Clearly Indigenous Audio Exhibition
Ancestors’ Voices
Hello, I’m Cole Rodgers, the museum’s project manager. I will be sharing the introduction to the “Ancestors’ Voices” section of Clearly Indigenous: Native Visions Reimagined in Glass.
One way that Native cultures convey Ancestral Knowledge is through ceremonies and ceremonial regalia. Ancestors have been symbolized by two-dimensional portrait masks and by three-dimensional sculptures in stone and wood. Communications from the Ancestors in the form of petroglyphs (images carved into stone) and pictographs (images painted on stone) also link current Native communities to the past.
Here, glass artists symbolize the Ancestors through blown glass portrait jars based on ancient effigy pots; blown or cast glass masks and other regalia; cast or blown glass versions of ancient pictographs; and kiln-fired glass-on-glass paintings.