Chatter Marks EP 81 Life lessons from fish camp with Angela Gonzalez

Crude Conversations

crudemag

Society & Culture

5 • 884 Ratings

🗓️ 14 February 2024

⏱️ 76 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Angela Gonzalez is an artist and a writer, and through her beadwork, her blog — the Athabascan Woman Blog — and the Fish Camp Barbie dioramas she creates, she shares her heritage. She says that it’s all a reflection of the way she grew up. Fish camp was a big part of that. As a kid, that’s where she spent most of her summers, about 16 miles from her home in Huslia, along the Koyukuk River. While the adults were harvesting the fish, her grandma would put Angela’s Barbies in settings that resembled what was happening all around them — catching the fish, hanging the fish, preserving it, cooking it. And then once she was old enough, she helped out with those chores. Angela says that she didn’t realize how special fish camp was until she started creating Fish Camp Barbie dioramas for her own daughters. It was a way to share her life with them and to teach them how to be proud of who they are. From her time at Fish Camp, Angela also learned the importance of work — that if you want to succeed, then you need to work. Today, this manifests itself in her beading. It’s easy for her to sit down for a few hours and focus on a project. She’s beaded earrings, pins, the tops of gloves, slippers, coasters. A recent project she finished included caribou tufting, raised beadwork and silverberry beads that she harvested herself. She says she’s inspired by the beadwork of her late grandmas and aunts. Their color choices, designs, and techniques. She likes to think about the stories and the experiences that led them to create their art.

Transcript

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0:00.0	The thing that you do to create these items, it's born out of creativity, resilience,
0:20.0	and just this spirit of making things that fit what your way of life is.
0:30.0	So they would, my late grandma was a carpenter too, I mean among other things, but she was able to create these stools like we had a stool probably for 30 or 40 years that withstood time because she just created it in such a, you know know that it held up and so creating these little barbies and it's
1:00.0	just a reflection of that, I think,
1:04.0	and it makes me feel connected to my late grandma.
1:08.0	And I think it makes other people feel so special
1:11.0	that there's something that reflects who they are and I just love being able to create that and helping people to have that connection,
1:23.9	whether they're an adult or it's something
1:27.0	that they could share with their kids and create for their kids.
1:31.2	That was Angela Gonzalez.
1:33.0	She's an artist and a writer.
1:36.0	And through her beadwork, her blog, the Athabaskan woman blog,
1:40.0	and the Fish Camp Barbie diaramas she creates she shares her heritage.
1:45.0	She says that it's all a reflection of the way she grew up.
1:50.0	Fish camp was a big part of that. As a kid, that's where she spent most of her summers, about
1:56.8	16 miles from her home in Husslea along the Coyocuck River. While the adults were harvesting the fish, her grandma would put
2:05.1	Angela's Barbies in settings that resembled what was happening all around them.
2:10.3	Catching the fish, hanging the fish, preserving it, cooking it.
2:15.0	And then once she was old enough, she helped out with those chores.
2:20.0	Angela says that she didn't realize how special Fish Camp was until she started creating
2:25.8	Fish Camp Barbie dioramas for her own daughters.
2:29.9	It was a way to share her life with them, and to teach them how to be proud of who they are.
	...

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