My Making of We Wait in the Darkness

Recent scientific study verifies what many Native people have always known: that traumatic events in our ancestors’ lives persist in our bodies, blood, and bones. These events leave molecular scars that adhere to our DNA. Our grandmother’s tragic childhood can trigger depression or anxiety in us, but we have the ability to heal these DNA encodings and change that trait for future generations (Hurley 2015).

Culturally, we are always looking toward the future, to our children’s future, to our grandchildren’s future. The circle of life turns one way—forward, and we are bound by the arrow of time to move ever forward in material existence.

When we pass on, though, we leave our physical body, and our spirit is no longer governed by the laws of earth. String theory proposes that there are ten possible dimensions (some say eleven). For our ancestors, time is no longer governed by the earth’s physical laws. If this is true, then our present day actions could potentially impact the spirits of our ancestors—and help to heal the trauma of the past.

In my work We Wait in the Darkness, I am investigating my connection to those from whom I come—those to whom I am tied by history, genetics, and spirituality. I am looking at “the past” as a history of facts, but with aspects that can potentially be changed. I am asking: is it possible, through intentional action (storytelling and movement) in the present, to heal the spirits of my Seneca family who are no longer bound by space-time?

The Seneca people pass on our histories and stories through oral tradition. The telling is a remembering and acknowledging of what has occurred. The memorization of the oral history and pronouncing the words aloud are actions. These actions evoke. They talk to our DNA, and those have gone before us listen. We are changed because of these actions.

We Wait in the Darkness is a dance, visual, and aural artwork to heal the DNA scars of my grandmother, her mother, and our ancestors. Through movements (action), visuals, and sound (telling), I evoke my ancestors to move and speak with me.

The Seneca are a part of the Haudenosaunee (Six Nations). We are matrilineal. We get our identity (our citizenship, clan, and inheritance) from our mother, her mother, and her mother’s mother. The knowing of these ties (internally and intellectually) is an essential part of belonging for all Haudenosaunee people.

We Wait in the Darkness is inspired by the life story of my grandmother (Clarinda Jackson Waterman, 1901–1987). At age five, she watched her grandfather kill her father. She grew up without parents, and was forced to attend an Indian boarding school where she was stripped of her first language (Seneca) and culture. Eventually she thrived in the two worlds, spending summers still tied to Haudenosaunee Longhouse culture, and the school year learning piano, sewing, and knitting. Boarding school for Senecas was not education as we understand it now, but a domestic training ground grooming youth for servitude to the dominant white culture.

When my grandmother graduated from Thomas Indian School, she was a popular pianist, always in high demand to play at various church services and sometimes traveling from church to church on Sunday mornings (even though she herself was not Christian). She had five children, four boys and my mother (Laura Waterman Wittstock), whom she raised alone on the Seneca Cattaraugus territory. She moved from New York to San Francisco with one of her adult children, where she became a founder and leader of the San Francisco American Indian Center during “voluntary” relocation and the takeover of Alcatraz. She was a leader in the community, using her skills to run the Indian Center. One of the projects dearest to her heart was a weekly sewing circle that sold its creations to raise funds to send the bodies of Native people who had died in the city home for burial at their home reservations.

Photo 1.

From the dance film Threshold. Photo by Douglas Beasley...