Tag Archives: folk objects

Cursed Objects on an Arizona Reservation

Text:

Interviewee: “When I was on the reservation, one of the days instead of helping out on the farm and like with the water and everything, they took us to this canyon that was like two hours away.

That’s where we saw those drawings on the mountainsides from the Hopi and earlier groups, and there were also a bunch of houses that were like hundreds of years old.

They also had this thing where a lot of the objects there were kind of like cursed, but only if certain conditions were met. Like, we found some arrowheads in the ground, and we were allowed to pick them up and look at them. But they said if you took them out of the canyon or away from where they were found, you’d basically be cursed and could even die.

It reminded me of how in Hawaii they say if you take rocks from volcanoes you get bad luck. It was kind of like that, on the reservation they said if you tried to take anything off of the reservation, you’d be cursed.

They also had a lot of rules that mainly applied depending on whether you were Native or not. Like, they said there were certain things you can’t do if you’re not Native. There was one example where some of the objects we could hold as non-Native people, but they wouldn’t touch them because they said they would get extremely bad luck. Like one of the arrowheads, none of the Native people were allowed to touch it because it had some kind of history with them, but since we had no relation to it, we were fine.

But then there were other things where we weren’t allowed to touch them or take them home at all, because we as non-Natives don’t really understand the significance.”

Context:

The interviewee was on a service trip to Arizona with school peers. He is a white man aged 18.

During this service trip, he went on a visit to a reservation where the interviewee was spending time with a local community in Arizona and learning about the land, its history, and its cultural practices. The canyon visit included exposure to ancient sites connected to groups like the Hopi, as well as interaction with physical artifacts such as arrowheads. The beliefs about curses and rules around touching objects were explained directly by community members, especially in relation to whether someone was Native or not.

Analysis:

This is an example of material folklore. The idea that objects become dangerous or “cursed” only when removed reflects a magic superstition, where specific actions (like taking an object off the land) trigger consequences. These beliefs discourage people from removing artifacts and help protect culturally and historically significant sites.

The distinction between what Native and non-Native people can or cannot touch shows that meaning and rules depend on identity, relationship to the object, and cultural knowledge. The belief that some objects carry history that affects certain groups differently highlights how folklore is tied to ancestry and cultural connection. Folklore in this story regulates behavior, preserves respect for the land, and reinforces boundaries around cultural understanding and ownership.

Clamshells as Folk Objects – Long Island, NY

Nationality: American
Age: 21
Occupation: College Student
Residence: California, USA
Performance Date: 04/18/2021
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

Context:

Informant KC was a current undergraduate student at the University of Southern California at the time of this collection and was raised in the east end of Long Island, NY.

When speaking with KC, they told me how clamming is a source of income and entertainment for many living along/near the coast along the east end of Long Island. They mentioned how people use large rake-like tools to sift through the sand while searching for clams. Once the clams had been cracked open, emptied, and cleaned, KC explained how the shells are often “repurposed” as folk objects. After cleaning, the shells can be decorated, painted, or kept looking “natural.”

In listing the many unique uses for old clamshells they mentioned how they have seen them repurposed as…

Text:

  • Spoon rests
  • Ashtrays
  • Plant pots
  • Jewelry holders

Analysis:

After speaking with KC, I considered how these examples of folk objects help illustrate/represent the identity and interest of east end Long Islanders. Whereas outsiders might not understand the repurposing of a clamshell or mistake it for a commercially bought object, insiders (east end Long Islanders) have a different connection to these objects as reflections of their identity and customs. This leads me to believe that east end long islanders might hold shared values of sustainability and/or craftiness which are able to be expressed through these repurposed clamshells.

Yearbooks as Folk Art

Nationality: American
Age: 21
Occupation: student
Performance Date: 4/23/20
Primary Language: English

Main Piece: 

The following is transcribed from a conversation between me (LT) and my informant (MS). 

MS: So, a yearbook is traditionally issued at the end of the school year when you’re in elementary school through high school… and they have pictures of everyone in the school taken throughout the year… and you’ll usually write messages in your friends’ books.

LT: But not all messages are equal (laughs). 

MS: Yeah, like in elementary school, everyone just wrote their names because we didn’t know how to write many things, but generally, in high school, it’s bad to just write “HAGS,” which means have a good summer… you want to write something more heartfelt because people often keep yearbooks and will want to be able to reminisce on memories and stuff in the future, so you need good messages. If someone writes “HAGS,” they probably don’t know you that well. 

Background: 

MS is one of my best friends, and she grew up in Los Angeles. She got her first yearbook when she was six years old, at the end of Kindergarten. She often jokes that she’s a “hoarder” because she keeps a lot of things for their sentimental value, including yearbooks. She actually just read through all of her old yearbooks the night before our interview since she “wasn’t doing anything better during quarantine.” Her favorite thing about yearbooks is reading the messages. She likes to think about who she’s still friends with and who she doesn’t stay in touch with. She also likes the messages that remind her of memories she wouldn’t have thought of on her own. 

Context:

MS and I normally see each other most days at USC, and we’ve been continuing to FaceTime often during this quarantine period. This piece was collected during a “Zoom Happy Hour” with our friend group. 

Thoughts:

In American culture, we often stress the importance of being “cool in high school.” Media often promotes the idea that an American teen’s self worth can be measured in how many friends they have. Yearbooks are a physical way we can quanitize that. I remember reading through my mom’s old yearbooks as a child, and I was so impressed by how many people had signed it. When I was in high school, I would actually get stressed and feel pressured to make sure every blank page in my book was covered with signatures. Now, as a college student, I don’t even know where most of my yearbooks are. In MS’s case, it’s nice to reminisce about the memories with dear, old friends. However, she doesn’t particularly care about the messages written by people she wasn’t close to. Yearbooks symbolize the things that felt so important as a teenager that don’t particularly matter later in life. Inherently, yearbooks are a really sweet tradition that should be treated more authentically. 

Folk Object: Estate Furniture

Nationality: Irish-American
Age: 54
Occupation: Water resources manager
Residence: Pasadena, CA / San Francisco, CA
Performance Date: 4/17/16
Primary Language: English

MH is a third-generation Irish-American from Battle Creek, MI. He now splits his time between San Francisco, CA and Pasadena, CA, where he lives with his wife and 18-year-old son.

MH talked about the origin of some of his furniture, which has been passed down a couple generations:

“My mom grew up in a poor Irish family during the Great Depression, and they were a big family and she would go on to have a big family herself, which was pretty typical of Irish Catholics at the time…so during the Depression, they were always breaking up these huge estates that had gotten too expensive for families to maintain, and they’d have these estate sales where they’d sell really nice and valuable pieces of furniture, like beautiful wooden tables and dressers, really nice armchairs and Oriental rugs…and so my mom’s family bought a lot of this furniture for dirt cheap at these estate sales. Eventually she grew up and married my dad and the moved to Chicago when they first started having kids, but now they needed to buy larger houses, and they could afford to after the war. But instead of needing to buy new things, they were given some of the old furniture by my mom’s family, so the really nice pieces that originally came from estates went back into really nice houses that my parents had to buy to hold all my brothers and sisters. And now I have some of this pieces in my own living room, and the tables and things are so much better quality than what’s being sold today, because they were build to last for generations like this. So I’ll probably end up passing them on to my own kids, when they buy their own big estates!”

IMG_1924 IMG_1925

My analysis:

Many families pass down meaningful objects with stories or important family history behind them. While furniture isn’t necessarily what you’d imagine when you picture those sentimental moments, they can still be considered folk objects when you think about the cultural implications – the biggest story for MH is about his Irish-American heritage, and what it meant for his family in America during the Great Depression.  “Being Irish from a big family went from being a negative to a positive,” he told me, and today he and his siblings are proud of their roots.

Building Model Airplanes

Nationality: Irish/Scottish descent, American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Dallas, Texas
Performance Date: March 13, 2016
Primary Language: English
Language: n/a

“We would spend the afternoon assembling these model airplanes, with glue, and then we would paint them and then hang them up on the ceiling in my room, and it was quite frequent. And so we did that a lot, and it was just a really good bonding exercise because I got to spend time with Grandpa, and I ended up with about twenty-five airplanes hung from my ceiling. And while we were working he would tell stories and talk about the airplanes, like what models they were, and it was just nice to spend time with him.”

Informant: The informant is twenty years old, and currently attends the University of Texas at Austin. He has always been interested in airplanes and military history, with a wealth of knowledge about these subjects.

Analysis:

In this instance, I asked the informant to describe how he learned to make the model airplanes that he used to keep hung from the ceiling in his room. He learned how to make them from his grandfather, and the temporal stickiness that seems to linger is connection between the airplanes and his grandfather, who passed away when he was eight years old. I believe that the significance of this practice is the time they were able to spend together. The practice of building the airplanes itself is not as significance without the context of a grandfather teaching his grandson to appreciate the airplanes and how to construct and paint certain models. Each airplane, the total of which is about twenty-five, is different and represents a different airplane model. In sharing this with his grandson, the grandfather was able to pass down his knowledge about and appreciation for airplanes and the military. The grandfather served in the Korean War, and therefore had extensive knowledge in this field from first-hand experience. The informant has since retained this interest in military history, weaponry, and aircrafts of all kinds, which I believe he received from his grandfather. This demonstrates the significance such a small teaching act can have upon a child, as he learns not only how to construct the model airplanes, but his appreciation for the airplanes as well.