Funding for this program provided by the School for Advanced Research with major support by the Vilcek Foundation.

Additional funding provided by Gerald G. Stiebel and Penelope Hunter- Stiebel >> Evone Martinez: If you listen to all these pots in here and you listen carefully you can hear her talking to you.

[Music] >>Clarence Cruz: This is our school this is our education.

It teaches us to be humble as well.

It teaches us the life- giving stories it has to offer.

>>Tara Gatewood: It's interesting how this particular piece, I'm talking about the conversation it's having with me, but there's also this conversation that it has just being present in this room among all of this ancestry and all of this different legacy.

I'm a very lucky person right now.

>>Rose Simpson: I love this.

You know I've had a photo of this piece on my refrigerator for I guess a year now, you know.

And, I feel like I've developed a deep relationship with this piece and I have a dear love for it.

You know, even if the family who made it was not mine and we don't get along you know what I mean I'm trying to release all that.

There's you know so much story and I wonder if I asked the pot who made it, it would tell me.

It's a secret.

It told me, and I'm not telling you.

>>Clarence Cruz: I love hearing my voice in the pot and it echoes back and talks to you.

[speaks Pueblo language to the pot] >>Jason Garcia: I'm just.

I'm just blown away by the line work and everything.

I mean, I can totally see why they picked it for the best to show at Indian market.

The water serpent, the Avanyu, is a very iconic symbol in our in our culture.

It represents rain, it represents a gentle flow of water, but then it also shows the power of water.

And then also just the symbols of nature like the crane bird design and how they're locked together in that orange and then the black.

And then also just the representations of cloud and I use that a lot of in my work as well too.

And as I read it, as I look at it, I can see you know color symbolism of the representations of the Tewa cardinal directions.

Each direction has a color symbol such as North is blue and uh West being yellow, the South being red and East being white.

The heavens is multi- colored and then the Earth is black.

>>Kathleen Wall: I love seeing pots from this area, especially from my aunts you know because I was a little tiny kid running around wasn't even thinking of making Pottery, but they'd all be making something on their on their table while you smell food cooking and all kids playing.

>>Evone Martinez: Right now, I feel content.

I can feel her feeling good, because I'm holding her from the coldness.

I can feel the warmth building up in her like someone is touching me.

I can feel that she can feel the physical embrace of my hand.

It's like holding a child.

And, I can also sense her stories again.

She remembers her birthing place of where her clays were dug up in that special place outside the village.

>>Clarence Cruz: When we go out and gather the material you know particularly the clay too, is that when you get to that spot you acknowledge her.

You pray to her, you give her offerings.

>>Evone Martinez: Each Potter has their own place to gather their clay and the earth is feed before it is gathered.

>>Clarence Cruz: I just wonder how many other potters sat with her, making pottery.

I could hear their voices you know the laughter, you know the sharing the stories, the creation you know: thunder, water, rain, clouds, lightning.

>>Evone Martinez: she remembers that she could smell the rain as it fell upon her, where she was still unearthed.

And then she could feel one day when the earth was being moved and she was dug up.

She talks to me, she's telling me that she remembers sitting on the shelf.

And sitting on the shelf she could hear songs of the different dances over the years that went by.

As Grandpa sat down by the fireplace creating songs.

It reminds me of my grandpa and I used to sit by him at night as he took out his pieces and he painted them and I used to watch him because he used to he never used a paintbrush.

He would get the yucca plants and he'd be chewing on them to get the right edging on his brush.

And I could still smell the bee wax paint that he used because he made his own black.

It has like a real bitter smell to it and he would sit there and he'd be painting and he'd be talking to me.

He'd be telling me all kinds of stories.

>> Lonnie Vigil: This particular piece was used to carry water in.

Until this day many of us who work with Pottery still make functional pieces for use in our own communities or the neighboring communities around us.

I feel like I can tell that by the hand marks over time, the oil from the body and from your hands have taken away the finish.

It's not so smooth and even now like many of us make our pottery we make it so fine, but what I love about this piece is that there's still the obviousness that it was handmade.

You know they're not perfect because it was not really intended to be that way and in reality, nothing is perfect.

And just like this wonderful collection room that we're in, as I walked-in I could just feel the presence of many of the pieces here because in our view and our understanding they are alive.

And even if they're here in the storage vault like this they still have an essence to them.

>>Albert Alvidrez: This vault contains just the histories and the stories of many different individuals and communities as a whole.

The designs that are incorporated in some of these bowls are because it was something that they experienced, or they encountered.

Others are prayers, others are asking for rain, others are asking for all of the natural elements coming from the southwest.

And so, these are all petitions and these are all prayers and pottery is in and of itself that, prayer.

This this bowl is just absolutely beautiful for the story that it tells, its simplicity, it just gots a little bit of character marks on the side where it's kind of probably got a rough spoon or some sort, but overall it's intact.

and that's actually the history of our Pueblo that's the history of our people.

I mean we were displaced we were taken as captives we were introduced to new things we were separated from our relatives and yet we managed to survive.

And so, through this bowl you have that same process.

>>Rose Simpson: It's about how do we find that deep part of our humanity that talks about some of those hard things.

Because that's how we need to grow and heal, is going to those places that are kind of uncomfortable.

My life work has been about honoring that story and not just the pretty parts and not the ones that are you know exploitable, easily digestible, palatable truth that people really want from our story.

And there's the genocide, there's the deep heartbreak, there's the denial of it, the work the hard work to try and live through that pain.

All the layers of that.

>>Albert Alvidrez: 1800s, you know native culture was at its prime.

We controlled the landscapes all the different elements that contribute to it.

The clay sources where this clay probably was harvested from no longer exists there's a highway and a freeway.

They're off of Pueblo lands, we lost them to ranchers and so we were forced to go to other locations and so we harvested clay from the riverbanks of the Rio Grande.

And, then we have a Trump wall that kind of takes that opportunity away from us.

So, we went a little further and we go to this place called Hueco Tanks which is a religious area for us, that's now a state park and we have to ask for permission to gain access to it.

So the landscape just kind of changes and so we still continued using pottery, but the hurdles that keep getting placed in our way are not barriers they're not deterrents they don't stop us from continuing to exist we find alternative ways of handling those situations and making it work for us.

>>Tara Gatewood: This piece it faced the fire and it is still here this strong and the beauty came from going through that fire and I think that kind of reminders is a blessing too that so many times were sent into moments of fire and to come out of it and see those fire scars is beautiful.

>>Diego Medina: When a pot survives, a people survive.

And, I still don't quite know what that means and the more I think about it, the more sense it makes in some ways the less sense it makes it other ways, but I think it's appropriate to the stories I'm telling about our presence in Southern New Mexico.

Because I'm here to speak with and for and to this pot.

All language holds knowledge and so for me maintaining cultural knowledge and history and values and relationships with aspects of culture will set forward an intention of care and understanding and respect.

>>Lonnie Vigil: I'm thankful for the ability to do this work and I'm thankful for the gift of the pottery making that it was left to us.

And the clay mother has told us I'll take care of you and I'll feed you and I'll clothe you.

She has done that for so many families throughout the Pueblo world.

I wanted to make a commitment and say I will devote my life to making you into beauty and I ask two things of you - to take me to places I haven't been and to bring wonderful people into my life.

I'm the first in the family, in even extended family, one of the few who have gotten a college degree and they supported all of that with the expectation of course that I was going to be the breadwinner for the family.

And uh it was difficult for me to, at the end when it was time to say I'm leaving this it was a one of the most difficult choices I've had to make in my life.

But, I'm glad I made that choice because it was like the way I say it was like committing a career and financial suicide, I just got to the edge and I jumped I didn't know where the bottom was where I was going to land or what was going to be.

>>Diego Medina: What I want people to get out of this show when they come and see it, is a sense of deep profound faith.

Faith in the way things come together, faith in the way things are guided to be formed.

A lot had to conspire to get this pot to where it needed to be.

You have to have water channeling minerals for thousands of years, if not millions of years, to particularly like deposits you know it like formed into like clay deposits and like an arroyo or something.

And then you know jump ahead a couple million of years you have to have people come into the area and like see this clay deposit and like you know work with the land to form it right.

There's a lot of hands, a lot of characters involved in making a pot, it's not just while someone gets the clay and makes and fires it and there it is.

>>Lonnie Vigil: Each of the Pueblos has their own particular style of work, in the making, the way it's burnished, especially the way it's designed and we all recognize each other's work by that.

For the lack of a better way to say it, it's an understood copyright of someone's work.

>>Tara Gatewood: It's not just the person who made this, it's everything the elements from the ground the environment and the people who taught the person who actually put their hands here to do this.

And who knows maybe the story is, there were several hands on here that you're actually shaking hands with several people as you run and feel the different divots.

>>Clarence Cruz: It means a lot to be a potter and to actually have been taken under their wing to share a tradition, an art and acknowledging you as an individual are capable of doing such work.

We all learn from someone that was willing to give you the time and the knowledge and the process.

And, within a Pueblo Community or any indigenous community that uses a pot there's always a function and a place and a purpose.

>>Evone Martinez: She was passed on, her life itself is to secure this memory, so that one day one of us would come by and just listen to her.

As her voice was very low, soft as she spoke, she spoke your thoughts.

And, she's very content and happy because she's able to share some of these thoughts today with the people.

That's her voice, to always remember and never forget a lot of the old ways that are instilled upon us and that's what she's telling me, to share with all of you.

>>Albert Alvidrez: So my niece who's 14 years old, she's a potter as well, she does her everyday things, she's also you know the captain of their cheerleading squad at her school and she does all her other extracurricular activities.

She one day approached me and said uncle I want to do some pottery and stuff.

And, so we went outside and she started processing clay and started forming some of her pieces and things.

I called the rest of my family over so they could see her work and we did a traditional firing in the backyard and so we just kind of let her manage putting the fire together and doing all these things and of course we supervise them, we gave the support, but she was able to do that and so that made me feel very good.

That here she is at 14 years old with all this other world in her forefront, but she's still understanding the importance of continuing with this tradition, because this is what we do.

>>Max Early: These pieces are rare, especially these dough bowls, there's not too many out there because they were used from grandmother to mother to daughter so probably only a few generations because just like dishes they wear out.

So, they would use them over and over until they'd break and then they would make a new one.

So I would say maybe at least three or four generations would use this pot until it would get thinner and thinner and then they would break it down into the pottery shards [speaks Pueblo language] and grind it up and then reincorporate that as temper into the new clay to make a new clay body.

And so, you see that a form of a connection that form of cohesion and recyclement.

Just an ever-going continuance of spirit within this pot that it carries to this day.

>>Evone Martinez: Each and every one of us, no matter where we come from and no matter our backgrounds, we have our sacredness.

And we all have a sacred spirit that we have to protect.

And she says: Always protect that spirit.

Never let it go.

Respect it and teach it to respect others, no matter how they treat you.

And be strong like her.

Over the years she's held together even with the crack that's our life, to keep ourselves together no matter how we're broken or how we're cracked.

>>Clarence Cruz: Growing up, my grandmas and the neighbors would be making pots in the morning and being always hungry I would always hear that [clapping hands together] and I thought they were making tortillas but they were making the beginning of the patty for the pots you know.

Having that connection through family and as well as other potters, I'm glad to be a potter.

And that you know I live their talk and the process itself and honoring each and every one of them present or past.

If you're willing to learn and keep tradition and pottery alive you seek those that are willing to assist you and help you and show you.

>>Kathleen Wall: to me it's amazing to be able to hold pottery that has so much history.

This is made by my aunt Mary.

This is the rendition of the nativity scene where Mary and Joseph are looking for shelter for baby Jesus, when Mary was having baby Jesus.

And of course, he was in a barn so we have the donkey and the cow.

It's amazing being with pottery that somebody has made somebody that you know and love.

You know how they made it.

You know sitting down at their kitchen table with all their kids running around.

Every once in a while, one of her children lending a hand with painting or scraping or smoothing out the clay.

Some of her children of course lending a hand digging clay and cleaning clay and that's how she taught all of her children.

And she also taught anybody around her, like such as me or my mom or you know everybody had this shared knowledge of pottery.

And it, um spending time with this piece you can feel my history, I can feel my history, I can feel the energy that she not only shared, but what my mother shared what my grandmother shared and everybody in the Pueblo.

All the women that taught how to make pottery and how to pass it on to next generations She, my Aunt Mary, she was, a Pueblo potter, for a very long time and she had eight children and they all made pottery, every single one of them.

So, it's a very beautiful thing to see.

>>Lonnie Vigil: My brother and I used to work together.

He would help me with the processing of the materials, the sanding and I would do all of the building, the polishing, the firing.

And that's typical of almost all potters is how we work together with either family members or extended relatives and maybe even in some cases with friends.

And so, but that's not the only thing, it's just not the hands that went into it, but my mother always was uh preparing meals for us so when we finished work then we could go there and sit down and enjoy the food.

And then as we worked you know particularly for times that uh we're putting a lot of focus and energy into the work and it's not that we don't do it all the time, but with the pressure of something like getting ready for Indian market she always had prayers for us about helping us to give us the strength to make the pottery with good intentions.

My great- grandmother would make these and she'd take them from [speaks pueblo language] in the Pueblo we live And, they would go through the non-Indian community that is between us and San Ildefonso Pueblo.

So maybe they would take two days or three days and they uh my mother would tell me that they would wrap their pots and sheets and carry them on their back because they had to walk.

So they walk and go to a family and then maybe they brought them some pieces there or they traded for food.

And then they walked to another place and maybe they spent the night there and then they got to maybe San Ildefonso and there they stayed again.

And some of the families that needed the pots they gave them, so they came home with maybe some money with some food and with cloth material who knows what they traded for but that's how she supported her family.

Just the same way that I'm doing.

And, I always say to her, great grandmother thank you so much because now I have a car and I can put them in and take them.

And, thank you for being so strong and powerful, that you are that strong to carry them.

>>Rose Simpson: I love you for all that you are.

All the layers.

I see your power, I see your fragility, your vulnerability.

>> Clarence Cruz: My hopes are, as we all see ourselves growing and getting older you know is that the generations behind us and those that are yet to come and have not yet come - continue the legacy of your people.

Be proud of who you are.

And, most importantly, where you come from.