Wow! That Oughta Be In a Museum!
Packages of Memories
Joe Sequiche Morris is another person who records
stories, but not in words.
Joe has many memories of Cherokee life in Oklahoma. As a child he hid in the
family's woodpile and listened to adults tell stories throughout the night.
He later turned these stories into wood carvings, each one a different tale
from the Cherokee Nation. Like most collectors, Joe sees his collection as
packages of memories. Each object is a cue that brings up stories of a distant
past.
Today, Joe's award-winning carvings are in museum collections. Many also are
owned by private collectors. Joe keeps a precious group of carvings for use in
school programs and in the Cherokee language classes he teaches at the
Indian Center
Museum in Wichita.
"I always carved from life. Everything was in my head of what I learned
when I was hiding in that little niche in that woodpile, and the stories they
told. Everything that was told I carved. . . . I am trying to perpetuate the
memory . . . and this is the only way I know how."
Pictured above, Joe Morris at the Indian Center Museum in Wichita.
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