Mitakuye Oyasin – All My Relations

acrylic on birch panel – 30″ X 40″
acrylic on hide shield – 16″ diameter
© 2021 Sandra Ware

Usually I would have my own poem here. But what follows instead seemed perfect – lyrics from the song Mitakuye Oyasin by Nahko and Medicine for the People. The song is from their 2014 album On the Verge.

…Wakan Tankunl
Skan Skan*
Something holy
Moves here on the land
It is my brothers’
And my sisters’ hands…

I have loved Lakota shields ever since seeing them in Western museums. So when I began playing around with the idea of incorporating a three-dimensional element within a painting, a Lakota shield came quickly to mind. The subject for the painting – Mitakuye Oyasin – followed soon after. Mitakuye Oyasin is a Lakota phrase that can be translated as All my Relations – a reference to the sacred interconnectedness of all life on Mother Earth.

Rendered in the playful style of a hide painting, the panel features representatives of the winged (ravens), the two-legged (bears – as they often walk on their hind legs like humans), and the four-legged (horses and buffaloes.)

Handprints appear often in petroglyphs, and are generally considered to be symbolic of man. I was inspired to paint four hands for the four sacred directions and their associated colors. Black/West. Red/North. Yellow/East. White/South. These are colors that are also representative of the races of man. The hands reach toward the Sun in its blue sky; the Sun that represents Great Mystery, the origin of All, and in whom all are truly One.