1859 Sept | Oct 2012_opt

artist in residence
Local Habit
Returning
to Roots
written by Shirley Hancock
ative American artist illian itt finds her
spirit in clay and among her ancestors
LIKE A BLANKET IN A WOVEN INDIAN BASKET, 4-year-old
Wak’amu would fold herself inside the gnarled roots of an ancient juniper
tree and gaze across the Oregon high desert. What she saw would later inspire
her as Lillian Pitt, one of the world’s most distinguished Native American
artists. Her Indian name, Wak’amu, means camas root. “A stubborn
plant that won’t let go of the earth,” explains Pitt. “I would spend hours up
in those hills—listening to the meadowlark’s song, watching the grass grow,
and the little water skippers on the creek. My art was always inside me.”
Today, Pitt’s contemporary sculptures, prints and wearable art are in
private collections, museums, galleries and public spaces worldwide. Each
piece celebrates the landscape, animals, legends and traditions of her ancestors,
the River People. For 12,000 years they ruled a vast trade network
in the Columbia Gorge—an ancient Wall Street of the West, or as Lewis
and Clark put it, the “Great Mart.” From the Great Plains to Alaska, British
Columbia to California, Indians gathered to trade, socialize and worship.
They fished at the epicenter of their salmon-based economy, Celilo Falls,
then the largest waterfall in North America. Pitt says you could feel the
ground shake before hearing the thunderous rush of water. Celilo fell silent
in 1957, with the construction of The Dalles Dam.
At her home in Southeast Portland, the artist points to a ceramic
mask that evokes her story of survival and redemption. “This is Eagle
Spirit,” she says. “It symbolizes an unwillingness to give up through
strife. We do have a choice, and we don’t have to let all the bad things
stay with us forever. I survived my youth, prejudice, a whole lot of tragedy,
and I’m still here, still creating.”
Pitt was born on the Warm Springs Indian Reservation in 1943,
more than 100 years after the government relocated her ancestors to
inland reservations such as Warm Springs. “We lived in a two-room
cedar and shake house in ‘Hollywood,’” she laughs. “The neighborhood
name, a spoof because we were so poor.” Her father—from
whom she inherits her humor and artistry—worked odd jobs as a police
dispatcher, garbage truck driver, and in the mill. She felt “blessed
and precious” as a child, but “torn.” Her mother, an epileptic, tried to
pass down traditions like beadwork, Indian fry bread, root and huckleberry
feasts, and Washat religious ceremonies in the longhouse. Her
father, though, thought it was dangerous to be “too Indian.”
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1859 oregon's mAgAzine SEPT OCT 2012 4