01/07/2020
A friend wrote this for me a while back thought id share
As White Earth artist Dan Neisen talks about making bow and arrows, we see the widths and lengths with measurements he creates in air with his hands. He choreographs planning the bow with the grain of the wood and the tying on of two feathers to the arrow. He explains that traditional hunting arrows had three to enable better rotation, but his are easier for people to hang on their walls. He tells how the best bow makers of the past were crippled or hurt in such a way that they couldn’t hunt, so they sat in camp and made bows and arrows.
We sit in a small Mahnomen Shooting Star Casino conference room, with Neisen on break. He considers himself fortunate that his full-time security job generates a good income that he supplements with earnings from his artwork. Both jobs cover the costs of material and help pay the bills. Both incomes enable him to buy an old farm house with a barn and an orchard with 43 apple trees. When he leaves work at the casino, Neisen goes home and begins creating. “My workspace is my living room!” The buildings are filled with deer horns, bones, turtle shells, and air-dried boards from his father’s woods. “You always have the fear that at 3:00 a.m., you won’t have what you need! You get these creative ideas and go out to the shop and find them.”
Neisen makes three different kinds of turtle shell rattles. One deer with antlers. Another from the deer front leg bone, showing us with his hands how nice and round it is. A third rattle is made with a shell and a wooden stick. He used to make small turtle shell rattles, but the turtles went on the endangered species list. He buys shells in quantity in order for the final product to be affordable. He makes a deer-horn pipe that he decorates with feather and leather. The pipes and shell rattles usually hang on people’s walls as art objects, not as an item for personal use, although a good share of medicine men use his rattles in their work.
One of Neisen’s best outlets is the casinos gift shop. He tells us that five years ago, the gift shop offered nothing but dream catchers for sale. Neisen recounts how Native artists worked hard together to get this changed. They approached the Casino and said “Everything here is based on us being Indians. This is Indian land. We pride ourselves on giving work to the Native Americans. If you are bringing outside stuff in, then that’s rotten. Individually we talked to the CEO and asked, ‘Why don’t you honor us?’” As a result, management changed their practices. “Here, we really get honored. Other casino gift shops don’t honor the Native artists from their own reservation.” Neisen would like to see more artwork on the casino walls, just as people have decorated their homes with his work.
As an artist working with traditional materials, Neisen is careful not to reproduce sacred items like pipestone pipes, water drums, or rattles with birch bark. He also abides by federal and various state laws. Bear claws, badger parts, and turtle shells, are treated differently in Wisconsin than Minnesota. Federal laws prohibit use of songbird feathers, and although you can hunt Canadian geese, you can’t sell their feathers off the reservation. As a Native, Neisen can make an eagle fan but cannot sell it to non-Natives. So he makes fans from chicken, pheasant, wild turkey, grouse, and peacock feathers. Safety laws restrict items like knives that might be sold to children.
Neisen has had the desire to create since he was old enough to sneak a paring knife from his mother’s kitchen drawer. He lost all of his dad’s wood tools in the woods. He was baffled on how the ancients could make the things he was trying to make. When people ask, “Do you use glue?” he answers yes. He has learned that native people used many kinds of natural glues including glue sticks from beaver trails. “All my life I have tried to find out how the things we have were made. Nettle fiber is waterproof, for instance.”
A dyslexic child, Neisen says he was never good with numbers, spelling, or reading, but in art classes and woodshop, he excelled. He stayed in school because he loved sports and wanted to graduate. He recalls how art, making things, always gave him what he couldn’t get from other people. He wanted to attend the Minneapolis Arts Institute but his high school counselor said that with his grades he wouldn’t make it. At 41 he got an electrical license, one of three Minnesotans who passed the test when it was read to him.
Neisen realized early that he couldn’t make enough money from art. “Its places that sell the artwork that make me money,” he says. “I sell everything wholesale but without them, I would have nothing. It would just sit in my house.” He thinks that young artists don’t understand that “You have to give it time. I thought that I could come right out of school and make it. No. I almost starved a couple of times. I had to have a job, too.” While he would like to quit his job and focus on art-making, Neisen doesn’t think it will happen soon, as times can still be lean in the winter. Besides, if he were compelled to live off his artwork, it would feel like a job, although currently, he estimates that he spends more than 40 hours a week on his art.
Because of how own long journey to become a practicing and selling artist, Neisen mentors and encourages others. When he first started showing friends his work, he was so shy he couldn’t go into any sales place. While working as an electrician outside of Mankato, he showed a local woman his art, she bought it all for $250. He cried. Neisen currently mentors a young Naytawash man and is hopeful that this young father will carry on his work. Giving talks at sobriety programs like White Bison, he stays connected to the community and speaks to the joy and satisfaction he gets from creating. “I wish I could give this to other people. It would slow down drug and alcohol abuse.”
Today Neisen is comfortable with himself. His art has given him a peace of mind that he couldn’t get anywhere else. He spent years angry because he was different, but now he recognizes that the Creator has given him a wonderful gift. He admits to still getting a rush when people buy hos work because they think his art is good, and he is starting to realize that he is in artwork. He dreams of doing one of a kind pieces and landing something in the Smithsonian.
Neisen enjoys the idea that his art in on wall all over the world. For instance, a wealthy guy, Chuck Hopwood, in Ada, Minnesota, collects Neisen’s work and has decorated his big hot tub room with it. Neisen says, “I am so fortunate, so honored. This artwork has turned into a healthy addiction.” He owns that he has made some unbelievable artwork, and as he gotten older, he has been able to accumulate material things that please him, like a beautiful bear rug with a full head. His art keeps him going. Or, as he says, “The hundreds of arrows keep you going…I can go without a lot of things but not my art. It’s so strong. It’s given me life. Everything I wanted out of life.”
