NOSAPOCKET: I inlaid white clay, which is not—so the clay is a brown clay. I chose to inlay the white, not a lot, but enough to— sort of – I guess it's suggesting about where we are.
ANTHONY TRUJILLO: How so?
NOSAPOCKET: It was—the European was imported here into this land. So I guess you could say the white—that some of that represents that phenomena or that history—it’s not indigenous to this land like the rest of the clay vessel.
ANTHONY TRUJILLO: Yeah.
NOSAPOCKET: So, there's dots, white dots on there. And they're around the male part. And in the female part, there's—it's like a—I don't know. And this design just came through, so I don't—I'm just saying the shape was really interesting to me, it’s the first time I've seen it. It could be looked at as sort of a plant. There's some sort of a plant look to it.
And also, it's raised off the—like a bar relief kind of thing. It's raised off of it. So, you had to carve away clay to make to give this this place and dig out inside of it and inlay the white clay. It was a big process, and was an important part of the glyph, I guess. And in that way, too, it could never just—that could not be looked at as a historic piece. And the thing about that is also what I learned as I was making this piece was how we—as a people, we're—especially Wampanoags. We're not relevant except for when we met the Pilgrims.
ANTHONY TRUJILLO: In colonial history.
NOSAPOCKET: Right. So, we're always being put back there. And our traditional regalia is also a really replica of the same that our ancestors [wore]—when we met the Pilgrims. It didn’t change. Well, my sister is making a change now. I see her. She's a clan mother and she's bringing it forward, bringing it forward. So, there's a combination where there's cloth, and there's ribbons. And there's all kinds of other things that would have normally happened. And it did happen. We wear European clothes. We speak English, all of this.
ANTHONY TRUJILLO: We're not sealed.
NOSAPOCKET: Yeah, we're not trapped and sealed, as—yeah, so, but because we accepted that for so long-- and I have to admit, like: sure whenever people ask me to talk about my [inaudible], I always was talking about the past, the far, far past, not just 50 years ago. Or what was going on in 1700s or the 19th century or the 18th century? What was going on then?
Well, I do know some stuff that was going on then. And it was just as relevant as to what was happening to my people and who they were. And they were still Native. You're still Wampanoag. You're not—it didn't die or change or—because, but—there's attitudes. There's anthropologists that consider Native Americans as contaminated.
ANTHONY TRUJILLO: Yeah.
NOSAPOCKET: Because of the heavy influences from themselves, from the European and the Westerner. And I'm like; ”Yeah, yeah, whatever. You want to think. You're always right.”
Think whatever you want to think. It's nonsense. But it's OK. I mean, what do you say to stuff like that? But I remember this elder anthro who was—she was actually a funder for Cultural Survival. And that's what she told me. Oh, you're—Native Americans? They're contaminated.
ANTHONY TRUJILLO: Is that right? Oh my gosh.
NOSAPOCKET: And I was like, whoa! Wow. I'm glad you told me that. I was like, well-
ANTHONY TRUJILLO: Yeah, that really only allows for a very—I mean, that Native person that she's imagining does not exist. It's just an imagined-
NOSAPOCKET: Sure.
ANTHONY TRUJILLO: -thing.
NOSAPOCKET: There's a lot of things that are like that, yeah.
ANTHONY TRUJILLO: And you have Native peoples sitting right in front of them, the complexities of who we are.
NOSAPOCKET: Right.