White Buffalo in Distance Laurie Fox Pessemier Acrylic on wood 7 x 20 inches
ARTNOTES: Shuffling
Off to Buffalo
On Wednesday,we flew from Orly West airport, just south of
Paris, France to Newark, New Jersey, USA.
At Orly, there is an Animal
Intake Counter, where one checks one’s pet.
We milled about the airport for an hour before turning Harika over to
the handlers. We walked up and down the
sizzling sidewalk with her encouraging relief, breathing second hand smoke from
people who were having a hard time giving up their cigarettes and cigars while
airborne. We saw an African albino girl,
in a family of blacks; ladies in skimpy flowered dresses heading to Provence;
and at least a dozen other dogs, not including the “sniffers”, who later
checked all our carry-on before entering the plane.
Goshen Connecticut is home to a white buffalo. Born on 16 June, this one-in-10-million
occurrence has drawn the attention of Indian tribes throughout North
America. This weekend, eight hundred
Indians congregated for the “naming” of this significant beast.
Just a twenty minute drive from Hemlock Lodge (where we
vacation in Winsted) we drove in the early morning to check out the scene. Men in braids and feather jewelry, who were
wearing sleeveless tee-shirts rode their motorcycle to
the rural New England town. There were
camping vehicles with names like “powwow palace” and “heart and spirit of the
buffalo “ . We spoke to an Indian woman and her daughter
who’d driven from south of Toronto for this event. I was just interested in seeing the bison,
and the little white one, which we did.
I painted a quick picture of the setting, which was extraordinarily
beautiful in the early morning light.
As I stood at the fence, people spoke in soft, hushed
voices, clearly awed by this rare event.
Goshen is a farming community, but with the feeling of a somewhat
uptight New England town. It is the last
place one expects to see Indians from the northern Midwest of the
continent.
The Indians believe the calf to be a sign from a prophet,
the White Buffalo Calf Woman, who helped the Lakota endure times of strife and
famine.
Since we’ve been here in Connecticut (an Indian name), the
temperature has been 90 degrees and
humid, making it debatable whether we’re better off braving the sun to swim in
the lake or staying on the porch in the shade.
Otherwise we have violent thunderstorms, with lightning piercing the sky
from side-to-side. My nephew says that’s
because the ground isn’t sufficiently positively charged, whatever that
means.
We took my nephews to pick blueberries at the u-pick lot. I
was overcome by how beautiful the bushes and berries were: deep green leaves on 5 foot bushes, dotted
with berries in shades of pale green, pink and deep purple.
At 8:30 AM there was already a small crowd. We’d been up since 5:30 when Harika hears the
skunk that lives under the porch returning home. The Elders, who were to receive the special
naming information from the spirit the night before were expected between 10
and 12. We’d already tempted fate in
the face of the sign which clearly read
“no pets” – so we didn’t stay for the actual naming ceremony of Yellow Medicine
Dancing Boy.
