Celebration of life and family
By Colleen Cronin / ecoRI News staff
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| Dawn Spears, a Narragansett Tribe member whose Ashawaug Farm provided some of the berries for the event, also connects her love of nature and her traditions to her art. (Courtesy of Dawn Spears) |
Strawberries in lemonade and on shortcake, along with beaded
and fabric fruit sewn onto clothes, marked a special celebration for the
Narragansett Indian Tribe: Strawberry Thanksgiving.
This Thanksgiving is one of 13 celebrations held with each
moon of the year, said Lorén Spears, executive director of the Tomaquag Museum
and a member of the Narragansett Tribe. The museum has hosted the event for
many years, but the tradition itself goes back much further.
The most recent iteration of Strawberry Thanksgiving
included themed food, Indigenous art booths, dancing, and talks from tribal
citizens and other community members.
Despite the dreary weather, hundreds of people, Indigenous and not, attended the outdoor event.
“There’s so many people here,” Spears said. “Even with the
rain … people kept coming.”
For Spears, the event is about bringing people together — to
share traditions with each other and people who didn’t grow up with them.
“It’s the community,” she said. “It’s that meaning of the
berry.”
Robin Spears Jr., a Narragansett artist and Lorén’s husband,
agreed.
“Strawberry Thanksgiving, to me, means bringing the
community together, you know, tribal community, as well as the outside, having
a good time, being able to just show our artwork from all different tribes in
the area,” he said.
Citizens of tribal nations from around New England also
attended the event, many bringing their own art to display and sell.
Spears has been making art his whole life, but started creating it professionally in 2012, after his mother died. “It helped,” he said, during the grieving process.
Using materials from nature, from lobster claws to beehives,
Spears makes a variety of tools and artwork.
“When I was a kid, I had the best playground, I had all these things around me,” he said, showing off his beehive basket to the crowd. Spears Jr. joked, “If you are going to collect these, you gotta do it in wintertime.”
Spears’ art is closely tied to his ecological knowledge and
his obligation to steward the natural world.
“Doesn’t matter what walk of life you come from, you should
protect them,” he said.
Dawn Spears, a Narragansett Tribe member whose farm provided
some of the berries for the event, also connects her love of nature and her
traditions to her art.
She explained the deep relationship she and others have to
the “heart berry.”
“It means a lot of things,” she said. It’s the first berry
of the season, marking the beginning of summer and the end of spring. “You just
get the berry at the end of it all — the burst of sweetness in your mouth.”
Spears said she can remember going to Strawberry
Thanksgiving celebrations since she was a child. “This is one of those
constants we celebrate.”
Also an artist, she’s often used the berry to inspire her
multimedia work. “I just have a very strong connection to the plant, and how it
grows, and kind of look at it as a sister,” she said, “because it’s got very
strong female characteristics.”
Mishki Thompson, an artist and the owner of Red Fern’s
“Bow”tique, also used the strawberry to inspire her art, making bright bows
using the colors and shapes of the fruit.
“I love strawberries. But red, red is my color,” she said.
While Thompson spoke, her grandson came up to her, covered
in grass from playing with the other kids in attendance.
She brought him to celebration “so he can be around his
family’s culture,” said Thompson, who is Narragansett, “family that you don’t
get to see all the time, and just laugh and have fun, meet people.”
In addition to the bows, Thompson made the bright,
strawberry-adorned skirt she wore to the celebration. The berry earrings she
wore, however, were made by her booth neighbor, Quaiapen Perry.
Perry, who is also Narragansett, started beading about 15
years ago. She often shows and sells her work at Tomaquag events.
“The style is more contemporary for, like, today’s everyday
wear, but I still use wampum that is traditional to the Narragansetts, and I
use rawhide,” Perry said.
For the festivities, she made large, brightly colored
strawberry earrings, which were sported by several Thanksgiving attendees.
She’s also made jewelry for the Maple Thanksgiving, the Cranberry Thanksgiving,
and others.
Besides her beading, Perry is also a traditional dancer, though she didn’t perform at Strawberry Thanksgiving this year.
Traditional dances performed by members of the Narragansett
Tribe happened all afternoon as a part of the celebration.
“I’m doing this dance because this is mosquito season,”
championship dancer and Narragansett Tribe member Thawn Harris said. Leading a
social dance that everyone was welcome to join, he described the steps and
their purpose: “Mosquitoes used to be a little bit bigger a long time ago, and
so in this dance … we’re actually going to be kicking them away.”
Other community members who weren’t Narragansett hopped in
the circle that stepped to the beat of several drummers and singers.
Right after the social dance, Harris’ son Pummukau performed
a men’s fancy dance, wearing yellow, orange, and red feathers that made him
look like a flame.
While he danced, Muriel Spears Tinsley cheered him on from a
seat up front. At 102, she is the oldest living member of the Narragansett
Tribe. Her daughter Robin brought her to Charlestown from Tinsley’s home in
East Providence for the day.
Wearing a strawberry-colored jacket, she made her rounds to
the stalls, saying hello to everyone.
The Thanksgivings have changed over the years, she said, but
one thing about them has always remained the same: they gather her family
together.
“I just want to see my people,” she said.
