Oral history interview with Richard Zane Smith

Little Thunder: My name is Julie Pearson-Little Thunder. Today is Tuesday March 31, 2015. I'm interviewing Richard Zane Smith as part of the Oklahoma Native Artists Project sponsored by the Oklahoma Oral History Research Program at Oklahoma State University. We're at Richard's home in the country, just outside of Wyandotte. Richard, you get this amazing, often eye-fooling effect from your technique of working with long, thin strings of clay that you hand press into various textures. Your work is handled by several premiere galleries. You've been collected by museums. You landed here in part because of your Kansas Wyandotte heritage, but besides working in clay, you've been very involved with Wyandotte language reclamation among other cultural activities. Thank you for letting me talk with you today.

Smith: (Speaks Wyandotte language) Richard Zane Smith. (Speaks Wyandotte 1:00language). I introduced myself in the Wyandotte language. My name is Sohahiyoh in Wyandotte. I'm of the Bear Clan. I'm a Wyandotte man, and I also said that this day, today, I'm happy that you've come and that you're here. It makes me glad that I can do it.

Little Thunder: Where were you born, and where did you grow up?

Smith: Actually, I was born in an Army hospital in Georgia, which I probably spent about, I don't know, maybe six months at. That was in Augusta, Georgia.

Little Thunder: Were you not well when you were born, or are you talking about--

Smith: Oh, no. I was like a seven-dollar baby in the Army. My dad was in the Army, so actually my sisters were cheaper. They were five dollars each. (Laughter) They didn't have that little extra two-dollar job that they did to the boys, which is a scary thing. I grew up, though, in Ballwin, Missouri, actually. It was a little new suburb at that time, these tiny little houses actually made for vets coming back from the Korean War. It was kind of a neighborhood a lot like this as far as the same kind of trees and the same flora and the creeks and the ponds and all that. Until I was fourteen, I was raised out there. In 1969, my folks moved into the city of St. Louis, which was a shock 3:00for me. It was a little difficult. I never really got used to the city, although I did the best I could, learned a lot. That's where a lot of the art started, in there. I was doing it before. I wasn't really that great with academics. Seemed like whenever the art cart came along, I was in my element. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: You kind of mentioned what your father did for a living, initially. He was working for the military. Did he stay in that position, or did he--

Smith: No, I actually can't remember whether he was drafted or whether he just put in a couple years to get started. He was an artist. He really wanted to make a living at it, and he did for several years. Worked independently as a book 4:00designer. He also worked for McGraw-Hill at times and some other publishing companies, but it was always a little tough growing up because my mom stayed at home. She didn't work. There were five of us kids, but almost every night they would read to us, and we'd sit around a little coffee table, all five of us kids. They'd put out the paper and pencils, and we'd draw while my folks would read to us. Sometimes we would be listening. Sometimes we'd go off on our own world, but whatever, it was a very quiet time. I always remember that as kind of a very warm, good feeling.

Little Thunder: That's a wonderful idea to combine reading and drawing.

Smith: Yeah, yeah.

Little Thunder: It sounds like your mom was sort of a natural educator.

Smith: She was. She was very sweet, very sweet when we were growing up. There were times when we'd be stuck in the house because it was nasty out, and they 5:00couldn't say, "Go outside and play!" We'd be stuck in the house, and we'd be fighting, and she would start crying. She would just start crying. We'd all stop fighting, and she'd say, "Sometimes you seem like you hate each other!" (Laughs) That was all it would take! (Laughter) We were like, "Oh, my gosh, we made Mom cry!" (Laughs)

Little Thunder: How about siblings? How many siblings?

Smith: There were five of us. I had two older sisters who were twins. I came along very quickly after those two were born, so I know I wasn't planned. (Laughs) Then I have two younger brothers. One of my sisters has died. She died in '88. We have a great time when we're all together, but it's not like we write or call all the time. We have kind of a different family thing. When we all get 6:00together, we have a riot. We might not see each other for a year, and that seems to be fine.

Little Thunder: And the Wyandotte is on your mom's side?

Smith: Yes.

Little Thunder: Can you talk a little bit, just briefly, about how the Kansas-Oklahoma Wyandottes came to be?

Smith: That's a big story, so I'll try to wrap it up. Obviously at the Removal, the Wyandotte Removal, the Wyandottes were the last tribe to leave Ohio. They didn't plant that year because they had been promised that they would [have] left. They waited, and they waited until it got to be fall. They finally were given the okay to go, to leave. Those who were traveling by steamboat packed up wagons and walked and went by wagon all the way to Cincinnati where they caught 7:00steamboats. The ones who wanted to keep their cattle and horses, they had to go overland, but they all came and got to Kansas area. The details of that trip are all written down, which is kind of interesting. It's really interesting to hear, but they settled Kansas near the Shawnee and the Delaware. When they got there, the land that they had been promised was already taken, so they had to buy some land. The Delaware (I believe it was the Delaware, maybe it was the Shawnee) gave them a large parcel, too. Some years after, though, the federal government, it declared all the Wyandottes as citizens.

You couldn't be an Indian citizen. If you wanted to keep your Indian status, you 8:00had to reapply. Most of those who reapplied for Indian status were those who ended up here in Oklahoma. Although there were eight families in Kansas who also did, and that was one of my family, they reapplied to stay on. We have those written things and why it was important to them. Some of them--of course, the Civil War was coming and going a lot. Some of the ones who were in Oklahoma, they would rather be in Kansas, and some of the ones in Kansas--. There was a lot of going back and forth. The families are really the same when you trace them back. The Kansas and Oklahoma families, the Wyandotte families, all come from the same group. Also in Kansas, the Wyandotte were involved in the Underground Railroad which was pretty strong in getting those families across, 9:00those black families across the Missouri River and getting them into freedom, freedom area. There's a lot of history.

Little Thunder: That's neat. I did not know that.

Smith: It's amazing.

Little Thunder: What was your relationship with your grandparents on either side or extended family, maybe, in Kansas?

Smith: In Kansas? We always looked forward to it, went to visit once a year. We lived, of course, in the St. Louis area, so we would take a train out to visit, and we'd stay a couple weeks. All the Zanes, Zane family, we'd all get together. My grandpa was always pretty shy, pretty quiet, kind of withdrawn, although he would stand on his head for us. (Laughter) I remember that. I remember he always wanted to stand on his head to show you he could still do it, I guess. He was in 10:00his sixties then. I'll have to remember that, see if I can still do that. He took me fishing one time. He also died when I was pretty young, so I didn't really get to know him very well. My mom always tells me, "Your Grandpa Zane would be so proud of you right now, all the things you're doing." That always makes me feel good because so much of my family, they're interested in their heritage as sort of a little side issue, but it's not that deep. It's not the passion. It's not the root of who they are. It's not in their identity, I guess. It's more of an interesting fact. I guess that's the way it is with a lot of families.

Little Thunder: What are your earliest memories of seeing Native art?

Smith: Hmm, ones that's really made a big impression on me, I guess I've seen it a lot. My dad was always exposing us to art books, so we saw a lot of stuff as 11:00we were growing up. The thing that really struck me, I guess, as a young adult, probably in my teens or late teens, were some of the Arizona Highways magazines that would come out. I'd see a lot of Jerry Jacka's photographs of these incredible--the pots and the things that were being made. I know Lonewolf, (gosh, names are so terrible to me) Rosemary Lonewolf and Joseph Lonewolf and Grace Medicine Flower, people like that who I saw what they were doing, and I was so impressed that they were taking tradition, doing something different with it. They were stepping out.

Little Thunder: What are your earliest memories of making art?

Smith: Earliest memories, it seems like it was always there. I've got all these 12:00sketchbooks from when I was just a kid. I still have some of them. I was doing them all the time, and I was making the stuff. I was writing things. When I was little, I made toys. We'd saw spools for wheels, and we made trains.

Little Thunder: So working three-dimensionally a lot, too?

Smith: All the time, yeah. I was drawing and trying to actually do rendering, having a hard time at it, but still it became a passion.

Little Thunder: What were your art experiences, then, in primary school?

Smith: Primary school, yeah, that was my salvation. (Laughs) The art cart being brought into the room, that was it because I felt like I had been--. I probably should've been held back because I really wasn't ready to learn some of the 13:00things that were being taught. I was terrified of the academic, some of the stuff we were going through, especially math. I just wasn't able to retain stuff, but as soon as the art cart came in (rubs hands together), "I'm in my element now! Okay!" (Laughter)

Little Thunder: Did you get reinforcement from your teachers?

Smith: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That helped, of course, too, and getting it at home, too. My folks were really good about that, both of them being artistic. My mom, too. She worked for Hallmark, even, for a while when she was young. She was designing greeting cards and all kinds of things. Both of them were very talented. They never told us things like, 'Oh, but you're going to have to get a real job. You'll have to do art on the side." They never said anything like that. It was always, "Follow your dreams, and someday it might just work out for you." They always were open about that. That really meant a 14:00lot to me.

Little Thunder: How about any art experiences in middle school or high school that stand out?

Smith: Another thing, I must say, in high school that really, really saved me, too, because it was a stressful time, we had moved into St. Louis, '69, early '70s. A lot of racial tension at that time, so we were in the middle of it as kids in school. It was tough. It was very tough to even get any kind of education at all, but the art classes, we had amazing art classes and great teachers. There was two or three teachers that really helped me a lot. It seemed like at that time the high school, University City High School, we had freedom 15:00enough that we could actually talk to other teachers and say, "Well, I'm going to be working in the ceramics room for two hours or three hours. I'm just going to be there today." They'd give permission, and so the next two or three days I might say, "I'm going to be in the crafts room. We're doing some welding and some sculpture or stone carving," or, "We're doing some lost-wax casting." This is all high school. It's like they would give you whatever you wanted to do.

There were some students, of course, in the room that were sitting back in the chairs, and they'd just want a little social event. The teachers would ignore them. "Just ignore those people." (Laughs) They would focus on those who were fascinated and interested. It was also there, I guess, when you start getting that reinforcement from teachers who are recognizing something, and you know they're recognizing something. It's not a put-on. They're not just saying, "Oh, 16:00that's nice. Oh, that's nice." It's like, "Oh! Wow, that's pretty good. Let me show you what you can do with that tool. Let me show you something else you can do with that." I really picked up on that. I was also kind of a survivalist kid. "I'm going to make my own way," so I really was. I was a hard worker. I'd wake up early. I did a lot of leatherwork when I was in high school. I made hundreds of pairs of sandals to sell. I'd cut the tires, and I made tire-tread sandals and sold them.

Little Thunder: And you sold them?

Smith: Yeah. In fact, people keep telling me, "I still have a pair of those old sandals in my closet. I just can't throw them away." (Laughter) My mom, she still wears them. She still wears a necklace that I made her in high school. She still wears that! She says, "All my grandkids have teethed on it." It's just who I am. It's aluminum. People think its silver, but it's--yeah.

Little Thunder: What would you say was the first piece of artwork that you sold?

Smith: Sold, I don't know. I guess what comes to mind is when I was at junior college at Meramec Community College in St. Louis. I would sell pots to pay for the school so I could go there. We'd put on a little show right at the house, and I'd have these pots made with.... At that time I was kind of addicted to the potter's wheel. I didn't have much interest in hand building. It looked too tedious. It didn't look like something I'd be good at, but I think it really helped me, actually, that wheel throwing, because it gave me a sense of symmetry. I would go into the ceramics room and wedge up enough clay to make fifty little bowls that day because I knew that after that fifty, it's like an 18:00exercise. You're exercising it, and then they start coming out, and they just start moving. They come right out of your hands after that.

Little Thunder: Now, when you say you were going to the ceramics room, you're talking high school at this point, or are you talking Meramec?

Smith: At the junior college, yeah. At high school it was similar, but I think in high school, they pretty much allowed you to fire anything. I wish that wasn't the case. Some of the pieces, "Oh, my gosh, my mom's still got that." (Laughs) Of course, you get into community college, and you have to be careful about what you are saving. Same thing happened actually at--I went to Kansas City Art Institute, too, for a year. Same thing. You'd throw all these pots, lots of pots. I'd have them all over the table, and then you could pick out maybe five or six for the kiln. It taught you, "Okay, I can live without that 19:00one. I can definitely live without that one. All right, those can go. I want that one." You start refining your own sense of what you like and what you're drawn to. If you only had five or six pieces on the table, they'd all look all right, but if you have fifty on the table and you have to pick out five, it starts--. It's a way of refining and refining.

Little Thunder: It's hard to get into the Kansas City Art Institute. I understand it's kind of pricey, too.

Smith: It was tough for me, too. I did get a scholarship, but I had to pay for it myself. My folks couldn't do it, as much as they wanted to, so I had to work like crazy to save money to do that. I was fortunate to find a little basement apartment I could rent for seventy dollars a month, which was really nice. This older lady who was there--. It was just down the street from the school, so I 20:00could bicycle back and forth, but I was on a limited budget. My food budget was thirty dollars a month.

Little Thunder: My goodness.

Smith: When I went over that, (and sometimes I did) I was like, "You spent forty dollars this month. You can't do that," because it was my savings and I didn't have--. So these student shows would come up, and of course you try to sell your pieces at the school. Some of the kids would get mad at me because they'd say, "You're underpricing us." It's like, "I just need sales right now!" (Laughs) But anyway, that was kind of my school experience except I also told them, "I'm only going to come here a year, so I'm going to be a senior and a junior at the same time." I started to go to all the senior functions, the junior and senior functions. At that time, it was the instructor--gosh, my memory. Ken, Ken--. I 21:00can't believe I can't remember his name. It'll come. [Ken Ferguson]

He'd be like, "Zane, what are you doing here? This is for seniors." I'd say, "I told you I'm only coming here one year. I'm getting it all." So yeah, I did, and then at the end of the year, I told him, I said, "I have to go. I'm leaving." He says, "No, I'm your senior--" really angry. He's like, "No, you have to come back. We'll make it easy for you. We'll get you scholarships." At that time, I was also--I'd already decided. I think I had had enough, too, and I was just ready to move on. A degree meant nothing to me. I wanted information. I wanted to know how to fire kilns. I wanted to know how to mix glazes, slips. I felt like I had a good--. "I'm ready to do this now." I just wanted to do it. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: Were you entering any Native art shows at that point or not?

Smith: No, that came later. My hand building kind of started--. At the end of 22:00'77, I loaded up my truck from St. Louis, everything I owned, all my tools and everything I could carry. I'd built a back rack, kind of like hoops on the back of my truck so I could sleep in there at night, and I just took off. That was it. I was gone. I had, like, five hundred dollars. I was going to make it. I could camp for the night, pull over somewhere behind a truck strop, build a fire, (you could do that back then; you wouldn't get chased off) cook something, and move on, just keep going. I did that for a year. Then I ended up at a little school right off the Navajo reservation. I went there to visit some people who I had met who were working there. They were teachers, and they said, "Yeah, if 23:00you're in Arizona, drop by and check it out." I thought, "Yeah, okay I'll check it out." I did. I stopped by. This was in the summer; the kids hadn't been there yet. It was a boarding school.

They said, "We don't have an art teacher this year. It'd be great if you could come because the kids won't have an art teacher." I said, "What do you have? What kind of materials you have?" They took me to the basement, and they opened this closet. It's glitter, bleach bottles, felt, the little eyeballs that would go like this. I thought, "Oh, this is terrible. Can't submit these kids to that art. I'm staying. I'll stay. I'll be the art teacher." I had no idea what it was going to be like to work at a mission school with that kind of structure. It's amazing that I lasted, but I did. They also, because they were desperate, they put me in charge of the fourth and fifth grade boys as a dorm parent. I mean, no 24:00background check, nothing. They just said, "How would you like to do that?" I go, "Sure, sure." (Laughs) I love that age, anyway. Those kids are just great. They're still full of life, and they're curious.

It worked out all right for a while. It worked out for me, but the school wasn't real happy. Probably after a couple of months, they decided I wasn't being strict enough to the kids. I didn't make them take a shower every day. They'd send a boy down to say, "Oh, it's time for all the kids to get their haircuts." I'd go, "Anybody here want a haircut?" (Laughter) It was a wonderful experience really. It was frustrating working with these religious fanatics, but at the other end it was incredible because these kids were all first-speaker Navajo. Navajo's their first language. They were really Navajo kids. These were not 25:00assimilated kids. These were kids that really came from the res[ervation]. These were res kids all the way. Boy, it was really an eye-opener for me. I'd been exposed to some Cree up in Northern Canada once when I went firefighting up there. I went up there on a whim, ended up with a group of Cree up in the bush, and those guys were all traditional people, too.

It was really the first time that I was around a lot of kids that that's their culture. There's so many things I could share, but one of the things, we were given fifty dollars for the year for art supplies. Fifty dollars, that was it. That's all they could give us. Our salary was fifty dollars a month, too. Of course, you could help yourself at the cafeteria, and you could dig around back there, see if you could find something if you got hungry. This was not any kind 26:00of moneymaking venture. (Laughs) With fifty dollars, I had to really stretch it. I bought beads for the girls. We went down to Phoenix, and we got stocked up on some looms and beads. I did find a clay place, and we bought some tools and even some clay. I even went into a place where they had been mixing clay down there. I said, "Can we have what's on the floor," because they had all this white clay that was just on the floor. "Oh, sure." I shoveled that up, put it in bags, and we took it up there. They did a lot of pottery that year, a lot of pottery.

It was, like, the first year that we started running out of that clay that we bought. During the weekends, some of the kids--the parents were supposed to get them, pick them up. They didn't always come, so the kids would be out there waiting, waiting, waiting, and Mom and Dad didn't come. They'd be all depressed, 27:00and I'd say, "Let's get in the truck. Let's go out in the desert and play cowboys and Indians." (Laughs) That's what they do! So we'd go out there and take watercolors with us, paint up. I've got pictures of these. I've got pictures. I can show you some. Running, hooting and hollering, just running all over the desert, hopping it. Pottery sherds out there, Anasazi pottery sherds. Well, they don't say Anasazi now. It's ancient Pueblo pottery sherds all over there, and clay, so I started finding stuff. I thought, "We got to try some of this clay that's out here." We'd bring some home, and I started mixing it. I was like, "This is better than the store-bought stuff! It actually holds its form. I like this stuff!" That's where it started.

Little Thunder: Without anything to temper it?

Smith: I don't think I was using anything to temper it at first. I don't think I was because we were just digging it out of the ground. It did have sand mixed 28:00with it, but, yeah, it was straight like that. Firing was a whole other thing for me. Of course, we're hand building; it's all hand-built. We didn't have wheels or anything. I'm away from all my security stuff, the stuff I was good at. Now I have to start things by hand, and I'm teaching something that--. I made a few little hand-built pieces like everybody has in high school, just enough to kind of make you think, "Boy, I'm not good at this." So many people I've talked to have had the same experience. You think, "Gosh, this is a way to inoculate people against pottery. Give them hand building." (Laughs)

Anyway, also, that's where I started to find the corrugated sherds. You'd pick them up out there in the desert. Looking at it, "How was that done? I don't understand it." First of all, I didn't understand it because I didn't know which way it went. I didn't know which way those lines went, but I kept seeing those things and the fingernail, you know, the little fingerprints and everything. It 29:00wasn't until I found one that had a rim, that rim sherd where you actually could see. Then I could tell, "Oh, okay. They run this way. Oh, they're lapped. They're shingle-lapped." You look at the cross-section, and you could see the little lines like that.

You could see how each coil was lapping the other one. "I got to try that!" I took a sherd back. This is all on the edge of BLM [Bureau of Land Management] land, but it was on private property. I'd take a sherd back and say, "I'm going to make a piece like that." I actually have sherds from my first one. The pot didn't survive, but I do have sherds from the idea. You could actually see how I learned it just from doing that pot because they started getting a little better and a little better as the coils went up. I was like, "Okay, I think I'm getting it. I think I understand this." Part of the key to that is good clay. You have to have a clay that gets sticky and sticks to itself well and holds its form. That's kind of where it started. That was in '78 and '79.

Little Thunder: How long did you stay there?

Smith: One season, but that's where I met my wife. She was a teacher there, fourth grade teacher. I kind of kept an eye on her because it seemed like the kids really loved her. They were always hanging on her on the playground, leaning. All the little girls would be leaning on her. She was watching me because she'd watch me go across the playground. All these little kids would get those little metal swings--those little, what do you call them? The little spinning ones. The merry-go-round!

Little Thunder: Merry-go-round.

Smith: Yeah, they'd say, "Push us! Push us!" Sometimes it was the first words they learned, I think, in English. It was "Push us!" I'd go, "Okay, come on. Everybody on!" Vroom, vroom, I'd get those kids flying so fast, some of them would go flying off, but they were tough. These little kids were, like, 31:00indestructible, man. They were just amazing. If they got scratched or if they got hurt, they would sort of whimper a little, and then they'd start laughing because that's the way they were raised. You pick yourself up. I can't even imagine what that'd be now today with all the rules. But she was watching me, and I was watching her. We started to have this little friendship. We started to meet together and talk and talk and talk. I guess I was the one doing all the talking, but, anyway, that's where we met.

Little Thunder: What made you decide to leave, then?

Smith: I couldn't stand working with the kind of people there. There seemed to be a lot of hypocrisy. Part of it was they didn't let the kids speak Navajo in the classroom. I was trying to learn it. I was trying to learn it as fast I can. Kids would come up and help me, and finally I'm counting. Tʼááłáʼí, naaki, tááʼ, dį́į́ʼ, ashdla', hastáá, tsostsʼid, tseebíí, 32:00náhástʼéí, neezná. I'm starting to learn Navajo. I like it. I'm starting to get the sounds right. They're like, "You shouldn't be fraternizing with the students. You're a teacher. You're not supposed to be sitting there on the propane tank with the kids." There was this attitude. There was this attitude that you're like a sergeant or something. I couldn't deal with that after a while. Plus, they were fighting with each other (I mean the staff) because their religious ideas were different than this person's religious ideas. They'd even argue sometimes during a devotional or something they're having.

I thought, "This is awful." Another couple of things we tried, which were different art projects, one of the things I thought was, "This is modern times, but you're Navajo. You've got modern things. You kids, design a Navajo soda pop. 33:00Put your own design on it, something that you would make if you were up there," because everybody was into pop at the time. "Make your own, and if it's even written in Navajo (speaks Navajo language)." I'm trying to get them to think about not just making old things. "Try something that's yours but do it in a modern setting. Do something contemporary." Even at that time when I was making hand-built pieces, there'd be pickup trucks on them. I was already playing around with those ideas, so I'm pushing edges. Once I learned the techniques, the ancient techniques, I'm already starting to push it. I can't just make reproductions all my life. I know that's not going to work.

Little Thunder: When did you find your first venue for, as you say, that new technique that you'd learned of the texture?

Smith: That was an amazing thing that happened. That was an amazing thing. We 34:00were, at that time--okay, '84, we'd been married for a couple years. We got married in that spring of '79. We hit the road, Carol and I, lived off the road. We didn't have money. Again, we were only making fifty dollars a month, so we didn't have a lot of money. We lived on the road, worked up in Washington, Idaho, on a ranch. When it got too cold, we went south. We made pots out in the desert, down south of [Phoenix].

Little Thunder: She did, too?

Smith: She did a little polishing once in a while, but she wasn't really into the crafts thing. She probably did all the worrying for both of us. "How are we going to--." "Where do we go from here?" When we camped out in the desert, it was great in the wintertime, but then it starts getting warmer. Sitting under the palo verde trees is not enough. (Laughs) Also, the critters are coming out. 35:00You're finding scorpions on your pillow. We were making little pots. I'd make them, and I'd fire them out there. We'd take them into town and park at the greyhound track down there in Apache Junction. Park the truck, put all the little pots on the hood, and, "Eight dollars, please. Six dollars for that one." Anything to make grocery money. That's all we were doing was just making grocery money.

I'd do a few of the little corrugated ones, but most of them were little burnished pieces that I'd do little etchings in. They were pretty crude, when I look at that stuff now. They're not worth more than six dollars each, maybe for crushing up. Anyway, that's where it started, where I was actually selling pieces that were hand-built pieces. Now, we moved to Ganado, [Arizona] because we really enjoyed working with Navajo people, and she's a teacher. She was trained as a teacher, had a degree, so they accepted her there as a teacher. We 36:00moved right in. Eventually we got to this old stone house that was near the lake. We got to rent that place, beautiful old house, one of those mud-mortar houses, and I started making pieces by hand, trying to sell them.

I'd take them to the trading post. First of all, they didn't know what to do with me. It was like, "That's not really Pueblo. What are you?" (Laughs) I was like, "Wyandotte." "What's that? Isn't that a chicken?" (Laughs) They didn't know what to do with me. It didn't really work too well. Like at Hubble's. They can't market stuff at Hubble's that's Wyandotte. That was discouraging. Then I found out about the Heard Museum was doing something down there in Phoenix at one time. Oh, I was making some big corrugated ones. The first big one I did turned out really nice. I had a great flashing on it. I've got a picture of that one, too. I had no idea what was coming. In the picture I'm just standing there 37:00like this holding this pot. Had no idea.

Little Thunder: How big was it?

Smith: It was about like that, but it was big for me. I'm holding this thing. We decided, "Oh, let's take it down to the Heard Museum. They're having this art show down there. Maybe I can sell it, make a little bit of money."

Little Thunder: But it wasn't the Heard Market. It was just an impromptu kind of.--

Smith: I'm not sure because--. It might've been, but I didn't stay. I kind of dropped it off. They took it all, and they put me in a certain category and all that. They said, "So what's your tribal affiliation?" "I'm Wyandotte." "Oh, that's great! We haven't had any Wyandottes." Put it on there. I took off, came back home, but I was still in the mindset that that's only going to be something I do on the side. There's no way I can do that for a living. I set up a 38:00stoneware kiln out there. I was starting to make cups and bowls and stuff like I was doing at the school.

Little Thunder: You had got yourself a wheel at that point?

Smith: Yeah, decided maybe that's what I should do for a living. I can do some--but it took a lot of wood to fire a stoneware kiln. I was feeling a little guilty for that, too, using up--good firewood from the res there. It was one time when I was firing that kiln, and I was getting about ten hours in the fire. I mean, it's when you're throwing the wood in like this, "Whoo, whoo." It's burning so fast, it's just gone. I got a call, and it was one of the judges at the Heard Museum. He calls me up, and he goes, "Yeah, I was one of the judges down at the Heard Museum, and before I tell you anything, who represents you?" I go, "Represents me? What does that mean?" He goes, "Well, I have my own gallery, 39:00I was one of the judges, and I thought if you haven't been represented by any gallery, then I'd like to represent your work. By the way, your piece got Best of Pottery this year." I thought, "You got to be kidding me!" That's how it started.

Little Thunder: Did you sell it, too?

Smith: Oh, yeah!

Little Thunder: You have prize money.

Smith: Yeah, and it was sold. I actually put three pieces in. The other two I kind of forget about, but one of them was one of the little polished ones where I had a little scene around it, kind of a modern res scene around it. I don't know where that one--. I have no idea. It's gone. The other one, the corrugated one with the corrugated texture, nobody'd seen that stuff before, I guess, or they hadn't seen it done like the ancient ones had been doing. Acoma do a kind of corrugated. It's not quite the same as what I'm doing. I mean it's similar, but it's different. That's where it started. From then on--.

Little Thunder: What gallery was he with?

Smith: Let's see, what was that gallery? It's been a long time now. I can't remember the name of the gallery.

Little Thunder: Was it one there in Phoenix, though, or was it in Scottsdale?

Smith: Yes, it was down there somewhere. I'm not sure I actually went to their gallery before. He would come up and pick up pieces. Right down at Keams Canyon, in Hopi country there, Bruce McGee had a trading post, and he found out about my stuff. He would come up, and we started a good relationship together. He would come over and buy them outright, buy pieces, or I'd take them down to Hopi and sell my pieces there. He started taking them down to Phoenix to a gallery that was really interested. It was Gallery Ten. In the early '80s, Gallery Ten was kind of like this gallery that was looking for artists that were Native artists 41:00that had one foot in the past, that were grounded in their traditions and their techniques and stuff like that, but they're out there trying the new and trying to make that balance, trying to find that balance.

I guess it just happened to be that I was one of those, so, like I say, I happened to be at the right place at the right time. People have said, "You're really blessed. You've been really blessed." I'm just real cautious about that because I appreciate it and I'm thankful, but when people say that, it also makes me think, "Does that mean someone else isn't?" It kind of gives you that sense that, "What about those who are artists who are struggling so hard and they work even harder than I have, and they still aren't able to make a living doing it? So, what? They aren't blessed?" I'm kind of cautious about those words, but I do feel thankful, very thankful.

Little Thunder: As you're really gathering steam then, maybe by the early '90s, are you dealing with a number of galleries? Are booth shows important to you, or is it mainly gallery shows?

Smith: Galleries, yes. I actually never officially--I went almost as far as applying to get into Indian Market in Santa Fe, but I never actually got a letter from the chief here, Wyandotte Nation here. Because I'm enrolled with the Kansas group, even though we're in the same family, I don't have an enrollment number because it's all--. Here, the Wyandotte Nation, all their members come through a certain roll that was taken in the '40s or something, so if your families aren't on that role, even if you're all related, it doesn't matter. You're not on there. We're on rolls in the Kansas group, the Wyandot Nation of 43:00Kansas, and it is organized. We have chiefs, and we have secretaries and all that. It's pretty small, there's not much going on, but it's not federally recognized. It doesn't mean a thing to me that I don't have a card. I don't even know what I'd do with a card if I had a card, scrape the window with it or something.

It doesn't mean that much to me, but it's one of those issues that, even though I had the Wyandotte Nation chief [Chief Leaford Bearskin] write this letter saying, "He's one of us even though--," I didn't want to use it because I didn't even want to get into that politic thing. Plus, there's something else, and I've gotten even stronger about this later. I'm opposed to competition, artists against artists. I just don't think it's a healthy thing. It's done some good. 44:00Competitions can do some good, but they do a lot of damage, too, because only one person wins and there's a lot of those who don't. There are those who collect awards, and they collect them like scalps. They'll cover their walls with their blue ribbons, and I think, "Every one of those ribbons could've gone to somebody like me back in '84 when I needed that." I needed that little spark. That was really--since then I don't really enter competitions. I just don't feel right about it. I was so happy when I was down in New Zealand and was down there with a Maori group.

They invited me down. Actually, I've been down there twice now. I noticed that they don't do competitions in their art shows at all. They think that would be crazy. "Why would you do that? Why would you pit artists against each other? We're here to lift up the young. We're up here to--everybody together here on this! We're all Maori." I thought, "Wow, we're missing something here because 45:00we're caught in that stuff." It's a big issue. I know some people feel strong the other way, so I won't go into it, (Laughs) but it's something that's important to me because I have never made pieces to compete. If anything, I'm competing with myself because when I finish a piece, immediately it takes me to a place where I go, "Next time, I'm going to try this," or, "Next time I'm going to vary it that way." Very few pieces I've done that I go, "That's it. I'm done. I think I can quit now. I'm done." (Laughs)

Little Thunder: Hand-coiled pottery's already labor intensive, but then there's your particular style. That's got to be so time consuming. How did you know how to price your work? How did you meet that gallery demand?

Smith: That's a good question. It is. I mean, when we got that request from that first guy who said, "I want to buy your work; I want to represent you," I go, "Can I do that for a living? Are you kidding? Rolling those tiny little spaghetti noodles and flattening them? I don't know if I'd enjoy it anymore." But after a while, it becomes a rhythm like knitting or like crocheting. You just got to do it. Next thing you know, it's lunchtime. Then do it for another four hours, and it's dinner. You start a pot. If you're going to make a large piece, you start it on Monday, and by Friday it'll be done, or Saturday.

Little Thunder: So you can do about one or two a week?

Smith: When this happened I still had that really strong work ethic, so yeah, I took it as a serious job. Eight o'clock to twelve o'clock, I'm going to be in 47:00the studio rolling coils. I'd break for two hours, do whatever I want, then I'd go back at it hard until six. That was it. That was what I did. I kept that pretty rigid. I was really tough on myself about those things. If I cheated, I worked extra hard on another day. Pricing things has always been tough. It's something we work with a gallery about. We've seen how some people can overprice things, and then it becomes a problem. Then we've seen underpricing, too. I don't want to underprice people, but it's tough. Yeah, it really is. You almost have to decide--I stay out of it, personally. I let my wife do it all! I have no idea what things go for anymore. She'll tell me. "You got to be kidding. You're selling it for that?" She goes, "Yeah, you didn't know that? Yeah." "No, wow, I had no idea."

Little Thunder: So that's kind of her role in the business.

Smith: It is, yeah. She works with the gallery on that. I only get into Santa Fe once a year during the show. Right before Indian Market, they always have a show. It's usually on that morning. Blue Rain Gallery will have a show that morning, ten o'clock. We've been doing that for so long now it's almost kind of standard.

Little Thunder: Several artists have talked about, "Oh, Richard always has sold-out shows." (Laughter)

Smith: It's amazing. It is like magic. It is. There's something about it, but, see, it's not just the pottery. People come into Santa Fe. They come to Santa Fe, and they have a Santa Fe experience. They're taking home not only a piece of art, but they've had this experience in Santa Fe. I think the gallery has learned that, too. It's not like you can take the gallery and bring it to San Francisco and set it up and try to sell. Sometimes that works, but it doesn't work as well because people, they like to come to Santa Fe, and they like the 49:00experience. They save up for it. It's the whole experience. When they bring a piece home, it's not something that, "Oh, yeah, the gallery down the road has them now." "What? You got to be kidding! They brought them here?" "No, you have to go to Santa Fe to get these." There's something kind of magical about it all, and people kind of get hyped up, the show. It's kind of funny, but people love it. They love the whole thing. They love this, and it's true. Yeah, they do go pretty well. It's nice.

Little Thunder: This ancient pueblo pottery sort of launches you into this textured technique, but the Wyandottes also have a pottery tradition?

Smith: Yeah.

Little Thunder: Have you explored that?

Smith: Oh, yeah, and this is important because when I started I had no idea. I had no idea what the Wyandotte pottery, what it looked like back in the 1600s, 50:001500s. I really didn't even have much of a connection to that history. All I knew was they came from Ohio. In Ohio everybody was using copper and brass kettles. They just weren't making pottery. I think I probably told people, "Wyandottes didn't have a pottery tradition," but they did at one time. Up in Ontario, the homelands--when we think of the homelands, we think of Ontario all the way up to the Georgian Bay. The Wyandotte, what they call Huron, those are my ancestors. The pottery method and techniques there--what is interesting about this to me, that the Pueblo and the longhouse people are so close in a lot of ways, even though they're a whole different kind of a living area and everything.

They're founded on villages, village life, matriarchal systems, the seasons are 51:00so important because of planting corn and bean and squash, those things that are so important for life sustaining, what we call life-sustainers. There's a cyclical thing of seasonal ceremonies. There's the village life, all this stuff. A lot of that was lost once they left the homelands. They were forced out of the homelands, and ended up down in Michigan and in Ohio and then eventually, of course, Kansas. I started studying that. Once I started finding out what the pottery tradition was, I started looking into that. I started doing some more reproductions. Did a few of those. Once I got the feel for it, "Okay, I'm going to start doing my corrugated." I started corrugating some of my old Wyandotte 52:00designs and shapes, so it's a combination now. It's like I'm combining Southwest and Northeast.

Little Thunder: Because they did a lot of incising of designs?

Smith: Yes, a lot of incising. Occasionally you'll see a place--looking at sherds, you'll see where they put on little coils and they'd smooth them and that, but there were more added. It was additives and not actually building with these tiny coils. I've been mixing these things, and it's kind of coming up with its own hybrid, which is fun. It's really fun.

Little Thunder: When and why did you decide to move to Wyandotte?

Smith: I had started back in early ʼ80s writing to Wyandotte Nation to see what language was available, what's there. They'd send me a list of words. "Here's a 53:00few words," twenty words, twenty sentences. To me, it was like a treasure. I met this historian, Charles Aubrey Buser, who was an elder at that time, an older guy, white guy, but somehow he got into Wyandotte stuff. He lives out in Maryland at the time. He really got into it. There's always somebody out there, and he did. He was studying up on it. He was going to museums. He was investigating. I met him, started talking to him, and he started sending me some recordings, Wyandotte recordings that were done in 1911. That just blew me away because it was like touching the ancestors. It was like having them reach you with a voice coming through.

You're listening to these voices, people that were born in Ohio as free Wyandotte people that were not forced in Ohio. They chose to live in Ohio. 54:00That's where they were born, and they're singing their songs. They're singing those traditional songs. That's what really started sparking it. We were living in Navajo land. Yeah, I was picking up Navajo, just enough to make me dangerous, (Laughter) make people think I knew Navajo but I don't know that much. I was like, "Whoa, what about my own language? What about my own stuff?" So I started really investigating that, and that's where I started uncovering some of these things. I started writing to the tribe, a lot of letters back and forth. Then I started making trips out here and did a pottery class or two.

I thought, "Wow, there seems to be some interest." There wasn't as much interest as I thought there would be, but what it did do is it brought me in contact with 55:00some of the people who are traditionalists in this area. When I brought in--I volunteered. "I'm going to be here two weeks. We're going to do clay, and we're going to do pottery in the old Wyandotte techniques." I wasn't going to teach the corrugated; that's Southwest stuff. Pueblo people should be teaching that, not me. I felt like I'm going to teach our own stuff. We had Seneca-Cayugas there. We had Quapaw. We've had a couple of Wyandottes show up. (Laughs) We had some Cherokee, of course. Anna Belle and Victoria [Mitchells], they came. Victoria helped me out with one. We did a workshop together which was fun. That was a lot of fun. That was hilarious.

She's a crackup, you know. We had a good time together, and we just started thinking, "Maybe, because I'm working with language, I'm making prayers--." By 56:00that time I had a lot of language material, and I was taking sentences and words out of narratives that were Wyandotte phrases. "Oh, I can use that in the sweat lodge. I can use that right there." I'd start saying that word or that sentence over and over. It had all the inflections, and it had all the little nasal marks. You knew, as close as you could know, how it was to be sounded out, and I'd start saying those. As I started saying them, they'd start singing. The songs started coming, some songs. I still have a lot of those that are sweat songs. We use them in sweat lodge here, even.

Little Thunder: You have a sweat lodge?

Smith: Yeah, yeah. There was a lot of prayer that went into this, just about being open. I fasted and fasted, and I'd sweat, and I had visions, powerful visions and dreams that were just amazing. I haven't had anything like that in a 57:00long time, but they were all telling me about the roots and about listening to the water, being like the salmon going up the current, staying in the midstream, staying against the current, fighting those currents, not ducking behind the boulders and resting too long. You have to keep this up. It's a continual struggle. Recently I was able to get a tattoo done on my arm. Some of it was done--right here with needles. Then others were done down in New Zealand, Aotearoa. The Maori did it, tapped it in, which was really great because these guys do spiritual stuff all the time. It's like, "Okay, we can do this. You tell me your story. I'll put it on your skin."

Anyway, these things started happening, and I started feeling that--. There was a group of people that started to get interested in our culture, not just about 58:00understanding it as a museum, an interest, but, "Let's wake it up! Let's get it going again. Let's see if we can revive these things." We're doing that. We're doing that now. One of the ways I started with language, I had adult classes. I've had adult classes here at the fitness center. That was great. I got to meet a lot of people that I hadn't really known. Then started working with the school, the Wyandotte public school. I went over. My wife and I'd go over and bring puppets. For seven years we'd show up every Tuesday or every Thursday, whichever day was right for everybody, and all day we'd be there with these kids. When you have these huge classrooms of kids all sitting there, the entire third grade, the entire sixth--we didn't do sixth grade.

Fifth grade was as high as we went. You had to do something where you can keep 59:00them all, so I started writing songs for kids. I didn't want to put them in European nursery rhymes. "We can come up with our own tunes. We have great music; we got our own songs." So, again, what I did, I'd make these phrases, and I'd start singing them, just the phrases. They loved it. The kids loved it. I'd make them work first. We'd sing. We'd take one of the songs apart, adjust it, say, "Okay, let's change that part of the song. Let's talk about this now--." They would do that and do that and then say, "When's the story coming?" For the last part, I thought, "Okay, it's wintertime. You haven't seen any snakes have you?" "No, haven't seen any snakes." "Okay, let's tell these--. Where were we last week?" They'd tell me, and then I'd go on because we have some of these stories that just go on and on, fox and coon stories that go back and forth, back and forth.

You can keep them going for a long time. Of course, once the snakes start coming 60:00out, they'll let you know. The kids'll, "We saw a snake!" Then all the other kids are like, "No! Shh! Don't tell him!" I said, "That's okay. I've got some of my own stories that we can tell." (Laughter) They're not those stories, but that's akin. We'd already moved here. I didn't really tell you how we got here, but it kind of slowly happened. We were doing the pottery workshops, and then we just put our name into a machine at a realtor and said, "If forty acres show up somewhere, doesn't matter if there's anything on it or not, let us know." They put us on an automatic mailer, and this place showed up. It had only been on the market for two or three days. We saw the stone house. Right away it was like, "Oh, that looks our house in Ganado," our stone house.

It's like, "Zhoop," drew me in. I said, "Let's go check it out." It was about May. It was in May. It was a beautiful time to come check it out. The house was 61:00a mess. It was a mess. Oh, the termites had really worked on it. My wife was like, "Uh." All she could see was the house, and I'm looking at the property. (Laughter) When they took us down to the spring down there across the creek, went down to the spring, and I went up on top, up on top of the bluff up here. I came back down the spring along those bluffs, those limestone bluffs, it's like, "This is it. This is it, Carol. This is it." She was not convinced. It took a long, long time. It probably took her two or three years. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: We're going to talk about your process and techniques a little more, but before we do, a question about how you came to be involved in that trip to New Zealand and how you got involved with Maori, culturally.

Smith: Yeah, that was incredible. You want to talk about that now?

Little Thunder: Yeah, how did that happen?

Smith: It's one of these connection things. It was wonderful. Al Qoyawayma was a Hopi potter. He's been going down to New Zealand. He's been invited down for years. He goes down, went regularly. Well, his wife was pretty ill. He just couldn't make it one year, so he called me up. He goes, "Would you be interested in a trip to New Zealand?" I said, "Tell me about it." He said, "You'd be working with Maori people for as long as you want to stay down there, I guess. We're going to have a show down in--." Can't think of the town right now, North Island? I hate it when that happens, I can't remember things. It'll come. He says, "Are you interested? If you are, I'll let you start talking with some of 63:00the Maori people who are setting this up. It's going to be a Maori market." It's like they do in Santa Fe; it's a Maori market, no competitions. He didn't tell me--I didn't know anything about that.

I said, "Yeah, that sounds great!" There's a group of potters down there. They call themselves muddies, and they have their own organization like your 501[(c)] status. They can apply for grants. They have their dues and whatnot. They'd bring an artist down for a while. I got to go! I was chosen that way through Al. Al let me know about it, and if it hadn't been for him, it would've never happened. We hit it off. I was down there for three weeks. I'll tell you what, it's so amazing. When you're down there and you're among the Maori people and they're telling you the history of their island, I was just amazed because we'd 64:00be driving along, and they'd say, "See that mountain there? There was a battle that happened there. This chief, he did this, and he went over to the edge, and he fell off there--." It's like the whole island, the stories are everywhere on that island.

When you see the women with their chins tattooed, traditionally those are the ones that can recite their ancestry back to their first arrivals eight hundred years ago. Then got to visit some immersion schools. Oh, my gosh, that was incredible. I brought my puppets, too, so it was neat. I got to tell a story. Of course, I had to do it in English. They allowed for that because I was a visiting artist, but I got to tell Wyandotte stories down there at immersion school. The little guys, the little kids, they met you outside, and they did their haka. There was a little guy there, bare-chested guy, little kindergartener out there. (Imitates haka grunting sounds) It was so cool! 65:00Brought in. They would sing the welcoming song and be welcomed in. It was a wonderful experience. I made connections down there that are still there. Last year I was there again. Last year I went with a group of all indigenous people from all over.

We had a lot of islanders. There were Samoans and Hawaiian and some from Australia, aborigine from there. There were Northwest Coast carvers. There were some Iroquoian people, which was great because we all sang similar songs and we could do things together, do an adowa or something, sing those things together. It was for two weeks and working together under a big tent, artists working together for two weeks, and with food that was incredible! A big cafeteria right at a marae. You're in a tribal area. The people are taking care of you, and they 66:00welcomed us in. They gave us the formal ceremony. We brought in a canoe and actually walked this waka, big waka. We walked it up onto the marae, singing. We had people singing with us, doing the welcoming, the responses, in the marae itself. They were singing there outside of their building and singing those chants and welcoming us so it came together. When we went inside there's a special--they stand in line, and you go past them, and you touch their heads--.

Once you're there, you're a part of it. You're a part of them now. It's wonderful. It was wonderful. There's a whole group of clay people, woodcarvers, painters, printmakers, jewelers. Denise Wallace was there with her jewelry. It 67:00was amazing. It was just so amazing. Everybody's on fire because they're all interested in the same thing. It's all about retaining culture and trying to bring back, awaken it. Whatever's sleeping, try to wake it up, reclaim it, and allow it to infuse your work. Let it come in, not like you're forcing it but just let it come in. Yeah, when you're around a bunch of Maori, then you get an airplane full of pakeha, the white people, all of a sudden it's like the temperature in the room kind of goes, "Whoosh." Gets cold, being around all that warmth. (Laughter). Mana, they call it mana, all that wonderful Maori mana.

Little Thunder: Sounds wonderful. Talking about your process and techniques a bit more, you worked with hand-dug clay? Is that right? Is that what you work with?

Smith: Yeah.

Little Thunder: Do you get it all from here, or are you getting it from other 68:00sources, as well?

Smith: Near the Vinita area. I won't go into specifics, but basically anything under Vinita all the way up to the Kansas border. All you got to do is dig down there, and you hit this yellowish, greenish, grayish clay, and there it is. It's just everywhere. Wherever there's shale, that's a good place to look. Where people are digging ponds, you'll notice a sort of yellowish kind of color. That's that clay. I'll tell you, it is the best clay I have ever worked. It's better than anything.

Little Thunder: And, again, you don't have to add, really, too much to it.

Smith: I do add some temper to it, yeah. I add crushed flint to it. You don't have to. Anna Belle never really added anything to hers. She didn't work really big, Anna Belle Mitchell. I don't think she added anything at all. You can get away with it, but I like it just because it keeps the shrinkage down a little bit to add something. But it's so nice. It takes a lot of different 69:00temperatures. The Arizona clay is very temperamental. Boy, you could build really thin and tall, but they were temperamental. They had gypsum crystals in them. That gypsum, once it's fired it turns to plaster. If it swells in the humidity, it'll make these little pits, so you know where the Arizona clay is. You see my pots in the old times, and you see the little white specks. It's the little markers. That's this Arizona clay.

Little Thunder: You use clay slips, but you also have other techniques for creating color.

Smith: Yeah, I use Mason stains to mix with the clays. Basically the most simple thing I do is if I get a Mason stain and a clay slip, they all go through a 200-mesh screen so that I can brush them on. There won't be any grittiness at all, but I start everything with half and half. I like that: half and half. Half 70:00stain and half slip. Let's say, to make a green or something like that, I'll use a forest green Mason stain, which is basically a bunch of minerals that are all ground together, and then very fine clay, half of that dry form, and mix them together. Now, if I want those shades to go to black, then I'll make a black, and I do all the shades in between. I'll have the green going all the way to black by changing. I use a gram scale for that. I may have eight different shades in between, and that'll give me--. If I run out of one, I know exactly how to replace that.

Little Thunder: You just get the most amazing, as they say, trompe l'œil effects from combining form and texturing. I'm wondering when you see a form, do 71:00you already know how you want to texture it, when you're thinking about a form, or do you discover that as you work? Do they come together, form and texture?

Smith: Of course, a lot of the texturing is done by the coil itself. By leaving those little coils showing, you get that. All the horizontal lines are kind of put in just by the coils overlapping. If I'm going to use textures, then I, of course, have to get to the clay while it's still damp. When I put a design in, in Arizona and New Mexico, I had to allow the--the design had to grow with the pot because it's so dry there. It just would dry. The piece could be dry all the way there, and it's still wet on top for a pot that size. Here, this has been great because actually the humidity really works in the favor in the clay because I can actually create a whole piece and then go back and put the design 72:00in. It's still damp enough. It's firm enough that it holds itself, but it still has enough dampness that, with tools, you can indent it and scratch lines and put a pattern in.

Little Thunder: Looking at some of your pots, you know, you think about, like, a shell or feathers or a corn husk or a gourd. Are you striving to evoke associations with other natural objects in your pots, or is that just something that happens accidently in a way?

Smith: I may happen kind of accidently, also, the fact that I do a lot of work with wood. I work with wood. I work with leather. Surface will sometimes be similar in whatever I do and there's a--. If there's something that pleases me, it's something that I get the same result from leather or wood, so that could 73:00be. I think it's not so much like I'm imitating another material. Maybe it's the aesthetic. I guess it's just an aesthetic that I'm drawn to. Like, very glossy surfaces I don't do that often because, to me, it doesn't work with my pieces as well. I do like them smooth. I like things that have a little bit of a shine to them. Sometimes I'll be brushing, brushing it with a brush to get a little bit of a sheen so that when it's fired, there's something that catches the light, but then some surfaces will be totally matte. Then maybe the rim will have a little bit of a sheen to it, but more like a leather, a shiny leather. Maybe it is. Maybe it's more of an aesthetic thing.

Little Thunder: Speaking of the wood, you've made some very polished-looking stands for your pottery or pottery as plates, but then you've also been 74:00experimenting with driftwood pieces as holders.

Smith: Yeah, some pieces seem to almost want something more sterile, something that doesn't draw itself attention whereas other pieces are very organic. They look like something that's kind of coming up out of the ground in the springtime, something you'd find out there among the May apples, kind of coming up through the leaves. It does seem like roots. I walk the creeks. This is a great time of year to go hike the creeks, especially Sycamore Creek. The cottonmouths are still a little slow. You can see them on the bank sometimes, but it's warm now. You don't want to be in the water when they start getting a little more feisty. I've been out there wearing waders. I walk down the creeks and the thing is, I like the same places the cottonmouths like, too, because 75:00they like those root balls that are hanging there on the edges. They like to get up there. It's kind of like fighting for a root. Sometimes I'll see a certain root, and it's like, "Okay, I'm going to have to come later on that one. There's a guy on that one." Boy, those things are ugly, those big olʽ heads on them.

There's something about roots. I think it has a lot to do with all the stuff, this cultural stuff, because it's underground. Now it's exposed. The creek, when it floods here--and it hasn't flooded in a couple years, but when it does, the creek changes. It's like going through a new creek, and it's really neat. I love going through a new creek. Our old creek down here will all of a sudden become new, new rocks, new stuff, atlatl points if you're lucky, or some flaking tools, and things that just show up. But the roots, they're exposed, and then you get to see what's going on underneath, things that are wrapped around rocks and 76:00stones. I love it when roots go apart and then they come back together again. They make these--it's like where is the sap flowing? It looks like it's going to go around and around. (Laughter) So, yeah, those are pieces that I like to integrate into my work, handles or--.

Another inspiration for me for those things have been the whole discipline of basket making, like Japanese basketry which is a whole art in itself. The masters, these guys have done these for generations, and the skill level is just unbelievable. They're splitting their cane and everything to the finest degree. I respect that. I really respect that craftsmanship when I see that. I probably end up having more respect for craftsmen in that intense follow-through and developing of skills than I do when I think of just modern art. I connect more 77:00with it, not to say that one's more valid than the other, but I connect more with the craftsmen and the craft and the skill level. When I was down in New Zealand, too, that's the same thing. When I was with the Maori, watching the weavers, watching them work that flax. "Oh, I got to do that! I got to try that. Can I take some of that? I want to try that. How do you split those? Let me see that! Can I try?" I had to do it. I had to get in there. Just hanging out with the ladies, the women, hanging out with these old ladies was just a treat. I love it.

Little Thunder: In terms of your incised designs, those take a lot of drafting skills. I'm wondering do you spend much time drawing, or do you sketch your designs beforehand?

Smith: I do like to do a little rough sketch to get started. I don't put 78:00everything down that I'll do on the plate. Otherwise, it's--. It's kind of like making a decal or something. When I have a big plate that I'm working on and I'm going to do an etching or something on it, it's a challenge. The hardest part is starting because you have this huge surface and you have an idea of how you want it to be but you have to start. You can draw very lightly with a charcoal, but you don't want to push too deeply because if you do, you disturb the surface that you've slipped. It's like you're drawing--feathery thing, then you have to dig in and start scratching it off. I like it. I like the kind of control I've got when I started doing that scratching into the black slip and scratching it away. It's almost like doing a block cut or something. Yeah, it's almost like that.

Little Thunder: What is your creative process, beginning with how you get your ideas? (Laughter)

Smith: That's a good one. I think a couple of things. First of all, Carol will come up and say, "We need a pot." (Laughter) I'm like, "Okay, yeah, I've been working in the garden a little too much here. I got too much going over there. It's time to make a pot." So I go in there, and I say, "What am I going to do? All right, there was a pot I was working on, and I took it this direction, but I'd like to try something else with it. I'd like to try taking it in a different direction." It's like working on a tree. When I do a show, I want to have something in the show that represents all the branches. It's like all these branches. People don't know that, so it looks like, "Boy, he's jumping from this 80:00to that." All these branches are growing and evolving over time, but at a show it'll be one of those, and one of those, and one of those, and one of those. Of course, sometimes a new branch, which is some of the etching stuff which I've been doing, a new branch is growing here, and that'll be something new for the show.

There's a lot of evolving going on. Nothing just happens. When I first started, I was looking only at the old stuff. I was doing the reproduction, almost like a reproduction of an ancient pot, but I couldn't do that for very long. I started to say, "I'm going to put a little color in here." At first it was like, "Okay a little bit of iron oxide, mix it with a little clay, fill that part in--." Then it was like, "Maybe I can put two colors in." Then I started adding a little more. Next thing, I'm three, and then it's infinite now. It's like they could go forever. It was real important for me to start from the root, the root of the 81:00ancient ones. The same with the Wyandotte stuff. Now when I'm working with the Shawnee, we're doing that, too. We're going back to that ancient roots first. Get your feel back to where the ancestors were when they were first making these pieces, before those trade kettles came along and everybody said, "I'm not doing this anymore! Get me a brass trade kettle!"

Little Thunder: And you just mentioned because you're working with the Shawnee tribe on a pottery workshop or something?

Smith: Yeah, yeah. It's kind of in the birthing process. It's still very young, but it's exciting. People are real excited about it, too.

Little Thunder: What is your creative routine? It might be that you don't have a rigid one, but what is the routine of creativity?

Smith: I wake up in the morning, usually take a walk, walk through the woods. If 82:00it's summer, I do have to stick closer to the paths because of all the ticks in the woods. I have to say, "Okay, the woods are alone until the cool weather comes back." Part of it starts that way, starts with that morning, listening to all the sounds around, watching the plants, looking for things I hadn't noticed before. I found a sugar maple on our property. I didn't know there was a sugar maple here, and I've been here ten years. I've occasionally found these little tiny maples, but there's a sugar maple here. The other year I found a pear tree. I mean, big pears, not the little Bradford pear. I'm kind of doing that, too. We have all this property here, and it's like an exploration and taking care of it. I spend a couple hours in the morning taking care of it.

There's a bunch of little trees that are started on the top forty on the eastern side. It's all from a field that's overgrown, and I'm happy about that. There's 83:00no reason it should've been cleared. It was all trees and nice in there, so all those trees are coming back. Now I can actually walk under them, which I couldn't do when we first moved here. It was just a tangled mess, wild hogs up there bedding down and everything, but now you can actually walk under those trees. All winter I go up there with a saw. That's part of my morning routine. I have a little handsaw in the back of my pocket, trimming up things and deciding if I keep that grapevine or take that one down. "No, that one's killing the trees. I'm going to take that one." Then when I come in, another cup of coffee, and I'm out to the studio--or maybe on Facebook a little bit. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: So you do use social media a little bit to help?

Smith: Yeah, that's really--I don't have a big social life, you know. (Laughter) I'm deprived. I deprive myself intentionally a lot. When we do get together, 84:00it's usually we're having a social dance or something where it's, "Okay, I've got to do this. This is important."

Little Thunder: What was a fork-in-the-road moment for you when you could've gone one way but you chose to go another?

Smith: Wow, that's a big question. In artwork or--. Well, I can see the fork being partly where I was working on the potter's wheel a lot, and all of a sudden I started hand-building with native clays. I thought, "This is nice. I can do this," whereas before, I--. When you're in school, you're young, you're arrogant, you want to be the bigshot. You want to be the guy who's, "I'm better 85:00than those guys. I'm better than those seniors. I'm a junior, and I'm better than them." You may not actually say that, but you think that stuff. "I'm not going to do something I'm not good at. I don't want to do hand-building." In a way, that chance to be away from all that scene, that academic thing, and the whole ceramic studio, and you're alone, all you've got are kids to teach, and you got pottery sherds out there in the desert to look at, and you've got kids that are interested in learning, and no tools, fifty dollars for the year for your supplies, that changed a lot of things. That set me on a whole different course. For firing, it's, "What do I do?" I look around. "Well, we got some cinderblock. I could pile them up here, put dirt in them." You start improvising. I think that was a big turning point there.

Little Thunder: What was one of the high points? You might've mentioned it 86:00before, but what would be one you haven't thought of yet?

Smith: In the artwork, art world? There's a particular piece that I finished just recently that was a high point. It was almost at that point where I almost got very close to saying, "I did it. I'm done. I can go now. I'm happy. I think I've reached--this is what I wanted to do. Now if I do anymore, I'm just going to be reproducing that one or I'm going to be doing more of those. I feel like I've got everything in there. I've got my ancestry. I've got my own originality in there, embedded. I've got a sense of floral designs against a black buckskin, but it's that design that's on there, the elements. Each panel has its own. Every flower represents that tree that's in the sky world where every flower was 87:00different." That's where you see that, in a lot of Iroquoian work. All the flowers are different. It's like, "I think I've done it! What do you do now?"

It was a good feeling, but it was also, "I don't know if I can beat that. I don't know!" You'll see pictures of that one, one of those. Felt pretty good about that. I think also, I think a lot. I'm sixty. I'll be turning sixty this year, so I think a lot about what I'm leaving behind. It's not a morbid thing. It's just you can only be here so long and then you got to move over and let other people have a chance. I started thinking a lot more seriously about, "What are you going to spend your time doing?" I want to be able to--I'm a speaker in our longhouse. I'm going to learn those speeches really well. I want to be able to say them fluidly, but I also want to give them--I don't want to just blah, 88:00blah, blah, blah, like a Latin prayer or something. I want to give it some real character when I speak. I want those sounds to be perfect. Those things are important.

I'm still learning Wyandotte songs. There's still some songs I don't know yet. I have to transcribe them. I listen to those old cylinders. I put on the headphones and really listen so carefully. On the computer, I put a Word document up, and I'll write what I think I hear. Then I'll play it back again. "That's not that. That's this," and so I change it. Go over and over and over. When you first hear a song, it's kind of like nonsense. Then you find the pattern in there. "Oh, there's a pattern. Here's the pattern. Okay, I got it. Got it. Now I need to learn to sing it." I've been doing that with songs, some of our songs. There's a Wyandotte woman's dance that we start, even before our 89:00ceremonies start. The person [Smith Nichols] in 1911 who sang this one for Marius Barbeau said, "This is a really old song. This is the oldest song I know."

In 1911, he's an old guy. He's in his eighties, and he says, "This is a really old song." This is what we start. It's a woman's dance song. We get the women who are all the helpers to dance this one, and the men sing this one for the women, and they dance that grounds with their feet. It's like spreading the earth on the back of that turtle. We're representing that. The Earth is being made right there. The women are spreading their feet just like Sky Woman when she came down and danced that earth around on the back of the turtle. Now we're ready for ceremony. The women have done their thing, and now we're ready. Things like that are important to me. I want to get it right. I'm still actually even 90:00adding songs to those. I'll find another woman dance song. Those are things that are important. My time, I think about my time.

I'd like to be able to offer classes to people, but I also think--I don't like to sound like I'm snobby about it, but I have to really concentrate on traditional people who are traditional people who really want to revive traditions at this point. I don't like to cut off a class and say, "No white people allowed." I don't like to say that, but at the same time I think, "Yeah, but my goal is to see some of these old traditions come back." Again, it's not just to make reproductions, but it's to get them moving. Just like our language, once it wakes up again, we've got to come up with new words. We don't have a word for camera or microphone or these things. There's just so much to do, but I think about that. I think about how I spend my time.

Little Thunder: What's been one of the low points?

Smith: Oh, low points has been being misunderstood, I think, yeah, being 91:00misunderstood, people thinking, "Who's this new guy here? He's come here, and he wants to show us how to be Indian or something. We've grown up here all our life. We know what we're doing." We have some problems. There are some problems with the community here because some people don't quite understand. There's some suspicion against some of our ceremonial things, too. Because of the way some of the people have been raised, there's been a fear of some of the traditional things.

Little Thunder: Is this a church / traditional religion split?

Smith: Yeah, we've seen that quite a bit. Some of the tribal members here are very involved in their particular brands of Christianity, which make those things suspect and very likely on the dark side. It's very difficult to work 92:00with people like that because as soon as they're convinced of that or they're even suspicious of that, when you suggest them or even when you want to sing songs, it's kind of like, "Oh, you're working for the other side," or, "You're on the dark side." There's that feeling sometimes I get that people don't understand that these came up from the ground here. These are our ancient roots. These are just as real to us as the blood in our veins. There's nothing spooky about these songs. These are our traditional ways. There's a ceremony. We have the Wyandotte words for this person talking about these ceremonies. He mentions something about when the people feast together and when they dance together, the peace will come back. Peace will return.

I think about that. I think people are missing out because they tend to think of this as a competition, almost like competition, again. It's like I'm competing maybe. Yeah, it's been very discouraging at times, but I also understand that's just the way it is. It's just the way it is. If it's important enough, you have to keep going. You have to keep at it, and hopefully people will realize you're not out there to try to, you're not there to scold. You're just trying to help. You're trying to help. I think in some ways maybe I do feel like I've been given some kind of insight, like I see things in a different way, and maybe that bothers people that they think, "Well, you just think you do." (Laughs) I don't know, but because of the passion for language--. When you start using the language, when you start using the language, it starts to become a part of you.

You realize what you've lost because you're using a language that's not at all like English. It's not the same thinking process. You're beginning to use the same patterns that your ancestors used. It's like making, for the first time, starting a fire with a bow drill. These are ancient. These are so ancient, making your own arrows and bows by hand, but you're connecting by that. There's some kind of connection that happens when you pull back your own bow that you cut on your property; and the string on it is from a dogbane that grew up on the side of the hill; and you're shooting an arrow made from hazel that grows right there on the bluff; and the turkey feathers you found down there; and the point that you chipped out of a piece of flint down there. This bow might not have ever left the property. Its whole life is right here. Maybe the turkeys left. (Laughter) There's something about that. I feel a connection. There's something 95:00there. There's a connection, nothing necessarily magical or mystical about it. It's just there's something very rooted about that. Roots, again.

Little Thunder: We're going to pause a minute and take a look at your artwork.

Smith: All right. Even though this may not be one of the most beautiful, artistic accomplishments of myself, I thought it was important because this drum, (we say in Wyandotte, yadáhkwa) it's the heartbeat of our people. A water drum like this is our traditional, the drum we use for our ceremonies and for social dances. Now, this one's made of clay. A lot of the traditional drums that 96:00came from Ohio are made out of little kegs. Here they began using them out of crocks, little crocks. It's like whatever, as long as you can tie it down and make a sound. When I first came down and I noticed people at the Seneca-Cayuga longhouse using a little crock, I thought, "I can make a crock." (Laughter) Not only that, for me, I can put sand in it from the homelands. I can mix in very special sand and earth from places that are really, really, special to me.

I did that, and I made a drum, tied it down. These are stones that I found, special round stones that I use. There's six. We use six, not seven like a peyote drum. It's kind of like the turtle. It also represents the seasonal directions. Also, the skin, the deer skin, this is one I tanned, smoke-tanned 97:00buckskin. We never used a big drum. This was the only kind of drum we ever had. One of the songs, I could do a little song here to give you a little sample here. One of the things we had a lot were--we did a moccasin game. Moccasin game was something we used a lot, just for fun. Sometimes it's taken pretty seriously. (Laughter) Some people got really into the gaming back then, betted a lot. These are old songs that came from recordings from 1911 and ʼ12. (Drums and sings) Here's another one: Moccasin Game Song. (Drums and sings) Just to 99:0098:00give you a little sample.

Little Thunder: Thank you! It's wonderful.

Smith: This piece is an old Wyandotte story. Also, Iroquoians share it, too, about the woman who fell from the sky. There's versions of it, different versions of what happened, why she ended up falling from the sky. In our tradition, she fell from the sky, and she was caught by two either swans or geese. It's the same word in Wyandotte. It's yahounk.

Little Thunder: Yahounk. It sounds like the noise.

Smith: Yeah, so the yahounk caught her on the back. They talked. They saw her falling, and they rushed to catch her. This is where she's falling, and she's landing on the back of these geese here or ducks, or goose, geese, yahounk. The 100:00yahounk are catching her, and she's pregnant, and she's going to give birth. You can see on her face that she's not too worried. She's a little uncertain, but she's not really afraid. She knows things are meant to be the way they are. When she's caught there, of course, the animals have to get together and decide what are they going to do with her because they've never had a person before. All they have are water animals around. There's nothing around to really put her on, so the Great Turtle, hamęrúre>hangya>wiš, he comes, surfaces, and when he comes to the top of the water, (speaks Wyandotte)--. It goes on and on. He comes up out of the water, and the water's streaming off his back.

He says, "She can live on top of me, or you can put her on me." The geese put 101:00her on the back of hamęrúre>hangya>wiš, the Great Moss-Back Turtle. You can see and think about the water coming off the back as little rivers and little streams and creeks, and the moss becoming the plants. Now, we're a little different than the Cayuga. The Cayuga say the animals--well, this is where we all share the story. The animals noticed that when she fell, a tree came down, too, fell down through the sky. They noticed that some of that earth fell down through that hole. They thought, "That must be part of her homeland. We need that." It was all water. There was nothing, just water, so the animals all said, "Who can go down and get some of that earth?" Different animals try, of course, and eventually--. Well, you kind of go through each animal, and they all have a 102:00tragic end.

We're really not supposed to go into a lot of details about the story in this season since it's springtime and the snakes are coming out. Basically the toad is the one in our story, ketǫskwa>yęh comes up. She dies, but she has a little mouthful of mud. Because she sacrificed her life, she went right up to the Turtle, and Sky Woman took that earth and started to spread it on the back. Then she danced. That first song that was ever heard on the world below was a woman's dance song, so she danced that. It's called a Shuffle Dance. It's where the women's feet don't really leave the ground. They do the shuffle as they go around. She's spreading that earth, and when she started to spread it, that 103:00earth began to grow. Her voice would carry, and that earth would go on and on because of the sacrifice. It's kind of about that story, but this part is the first part where she's falling. Now I got to think about the next plate. (Laughter) What's going to come next?

Little Thunder: What's going to come next. That's wonderful.

Smith: But it's a challenge for me because I've really not done a lot of this drawing and stuff in a long time.

Little Thunder: There's a lot of wonderful drawing and draftsmanship in that.

Smith: Yeah, it was a real--I just love doing it. Something that was so, boy, it felt so good to do. I have to do more of them now, I know.

Little Thunder: Right, they're calling to you.

Smith: Yeah. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: Thank you very much for your time today, Richard.

Smith: Oh, sure, sure, yeah. You bet. I've enjoyed it.

------- End of interview -------