The Way Home
By David Neel
Published 2019
David Neel was an infant when his father, a traditional Kwakiutl artist, returned to the ancestors, triggering a series of events that would separate David from his homeland and its rich cultural traditions for twenty-five years. When the aspiring photographer saw a mask carved by an ancestor in a Texas museum, the encounter inspired him to return home and follow in his father's footsteps. Drawing on memory, legend, and his own art, Neel recounts his struggle to reconnect with his culture and become an accomplished Kwakwa̱ka̱'wakw artist. His memoir is a testament to the strength of the human spirit to overcome great obstacles and to the power and endurance of Indigenous culture and art.
An excerpt from the book:
In the time of myths there was a Thunderbird who had a young son, and they lived in the land of the Kwakiutl. One day the Thunderbird was called home to the sky-world and he flew away, never to return. The boy, lacking the guidance of his father, wandered far from home until he didn't know from whence he came. After four years his grandfather came to him in a vision, wearing the mask of Tsegame - the Great Magician of the Red Cedar bark. He told him that his people were waiting for him and it was time to go home. The boy began the long journey home, and when he got there he found that he had been away not just a few years but two and half decades. Soon he met other descendants of the Thunderbird and they taught him the ways of their people. The boy stayed in the land of his ancestors, raised a family and eventually he transformed into a Thunderbird like his father.
Summary
This book tells the story of an Indigenous boy who is separated from his family as an infant, and after a 25 year journey rejoins his family and community, and becomes traditional artist like generations before him. It is a classic tale of the search for family, home and identity. But this story is unique: the boy has the soul of an artist and his creations becomes his family, and he never loses the thread of cultural knowledge and dreams of following in the family footsteps. Over time, through his art he manifests images and carvings that symbolize the family he never knew; allowing him to hang onto a thread of his legacy. Like Odysseus, he finds himself thousands of miles away from his people and can't discern the way home.
One day, in the most unlikely of places, a museum in south Texas, he finds himself staring at a mask of Tsegame that was carved by his grandfather, Charlie James. He immediately recognizes the mask's significance and it speaks to him; not in words but in a spiritual download of cultural knowledge. He realizes that it is time return home and within months he leaves his house and his career, to move to Vancouver; the city of his birth. The ancestors are looking out for him, and just by chance, he moves into a house across the street from where Beau Dick and Wayne Alfred, are carving a totem pole. Within weeks of his return he is apprenticing with two of the most renowned artists of this generation. As time progresses, he becomes a Kwakiutl artist like previous generations of family, and in due course, his children become artists, fulfilling the obligation of passing on the tradition, and the story comes full circle.
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