the shared and the unique, but always referring back to a magnetic
centre that is Onkwehonwe rather than Western. Sam Thomas’s
Cayuga Cosmopolitanism answers with a resonant ‘yes’ the question
of whether local traditions can survive and flourish within and
against the powerful tides of twenty-first century globalization.
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Size: 90" L x 72" W 225cmx180cm
Materials: Wool Stroud, mother of pearl buttons, cotton, thread,
broadcloth

A World of Materials
The Beadwork Art of Sam Thomas
Richard Green
Birmingham, England, October 2009
When Sam Thomas visited me at my home in Birmingham, England,
in October 2008, I could not fail to be struck by the Cayuga beadwork
artist’s unashamed love for all manner of materials – from glass beads
of every description to textiles and trimmings he could use to good
effect in his artwork. Following treasure hunts around the city’s
numerous textiles stores, he would return with his latest haul of fabrics
for use in his work, and rejoiced in every one of them in a way only an
artist knows how!
Every artist or craftsman naturally places a high value on choice quality
materials, as of course did Sam‘s Haudenosaunee forebears, the more
scarce, exotic, or hard to manufacture, the higher their intrinsic value
to Native artisans.
From early times, Native Americans operated a complex intertribal
trade network in the Northeast. The Huron, as an example, exchanged
fish nets and pigments for furs, reed mats, dried berries and fish from
their Ottawa neighbours. Prior to 1600, they were obtaining French
trade goods via Algonquian middlemen and, after that date, dealt
directly with French traders in exchange for furs and other indigenous
commodities. An increasingly wide range of imported materials became
available for traditional Native artistic expression, incorporated into
ceremonial clothing and, by the nineteenth century, goods made
expressly for the commercial market.
Hand-made wampum, long used as a form of currency in intertribal
trade in the Northeast, was adopted by Europeans in their dealing
with local indigenous populations in exchange for furs. Commercially
made wampum was traded by the Dutch from the early 1600s, and
trade silver and glass seed beads – perhaps the most desirable of trade
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commodities to most Native peoples – were supplied from various
European sources, particularly England and France.
From the late 1500s, the French brought into the Maritimes woollen
cloth, needles, silk thread, ribbon, earrings, finger rings and other
metal jewellery, knives, awls, and buttons. By at least the nineteenth
century, they were also exporting cotton velvet, glazed cotton fabric,
and metal sequins, so crucial to the evolution of Haudenosaunee
material culture. From England came woollen Stroud cloth, Venetian
beads, cotton textiles, brass hawk bells, commercial thread, needles,
mother-of-pearl buttons, and other requisites such as knives,
hatchets, and kettles.
With an unadulterated delight in materials and their potential
for artistic effect, Sam Thomas has sought out local specialties in
whichever country he has travelled, cleverly incorporating them into
his artwork to great aesthetic effect.
The stunning button blanket created within the ancient stone circle
at Stonehenge incorporates pure woollen broadcloth and motherof-pearl
buttons in the traditional style of the Northwest Coastal
peoples. Both woollen cloth and pearl buttons were of course
manufactured for generations in England and traded to North
America for Native use.
In Kenya, Sam carefully selected materials as traditionally favoured
by local indigenous groups — seed beads, indigenous woollen and
bark cloth, and Turkana metal chain. The bazaars of Cairo yielded
local Egyptian beads of faience, turquoise and 14-karat gold, which
Sam combines with papyrus, silk tassels, and Egyptian cotton
fabrics. From the intimate stores of the Greek capital, Athens,
Sam purchased local silks, Greek “worry beads“, “eye” beads,
and alabaster. Back home in Niagara Falls, Ontario, historic venue
for curio and souvenir trading intercourse between Indians and
Europeans for many generations, Sam uses local clay and Queenston
shale excavated from the Niagara gorge as the solid foundation for
his beadwork sculptural representation of the crashing waters of
the Falls.

The resulting works are therefore not only aesthetically pleasing
jewels but are also laden with localized meaning. Haudenosaunee
beadwork imbued with resonances of home and distant lands,
emphasizing the paradoxical allure of decorative materials – their
universality and their irresistibly exotic appeal.
Hudson Bay wool blanket – Courtesy of the HBC Foundation
Mother of Pearl buttons –
George Hook and Co, Birmingham UK, 1824-present
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Size: 11" L x 11" W x 18" H 27.5cm x 27.5cm x 45cm
Materials: silk velvet, silk lining, 10o/11o seed beads, steel cuts,
Greek “worry” beads, Greek “eye” beads, alabaster

Kasatste:
Susan M. Hill, PhD
Through the Eye of a Needle
In the Mohawk language, we use the word kasatste to talk about
strength and power. The pieces in this collection embody ideas of
strength and power in a way that transcends traditional boundaries
of media, place and culture. Through these incredible pieces, viewers
have the opportunity to travel to a number of ‘power’ places and view
the creative power of those places through the eye of Samuel Thomas’
needle. These pieces are solid representations of contemporary
Haudenosaunee beadwork but they are also strong products of the
places where they were created – “power” places found mostly in
other parts of the world. Many of these places are known because
of events, ideas and images created thousands of years ago. Thomas
demonstrates, however, that these places continue to embody ‘power’
that transcends from the past to the present and into the future.
When I look at the pieces in this collection I am struck by Thomas’
ability to transcend time and place. His work is well known for
creativity and beauty and its embodiment of Haudenosaunee thought
and philosophy presented in three-dimensional forms. The pieces in
this series, however, demonstrate the continued ‘power’ of places
whose historical significance is seen as happening in many cases
thousands of years in the past, such as Delphi and Giza. In his vase
created at Delphi, fans of Thomas’ work will recognize the vase form
prevalent in other pieces he has created previously; and if they are
familiar with the stories of Haudenosaunee cultural history, they will
recognize Skywoman, the Twins, the Thunderers and the Winds –
cultural heroes of the Haudenosaunee. Inspired by the stories of Greek
cultural heroes, Thomas has created a masterpiece worthy of both its
place of inspiration and the images it embodies. Similarly, the papyrus
holder created at Giza reflects a common form of Thomas’ work.
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However, with a commitment to utilizing local materials, he has
created a piece structured from Egyptian beads, stones and fabrics.
Again, he has managed to create a contemporary piece that conveys
thought and knowledge thousands of years old – in this case, Egyptian
and Haudenosaunee.
Thomas has also demonstrated that ‘power’ places are not always
famous places. And that the power of those places is on par with more
well known sites. In his pieces created in Kenya, he recounts stories of
colonization and Indigenous persistence despite colonization. Again,
we see raised beadwork forms common in Thomas’ work, but the
stories are tightly connected to the Indigenous lands and peoples of
Kenya. Joining together glass seed beads with symbolic chains and
other colonial ‘tools’ inside the box, he has also created dialogue
around Indigenous experiences with colonization around the world. In
particular, he urges that boundaries must exist between colonial and
Indigenous powers so that Indigenous peoples will have the space to
persist and even flourish.
In the piece created at Chichen Itza (Temple of Kukulkan, in Mexico),
Thomas has woven the celestial worldviews of the Haudenosaunee
with those of the Aztec and Maya, creating a calendar that connects
the people of this world to the Skyworld. The backing is made of sepia
photographs, for example – of corn – a food that sustained Indigenous
peoples of the Americas for millennia and that revolutionalized the
world’s diet through the Columbian Exchange. Also in this piece, we
see connections to many of the other pieces of the collection. The
gold beads utilized in Egypt and paired with African beadwrapping
techniques applied in the Niagara Falls piece.
My favorite thing about this collection is that while it is solidly an
example of Indigenous expression, it reflects on a number of places
not typically associated with the Indigenous world. In this, Thomas
reminds us that indigeneity is not limited to reflections on Indigenous
places and topics. Indigenous peoples are part of the world as a whole
and we have ideas, thoughts and opinions about the entire world.

The blanket inspired by and created at Stonehenge conveys this.
While Stonehenge was created by Indigenous people – today it is
associated with the cultural history of Scotland and Great Britain.
Again in utilizing local materials, the blanket honors the place of
inspiration but also conveys amazing messages connecting the
piece to other Indigenous places, ideas and stories – primarily
those of the Northwest Coast traditions through the use of buttons
originating in the UK that continue to be prized decorative items
in traditional clothing and other artwork. In using English wool,
Thomas also connects Stonehenge to our own Haudenosaunee
history with trade wool that continues to be a prized item for our
traditional clothing.
Thomas culminated this project at the most prominent of
Haudenosaunee power places: Niagara Falls. In “Prophecy”
Thomas recounts that we have been foretold of a time coming when
this world will change drastically, symbolized by the backwards
flow of Niagara Falls. He combines Queenston shale with African
beadwrapping to remind us how precious life is and that there will
be repercussions for the human actions that seek to disempower
nature. In looking at this piece, I recall that a number of years ago
engineers “turned off” the Falls. They were able to do this because
of the various hydroelectric projects built in the 1950s – projects
that cost the Tuscarora people land and resources. People cannot
commit such acts and not expect reaction from the Natural World.
In fact, that is probably one of the main ideas that flows throughout
this collection – that human interaction with place will determine
the future for people. When those actions are in favor of life and
supportive of the natural world, life will continue. However, as
represented in the Delphi vase, we also know that the Creator and
his brother agreed that once humans ceased acting in support of
life, that Flint (who wished for life to not exist) has the opportunity
to claim the world. In this collection, we see a celebration of the
connections between humans and place – connections of kasatste.
And their beauty reminds us that we must endeavor to ensure
those places – and all ‘power’ places – continue to exist to inspire
future generations.
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Handmade Greek Urn
2008 - Copy – Classical period 450 BC
Clay
Power of Place — Strength of Being