Grass, clay, fibre and stone

Monday, March 28, 2011

PHOENIX, AZ – The history of this area and the rest of this country dates so far before the arrival of Christopher Columbus, his arrival could almost be cited as a recent event. We saw the legacies of ancient native cultures depicted in an amazing array of artifacts at Phoenix’s Heard Museum today.

The germ of the museum dates back to 1892 when Dwight and Maie Heard went on an exotic journey to Egypt and the Sudan. This was the beginning of many trips by this intrepid couple, who began to accumulate a wonderful collection of artifacts. They settled in Phoenix and decided to build a museum to display their souvenirs, and from that grew the beautiful building that is now considered one of Phoenix’s chosen “points of pride”.

The white adobe building has a terra-cotta tiled roof and graceful archways around several small quadrangles, where benches and yucca plants provide a peaceful setting for visitors. Inside are several galleries devoted to different aspects of native art and culture.

While most of the museum’s collection focuses on tribes in the US southwest, other native cultures, including the Inuit, are also represented. We admired clay pots and bowls, exquisite jewelry crafted from silver and copper, decorated with turquoise and other semi-precious stones, Navajo rugs and baskets and the museum’s signature collection of Katsina figures. There were hundreds of the figures, most about eight to 10 inches tall, dressed in native costumes and wearing grotesque masks.

Val and I strolled through the first section of the ground floor and then went back to the truck to get our bag lunches. An excited couple in the parking lot called out to us, asking if we were leaving, because there were no more parking spaces left. We had to say no! There was quite a bit more to see, so we sat in a shady spot on one of the benches to eat and then resumed our visit.

Lots of hands-on activities were set out for children who might be visiting the museum, with crayons and crafts materials to encourage them to try their hand at making a paper canoe or decorating a button blanket. One section showed handicrafts from all the tribes in the Arizona area, of which there were dozens! We knew the Navajo and Hopi names but there were so many that were completely new to us.

The pain and challenge of assimilation of native peoples into western civilization was portrayed with sensitivity in the section of the museum devoted to the boarding school experience. Recorded voices of people who had left their homes to attend school thousands of miles away spoke of homesickness and the loss of their identity. They were forced to abandon their language and even their names by educators who were trying to ensure the young people would be able to make their way in modern society. Like the descriptions of our Canadian residential school survivors, these stories left us with a feeling of sadness, mingled with admiration for their strength and resilience.

The museum was one of two places we visited today; we also stopped in to look at St. Mary’s Basilica, a Franciscan church which stands on the site of the original adobe building from the late 1800s. It’s another “point of pride” for Phoenix, and has a wonderful series of stained glass windows depicting events in the life of the Virgin Mary.

It was good to have a chance to see some of downtown Phoenix, with wide avenues lined with royal palm trees and sleek modern buildings. The city is so spread out that there is no sense of congestion at all. On our 19-mile drive back to the campground, however, we did see a brown layer of smog in the air from the thousands of cars that zoom along the city’s many freeways. The sight of the stately Superstition Mountains marking the eastern boundary of the greater metropolitan area, where our campground is, was a welcome one.