Raven Custalow, Puttawus

0:00:06.8 Beth Harris: We’re standing in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts looking at this very thick feathered mantle by a contemporary artist named Raven Custalow.

0:00:15.0 Siera Hyte: Raven has both Mattaponi and Rappahannock cultural heritage and is a Mattaponi tribal member. This feather mantle, which is titled Puttawus, was commissioned by the VMFA in 2021. When Raven decided that she wanted to start making feather mantles, she talks about how Mattaponi tribal members stopped wearing these around the 1930s, so she was able to conduct research both from looking at other contemporary Indigenous artists who make these works, as well as historic examples that were held in institutional collections, looking at photographs of Mattaponi folks and other tribal folks from this area wearing these garments. Then she also talks about how she had to do some improvisation. A lot of times when we talk about Indigenous art, there’s this divide between traditional or authentic versus contemporary. But Raven talks about for Mattaponi people and for Indigenous people more generally, adaptation, innovation, evolution of these creative traditions is traditional, is something that has always been done. So she felt empowered to learn as she went along and develop her own way of making this garment as an artist that worked for her.

0:01:25.2 Beth Harris: I was thinking too about all the research that needs to be done when traditions of how to make something are lost.

0:01:32.3 Siera Hyte: I want to dig into that phrase lost. These traditions were forcibly taken. They were diminished in terms of the amount of people who could practice them because of the violence and federal Indian policies that dispossessed people of their homelands, made it so that we could not practice our traditional ceremonies or traditional spirituality. And all of these mean that certain ancestral art forms now do need to be revitalized. So Raven, along with her husband, Chris Custalow, are co-founders of an organization called Eastern Woodlands Revitalization, focused on art traditions from Eastern Woodland tribes. And I think that this is a moment where you see a lot of contemporary artists involved in this resurgence. Almost a century after this practice fell out of being actively done in the Mattaponi community, you have a tribal member going, let me see how this was done. Let me bring this back to the community. Let me reawaken this. So language for Mattaponi people, their Indigenous language, has not been spoken fluently for centuries. But for her, naming the cloak a word that was written down in a dictionary in the 1600s and translates to mean “feather mantle” or “cloak of many feathers” is a really important way of keeping that Indigenous knowledge active and alive.

0:02:55.8 Siera Hyte: Because it was commissioned for the museum, Raven made it with the idea in mind that eventually it would be a part of our collection. But before it came to the VMFA, Raven did dance the mantle.

0:03:07.8 Beth Harris: So let’s talk for a minute about how this was constructed. It starts with a kind of netting and then gathering all of these turkey and duck feathers.

0:03:18.1 Siera Hyte: In the commissioning of this work and the lead up to making this, Raven was not able to gather enough turkey and duck feathers on her own. So she put a call out to her community, to her friends and loved ones from other tribal communities too, and people brought her feathers to help complete the garment.

0:03:34.1 Beth Harris: When we look closely, we see some feathers that are very long towards the bottom and then shorter feathers toward the top. The browns and the blacks are so rich. And then these blues and purples that emerge toward the torso and these lovely feathers with white tips around the shoulders.

0:03:54.9 Siera Hyte: Where we are right now is sometimes referred to as “the birthplace of America.” But why is it that those histories or the names of the many, many Indigenous people who were also a part of the historical record when John Smith or any other early colonial settlers were on this land, why are their names not recorded, their stories not recorded in the same way? And what can we do working with contemporary artists now to honor those histories, honor the current communities, and also ensure that for future generations those cultures continue to be vibrant, they are vibrant. To Raven’s point, if maybe now you can only speak one word or a few words in that language, but if we keep it on the tongue and at the top of mind, it will just continue to grow for future generations, and that’s what’s important.

This work at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

Watch a talk with Raven Custalow

The Eastern Woodlands Revitalization organization

Learn more about traditional crafting by the Mattaponi Tribe

Lisa Reagan, “Revitalizing Indigenous Traditions In America’s Cradle of Colonization: An Interview With Raven Brightwater Custalow,” Kindred Media (2021).

1980–now in the United States, an introduction

About geography and chronological periods in Native American art

Terms and issues in Native American art