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On a "Tools" Page it is possible to forget what these tools are intended for, the purpose of what you are doing. The sky spirit seemed an ideal reminder-guide to me, myself, while working on it, and a good guide for all of us. Look again at his picture, serving as logo for this page. He looks friendly, maybe smiling. His right hand is up, saying Hi, Attention.

In his left hand, closest to his glowing, golden heart-of-light he holds the otter-skin medicine bag that will be familiar to those who have been to Midè healing or mid- winter, or summer, or fall ceremonies of the Midèwewin that are held all over the Great Lakes woodland country, quietly. But his bag isn't just a whole otter skin, it appears to be alive, with a large heart power-center, veined and radiant. Look too at the spirit's head. To me (and maybe to you) it will suggest a sort of lightning-bolt connection to sky-powers, natural sky-electricity. Too, the pattern strongly suggests to me a sky-constellation, a pattern that is something like a connect-the-dots, but the dots are certain stars. This one seems to be most of the stars of the constellation called Orion, the Hunter except that instead of bow, arrows and spears, this Sky-Spirit is holding (somewhat different stars) a pindegossin for sacred help and healing.

I rescued these drawings from oblivion from the crumbling old brown pages of a 1974 "Akwesasne Notes" issue. (I traced it in FreeHand as an Encapsulated PostScript file, and for this page, colored it, then extracted the raster preview image, then converted that to a right-sized, displayable GIF for both logo and small button.) This image has for me a lot of meaning. That meaning is an appropriate reminder, here, to all of us, not to get so lost in the technicalities--which we do have to learn and master--that we forget why we are doing it, what our purposes really are.

The Sky Spirit logo might have been artistically designed for this very purpose--but he wasn't.

This drawing was one of 2 given to Awkesasne Notes Indian newspaper in 1974 by a young Manitoulin Island artist. These young Odawa artists from Canada's Manitoulin Island reserves were just discovering-inventing a northern woodland style of painting that was first begun by the Canadian and Red Lake artist-spiritual elder Norval Morrisseau who was very important in the revival of interest in traditions and real native histories in the 1960's. They had also sadly discovered what a mess was Birch (Aminkeek) Island, once (and now, again) the site of spiritual vision quests for young people, but then heavily vandalized.

The name of the artist of the 2 drawings was not recorded, and Notes published them only once, then the originals and contact prints were lost, so I was told. I've rescued it, but the page layout editor of that time, Doug Bradway, and the art editor, John Fadden, couldn't tell me who drew this and the other one (Bear Medicine Sky Spirit).

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Page prepared by Paula Giese; copyright 1995

Last updated: Thursday, June 29, 1995 - 10:19:35 AM