00:00.00 archpodnet There you go your life is. 00:00.52 Alan To welcome out there in archaeology podcast land this is your host Dr Allen garfinkel for the seventy fourth episode of the rock art podcast and we're blessed and honored to have Cynthia Waltman she's a ah astounding author author s if that's the if that's the. Right word who has written several books three and these are mainly children books that are thematically tied to native americans and they're remarkable. They tell stories. They're inspirational and transformational in some ways. And they ah also surround certain key elements that are very much in alignment with our study of rock art and our study of sacred narrative and understanding the theology the religious precepts and metaphors for native people and. We'll get into the details of this shortly Cynthia are you with us. Oh god bless you I'm so glad that you were able to jump in so quickly. So it's been a while since we've you know sort of had a chance to chat? Cynthia has come along on the. 01:08.41 Cynthia Waldman Yes I am Hello Allan thanks for having me. Yeah what's my pleasure. 01:17.11 Alan Ah, number of tours and and associated lectures and other things along those lines and she's helped me and I've helped her with ah some of her research on some of her books. So the the first question I always ask is if you could kind of. Give us ah a thumbnail sketch. Ah maybe some word pictures of how you got involved with writing of children's books and how that might have where that came from and what you know how that evolved with you and obviously you're passionately involved in. And the subject matter and what what led to that sort of interesting development. How about it. Cynthia. 02:07.72 Cynthia Waldman Okay, well I think you know I have always had a love of books when you talk to any writer you know they talk about how their childhood was filled with books and mine was too I didn't have a lot of books in my home. But when I was young I read the iliad and odyssey because they were. Practically you know one of the few books I even had in my house and then um I just scrounged around and and just about this love of literature. 1 of my very favorite books that I found in the basement of my grandmother's house was called girl of the limber loss by Jean Strautton Porter and it's about nature and that just kind of reinforced my love of nature and so my 3 books all have a natural element nature is really part of the environment in those books and then as time went on. Um I also of course always had an interest in indigenous culture I think. Because you know the indigenous peoples live so close to the earth and I loved nature and so that just kind of grew into my interests and third um, well I think I I covered all 3 things actually books nature and indigenous culture. And then I was a teacher and that's how I got into children's books so I had many kind of a circuitous path to it I did other jobs before I even worked on the viking mission to Mars on the biology team and searching for life on Mars and worked in the space program for many years and moved around a lot but I finally ended up being a teacher and that you know developed into my really passion for children's books because I was always reading them to the kids obviously and so that all came together to feed this. Passion and finally after living many places I ended up into Hatchepe California and living in a canyon called Sand Canyon and there the indigenous peoples lived and for many years and some still live in the area of course. And it was the winter home of the kowaa 6 and suddenly I found myself just surrounded by artifacts pounding holes where the the people pounded their acorns little bits of arrowheads shirt. You know that they made their own heads out of just surrounded by. And just exquisite beauty and that just started me in on wanting to write books with an indigenous character and then on top of that part of the canyon has a beautiful pictograph. 04:57.39 Cynthia Waldman And that was to become a state park and I got involved in that right at the beginning that was 9093 and that's how um, that's how I got involved even further in this subject. And began to delve into it and learn a lot make friends with some of the kawaing you with people who helped me and it just went on from there. 05:11.92 Alan So the koayau for those who are listening in and may not know are a southern piute speaking culture they're and they're a native California indian group that both lived in the taatchepi mountains but also in the western Mojave Desert and still to this very day lived there. Um, the place Sand Canyon is a very important one for the for the native people and the site what they call tommocanni which is a state historic park is actually the creation site for the kuai si and it's It's um, layered. It's a tapestry of sacred narrative and beauty and wonder as well as being ah a habitation site and it's ah I think it's a wondrous place in many ways isn't it Cynthia. 06:11.62 Cynthia Waldman Yeah, it is. It's it's absolutely beautiful if you've ever been to joshua tree for people who live in California there's a section with all the jumble of rocks and that section where the creation cave is is a jumble of rocks that are many are formed to look like animals. And they're considered to be guardians so you'll have ah a horned lizard a rock. You'll have a rabbit-shaped rock. You'll have a coyote-s shapepedd rock and you'll have a tortoise-s shapeped rock all kinds of rocks in the area so you're going into this absolutely gorgeous geologic space and um. Then then when you get to the cave that's up there. You know it's a like you said it's part of the sacred narrative of the wise Andua people. Um, there's a rock baby who keeps painting over who has painted all these paintings. They've been there forever according to the people and um and it's also. Part of the you know their stories that took place there if you read the narratives of the people they say that grizzly bear gathered all the animal people so that they could all decide what if they wanted to be and there's different versions of that story. Of course. Um, say that coyote gathered the animal people but they decided what animal they were going to be. They decided that deer who got the short end of the stick was going to be food um and grizzly bear would go in and out of there and I believe that was also an opening into the underworld. So. It's a. 07:33.12 Alan Ah, absolutely. 07:42.99 Cynthia Waldman it's an ab yeah it's ah an amazing place. There's so many stories about it. Um, the kuau elder Andy Green who helped who named the park tomacanni which means winter home. He also would tell stories about the place because he lived there. He lived on that site. It was sheltered from the cold. It didn't have as much fog as the sites a little bit further west and it was a great place to stay warm. It had a spring and they could gather. Um, let's see pine nuts in the fall and and. Walk around the whole area to gather the the acorns wouldn't have been there. You know acorns are a very important food force of the indigenous californians but there were acorns outside of sand canyon that they could gather not far and um so it it just became it was just a great spot and. And details of his grandmother who went up there didn't leave the proper offering once went into the cave and got chased out by a bear so that was any florries but he loved living there in a connie with his grandmother on the hillside a connie being. Ah, a circular hut. You know, made out of willow and covered with any kind of brush. Usually they used rabbit brush there to cover and um and it was a spring. There was watercrest there. There were nettles to eat and to um, 1 thing that you could do with nettles if you had arthritis you could hit yourself with them and the stinging would be like a counter pain so you wouldn't feel the arthritis um, so he would whip his grandmother back with that. He said um. And just you know is it. It was a great as a great spot to live for the most part you know I myself have been living there for 30 years yeah ah 09:35.22 Alan And you've been living there for how long. Oh my word. Wow I hadn't I had no idea. Wow. 09:53.66 Cynthia Waldman Yeah I fell in love with it when I first saw it it was like I couldn't believe it existed. It was almost like I imagined it into existence because my husband and I I wanted to move out of the city I liked the wilderness and he wanted to be in the desert I wanted to be in the mountains. And so it's like a perfect combination because it's kind of like the desert in the mountains. It's arid dry very western you know cliffs covered covered with lichen. Um, every kind of rock green sandstone you know, purple sandstone pink sandstone church is. Um, you can walk down the road and find petrified palm while I also besides rock art I also love just plain rocks. So that was a reason why I feel very privileged to be able to live there and of course there's pounding holes everywhere like I described before and artifacts everywhere. And a beautiful mountain was ah um, one of the southernmost sierra mountains I can see and it's just you know it's not everybody's cup of tea. Fortunately, that's why a lot of people don't live there but I adore it. Yeah. 10:55.53 Alan Yeah, it's a remarkable place. So so sort of ah I guess entwining a number of your passions. What made you decide to take a foray and begin writing books and how did that How did that develop. How did you learn to do such a. And amazing thing is writing a book for children. Go ahead. 11:19.59 Cynthia Waldman Um, well I I had always been interested. Yeah, Thank you? Um? Well I always wanted to I would have done it earlier if I could have figured out how to live you know. Needed to have a job so it took me a long time but while I was working as a teacher I went back to school and got my master of fine arts and creative writing and chose children's because I was a teacher and knew and I'd already started to develop the first Book. Called the butterfly basket and so that's pretty much how it all started right? there I just had always wanted to do it I never had the chance I took the chance and I started and that's that's what you have to finally do and that's what I did. 12:07.24 Alan So your first book was called the butterfly basket. What was that about. 12:19.20 Cynthia Waldman Well, that was inspired by an actual basket and the indigenous californians of course are known for their beautiful baskets I mean the spanish even when the spanish came they mentioned it. Um and the baskets are you know hard to make. I took a tried to take a basket weaving class by a basket weaver and Mary Claw who's wonderful. Um, and I found it to be so difficult I mean there are so many steps that you have to take to make one of these baskets. Um, because you don't have any of the. Any of the materials you have to gather all the materials you have to strip all the materials you have to get them into the forms that you use and then you have to after that takes a tremendous amount of time. It's a lot of fun and then you have to actually make the baskets and weave the baskets which takes a lot of skill. But um, she taught us how to do that and I got very interested and then there was this basket. There was a basket collector and she unfortunately was killed in a car accident and nobody knew what happened to her basket collection and we have a wonderful historian and to hatchup here. Her name is. Del Troy um and she went online and found managed to find the baskets. Well she managed to find this 1 basket and it was a butterfly basket. It's woven with butterflies I think they used bracken fern actually it says. Do the darker colors. But um, so it's very symmetric. It's a pretty large basket and I was able to actually go to the collector who owns it and he let let me actually even touch this basket which is a magical experience and um, so so. So this basket was woven and by a quietu woman and it just inspired the whole story because I began to imagine this girl who's about to lose her basket and because they were actually sold. The women would come and travel. By foot many many miles to a store in near taatapy and other places where they could sell these baskets because for a time they were you know a way for the peoples to make money and um so she was going to lose her basket and her friend Sarah. Figures out a way that she can save it. You know the 2 girls just become fast friends. The indigenous girl Lena and then Sarah a girl from the city who has found herself in the middle of this canyon in the middle of nowhere and it's too scared to even go outside at first Lena teaches her all about. 15:10.75 Cynthia Waldman Beauty of living in Sand Canyon called coyote canyon in my book and then and then Sarah helps Lena save her basket that's about to be sold. So that's the story and that was the inspiration but also it was a story about the loss of culture because. You know when you lose the baskets and they leave your area. You're losing some of your culture but also there was a loss of language language. We all, you know about the language and how important it is to save these languages and at the time I wrote the book. There was only a handful of native. Speakers and they helped me with the book and I tried to put quite a bit of the native new ah language into the book. But now there's only one native speaker left and so that has been quite quite a change you know over the years the number of native speakers. So. 1 left but it was in the story you know part of it was you know trying about the importance of keeping the language. Um, although the overall theme was about grief and the 2 girls helping each other deal with grief. So. 16:17.38 Alan And you've got on to work on her craft more than just the butterfly basket haven't you. 16:31.27 Cynthia Waldman Yes, 2 more the next one which is also out is called turning gold now not all you know the quas who did not live on a reservation some went to the fort to home reservation. But for the most part, the quietu people did not and they had to. Fight to stay on to stay and on their land which was not a reservation just to stay in town because they wanted to clear the army came by and wanted to clear them out I'm not sure of all the details of this story but there's a story about how they had to hide in the rocks near. 17:07.18 Alan let's let's let's stop let's let's stop right there for just a moment. Um, this is the first segment and I think that's a wonderful place sort of a cliffhanger to ah, let the let let our ah the listeners think about some of the. 17:10.77 Cynthia Waldman Um, in the Tummacani area and you can see those walk. Okay. 17:24.41 Alan Pictures we've painted and we'll ah pick it up on the flip-flop and continue our our story. Thank you? Yang.