Oral history interview with Gerald Cournoyer

Little Thunder: This is Julie Pearson-Little Thunder. Today is December 10, 2018, and I'm interviewing Gerald Cournoyer for the Oklahoma Native Artist project sponsored by Oklahoma Oral History Research Program at Oklahoma State University. We're at Bacone University today, where Gerald, you've accepted a job as department chair and art faculty, starting in January. You are from Pine Ridge, South Dakota, got your MFA from the University of Oklahoma, and you're known for your colorful, richly patterned and textured paintings that communicate a sense of the spiritual. You've had a number of articles published on your work and several nice videos, and so I hope to cover some new ground today. Thank you for taking time to talk with me.

Cournoyer: You're welcome.

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

Cournoyer: I was born in Wagner, South Dakota, on the Yankton Sioux Reservation. 1:00My dad is Yankton Sioux, and my mother is Oglala Sioux. In South Dakota we register as one tribe, so I'm registered with the Oglala Sioux tribe. I grew up mostly in Marty [South Dakota]. In the summertime my parents would travel out to Pine Ridge, and I would spend summertime out there with my relatives, my cousins and grandparents, and ride horse, ride bike, run through the hills, basically take off all day on horseback, drinking pop and eating sunflower seeds and just going wherever we wanted to go on our horses. That's where I grew up, a little history.

Little Thunder: That sounds wonderful. Where were you in the sequence of brothers and sisters?

Cournoyer: I'm the youngest of fourteen.

Little Thunder: Okay! (Laughs) Wow! The youngest.

Cournoyer: Eleven boys and three girls. My dad had a family of fourteen. There was twelve boys, two girls. My mother had a family of ten, so five boys, five girls.

Little Thunder: Your folks were pretty mellowed out by the time you grew up. (Laughter) What did they do for a living?

Cournoyer: My father was a farmer. He served on tribal council. He was a schoolboard member. My mother, she started working in the dorms at St. Paul's Indian Mission. That's what it was before it became Marty Indian School. When my parents met in 1950, my dad was working for the farm project at Marty, and my 3:00mother was a clerk typist. She said she could type seventy-five words a minute on the old manual typewriter because that's what they trained for. She had several different jobs. She worked in the girls' dorm, and then she became a cook, so she worked in the cafeteria. Every summer they would go to Brookings, South Dakota State University for two weeks. They would learn how to cook the large recipes for, instead of for five people, you could make it for two hundred and fifty or three hundred people.

Little Thunder: Yeah, that's an art. What was the creative environment in your home like?

Cournoyer: It was crowded. (Laughs) I don't know if it was creative, but it was 4:00crowded. My dad was always working. My mom, it seemed like she was always working. My dad would travel. My brothers would draw things, make their own posters and hang them up. They'd make the peace sign. Another popular sign they would make was the one-finger salute. (Laughter) They would make posters like that, and they'd put them on the door or on their wall or something. That's basically what I saw at home. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: What is your first memory of seeing Native art, however you would define it?

Cournoyer: Walking around the hallway at the boarding school, you would see these posters. They were from Institute of American Indian Arts. They were from 5:00different conferences across the country, just different things showcasing different programs, social programs on the reservation. Got to see a lot of those. Different secretaries or people in the school would put them up, so that's what I saw first.

Little Thunder: Cool. What is your first memory of making art?

Cournoyer: In first grade, this teacher that we had--he didn't last very long. I think he was only there a year. We did these small, I guess it was the chalk on black paper. He wanted us to make a mask and make scary faces, so I remember trying to come up with something for that. I just remember the black paper with 6:00the chalk.

Little Thunder: Right, such a contrast. What kinds of art experiences were available there at the school, at the elementary level and maybe middle school, too?

Cournoyer: The elementary level, we had a teacher, my fourth grade teacher, Diane Lawson. She was teaching us to draw boxes and squares and triangles and circles. Then you'd put those together in sequence, and then at the end, it was supposed to be a dog kind of thing. By the time I got to middle school, we had a great and wonderful teacher, Kim Vanderheiden. She came. She really reshaped the 7:00art program, so the K-12 art program was really strong. A lot of good artists came out of that.

Little Thunder: Can you name one or two?

Cournoyer: Ward Zephier, Art Standing Cloud, Tracy Wounded Face, Clay Zephier, John Zephier. We got to see what everybody was doing, and she would put the work up around the school. One of the things that they did--Dave Ripley was another artist that was there. I remember he let some of the older students paint album covers but on a big wall. The Eagles, the one with the buffalo skull or the cow 8:00skull all painted up, somebody reproduced that. Those are the kind of things that we got to see.

Little Thunder: They motivated you.

Cournoyer: Motivated, yes.

Little Thunder: When did you start thinking of yourself as an artist?

Cournoyer: Probably high school.

Little Thunder: What were your high school art experiences?

Cournoyer: It depended on your level of interest. If you were there just to be in class, you got to do class kind of work, but if you were more serious--. I would go before school started, so I'd be up in the art room doing a little bit of painting, do a little drawing. "At lunch time," she said, "whenever you're done eating, I eat in my office, so if you want to come up here, come on up." 9:00I'd go up there and do a little bit more painting. Then after school, before practice, I would run up there for a few minutes just to try to work on something real fast, and I'd go to practice.

Little Thunder: Is this basketball practice or what?

Cournoyer: Cross country, basketball, track.

Little Thunder: Okay, athletics. I don't think we mentioned the name of this teacher in high school who was important to you.

Cournoyer: Kim Vanderheiden.

Little Thunder: Oh, that was Kim, okay, at the high school level, cool. That's also when you sort of started thinking about yourself as an artist. Did you have any ambitions for your artwork yet at that point?

Cournoyer: Not really. I wasn't thinking I could do this as a career. I just thought this was something that was interesting. I didn't have any aspirations 10:00beyond high school. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: When did you sell your first piece of art?

Cournoyer: That was in high school. I sold it to the Princess Pale Moon Foundation out of Washington, DC. (Laughs) You know who I'm talking about?

Little Thunder: Yes. (Laughs)

Cournoyer: I sold that painting for 250. It was a buffalo painting I saw. Drew it out and painted it.

Little Thunder: Pretty exciting, though, to sell.

Cournoyer: Yeah, it was. That was a million dollars back then. (Laughs)

Little Thunder: Yes, yes, it had a good price like that, not twenty-five dollars but 250! What happened after high school?

Cournoyer: I left Marty Indian School, and I went to Todd County my senior year. So many teachers and the principal left, and the whole entire feeling of the school--. My parents were--my dad was no longer on the school board. My mother was still working at the kitchen. My dad and mom said, "We think there's a better school for you," so I went to the Rosebud Reservation. That's where I finished high school. I was in the art program there just doing small things. We had a small press. I took pictures for the yearbook, so I was active there. Just a little bit of everything, a little print making, little things like that. We made t-shirts, I think, one time. Before I got out of high school, I joined the 12:00Marine Corps. I didn't know anything about getting into college. The guidance counselor came in one day and said, "Who wants to take the SAT test?" I didn't know what that was or what it meant, but everybody was leaving, and you had to pay seventy-five dollars. I thought, "Well, I don't have seventy-five dollars, so I'm not going to take it." I joined the Marine Corps to get money for college, and after college I went to Black Hills State. I was going to be a physical education teacher, I thought. I can roll the basketballs out, take attendance, sit in the bleachers.

Little Thunder: You played all those sports.

Cournoyer: I played all the sports, so I could blow the whistle and coach, wear 13:00sweats the rest of my life. (Laughter) That would be living the dream, right there. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: Just to go back to your Marine service quickly, was it four years? Were you in this country the whole time, or did you get a chance to travel?

Cournoyer: No, I got to travel. My first duty station was Guam, so I went over to Guam for almost a year and a half. The highest point on Guam, you can get all the way up there, and you can look all the way around, and there's nothing but water. At the widest point, the island is four miles wide. That's at the widest point.

Little Thunder: Your first exposure to the sea, probably, like that.

Cournoyer: Yeah. It's thirty-three miles long, but you don't get to use all thirty-three miles. Most of the island that they use is within--I think we got 14:00to travel the whole, entire island, stopping and getting something to eat and drink, was four hours.

Little Thunder: So no chance to look at some different kinds of art there, but did you do any art while you were in the Marines?

Cournoyer: I just drew, drew fast pictures of people. They thought it resembled them; that's what they thought. "Wow, that resembles me!"

Little Thunder: So a few portraits.

Cournoyer: A few quick portraits, yeah.

Little Thunder: So you did go ahead and go to Black Hills State College. Is that was you said?

Cournoyer: Yes. I was at Black Hills State and--.

Little Thunder: Just taking exclusively phys ed stuff?

Cournoyer: I became a lifeguard, I guess, was what I got out of all my classes. I was taking classes in Weightlifting for Life and tennis. I think I took a basketball class. Tennis was kind of fun. We got to get out there and--all I remember is this young lady would get up there, and she's bouncing up and down. The ball comes over the net, and she hits it over the fence. We're just standing over like, "Wow, she's knocking them out of the park today." Then we have to go get all the balls. (Laughter) That's when I took a drawing class because I needed an elective, and that's what it was, an elective. I took a drawing class, and that's where I thought, "Could I go into art? Can I change?" I took classes 16:00there, and then I left Black Hills State. I went and worked at St. Joseph's Indian School in the meantime before I got into the Institute of American Indian Arts.

Little Thunder: Had you always heard about that? Were you well familiar with their program?

Cournoyer: Yes, I saw all of the posters out there. I never really asked, and I never really thought that I could go all the way down there, live in the dorms, and just create until I actually did it. To me it was like when I first learned to swim. I could dog paddle a little bit, but it's having that confidence and then seeing my brothers and sisters swim out to the raft at North Point 17:00recreational area in Pickstown, South Dakota. They would swim out there and get on the raft and dive. There was a bunch of kids because they brought the kids on school buses from the surrounding reservation. I'm just standing there, and I see my classmates from first grade swimming out there. I'm like, "I can swim. I can do this," so I slowly made my way out there. It felt like I swam two miles, but it was about twenty-five, thirty yards, maybe. That's what it felt like, leaving the comfort of the reservation and then going down to Santa Fe, like taking a big chance, a big leap.

Little Thunder: Yeah, it's a big change. What were your first impressions after you got to Santa Fe?

Cournoyer: Everywhere I went, I just really looked at the art. I was so blown 18:00away, and I didn't know where to start, really. I didn't know anything about underpainting. I didn't know anything about having drawing skills and making sure you're using the rules of thirds, and all that kind of stuff. I was just, "These guys must be geniuses, how they're doing this." Got to see the Fritz Scholder, and I thought, "Wow, that stuff really sells." Then going into different galleries, it's all about Native American art, and then you see these non-Natives doing Native American art. They're looking at me, and they're asking where I'm from and what I'm doing, so I was telling them. This guy was doing--an eagle was coming down, going to get this rabbit, and this guy was doing a 19:00sculpture of that. Then he pulled one feather from the eagle's tail. They were asking me what tribe I was. I told him I was Oglala Sioux tribe from Pine Ridge Reservation, and they said, "That's what the artist is capturing. Do you know what this is?" I said, "Yeah, I know what that is." They said, "Can you tell us any more?" I said, "No, not going to tell you what this is about. If you're doing it, you should already know." I walked out of the gallery, but then I started to get the full picture of what it was to be like in Santa Fe.

Little Thunder: Yeah, there's a lot of cultural appropriation and opportunities, 20:00I guess, to speak out or educate.

Cournoyer: I didn't know what cultural appropriation was, but I knew that's what he was doing. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: Yeah. Who were some of the teachers that you most enjoyed at the Institute, and what kind of base did you get?

Cournoyer: I can tell you who was there, but I--.

Little Thunder: What years are we talking about? We should probably set that up, too.

Cournoyer: Okay, I got there in '93, so the fall of '93, I had Larry McNeil as my photography. Then Linda Lomahaftewa was in 2D design. Felix Vigil was teaching painting. Craig Anderson was teaching painting. Let's see. What other class did I take? I took a lot of drawing classes. Medina--what was her name? 21:00Ada Medina was my drawing instructor. Another lady, I cannot remember her name. I can see her face, but I can't remember her name. The classes I enjoyed the most were probably the 2D design with [Linda], and she became my mentor. I really went to her if I had any questions or problems or advising. My biggest thing was, "All right, I've been here a semester. I've been here a year. I'm ready to go."

Little Thunder: Okay, and you're still focused on figurative work. Everything that you're doing is real representational, right?

Cournoyer: It was very representational.

Little Thunder: Even the 2D stuff?

Cournoyer: The 2D stuff, yes, figure drawing, all of that because I saw that 22:00sort of work selling, and I thought that's the whole key to this thing is to make the sale. You've got to sell, got to sell. I was trying to do things that the buyers would look at and say, "That's what I need in my house because it talks about the Indian on the horseback or the Indian by the tipi," or whatever. That's what I was really focusing on.

Little Thunder: Did you try to get into the gallery scene yourself over there?

Cournoyer: No, I thought the gallery scene would come to me. (Laughs) Not knowing anything, I didn't know how that worked, and they weren't teaching that. I did see the Indian market, so that's where I thought, "That's where I need to be. I need to follow that. I need to be in Santa Fe Indian--." I didn't know there were more than one.

Little Thunder: Markets, Native markets, yeah.

Cournoyer: Yeah, I thought that was the only one, so, "How do I get in?" Then just to put your application in is like three hundred fifty dollars. Again, that was like ten thousand. How do I get that? They did have a little booth for fifty bucks...

Little Thunder: For the students.

Cournoyer: --for the students down at the museum, IAIA museum. I did a bunch of watercolor, and I had some frames that I found. That's where I set up. When you make a hundred fifty dollars off a little watercolor, it's like, "Wow, time to celebrate."

Little Thunder: So you did pretty well the time that you set up as a student.

Cournoyer: I made probably three hundred fifty dollars, four hundred dollars maybe. Back then, that was a lot of money for just making art.

Little Thunder: Right. So you've done the 2D work, and you're ready to leave Santa Fe. Where do you go next? What happens next?

Cournoyer: I did have a lady visit with me from the San Francisco Art Institute. I was photographing my work using a 35mm, changing my film out and all of that sort of stuff. This lady came up, and she said, "I'm recruiting for San Francisco Art Institute." I said "Okay." We visited a little bit, and we're just talking process. We're talking about where I wanted to go with my work and what was my work about, what was I thinking about, and what were my next steps, or have I thought beyond IAIA. After an hour and a half of this lady--I wasn't even 25:00supposed to talk to her. They had other people. "Since so and so's not around, I'll go find them. You can visit with Gerald." I'm just visiting with her in the small gallery, about as big as this room, maybe a little bit bigger. We're just visiting, and the class starts coming in. They're having a critique or something, so they're setting up their work. I'm trying to get out of there, but she wants to keep talking. At the end of our conversation, she gave me her card and said, "I want to offer you a full ride to San Francisco Art Institute," which I didn't take. Instead, I went to Durango, Colorado, Fort Lewis College, because that was free.

Little Thunder: Was there anybody else from the Institute going over there, or did you just happen to--.

Cournoyer: I was married to a young lady, and we split. We got divorced, but that was the reason why we went to Fort Lewis because it was closer to her home down in Santa Fe. That didn't work out. Then I went to the University of South Dakota, so now we're at 1996.

Little Thunder: So at Fort Lewis, though, in Durango, are you taking art classes again?

Cournoyer: I was. Now I wanted to be an art teacher.

Little Thunder: Okay! (Laughter)

Cournoyer: I thought, "Well, I'm not going to be a coach. I can be an art teacher and still coach." Instead of a PE teacher, I thought I could coach and teach art. Then I went to the University of South Dakota with that in mind. I get into the education department, and I'm going along. Then at some point I 27:00decide, '97, I think, I wanted to go into art. I'm doing little art shows. I did an art show in Sioux Falls, the Northern Plains Tribal Arts Market. I had a painting, had four or five paintings, didn't know what it was going to be like. I just had a table. I leaned up a couple of paintings against the table because they were larger, and then I had smaller paintings and drawings on top of the table. This guy was walking back and forth, doing this number (Gestures). He's looking at the painting, shaking his head, walking around, different angles, and he's kneeling down, looking at the painting, doing this. He came over and said, 28:00"How much do you want for this painting right here?" I said "Five hundred dollars." He said, "Well, I don't know. Five hundred dollars, that's a lot of money. I can do three fifty. I'm not coming back tomorrow. I'm doing three fifty; that's what I can do." So he walks away.

When he walked away, someone came over to me and said, "You know who that is?" "No." "Larry Piersol, he's a federal court judge here in Sioux Falls. You've got to get in his collection. What do you want for this painting?" I said, "Five hundred." "What is he offering?" "Three fifty." "Yeah, just do it." (Laughs) So I ended up selling the painting for three hundred and fifty dollars to this guy with money, of course. Then I see him about ten years later after I get my MFA. 29:00I run into him, and he said, "I saw that you're having a show here in Rapid City, so I wanted to come and check it out. It's a lot different than what you did before." I said, "Yeah, it's a lot different." He said, "That painting, I shipped it down to my summer home in Florida. I go down there, and I spend time in Florida. Wintertime I'm down there more. I changed out all the windows of my house. Early in the morning--I have the paintings right in my bedroom, in the hallway. When I leave my bedroom door open, the sun comes in and hits that painting. It's so beautiful. That's what I wake up to every day." I'm like, "Man, you couldn't do five hundred, huh?" (Laughter) I felt like he took me on that one.

Little Thunder: (Laughs) Thank you for sharing that story. It happens to a lot 30:00of artists. So you eventually get your BFA at the University of South Dakota, still kind of focusing on representational work, right?

Cournoyer: Yes. I really got caught up in a portrait series with Fritz Scholder and Malcolm Furlow, kind of, with the very colorful and very splashy. I'm really doing a lot of that. I took second place out at Red Cloud Indian Art Show, and then I won an award at the Northern Plains that year. I think that year I made five thousand dollars at Northern Plains, so I thought, "Man, I'm taking off!"

Little Thunder: I was interested to read that you also got a degree in interdisciplinary studies while you were at South Dakota. Is that right?

Cournoyer: Yes, I got a master's. Basically, I was applying to all of these MFA programs. I wanted to stay close to South Dakota. University of South Dakota does have a program, but they told me, "We never allow any of our undergraduates to come into our MFA program. It's never happened. When I was in my interdisciplinary studies, this person I graduated with, she graduated with a BFA just like I did, in painting just like I did. She's walking in and saying, "I'm the graduate assistant, and I'm getting my MFA in painting." I said, "From here?" She said, "Yes." I said, "I thought they didn't do that." She said, "No, they do that all the time."

Little Thunder: What was behind that do you think?

Cournoyer: Because I painted what I painted: figurative, Native American. I did tell the painting professor when I first got there--I painted a large five-foot-by-six-foot painting. These guys were in a purification lodge, sweat lodge. They're all sitting in there, and you can see figures in the back. They're kind of, real dark. When I painted it, I had something very particular in mind because we went to the sweat lodge that night and one of the Native American Studies professors had passed away. He had been on campus for twenty-five, thirty years and was a big part of the Native community. I didn't 33:00meet him, but I heard a lot about him. We were in the ceremony that night, and we were praying for him. There was a lot of things happening; people were emotional. When we came out, I see these two stars, shooting stars. One goes by, and a little while later while that one is still burning out, another one comes by.

That's what I painted, and the professor was talking about something way out of left field. "This is a Native American ceremony," and going on and on. He said, "That's what you painted, right?" I said, "No." A few of my classmates were like, "Hey, wow, new guy stuck up for himself. Go, new guy!" They didn't know who I was. Years later we talked about it. They were saying, "Yeah, nobody ever did that to that guy before." That kind of started the bad blood there, that I didn't agree with his interpretation of anything Native American. He was trying 34:00to have me do storyboards and all this other stuff, and talking about these legends and different things. I said, "That's, really, that's not what I'm doing." He didn't like that, so each time I did something, he didn't like it.

Little Thunder: You found your way to University of Oklahoma, at some point, in their MFA program, right? How did that happen?

Cournoyer: I met a girl that I married, so now she's my wife. We were working in the same program. She was going to be working in Pine Ridge, which she did, and I was going to take a job in Rosebud. Things fell through; I didn't take the 35:00job. A couple months later I ended up at Porcupine Year Round School. I was working security, doing the cameras, and in-school suspension, and then they would pull me in to teach art classes. There I was, doing things with the kids. We were starting to do a little bit of painting. We were starting to do a little bit more than just a worksheet. I think around Thanksgiving, just this first grade class, I brought them in, and we made those little vests out of paper sacks. That was something I did when I was a kid, so that's what we did. We made 36:00those little vests and designed them and cut the fringe. Everybody was, "Wow, that's cool."

Little Thunder: They probably enjoyed that.

Cournoyer: Yeah. Then working in-school suspension, that's when I realized that a lot of our Indian children could not read. We had these real tough guys that were always in trouble, the thlatay boys. Thlatay means you're kind of naughty. These kids would come in, and they would sit next to me because they would be bothering other students that were in there. I said, "You're going to sit next to me, and I want you to read to me. Bring your books out." Seventh and eighth grade boys bring out this third grade book, and they were reading really slow. I would listen to them, and we'd go through the whole book. They would get stuck on a word, and I'd say, "Sound it out." They'd sound out words. When I was 37:00sitting there, I thought, "Man, this is a problem," probably an epidemic that a lot of our kids that are acting out are doing so out of frustration because they can't read. If you're reading at a second or a third grade level and you're in seventh grade, eighth grade, you can't possibly read and understand the simple science experiment in class. We would sit and read. Then I would put paper on the table, and I'd put pencils and colored pencils out.

After reading for a while, they would draw, and then I'd have to go get their meals. Every day those kids would be--some days they'd try to wrestle. Right outside the door is the principal's office. She'd come over and say, "What are 38:00you guys doing?" I'm the only one in here, so I have to go get the lunch and come back, and in the meantime these kids are wrestling. They could have gave me some kind of cart or something to put all the meals on. I'm making several trips, the kids are wrestling, and people are looking at me like, "Hey, you better take care of that." "None of you could have came in here and said, 'All right, kids, you're not wrestling on the floor'?" I knew I wasn't going to do that job forever, and my wife said, "Let's move down to Norman. I want to get a master's in educational administration, and then you can get into the art program." I said, "All right." We did that, and I took a year. I just took special courses, so I took two painting classes with George Hughes.

He was looking at my work. He said, "It's very figurative. I said "Yeah, not a portrait, yes." He said, "What do you want to do?" I said, "I just want to paint and make some money at it." He said, "But what do you want to say? What does your artwork--what do you want to say with this? Or is that it, just pretty pictures?" I said, "Well, I'm just trying to make money." That was kind of my thing. We laughed about it, and he said, "But you could do more. You could do more." After I got in the program, he was going through my portfolio, and he said, "Let's select these pieces. We'll get them photographed, and then we will put them in your portfolio somewhere where whenever they do reviews it'll be 40:00there. I'll pick your strongest work." We spent that year just working on all of these paintings and doing different things. He had me reading and researching, so it was interesting. Then I get in, and I wasn't too sure of what I was going to do. I needed to be doing something, so I found this door I painted on, and different things...

Little Thunder: Experimenting.

Cournoyer: --with artwork, experimenting. Different people had come in. Jim Wade came in that year. -- What I liked about his work, it was very textural, very colorful. I thought, "Man, that's really some good work there," and it was large. I liked what Jim Wade was doing. I learned to make and stretch paint 41:00using Cal-Tint or Quick Flash that you get at a paint store. You bring that back to the studio, and you take methylcellulose, (I guess it was called Rhoplex), and you mix those together. Methylcellulose is a powder. The way it was explained to me by George Bogart was you take two film containers full and you have a gallon, a gallon in a bowl. Then you take a mixer for, like, cake mixing, and you just mix that up for fifteen minutes, ten minutes. Mix it up real good so you can turn it upside down and it won't come out. I did that, and then he 42:00said, "Now just take some of that, put it in a Tupperware container. Now let's mix this paint in there." We used the Cal-Tint and a spatula, and we're mixing it up. He said, "There it is. Let's mix another coat, and another coat." That's what I was doing, and he said, "You can get some nice textures with this." We're making textures. He was down at the other end of the hall, painting, and I was in my little studio, painting. He would always come down, and he'd say, "You're the only one that's ever here. Let's see what you got."

Little Thunder: And you were getting that two-dimensional effect almost, too, with the texture on the canvas, working in depth.

Cournoyer: I was trying all these different tools. That's what some of the faculty--. "All these people come in here, and they have all these different things. They teach all these different methods, and our students think they have 43:00to do this stuff. God, I just hate that." I was listening to them complain about that.

Little Thunder: So he wasn't as appreciated by the other faculty, is what you're saying. He wasn't--.

Cournoyer: George Bogart--

Little Thunder: Yeah.

Cournoyer: --he was emeritus status, I think, and he was just down at the other end of the hall. He always had a space. When he retired, I think that was part of his retirement package. He said, "I'll retire if you give me a place to paint," so they gave him a place to paint.

Little Thunder: Were there any other Native students in the MFA program when you were there?

Cournoyer: Marwin Begaye, Matt Jarvis. Matt Jarvis was graduating; I was in the 44:00middle; Marwin started. Tony Tiger. I was trying to think if there were any others, but I think that was it.

Little Thunder: So now you kind of cut the strings to figurative work, real representational work. Have you done that completely, or are you just involved in textures and colors right now?

Cournoyer: What I'd done, I was doing all these large works because they were five foot by six foot, a lot of movement, color representation. One of my students, because I was teaching now--. After I graduated, I was teaching full-time when George Hughes left, so they needed me for that year.

Little Thunder: Oh, so you taught at OU in the program after George Hughes left, okay.

Cournoyer: One of the students was talking about her mother having a cancer. She 45:00said, "I started doing this research on color and how that heals." She was saying these colors, if you wear these colors, there's this theory. She was showing me all of these books, so I thought that was very interesting, where you could take fabric and you're putting them together to heal yourself. I thought that was really interesting because I never had come at it from that angle. What my work was about then, when George asked me, the way he put it was, "Let's enhance what you already know." No one's ever said that. No one ever said, "You have great skill. Let's enhance it." George did. He said you have to be very strong in your drawing abilities, so that's what I focused on. He said, "Okay, 46:00now let's look at what you want to paint about. All of these things you could paint about in your Native American heritage, what is the one thing that stands out to you?" I said, "Spirituality." He said, "Okay, let's expand on spirituality." We started talking about color, and that's where the color came in.

We started talking about repetition, repetition of pattern. Over and over and over and over, you see all these patterns. "What should we be learning from these patterns?" I said, "It's like anything you're doing: spiritual enlightenment." I talked about the more you sing a song when you're crying for a vision, you're hanblecha. You keep singing the same prayer song over and over 47:00and over for spiritual enlightenment. He said, "Okay, that's good. We can use that. Then what else?" We talked about different ceremonials. I have this painting. It's a big--it's a four-foot-by-five-foot painting that's all black, except there's a portion and it looks like a big, red circle. It's not so red because I use some black on a rag and I made it duller. In the center, I have yellows and oranges and reds and a little bit of white. The white part, I used that rag with a little bit of black paint, so it looks gray. I had a show in South Dakota, and I took that one with me. That's the only one that didn't make it into the show. I have all these other colorful paintings, and that one there 48:00didn't make it into the show. They had an easel, and we had a panel. I put it up behind me, and all of these Native artists were talking about the artwork. They said, "We can kind of see what you're doing in the other room, but this one behind you, that's not Native at all. It's just a big circle, kind of a target."

I was just sitting there listening and shaking my head. I said, "How many of you have ever gone into an Inipi, a sweat lodge, a purification lodge?" Everybody's raising their hand. I said, "Okay, when you pass around the pipe, the chanunpa, in the sweat lodge, or are you standing around outside?" Some inside, some outside. I said, "Is it done during the day or at night?" They all said at night. "Okay, as you're passing that pipe around and you light that pipe for 49:00someone, I said, what do you see?" Finally, somebody said, "We see that right there." I said, "Yeah, that's what you see. That's why I painted that. It took you a long time to get there, but you finally got there." Someone said, "Is that what all your paintings are about?" I said, "Yeah, it's about a ceremonial experience." Then a few people were like, "I'm going to have to go look at all the other works now," because now that gave them something more to go--. I was thinking, "That's in my artist's statement that's hanging on the wall."

Little Thunder: So they hadn't read that part.

Cournoyer: Nobody read that. They just went right in.

Little Thunder: That's so interesting. That's a great story. This kind of 50:00reminds me, too, that for a while I was wanting to talk to you about the Urban Indian Five and how thinking in terms of healing powers of color. Then your focus here is on communicating spirituality already, I think, before you got involved with them. Do you remember when you did get involved and how that conversation came about?

Cournoyer: I was invited over to Harold Larsen's house. Steve [Barse] was doing the Red Feather Gala, and he came and asked me if he could have a piece for the Red Feather. I was like, "Yeah," and I gave him a piece. I thought at least five hundred to a thousand dollars. I'd get something for the piece, and I'd get a small check. He did bring me a check for, I think it was two fifty. Brought me a 51:00check for two hundred and fifty dollars. Then he was giving out these checks for seven dollars and twelve dollars and twenty-two dollars. We were just sitting there talking, and he said, "We need to do something more with this Red Feather Gala." I said, "Why don't you put out a magazine? You work right at that clinic [Oklahoma City Indian Clinic] up there. You should put out a magazine, and you should promote it, make a little gallery space if you have space up there available. If you really thought about it, you could go into, like, the Kiowa Five. This could be a launching point." Steve was just thinking, thinking. He said, "Maybe that's something we could do." We had a long conversation, and then I tried to get Tony Tiger and Marwin. Then I got Brent Greenwood interested. 52:00Brent and I went up to the clinic and Rita [Wright-Burkhalter]--she was sitting there. Someone came in and said, "We have a couple of artists that want to visit with you." She was administration, so she said all right.

She said, "I grabbed a couple of twenties because I thought I'll buy some art today." (Laughter) She came in, and she sat down. We started talking about the idea, the idea of getting five artists together to put some artwork in the clinics. We could start with this clinic, and we could kind of ripple out. We presented that. She was like, "I thought you guys were just coming in here to sell some--." I didn't want--she was thinking she was going to buy some trinkets 53:00and beads and whatever, and we said, "No, we're beyond that." I think that's where Tony Tiger said, "I'm not going to have them think of my work in that manner, so I'm out." That was okay. We needed to have that conversation. Once we started to define what direction we wanted to go, that's when things started getting more and more--. Tom Poolaw, myself, Marwin, we got Shan involved, Kim Rodriguez, different people. People came and kind of went in that group, and that was Brett Greenwood, Tom Poolaw, myself, we got Shan who was a big supporter, and then Holly Wilson. I went and visited everybody at their place, 54:00and Holly was like, "I'm really not doing nothing right now." I said, "Well, you should come and think about joining the group." Shan was eager. She was like, "Yeah, I want to be a part of this."

Little Thunder: Shan Goshorn, who we lost.

Cournoyer: Yeah. Holly was like, "Uh, maybe, I'm not doing anything," at that point. We said, "You could do a little bit of something." She came, and she started getting into it and getting back into her own work. It was good.

Little Thunder: That kind of launched her into creating again.

Cournoyer: Yes. She said she hadn't been working seriously, but she had to do a few things here and there. This gave her and opportunity.

Little Thunder: Were the works that were on display--they're there for people to take in as they're there. Were they also for sale, or were they just there for 55:00healing purposes?

Cournoyer: They were for sale. What actually happened was the patients that were going into the mental health side, one of their assignments was just walk through the gallery and see if there's something that you can see. Just observe the art, and if there's something that sort of catches your eye or makes you think, write about it. They'd walk through with pencil and paper, and they'd be really looking at every part of the artwork so they'd start writing things down, what and why and how that made them feel. They're documenting all these things, and that's when we started talking about this art of healing, going back to that 56:00color, that theory of healing with color. That became very important.

Little Thunder: You've talked a little bit about the significance of the color red for you. I was wondering, too, how much--I'll have you share that, if you will, in the interview. I'm also wondering how much of the traditional, (I don't know if it's red, black, white, and yellow) if you use very much of that traditional Lakota symbolism of color in your work.

Cournoyer: When I use the color red, I'm referencing the blood of the people. When we're at the Sun Dance and we're giving flesh, we're offering a flesh, and 57:00with that comes the blood of the people. You're doing that; you're offering your flesh and blood for people in the community that are sick, that are having a hard time with the loss of a loved one, those sorts of things. I did my research, and a lot of cultures around the world associate red with power. Red is associated with spirituality; red is associated with all that stuff. It's all about being closer to the Creator. They talk about the red tie, the red power tie, so it has a connotation of power. When we go to get our tobacco that we use in our ceremonial pipe, the chanunpa, we go gather red willow. You peel the red 58:00off, and then there's a layer--it's an off-white layer. You peel that off, and you get down to a white layer. That's what you're using inside your pipes; that's what you put in the pipe. It's got to be dried out, and then you can cut it up a little bit so it'll come off in big pieces. You just cut that up. That's the only thing we use in the ceremonial pipe.

People talk about tobaccos and kinnikinnick and all that kind of stuff, but we just use red willow. They use willow in the making of aspirin, so it does have some medicinal purposes there. That red, when you do something, if you're praying and praying at a certain time of the month, they say a waluta. You make this big tobacco tie and tie it in a red cloth, and you would hang that up. A 59:00certain time of the month we'd make a waluta or during a ceremony you might be asked to make a waluta. Those are some of the reasons why that red is very important. When we do something, we pull out that ceremonial pipe, that catlinite, that red pipestone is the blood of the people. That goes back to another great flood legend, where this is how the blood of the people was used to make this catlinite. It was during a great flood. People were drowning. Then all the bodies kind of washed into a ravine. As the waters receded, the bodies 60:00were piling up. As the water was going down, the bodies would go back and forth and cut open, and then all of this blood was left in this ravine. Today, it's Pipestone, Minnesota, and that's where that legend comes from. It's the blood of our ancestors.

We even talk about that color red. We talk about the bones of our ancestors. We say "Grandfathers" whenever you're bringing those heated stones into the sweat lodge. Those bones are your ancestors, and you're reheating them up. You're giving them another life. As you bring them in, you're touching the blood of the people, that piece of catlinite to those bones of the ancestors, so you touch those first seven. That goes back to the ceremonial, the seven different 61:00ceremonies that we have. All of this just keeps going and going and going. The more that you get into this, the more you're thinking about, "Wow." When you offer tobacco, it makes sense when you're offering this tobacco. Before you do anything, you're offering some tobacco. Long ago, we had tobacco as a barter, a trade. If you had a handful of tobacco, you could trade for five of the best horses in the land. It was a great sacrifice. It was currency. Now people still bring you tobacco. When they do something with you, they'll bring you tobacco. Whenever you pour water at a Inipi, someone will bring you some tobacco. It's a sacrifice. When you make your [inaudible], your tobacco ties, or your 62:00[inaudible], your flags for Sun Dance, you're putting tobacco on there as a symbolic gesture. We still use that. When someone comes to you and they're going to ask you for something, they offer you some tobacco. That's when you know, "Oh, something's about to happen here." (Laughter) We still use that as kind of-- It's a binding thing.

Little Thunder: You've explained in some of your videos how important--this is the way you live and how important--. For example, you'll smudge off and smudge your paintings off, and how that's just an integral part of your painting process. Your artistic practice is really literally grounded in the spiritual, 63:00as well as seeking to convey that to people. I'm wondering what you also think about Native activism and Native art. I was just wondering about your thoughts on that.

Cournoyer: Native activism, like--.

Little Thunder: You seem to stay away from any overt political statements because your focus is on the spiritual, not what I've seen anyway. I haven't seen a lot of--.

Cournoyer: You haven't seen any angry paintings. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: At the same time, it's kind of like as a Native person you're already politically engaged, whether you want to be or not, just because of the way the history plays out. I just didn't know if you had any thoughts on that.

Cournoyer: One person can get lost in the political, always active. When I think of that, I think of Edgar [Heap of Bird]'s work because there's a lot of anger that comes with what--and it's just words. It was just words when he did that show in Minneapolis, and they destroyed a lot of his signs. But they're signs, and they're out there in the public. People took baseball bats to them or tore them down or whatever. That's not what--that's not all that he does, but that's what he's known for. His other works are more colorful, and there's a movement 65:00to them. He was telling us about it. He was snorkeling, and he saw these fish, this school of fish going by that was all these different colors and stuff. That's what really inspired him at some point in his graduate school. Then as he progressed in his career, he got spiritual with those pieces that look like a tree that go into a Y. Then he went to the sign. He's just listening for words, a word that'll stick out to him. Then he'll put that down, so he's painting with words and different colors. He's just thinking of ways to put these words together. It's like a poetry, kind of. I think that's what he's doing. The words 66:00that he chooses, they could lead one to think that he's very politically active and he's making a statement on some social whatever. That's kind of what I saw out of his work.

What I wanted to do or what I try to do in my work is to--we always talk about teaching the next generation. I was reading these applications for a grant. Some young lady in her late twenties, early thirties was talking about, "I don't know why Indian people even move to the city. How can they afford to live in Denver, or how can they afford to live out in LA and Detroit?" She's talking about all of these places where people were sent on relocation in the 1950s. (Laughs) I 67:00was thinking, "Wow, you really need to know some more about what was happening." (Laughter) I think the next generation needs to realize that there were some things that happened, and why people moved from one place to the next. It wasn't because they could afford it; it was because it was a program. A lot of their relatives are still out there. A lot of my dad's brothers were involved in relocation, so they were in and around Chicago. When I listened to different stories people talked about, they knew Indians were in the neighborhood because someone would pull out a drum and start singing. Pretty soon, there's a couple 68:00more people that joined. "Hey! I didn't know you were out here." (Laughter) From boarding school, you end up in relocation programs.

Little Thunder: In terms of passing on some knowledge to the next generations, you have taken on this challenge of being chair of the department and faculty here at Bacone beginning next semester, I understand. Can you talk a little bit about just some of the goals, I guess, of the program at this point?

Cournoyer: You're looking at the entire art department right now. (Laughter) We're starting slow with offering just a couple of courses just to get started. 69:00There is no several sections. There's just going to be one section of drawing, two sections of art fundamentals, and a painting class just to give people an idea of what's here. Then as we go forward, that gives us the summer to start defining what this program could or should be. I envision this program to be a strong sixty-hour program, an associate degree that the student can graduate with an associate and matriculate into a BFA program somewhere or maybe even 70:00change majors. The main part is to get a strong, solid foundation in art. When I left, I wanted to learn how to draw better because I felt like that was really weak. Over the years of teaching, I really got into perspective. A lot of the work that I was doing with my students was all about one-point, two-point, three-point, five-point perspective just to show that they can have success using a ruler. Once they get that confidence, then you start introducing value, and you start introducing positive/negative space. The students are starting to see where those go, how they fit together. Then we start using that rule of thirds. Then the students are like, "Wow, I can really do this." Some of them will change from, "I was going to be a history major. I took this art class, and I was like, "Wow, I really learned a lot." Then they'll change their major.

Little Thunder: Right, you win them over, and you have both those backgrounds of figurative and then this more abstract, kind of expressionistic approach. In terms of just getting into your process a little bit more, what size format do you most often work in when you're doing acrylics on canvas, or are you working in all sizes? Are you medium scale, are you working big quite a bit, or does it just depend?

Cournoyer: Wall space has, the wall space has shrunk. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: Collectors' wall spaced have shrunk.

Cournoyer: They're no longer going for large paintings. Now they want smaller paintings, I would say in the thirty-by-forty range all the way down to--. I 72:00have a couple four-inch-by-four-inch paintings.

Little Thunder: One of the videos, it was great. I was surprised to see--you were in a white lab coat, and you were painting. I thought that makes perfect sense, as close-up as you are to these huge paintings. If you paint big, do you like to do that to protect your clothes?

Cournoyer: I do. I never think about putting on one of those aprons and tying it in the back. I see all these other guys walking around like that. I bought these really nice Brooks Brothers shirts that are the polos. We were doing ink. One of the students went (gestures), and it just splattered on my shirt. I was like, "Oh, man, I could've used an apron today."

Little Thunder: "Needed my lab coat on!"

Cournoyer: Yeah, that's what I--.

Little Thunder: Another thing I really like about your process that you said in previous interviews is that there's all this intellectual effort. There's all this thinking that goes into your work. I'm wondering what comes first for you. Is it the emotion associated with a spiritual event or ceremony, or is it the thought behind it? What comes first: emotion or thought?

Cournoyer: At one point, I was just doing thumbnail sketches on the wall with a vine charcoal, and taking these patterns and putting these patterns and trying to create these intricate patterns as I was thinking. This bird pattern was a 74:00geometric pattern that I'd come across. I was like, "Wow, that's really interesting." I wanted to create this geometric bird pattern, and that would have a geometric echo. One side would reflect the other side. How do I connect these two? I'm really thinking and drawing and getting ideas, and putting more paint on using a drywall trowel. I made this great big one, pulling the paint across the canvas, and then working on four or five at the same time. I have that one, which helped me go into this one, which helped me go into the next one and the next one. When I was at OU as a grad student, I would create ten five-foot-by-six-foot paintings. Then I would be pulling on the back and stapling. I knew when to quit was when all of this area right here (shows hands) 75:00was all bleeding and raw. "Okay, I'm done. Let it heal." Then I would do ten more.

Little Thunder: Yeah, you explain that, too, that you--are you kind of working through the problem in a way until you get to this place where you feel like everything's resolved, or you're just following that impulse through all the way?

Cournoyer: I'm just following the impulse.

Little Thunder: As long as your hands hold out! That's neat because there is something about a series, right, that has a whole story and a context to it.

Cournoyer: That one idea in the series, and then you really do a lot and work a lot on this one. The next gets less work and less and less, so less becomes more.

Little Thunder: Oh, okay, that's neat. By the time you're at the end of it, you've refined it, almost like a piece of calligraphy or something. It's simplified. Do you do any commission work?

Cournoyer: Those are harder to do because someone's idea, they'll give it to you and say, "I want you to paint my brother-in-law in this painting right here, the way you did this so abstractly and looks like my brother-in-law." "I don't know what your brother-in-law looks like. How do I put your brother-in-law in there?" "I like this." We worked on an idea one time, and it was like, "Yeah, I want this, and add some of this." I was doing that and sending him photographs back and forth. Pretty soon he said, "Well, that's not what I wanted." I learned my lesson. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: I think a lot of artists feel that way. We're going to be looking at your paintings in a few minutes, too, but can you talk about--. You do acrylics, and then you do, I think you call them glass acrylics. I can't remember. It's just kind of a glossy--

Cournoyer: From glass.

Little Thunder: --from glass, okay, acrylic canvas on glass. Can you explain to us what you're talking about with that?

Cournoyer: This is what Gene Bavinger did at University of Oklahoma years ago. He took this heavy gel medium, and he put it on a glass surface and then let it dry. Then on the backside of it, you're painting. You're putting color in, and it's layer after layer. After you put a color in, you need to let it completely 78:00dry. Then you'll put some more medium over the back of that so you don't scratch or do anything to that next layer. They become these very thick paintings, but they're very shiny, shimmery. They're very flat on the front of them, but you could have a lot of things happening in your work when you do it that way.

Little Thunder: I looked at a few on your website. I don't think we have any examples today, but they have a great feeling, a mystical feeling and just some neat effects that you get with all those.

Cournoyer: That one's one of them, behind you. (Gestures)

Little Thunder: Oh, okay good! I noticed the sheen. We will get to see one. How 79:00about your signature? How do you handle that?

Cournoyer: I usually just put it on the back.

Little Thunder: You put it on the back, okay. You've kind of taken us through-- Is your creative process--how does that work? From the time you get an idea, will you get up in the middle of the night and work?

Cournoyer: Not anymore. (Laughs)

Little Thunder: Not anymore, not with this new job? (Laughter)

Cournoyer: Middle of the night, I'm still trying to catch up on sleep.

Little Thunder: Right. Once you get an idea, what happens? What's the next step?

Cournoyer: Doing thumbnail sketches, and then placing that, using the rule of thirds. As an artist, after a while you just forget about rule of thirds, and you're just doing it automatically. It goes back to my drawing skill. Teaching 80:00drawing for the last five years in DC really helped my skill.

Little Thunder: In Washington, DC, okay, because you left Oklahoma for about ten years, and then you have just come back. Five of those years you were in DC.

Cournoyer: Yes. Went back to South Dakota to teach at our tribal college, Oglala Lakota College of the Pine Ridge Reservation. Started a program there. Then just before I left, I took four students to National Portfolio Day in Denver. Out of that, one was pre-admitted to Chicago Art Institute, and one was pre-admitted to Minneapolis Art Institute. I thought that was pretty good for that small little program.

Little Thunder: Pretty proud, yes. I hope you are going to have the opportunity not only to be a great teacher to a lot of these students here at Bacone, but also to continue a lot of your painting. I'm wondering, so far as you look back on things, what's been a big highlight for you in terms of your painting career?

Cournoyer: Let me see. I was going to bring--I did a painting. When I got to South Dakota, I was still involved in all the art shows. I was involved in the governor's show, and there was the show in Nebraska. [Andrew] Tsinnijinnie was 82:00the juror, and I took first place. It was a Northern and Southern Plains show, so all of the big Northern and Southern Plains people had their works in there. I took first place, and that came with thousand dollars. I thought that was pretty good. They gave me a certificate. I have that at home. I was going to bring that and the painting, and of course, I didn't. (Laughter)

Little Thunder: That's all right. Yeah, that's neat to, in that kind of company, win that top award. So looking back, what's been kind of a low point so far?

Cournoyer: I was a part of an art show in South Dakota, and everybody wants a print, a ledger, or they want a print of an Indian on a horseback. That's not appealing to me, but that's what people love. It's their taste, and you can't change that. I guess I always talk about ice fishing when I go to those shows because you're waiting on a nibble. You start reeling it in, and then it's like a dog seeing a squirrel. They go, "Oh, going on to the next booth."

Little Thunder: You have mentioned that you prefer kind of working with the galleries now as opposed to trying to do the shows.

Cournoyer: Yes. There's an expectation that if your work isn't overtly Native American with Native American themes--. We're still living in 1880, according to our art shows. There's no way around that unless the buying public sees us as something more, and that's where my work is at. We still ride horse, but we're not chasing buffalo. We're just riding horse to ride horse now. We powwow, and we do our ceremonials, but it's taboo to paint about your ceremonials. Who paints about our ceremonials is the non-Indian. You can't tell the younger generation. You can't teach that. They have to find it on their own, that we are 85:00more than what happened in 1868 or 1820. We're no longer nomadic. We're living in some place and we no longer have to chase the buffalo for us to eat. We have to get college educated and learn how to adapt and adjust to the new changes. I taught a class, and it was about music and culture. On the reservation, I talked about the culture and how it had changed.

Once we became sedentary on the reservation, we started to get heavy because we were eating cow instead of buffalo or elk or deer. Then we started getting these 86:00heart diseases. Then we started getting diabetes because they introduced the flour and the sugar and the different kind of meat. Now we're eating bacon. It really changed when you're eating a diet that was created for the cavalrymen: beans, bacon, flour, hardtack, and some cow meat. We don't walk like we should. We don't do things like we should anymore. Even in ceremonial, when we're in ceremony, we have to realize that if we're going to be fasting. If you're drinking two Monsters a day for years and now you're down to no Monsters, that affects your body, or four or five full-strength pops. That affects you. There's 87:00all little these things that happen and people are like, "You've got to be more strict, and you've got to be more prepared." We don't live 150, 200 years ago. Even the sun has changed with the ozone layer, so that sun is hotter.

Little Thunder: That's been a real thing at ceremony for older people, those changes. I thought that was very well expressed, the education that needs to happen through Native artists today. Now we'll take a look at a couple of your paintings if that's all right. -- Okay, do you want to tell us about this piece, Gerald?

Cournoyer: I did several of these. It was part of a series. This is the Window 88:00Series, Yellow. That's what they were called, Window Series.

Little Thunder: Oh, cool.

Cournoyer: I did one with red, yellow, black, white. I did a blue one and a brown one, a green one.

Little Thunder: Were the backgrounds different each time?

Cournoyer: I kept those leaves in there, and I changed the color. Where it's yellow, it would have been red, and where it's yellow, it would have been white. I put different birds in there. The process was to get the gel medium on the glass. Once it's on the glass and once it's set up, then I started figuring out where I wanted to put my window. When I did the window, I used color on a drywall trowel, and I just pulled it through. The bird was in there. Looks like 89:00a crosshair. The bird was in there, and then I did the background, then the blue. Then you go around and do the yellow, I guess the leaves first and then yellow behind it. After you do everything, you have to put more gel medium on. You got to let that dry. I had these floor dryers, those round, those circular ones like you're drying a carpet. I had those, so I have those going. It's a whole process.

Little Thunder: A whole process, yeah. It's such a neat effect and you can see the underpainting.

Cournoyer: After I did yellow, then I did a white. Then after the white, I did some black behind it to keep everything from bleeding through. I airbrushed those--.

Little Thunder: Oh, the leaves, okay.

Cournoyer: The messenger, I always talked about the messenger. It goes back to Ghost Dance. When they were dancing, they went into a trance. From that trance, the dancers were able to communicate with their deceased relatives. That's still going on. When I was in Pine Ridge, I was living in Kyle and I was driving from my house to drop off some leaves. All morning, I was raking leaves around our house, and this crow, raven came and landed in the tree. It was there all morning. I was raking the leaves, and my wife said, "What's your friend got to 91:00tell you today?" We laughed about it. Then I drive out, and I drop all the leaves off. As I'm leaving, I notice my tires seem to be going lower. I saw a nail in it. I drove to my friend's house, and I have to go down this little dirt road to get to his place. He fixed it, and I had to run back to the house to get some more money to give him. I'm leaving my house because I was in a hurry. I got to the door, and I was about ready to go out. My wife said, "What are we going to have for supper?" I turned around, and we started having a conversation. I get back in the truck. Took about two minutes to get in the truck and drive back. As I'm driving down this dirt road, all of a sudden I see 92:00all of this dust in the air. As it's dissipating from the left to the right, I'm going around this little corner, this turn, and I'm just watching it, watching it, watching it.

Then I see two bodies in a ditch, and I see a car just rolling. Then there's two people in that car. One person jumps out. He runs over, and I stopped. He jumps in, and I said, "We're going to go to that house," because I could see it. "We're going to go to that house right there and call 911." He said, "My grandma lives in the next house. Just drop it off at my grandma's." We drove over there, and I said, "Are you going to call 911?" He said, "Yeah." I figured he wouldn't because as soon as I let him off, he ran past his grandma's, and he kept going. I went to my friend's, and I ran in. I was dialing 911, told them the accident 93:00and where it happened and what road we were on. I said, "Here's your money. We've got to go over there because there's a person still in that car, two bodies in the ditch. I think they're dead." He froze. He said, "What happened?" I had to walk it through to him again, and he didn't want to go. He didn't want to go. I didn't realize that his own son lost his life in a rollover, and he ended up upside down. They didn't have the Jaws of Life to get him up, so he was crushed. I keep thinking about that. If I would've been a minute or two earlier--

Little Thunder: Yes, coming out of the road.

Cournoyer: --I would've went head on with that vehicle. That's why I still use the bird.

Little Thunder: Okay, Gerald, can you talk to us about this piece here?

Cournoyer: This is [A Closer Look at] Kicking Bird, and I was trying to get away from the portrait-portrait like everybody else does. They all do the same thing. You could always find a Sitting Bull, and it's always the same one. Everybody draws and paints it the same way. This is just giving it a different look, a different voice, making it different so that it's not all the same cookie-cutter kind of thing. Getting back into South Dakota, trying to be involved in Native art, trying to do something Native, this is kind of what I came up with.

Little Thunder: Kind of a compromise.

Cournoyer: Compromise, yeah. People really look at this, and they say, "That 95:00looks good, but if you would have done it this way like everybody else does...."

Little Thunder: You recognize Kicking Bird. He's such a famous personage. It's very recognizable, and I love what you did with the red and green kind of shapes there, too.

Cournoyer: Using the complementary colors.

Little Thunder: Yeah, and the turquoise. That's neat, neat patterning, neat texture. How about this drawing here?

Cournoyer: Living in Washington, DC, you get to see the homeless. As you're walking down the street, they're using the bathroom, they're going into the trash can for food, sleeping. This was an assignment that I had for my students. 96:00We drew the same face, and then we put something different in the reflection of the glasses. They could choose whatever they want to. I started this one day in class, and by the end of the two weeks that we did this, this is what I came up with.

Little Thunder: It's wonderful. You really feel the despair, and you get that feeling that you're looking through those reflective glasses, and the perspective and all the different highlights that you did, too. It was a great assignment. Thank you for talking with me today.

Cournoyer: You're welcome.

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