Ancestral Puebloan Cry

*****Ancestral Puebloan*****
19 x 25 inch colored pencil and ink drawing
created by Felicia Lujan in about 1993.

A couple of weeks ago, my mom called me and told me that she had a couple of things to give me. She had come across an old colored pencil/ink drawing I created almost 20 years ago, and she also had the video footage of my college graduation. Of course I told her I wanted both back. Last weekend I watched the video footage. It was fun to watch in retrospect, but what was most important was a tiny piece of footage unrelated to my graduation. It was footage of my grandmother (now deceased) right at the beginning. I could have gone without the hour long video of me smiling and making funny faces at the camera for less than a minute of footage of my grandma. There were a few people in the shot, and I was apparently standing off to the side. My grandma Corine urged me to get in the frame. I cried when I heard her say my name in her cute little voice. After I watched the video, I stayed looking at my old, oversized artwork. It is rather mind blowing that I penciled this Ancestral Puebloan almost two decades ago way before I cared about my family history. I made the picture for my mother so many years before and had it framed for her. Ironically, I got my picture back from my mother, with a moving image of her mother, and my direct maternal DNA is tied to Native ancestry. Thinking back, I don’t remember why I selected that particular subject matter for the colored pencil/ink drawing? What matters now is the connection between each item and the subject matter, as well as how I feel about it. Everything happens for a reason. It was time for those two pieces of history from my maternal line to return to me.

*****Ancestral Puebloan*****
Framed 19 x 25 inch colored pencil and ink drawing
created by Felicia Lujan in about 1993.

********************
Ancestral Puebloan Cry

Earthen paths of directions lost,
link me to the strand of time.

Guide steps through knowledge gates
so I connect each dot to line.

Untie my hands to feel the past.
Tie what’s inside me to the stars.

Draw water from this flowing
stream and teach me of your wars.

I am bound by fire. Ancestor I
will endure and live another day.

Reveal the path, I’ll hear your cry
and bless your body where it lay.

Forge the sky to feed my heart,
which beats with Native drum.

Whisper to me on the wind–
where is my mother from?

********************

by Felicia Lujan_6.27.2012

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