The Sky People
The Sky People
This is a complete sandpainting of the Sky People, made rarely by only two Navajo Medicine Men. It is from the "Male Shooting Way Chant".
The figures are Black Sky Man, Gray Water Boy, Sun Light Girl (yellow figure), and Pink (glitter) Summer Cloud Girl. This painting (very rare) is only made by two medicine men (left) for patients who have become sick during the rain storm.
The figures are dressed in red horse hair head dresses with turkey feathers and eagle feathers, dots of dewdrops adorn the bodies. They carry each a corn meal basket, water olla (jar), whirling hoops, and black rattle. Whirling hoops are for speed in traveling. Their faces are banded with white dawn, black darkness, gray mists, and yellow mists.
This painting is all hand done, out of pulverized natural colored sand stones, and mineral rocks.
Two medicine men survive that make this this painting for drowned patients surviving.
By: Grey Squirrel (Fred Stevens, Jr.), Navajo Indian Medicine Man and Sandpainter
Note:
12/10/2003 - This sandpainting was very rarely done in ceremony, and the artist stated that only 2 medicine men still alive at the time he made it, were doing it in ceremonies where someone survived near drowning. This was circa 1971, and the artist was one of those 2 medicine men. The statements he made at the time he did this painting also indicated that the other medicine man was quite elderly. The artist passed on 20 years ago, and the probability that the other survives at the present time is almost nonexistent. With the deaths of these last 2 practitoners, this sandpainting is apparently not used in curative ceremonies any more. I have never seen or heard about another representation of this work being reproduced, permanently or in ceremony. It is a near certainty that this particular work is unique in existence.
BACK Created on December 12, 2003 by RedMin Productions All Materials Copyright © 2003 by Nizhoni Cards, all rights reserved
