Mother tongue Lifeways of the Southern Athabaskans
LIFEWAYS OF THE SOUTHERN ATHABASKANS
Athabaskan” is a word every New Mexican should know. Here’s why: Athabaskan is a family of languages spoken all around the state by its Apache- and Navajo-speaking tribal members. Beyond the Southwest, the tribes who use the Athabaskan language stretch as far as the North Pole.
Here’s a real-life example. Many years ago, Joyce Begay-Foss, education director at the Museum of Indian Arts & Culture, said that her Navajo grandfather found himself in Barrow, Alaska, the northernmost city in the United States. To the surprise of the local tribe he was staying with, he could understand their language and carry on a basic conversation.
How was this possible? The answer is Athabaskan, a cluster of 53 related indigenous languages whose tribal speakers can be found from Alaska and the Canadian Yukon to Oregon and Washington as well as much of Arizona, New Mexico, and northwestern Mexico. In other words, Navajo, Plains Apache, and Chiricahua Apache are all Athabaskan languages, sharing words, concepts, and even a syntax. Though there is no perfect analogy, it may help to think of Romance languages and their shared grammar — in particular, Spanish and Italian, and their often shared intelligibility at a novice conversational level.
There is a strong push among both tribal members and linguistic scholars to officially rename Athabaskan as Dené, the word most native speakers of these languages would use to describe it. The shared linguistic sensibility implies another sort of kinship. “Growing up,” said Begay-Foss, who is Navajo, “I was by my elders that the Apaches are our cousins.” That’s the reason the curator and eduator took a risk on a word that is not well understood outside anthropological circles and decided to call the new show at MIAC ways of the Southern Athabaskans. The exhibit, h opens Sunday, Dec. 10, explores the matere of the Jicarilla, Lipan, Mescalero, Fort
Many of these objects have never been seen in a public exhibit. It’s really good for our tribal communities to see how our people lived in the 1800s in this nomadic way, living off the land. — curator Joyce Begay-Foss
Sill Apache (Chiricahua), San Carlos, and White Mountain people, all of whom, in Begay-Foss’ words, “are linked by language.” (Each of these tribes and bands speak different Apache languages.)
You won’t find the objects and photos organized by tribe, but rather by the differences and similarities in how these Southern Athabaskans once thrived in New Mexico’s deserts and mountains — how they beaded baskets, how they constructed arrows out of turkey feathers, how they shod horses, and how they sealed twine pots against water leakage. In other words, it’s a show about how they lived a nomadic life in one of the harshest environs that can be found in this hemisphere.
“The focus is on material culture. These objects allow us to see how they were great horsemen and hunter-gatherers, how they lived off the land,” Begay-Foss said. “These guys were scientists, ethnobotanists, astronomers who knew how to read the land and predict the weather.” Among the themed collections in the show are features on women, temporary dwellings, traditional dress, icons, horse culture, hunter-gatherer lifeways, and bow-and-arrow technologies. “I have worked here [MIAC] for 20 years, and many of these objects have never been seen outside the collections in a public exhibit,” Begay-Foss said. “It’s really good for our tribal communities to see how our people lived in the 1800s in this nomadic way, living off the land.”
While the exhibit is heavy on historical photographs demonstrating the clothing and culture of Southern Athabaskans from the 1800s and early 1900s, it also goes deep into actual material objects that reveal how various Apache bands once lived. For instance, the section on temporary dwellings shows how different Athabaskan Apache groups built nomadic houses. Tipis were constructed by Jicarilla and Mescalero Apache using elk, deer, and buffalo hides to stretch between long wooden poles. In contrast, the Chiricahua built wickiups, which made use of lowland desert materials. Boughs of oak and willow were bound in sections with yucca leaves to form a housing structure that was protected from the elements by animal hides stretched over bound poles. As Begay-Foss noted, these temporary housing structures were built by women. In the matrilineal culture (like many other Athabaskan tribal groups), Apache women played a pivotal role in tribal decisions, participated in prayer ceremonies, and even fought alongside men during battles against other tribes or European colonists.
At the Lifeways exhibit, a portion of the show is devoted to Apache women, showcasing their contribution to the everyday craft of living. They made ceremonial attire as well as clothing, cradleboards, and moccasins. Making clothing was far from mere sewing; it required a woman to learn to prepare animal hides and construct intricate beadwork. Clothing could also be religious or ceremonial in nature as well. For instance, when a girl came of age with her first menstruation, her female relatives would sew an intricate puberty cape as part of a community celebration of this life-changing event. (The show features a beaded Jicarilla puberty cape.)
Visitors to the exhibit might also be surprised by the mannequin horse in the exhibition room. When Begay-Foss found a pair of Apache rawhide horseshoes, she wanted an actual model horse to demonstrate how well these shoes fit, for the benefit of Native American children attending the show and wanting to see how their ancestors once lived. “With kids, you need to do something to bring history to life. They want to see how things actually work, not just read a description of it,” BegayFoss said.
The rawhide horseshoes are a particularly ingenious adaptation. Not only did they shield horse hooves for a nomadic tribal people who lacked access to blacksmiths, they also allowed some tribal warriors to become master horse thieves, slipping off metal shoes under the cover of night and replacing them with rawhide, which made little sound as the horse hooves hit the ground.
It’s an example of how a seemingly simple object can illuminate history and shed new light on how people once lived in an era not so far removed in time from our own. It’s also an illustration of what Begay-Foss hopes to achieve with Lifeways. The show is less an academic or curatorial study in Apache material culture than a display of tribal objects that is intended to spark conversations among both Native and non-Native families — about what it once meant to be Apache, nomadic, and utterly reliant on the weather, plants, animals, and fellow tribal members for survival and cultural continuity.
“We need a voice in history,” Begay-Foss said. “We need to depict our people in a better way and tell their actual stories.”