My Father Was A Painter And He

I Have A Pretty Good Knowledge Of The Indian World By Virtue Of Living On Several Different Reservations And Being Exposed To Several Different Cultures And Languages.

There Is A Great Good In Returning To A Landscape That Has Had Extraordinary Meaning In One's Life. It Happens That We Return To Such Places In Our Minds Irresistibly. There Are Certain Villages And Towns, Mountains And Plains That, Having Seen Them Walked In Them Lived In Them Even For A Day, We Keep Forever In The Mind's Eye. They Become Indispensable To Our Well-being; They Define Us, And We Say, I Am Who I Am Because I Have Been There, Or There.

The Character Of The Landscape Changes From Hour To Hour, Day To Day, Season To Season. Nothing Of The Earth Can Be Taken For Granted; You Feel That Creation Is Going On In Your Sight. You See Things In The High Air That You Do Not See Farther Down In The Lowlands. In The High Country All Objects Bear Upon You, And You Touch Hard Upon The Earth. From My Home I Can See The Huge, Billowing Clouds; They Draw Close Upon Me And Merge With My Life.

Loneliness Is An Aspect Of The Land.

Words Were Medicine; They Were Magic And Invisible. They Came From Nothing Into Sound And Meaning. They Were Beyond Price; They Could Neither Be Bought Nor Sold.