Printer-Friendly Version (pdf) of Wellbriety! Special Edition: Issue#2

Artful Recovery
Artist Dana Tiger talks about art, recovery, and her life

Dana Tiger, Native American Artist

Dana Tiger's personal recovery program includes Native culture and her art. From her bout with alcohol, which bottomed out in the mid 1980's, to marriage and motherhood in the 90's, and now on to advocacy for Native women and Native youth in a healing vision, painting has been a constant companion.

Hoop Journey 2002 is honored to carry and offer for sale prints of an original Dana Tiger artwork entitled Woman Who Carries the Sacred Hoop--it's Dana's donation to help defray expenses for the Journey. This exceptional painting is one of the latest in a long line of drawings in which the artist shares herrecovery journey with all.

Starting at birth at the lower part of the basket, and moving throughout the entire cycle of life to the Elder woman at the top leaving to go back to the spirit world, what an awesome work of art! As I look at it I see the whole dance of life and feel the heat of the sun and the mystery of the moon.

In the southeast section of the painting is a grandmother teaching her granddaughter to make a basket--maybe even the very basket we are looking at in the painting. In the southwest is a women's drum group whose purpose is to strengthen community. The women at the drum come together because it is one way they can give strength to the people. They sing the songs that the ancestors want the people to hear.

Woman Who Carries the Sacred  Hoop, by Dana Tiger

In the west two figures on horseback are inspired by the Dann Sisters from the Western Shoshone country of Nevada, who ride and resist injustice to protect the land. Just above them in the northwest is a woman who runs to connect the physical world to prayer. She runs to come closer to the ancestors and to the Creator. And in the northeast is a dancing woman who shows the beauty of the people. She dances to honor all that is going on--to let us know that this world is sacred. She makes her own dance regalia in a sacred manner with every stitch and everything involved being done in prayer.

But it's in the eastern part of the basket-painting that we find one of the strong connections to this year's Hoop Journey. From the eastern direction of Woman Who Carries the Sacred Hoop we find a woman speaking. That woman is Ingrid Washinawatok El-Issa, the same person that the Hoop Journey is dedicated to. Ingrid Washinawatok's life and work inspires both Native Americans and non-Native people alike. Artist Dana Tiger is no exception.

Dana connected deeply with Ingrid's work and finds a further linkage going back to her beloved father Jerome Tiger, a well known Native artist, who journeyed to the spirit world when Dana was five. "Ingrid lived her life every day to help the lives of her people who she loved so much, as well as the land," she says. "I read about her family. Her family were leaders. That was her place on this earth. She had a short time to live like my father did, but when she was here she did her job. The Creator took her in a young way like he took my father. She knew her path and that was just so beautiful. I honor her. She's the one who is speaking out. She's the one making good words on the basket. Those five women standing to her left bring food in her honor, and to honor what she did in ceremony. She's an ancestor now. She's with us if we ask her to be. But we have to ask her to be with us and honor her. That's why I painted that painting."

The center of the painting is another strong personal connection for Dana. The artist's life began anew the day the Hoop came to her home in Park Hill, Oklahoma during Hoop Journey II in May of 2000. Newly diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease, she was developing problems with walking at that time. But two miracles happened. Don Coyhis, inspiration behind the Hoop Journeys, asked Dana and sister Lisa to carry the Hoop as it came into the Cherokee Nation at Tahlequah on Mother's Day of 2000. And despite her health problems, she found she could do it. Later that evening, after the Wellbriety Day events were complete, the Hoop was brought to her home. It was a new beginning.

"My whole place was blessed when they brought that Hoop to my home," she remembers. "From that point on things had more of a hopeful vision for me. I was in a new challenge with the Parkinson's and it was very hard to deal with. But the Sacred Hoop and Don's wisdom was just where it should have been. It was there just when I needed it."

Recovery and Art
Of Cherokee, Creek and Seminole descent, Dana was raised in Oklahoma and is the daughter of the well-known Native Artist Jerome Tiger, whose influence is felt wherever there is Native American art. Her father passed into the spirit world early in her life, but his influence as an artist was already alive in her. After her father's passing, uncle Johnny Tiger, her father's older brother, took the responsibility of encouraging her, brother Chris, and sister Lisa to draw. They used pencil on matte board, tempera paints and water colors, entering shows and winning awards as children.

Dana painted into her junior high school years when the difficulties of growing up took her down a hard road. But she reconnected with art in her mid twenties on January 31, 1986, on a powerful night when it was time to make the choice to live. The choice to live was the same as the choice to pick up her art once again.

"Art is a direct link to my ancestors," she says enthusiastically. "The day I quit drinking the ancestors spoke to me through the art. They told me it would save my life. And it has."

"I believe that my father came in during that night," she continues. "It was a miracle. Before that I wasn't thinking. 'Well you need to draw...' It was not anywhere in my brain. It happened in that time alone with utter despair and doom and knowing that I would die the way I was living. I was going to do whatever it took to stop drinking. It didn't matter how hard it was. So in the next few days after I came out of that room where all this happened, I picked up a pencil and a paint brush, and I also picked up a phone and called a counselor."

Nowadays Dana Tiger mostly draws women, focusing on a woman's healing journey in her work. But beginning her recovery in 1986, she experimented with different subjects and remembers copying her father's style because it was a starting point. It was art to keep going and art to save your life, as many people who have used the artist's way in recovery know. But soon something began to happen. As she kept to a one-drawing-every-day personal commitment, Dana began to notice that when she drew women there was something coming from deep inside her--she wasn't copying someone else. She had begun to find her own way as an artist.

One by one new paintings came. Some of the titles include--Being Women...Ride at Sunset...Truly Supreme Court...Generations of Strength...Honoring Her Gift, and so many more. How can you see some of Dana's work? Just go onto the web at NDNArtGallery.com to learn more about the artist and to view her art.

Culture's Fire
As the years wound on, a painting was born that would go on to become the logo for the White Bison Daughters of Tradition Program for Native girls. Dana donated Keeping Culture's Fire Burning to White Bison when the Sacred Hoop came to Tahlequah, Oklahoma on Hoop Journey II in May of 2000. Now, thousands have seen it on Daughters of Tradition program material.

Keeping Culture's Fire Burning is the artist's vision for her own healing journey, as well as a sharing for every young person to come. What's it about?

Daughters of Tradition

"I was trying to show different ages and the wisdom that different ages have," she explains. "Young people have a certain wisdom, and Elders certainly have another wisdom. The ones in between can learn from the ones before and after them."

"The moon in the painting represents the grandmother, the circle of life, and the strength you can get from that. The women are holding sticks in the fire because from the knowledge that you are born with, and that you die with, and the continuation into the spirit world and back down to earth, that's the knowledge we honor as Indian people. That's what's going to keep us surviving. That's what I live for."

Dana sees a connection between the Daughters of Tradition Program and Women Who Carries the Sacred Hoop. She says that the girls in the Program could study the painting and then write or speak about what each special scene in the painting means to them.

Dana Tiger's vision is to create the Legacy Cultural Learning Community, dedicated to teaching art to Native youth and bringing in Elders to teach language and culture to young people. It's a vision that will take place on 400 acres in Oklahoma she and her husband Donnie make payments on until the day that the Community can take shape. Dana's dream would not be possible without the love of Donnie, a rock mason, and their children. Daughter Christie, 8, and son Lisan, 6, are the light of Dana and Donnie's life.

How can you learn more about Dana's art and the Legacy Cultural Learning Community? Come to the Hoop Journey stop in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma on July 12 and 13 to visit with the artist and experience the good healing energy of Wellbriety Days.

About the Center of Woman Who Carries the Sacred Hoop There is a whole movement of people, beautiful people, on the journey. There are some at the beginning, some maybe not quite there yet but getting ready to. It's the center of the painting because that's our center. That's all of us, that's all the Nations finally coming together in something beautiful where there is no jealousy. It's all about learning where we came from and holding that with us. You can see that the ancestors are right behind them walking with them. The power of it all is when you've got the Sacred Hoop and the women and the children--everything comes from that. Everyone can be healthy from that. In our traditional ways, women were trusted, believed and held with respect. What women knew wasn't threatening. It was part of the balance and it was natural. Dana Tiger