I am reading “Wampum as a Hypertext: An American Indian Intellectual Tradition of Multimedia Theory and Practice” – by Angela M. Haas for school.

I, then, take a break from my reading, and I catch Oprah’s post on seven books that are helping her during this moment. One she highlights is When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through: A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry, edited by Joy Harjo, et al.

I go back to my reading, almost done just like a page or two left, and in the last few paragraphs of the article it reads:

“As Mvskoke writer Joy Harjo reminds us in her poem, there’s no such thing as a one-way land bridge/ the story depends on who’s telling it.”

This coincidence happened within a few minutes. I will say many Indigenous peoples stories are being highlighted currently, and Joy Harjo is a well-known author in the community, but still.

To gather, what are wampum belts, strings, and/or wampum tradition?

Wampum are shells or beads that date back thousands of years. They are small, short, and tubular made from the quahog clam shell. The white beads are made from the inner whorl of the shell, and the purple beads come from the dark spotor eye on the shell.

The wampum belts have the wampum shells or beads and various material components like bark fibers, sinew, hemp fibers, string and other weaving materials that have been used by Native nations through northeastern North America for ornamental or ceremonial use. Typically they derive from Eastern Woodlands tribes of Native Americans for ceremonial traditions for alliances, marriages, treaties, ceremonies, wars, alike.

The wampum belts have coded beads which are typically contrasted between dark purple and white with the meaning inscribed in the patterns; a visual coding, a sign technology of the interwoven knowledge and traditions.

What is so fascinating – is that the layered meaning in the wampum belts serve and illustrate by symbol between alliances within tribes, between tribes, and between tribal governments and colonial governments.

Wampum strings and belts serve to gesture reciprocity on both sides, all sides. Accepting a gift of wampum meant that the recipient accepted its implied message and responsibility.

Wampum records are regularly revised and re-read through the community memory and performance.

Wampum is a living rhetoric that communicates a mutual relationship between two parties. The wampum embodies memory, as it extends human memories of inherited knowledge interconnected, nonlinear designs, withassociative storage (Haas 77).

Think of a vast library with walls and shelves of books; look way up and see the stacks of knowledge, unreachable, unseen through the narrow vision of your eye. Interlocked and connected stories and records of community traditions. They sit next to each other, communicate their stories to one another, nestled side-by-side.

While the wampum through its symbolic and auditory tradition extend human memories or inherited knowledge through, opening life’s traditions long passed and today.

Western and wampum hypertexts use digital rhetoric to communicate nonlinear information.

Hypertext defined by Western culture is computing a software system that links topics on the screen to related information and graphics; a document presented on a computer in this way (OED).

Digital refers to our fingers, digits, typing madly away, one of the primary ways, eyes and ears too, we make sense of the world.

All writing is digital. In Latin digital means to fingers or toes, coding information. We have done this all along in Egyptian and Mayan hieroglyphics, Chinese logograms, and Mesopotamia Cuneiform.

Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is standard text with formatting codes for font, layout, design, and hyperlinks – o/o/o/o/o/o/o or strands of binary code to communicate to readers.

In wampum belt hypertexts, wampum beads serve as links or pathways illustrated carefully within the bead placement, proximity, balance, and color within, interwoven in the belt itself.

And in order to retrieve the story – an individual must be a part of the community with the cultural context to relay and read the story accurately. To be culturally-situated, the placement and balance and colors tell a story all on their own.

In practice, to know, understand, and literally transcribe the story, the reader must memorize the belt and its story. And then, that trained individual, the reader would impress in the mind the visual representation of the belt and the mnemonic associations between the visual representation and its story.

It is as if one must have a historian, an interpreter, and a reader all in one – in order to relay the story accurately.

The wampum preserves and communicates the memoires of treaties, peace, andlliances, it not only embodies this communication but also presents the memories (90). Whether it is treaty belt, peace pact, a welcome belt, condolence string, or adoption belt, it is presented to all affected parties, and most are revisited on a regular basis and re-‘read.’ Not only is the wampum belt crafted with memoires, is also ‘read’ by memory (90).

It is just super interesting. We could spend all day and night reading and researching, and never even get to the tip of the iceberg of embedded meanings inside crafted pieces from scrolls, petroglyphs, quilts, songs, pottery, paintings, etc.

Yet, when culturally-situated folks, historians, meaning-makers, life becomes clearer an easier.

There is so much meaning within – Wouldn’t we all love to have a translator walk through life with us?

For many years I have carried around this book with Indigenous peoples’ teachings called Wokini – Your Personal Journey to Happiness and Self-Understanding.

I found it in the library one day. I was in a lot of physical pain at that time, which then only compounded. I had to figure a new way of life. Not a small task.

It helped walk me through life. The words and wisdom detailed in this little book changed the way I thought of life and felt life.

Looking back, I think this all makes sense. That is because I already made sense of it. I unraveled and shook out the pain. Thank God I did.

Life’s teachings in such a tiny book –

Much love.

Please be well.

I hope this post made sense. I am not sure if it did. The article was at some length.

Please stay healthy.

The world is a lot.

Perhaps check out the anthology or Wokini. May be worth it.

Work Cited:

“Wampum as Hypertext: An American Indian Intellectual Tradition of Multimedia Theory and Practice” – Angela M. Haas

Wokini – Your Personal Journey to Happiness and Self-Understanding – Billy Mills.