Ancestral art shared with tribal women
While she has earned international renown for her work in ancestral crafts, Ramona Nosapocket Peters’ approach to teaching coil pottery to a group of tribal women attending her Woodland Forms in Clay workshop came from a very humble place. She gave all the credit to the clay, the mound of earth cupped in her hands which is the essence of her cultural heritage.
“It will tell you what it wants to be,” she said.
Ten women from the Hassanamisco Nipmuc, Mashpee Wampanoag, and Aquinnah Wampanoag tribes attended a three-day workshop in January in the Native Land Conservancy meeting space where Ramona introduced them to clay as a relative, a piece of the earth that is the living spirit of minerals and water touched by the ancestors.
“The elements in the clay are the same as the ones in our bodies. Like the clay we are made up of minerals and water,” she said explaining how the pot ultimately becomes an extension of ourselves with energy fueled by ancestors who inspire the making of the vessel.
It is common to not have a plan she cautioned the women. Tapping a coil of clay carefully rolled out onto the table with a wooden paddle she said, “sometimes I have a pot looking at me for days and I don’t know what it wants to be.”
Ramona has always been drawn to recreating ancestral crafts. She began working in copper and wood making jewelry and carving spoons and bowls and even a mishoon, a dug out canoe, she named the Tuspaquin that she paddled more than 70 miles along the Wampanoag Canoe Passage. Late in the 1970s Ramona was asked by the Plimoth Plantation museum to make a coil pot that would be a replica of one used by the Wampanoag in the 17th century.
“That was my first time making an ancestral pot,” she said. “I found I really took to the clay.”
Ramona’s work is informed by the evidence of historic pots made by her ancestors, ceramic chips unearthed in archeological digs and reassembled to depict vessels made hundreds of years ago in this region to cook and carry water. Her contemporary pots have become very popular with collectors and are on display in museums and institutions nationally and internationally including the Peabody Museum, Harvard Divinity School, the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, and in the United Kingdom in Plymouth, England’s Box Museum.
Ramona learned to fashion tools that don’t exist today using things like wood, bone, leather, and shells. “I was really into seeing what the ancestors had done historically and trying to recreate that.”
The tools she brought to the workshop looked like odds and ends; bits of shell, pieces of bone, scraps of worn leather, sections of a hair comb, and hand-crafted wooden tools to be employed in shaping and decorating the pots. But the most important tool didn’t come in Ramona’s kit. That, she said, was patience. It was practiced intensely as the women worked.
They began by kneading the clay into a ball to create a pinch pot base, then rolling coils of clay to build the vessel. The coils would be tapped with a wooden paddle into a uniform size before being scored and added to the base. Dasia Peters leaned into her emerging creation, smoothing a coil of clay she had just applied to her base. She was smiling. “I think it’s calming to really be able to mold the earth and trying to let it be what it will be.”
Ramona was impressed that everyone in the group was truly invested in their work and became meditative. “Everyone was very focused,” she said. “I liked how the women were very comfortable being in silence together. They got very focused by the clay in front of them. Silence builds connection and helps them to really listen to the clay.”
For much of the workshop Ramona was a quiet observer offering guidance and encouragement as needed, like when Jodi Keegan was ready to apply texture to her pot but found that step a bit intimidating. Ramona assured her and urged her to try. If she didn’t like the design once it was applied, it could be easily smoothed away. Jodi gently paced one hand inside the pot while holding a textured wooden paddle in her other hand.
“Now press,” Ramona told her as Jodi embossed the clay with a wavy pattern and was delighted with the effect.
“I think I like that,” Jodi said.
While she has taught other groups and individuals in the past, none were quite as invested as the women in the workshop. “I see a lot of talent here.” She said “I was so happy to see the skills in this group. It is really important to me that this style of this pottery doesn’t die out. I want the form of our ancestral pots to carry on.”
For the women attending the workshop that was an easy assignment.
“I’m into it,” said Sherry Pocknett as she used a chunk of wampum to smooth the interior of her pot that she named Sam’s Hill. “That’s where we are ya know, this was Sam’s Hill,” she said remembering the old place names of Mashpee before it was developed. And the women began to reminisce about old times as they worked. Laughing about the days of skating on the bogs, catching eel in the river, and swimming in the pond. There was a connectiveness in the room that transcended the generations of women from those in their 20s to let’s just say much older. Bonding like the coils of clay, they created a unique connection in the workshop environment.
“I feel so lucky to have been a part of this,” said Trish Keliinui who didn’t want it to end. “This has been great.”
All of the women expressed how particularly fortunate they were to be part of the workshop and learning from a such a master of the craft. Ramona was happy to pass along her knowledge to those who could carry on this important tradition. It gave her a deep sense of satisfaction and in the end she had only one word for them, “continue.”