The Lakota say that when you die, you travel on the Blue Road through the Big Dipper. There, Blue Woman waits. If you have learned your lessons and lived a good life, you get to proceed onto the Milky Way to an area over the Southwest. I think it is Chaco Canyon...just my guess and gut feeling. If you didn't learn your lessons, or lived a not so good life, you get kicked back into this world where you reincarnate and try again. I live in the Southwest. One night I looked up at the Milky Way, which is an amazingly bright path up here in the Rockies, and I had this image of the Old Ones...the ones who were slaughtered by cowards at Wounded Knee in 1890....and the message implanted into my mind is how we keep repeating the same mistakes. It is time to make different choices...It is time we learn some lessons. That is what they whispered into my heart.
This was very painful for me to paint. It took me several weeks for me to do. I cried through a lot of it thinking of the stories I heard while living on the rez. I don't think I could ever do the old ones the justice that they deserve.
