Tag Archives: #nativeamerican

336 … Mohalk along the trail

336 Image-Content-Blog of the Day 2019/01/25 of-by patrick wey https://blog.patrickwey.com/category/image-content-of-the-day
Mohalk along the trail, outside the frame.
A unique composition with the subject dancing outside of a frame and a mysterious head protruding almost emanating from ancient air from stage left. These days you can manipulate any image and create whatever composition one wants. Somehow it holds more weight when you know that it is the way it appeared in 3D reality. I don’t know why, it’s a cultural thing but it is interesting when a great composition gets it right in real life. Nothing incredibly special but as Mick once said, ‘it’s just rock and roll but i like it’…..somehow that fits; tho i never really liked that song much i do get the understanding and as half the population is now realizing, ‘it’s just another image, but i did it and i like it’.
The old and the new, the red and the blue, the way it was, the way it is, changing.
Image circa early 90’s

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Patrick Wey

260 Image-Content of the Day 2018/11/10

260 Image-Content of the Day 2018/11/10 of-by patrick wey https://blog.patrickwey.com/category/image-content-of-the-day
My friend Servando in silent thought. He has been gone for awhile now. I remember the many conversations on the phone about the medicine, the red road, the way in life, friendship, enemies, relationships, the past, the future, death and love. He was one of the most sincere honest and real human beings i have encountered thru this walk in life. He conducted a sweat lodge every Saturday night on his land near Sante Fe, New Mexico until his death. I hear the lodge is still going as far as i know from my friend Melinda Morrison whom i met on my first trip south with Vernon Harper and family.
Memories outside of time.
Image circa early 90’s.

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Patrick Wey

184 Image-Content of the Day 2018/08/26

184 Image-Content of the Day 2018/08/26 of-by patrick wey https://blog.patrickwey.com/category/image-content-of-the-day
A beautiful woman i remember. She was an inmate in P4W (Prison for Woman) in Kingston On. At that time, up into the 90’s, P4W was the only prison for woman in Canada. Canada is a huge country. Many inmates especially anishinabe had few, if any visits from family or friends thousands of miles away.
It was an honour to be a helper for Vern Harper whom conducted sweat lodge ceremonies here and in other prisons in Ontario.
The woman were always thankful and gracious for our support and work to make this happen for them. I remember hot afternoons working around the fire joking with the women and having to hide my camera when they would warm me that the warden was coming out to check on things. The warden was a nice person with a beautiful golden retriever that she would allow to roam around the yard. The women loved the freedom for the afternoon to laugh and also to have sincere conversations with Vern. There was always difficult decisions members of the sisterhood needed to deal with. The sweats were always hard and rewarding. You could tell from the spirit in the air.
circa early 90’s

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Patrick Wey

183 Image-Content of the Day 2018/08/25

183 Image-Content of the Day 2018/08/25 of-by patrick wey https://blog.patrickwey.com/category/image-content-of-the-day
my good friend Morris Poile lookin serious…..back in the Kapka days way up there north of Thunder Bay…ceremonies for ten days in the spring and fall.
some of my most precious moments lay along that Kapka river and still soar up there around the mountain, Morris was always there lending a helping hand. a trickster with a good heart.
circa maybe 15 years ago or so.

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Patrick Wey

169 Image-Content of the Day 2018/08/11

169 Image-Content of the Day 2018/08/11 of-by https://blog.patrickwey.com/category/image-content-of-the-day
Rubin Hurricane Carter and Vernon Harper….Vern had a short lived boxing career, he loved boxing and one of his heroes was Rubin. Long before Rubin came into his life Vern admired him for his boxing and stamina surviving in a prison for almost twenty years for a crime he didn’t do….https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubin_Carter
Rubin attended a number of sweats down at Verns lodge before the film with Denzel Washington acting out his life as a boxer and prisoner….https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hurricane_(1999_film)
Vern is wearing an honorary Middle Weight Champion of the World belt given to Rubin just weeks before at a ceremony in Las Vegas honouring Rubin. This was one day down at the lodge before a sweat lodge ceremony with the two hurricanes proud. Verns boxing name was Hurricane Harper. The size of Rubins fist is almost the size of my head. Bob Dylan wrote in a song that helped to free Rubin………https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/bobdylan/hurricane.html
LAST THREE STANZAS
How can the life of such a man
Be in the palm of some fool’s hand?
To see him obviously framed
Couldn’t help but make me feel ashamed
To live in a land
Where justice is a game.

Now all the criminals in their coats and their ties
Are free to drink martinis and watch the sun rise
While Rubin sits like Buddha in a ten-foot cell
An innocent man in a living hell

Yes, that’s the story of the Hurricane
But it won’t be over ’til they clear his name
And give him back the time he’s done
Put in a prison cell but one time he could-a been
The champion of the world.
LIVE PERFORMANCE 1975
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfiK17FhP4g
Photo Circa early 90’s

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Patrick Wey

157 Image-Content of the Day 2018/07/30

157 Image-Content of the Day 2018/07/30 of-by https://blog.patrickwey.com/category/image-content-of-the-day
Floyd Buffalo Hand…..Floyd Hand is a full blood Oglala Lakota, descendant of Chief Mahpiya Luta. I got to know Floyd and hung out with him in South Dakota and also north of Thunder Bay at a camp i went to for ten years for 10 days twice a year doing sweats and learning about the red road. I also did sweats with him at Verns lodge in Guelph Ontario. He is one of the most controversial medicine men in north America for many reasons too involved to even mention here. He has a voice like thunder.

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Patrick Wey

145 Image-Content of the Day 2018/07/18

145 Image-Content of the Day 2018/07/18 of-by https://blog.patrickwey.com/category/image-content-of-the-day\
A mixture of lit past caught in a realm of space. Time sits quietly in the walls. The story is folding over itself, myths are emanating from the mood, a texture of love is diminishing in the corners, worlds are falling all around, everything is concealed. The statute takes the lead, the dance begins again.
Vern knows..
Circa 90’s….gallery of the infinite….( Vernon Harper )

 
 
Vern Harper and Statue

Image and Writing by patrick wey

144 Image-Content of the Day 2018/07/17

144 Image-Content of the Day 2018/07/17 of-by https://blog.patrickwey.com/category/image-content-of-the-day
I am there, P4W, Prison for Women, Kingston On. In the early 90’s there was only one federal prison in Canada which meant any women serving a federal crime had to serve her time in Kingston Ontario. This caused great grieve for many women whom came from poor families across the nation and because of economics, never had a visit for years, if ever. That is not to mention the severity for crimes committed by the poor from undesirable backgrounds with racist treatments for people of colour, blacks, browns, reds and women were mistreated the worst. The women of the land, native, anishinabi, native american women were at the end of the end. There are many unreasonable reasons why the native has been persecuted so insanely and especially the women. Far too complicated to explain here but one thing that can be noted is that people all suffer for different reasons and the truth of the nature is that we all are so incredibly similar regardless of race colour sex and age.
This shot was taken by one of the inmates with my camera. I was becoming a common figure as i was returning so often, as an elders helper (Vern Harper), that some were getting to know me and trust me beyond the shield of white and male. I was simply myself, it always has seemed insane to stumble first thru a veil of colour, as if that has any real significance before relating to another human being. Yes i know, it is much more complicated, but one must attempt to see clear thru skin.
Many american natives, possibly even more so then american blacks are very leery of the white man and easily understood but i don’t bother with that realm unless i am confronted with a situation that i need to address. Otherwise, i just live life and do the best i can to respect, love and care for all people and all things.
There is so much more that could be and should be stated here about what sits behind in this photo, the earth altar, the sweat prayer lodge, the prison, the world and the mystery everywhere. Besides all the torture existing surrounding there was a great sense of humour at times in the air between the minds of the sisterhood of mostly native but not all. Anyone with a true heart could find a way into the way of the red road, sometimes it would simply find you….if you were listening.

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Patrick Wey

127 Image-Content of the Day 2018/06/30

127 Image-Content of the Day 2018/06/30 of-by https://blog.patrickwey.com/category/image-content-of-the-day
Vernon Harper standing in front of a store entrance reflecting a sunny side of Queen St. W. near Spadina Ave. Toronto of a shop called Red or Dead. Vern was a great actor, seldom did i suggest much other than a location and he would just take a pose or two and i never wasted time. I seldom let people wait uncomfortably while i grabbed a few images. I usually had the composition worked out and moved into a few angles with a variety of lens lengths and occasionally added some colour shots from a second camera; but all quick, not to have the subject feel uncomfortable, awkward and throw on strange expressions. It’s got to be natural for these portraits to portray something that laymen’s words seldom express….possibly a poets words can shape a Picasso like angle across the terrain but it is still not a pure comparison for a great portrait, just different.
Vern was proud to be Red, but it goes much, much deeper than that. The reflection of the city was always behind Vern, his walk was focused forward into a red horizon.
circa 1990’s

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Patrick Wey

#79 Image-Content of the Day 2018/05/13

#79 Image-Content of the Day 2018/05/13 of-by https://blog.patrickwey.com/category/image-content-of-the-day
Vernon Harper I remember so many moments with Vern. We travelled to sweats in the prisons, across canada and the states. I spend one full day a week with him in Toronto for years when he worked for the Native Legal system and we’d go to healing circles, asian lunch on Spadina, pick up a boxing mag in a little store on Bathurst, be together and talk about everything under the sun, many personal conversations about his past and struggles within the dominant society’s ways. Vern was a very sincere man and though i have not been with him for years he has been in my heart since the day we met. He encouraged me to document that past of his live through-out the late 80’s and and 90’s. The original of this image was taken in his sweat lodge. It feels appropriate now knowing he’ll be conducting sweats on the plains of the spirit world and enter our minds for many years to come. My heart feels for his family and the inner and outer circles of his life. Vern has brought peace to many a weary heart.

PhotoArtManipulations
Patrick Wey
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