CHAPTER 05
Symbols & Artifacts
Stories Etched in Time
SYMBOLS & ARTIFACTS
By Johnson Bryant
In New Mexico...
Earth carried on the body
when names and prayers had to be hidden.
Pottery holds patterns older than memory, made by hands that understood history doesn’t need permission to exist.
Crosses stand beside kachinas.
Chile ristras hang like coded messages
welcome, warning, survival.
Chile ristras hang like coded messages
welcome, warning, survival.
Nothing erased.
Nothing alone.
Some things here are not what they first appear to be.
A mural isn’t just paint.
A pattern isn’t just design.
Modern buildings sit on ancient ground whether they acknowledge it or not.
These symbols didn’t bend.
They didn’t translate themselves for comfort.
They stood the test of time because time couldn’t break them.
When words failed, symbols spoke.
When language was threatened, artifacts remembered.
They are not souvenirs.
They are witnesses.
Look closely.
They’re not frozen in the past they’re still talking.
And they’ve been saying the same thing long before anyone started listening.
the story didn’t rely on words –
because words could be taken.
Languages punished.
Silenced.
Corrected out of existence.
So, truth learned how to survive somewhere else.
In symbols.
In objects.
In things that couldn’t be edited, couldn’t be outlawed, couldn’t be told to speak differently.
This is a place where the land speaks in its own language.
The Zia sun never needed translation.
Four directions.
Four seasons.
Four stages of life.
Balance that existed long before paper laws and outlasted them.
Adobe walls kept breathing when languages were forced underground.
Cracked.
Weathered.
Still standing.
Holding memory
when mouths were taught to close.
Turquoise was never just decoration.
It was protection.
Connection.
