Keeping Catawba Culture Alive with Beckee Garris

Welcome And Why Becky Matters

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to Voices of Inspiration. In this episode, I sat down with Becky Garris at the Native American Studies Center in Lancaster, South Carolina. She is a Catawba potter and storyteller who was born and raised on the Cotawba Indian Reservation in nearby Rock Hill. Becky is the granddaughter of former Chief Albert Sanders and the great-granddaughter of former chief Samuel Taylor Blue. She grew up in a community where everyone knew everyone. Family looked out for one another. And if you were at someone's house at dinner time, you were expected to stay and eat. In this conversation, she shares memories of that childhood and the women who taught her to make traditional cataw pottery. We talk about the care and respect that go into working the sacred clay and why she feels a responsibility to pass those teachings on. She also shares what brought her back to school at 65, how she incorporates the Catawba language into her storytelling, and what it means to see her great grandchildren making their own creations alongside her. For anyone spending time in the Carolinas, this conversation offers a chance to learn about a Native community whose history is part of this region and whose people continue to shape it today. Becky speaks directly about what she wishes visitors to the Native American Studies Center and to the area understood about the Catawba people. Hearing from her is a good reminder to make room in our travel plans for conversations and to listen to the people who know a place as home. You'll find information about Becky and the Native American Studies Center in the show notes so you can learn more or plan a visit. And if you enjoy these conversations, follow Voices of Inspiration and share this episode with someone who would appreciate hearing her story. Here's my conversation with Becky Garrison. Thank

Growing Up On The Reservation

SPEAKER_01 1:53

you so much for being here today. Well, thank you for inviting me. I feel very honored to have this conversation with you. I have heard about you for a very long time, and I were a little conventional. Don't believe everything you hear. I'm looking forward to this conversation. So you were born and raised on the Cotappa Indian Reservation in Rock Hill. Can you start off by just sharing a little bit about what it was like growing up there?

SPEAKER_00 2:18

It was a quiet community to where everybody knew everybody, and you could walk anywhere into anybody's home because we are all kin to everybody. And if you were there during lunch or dinner time, you were expected to stay there and eat. If you left, you were kind of insulting the cook.

SPEAKER_01 2:38

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:39

Yeah. And if you misbehaved at somebody's house like an aunt or an uncle, you can make sure you got a paddling. And then you get another one when you got back home. And since we didn't have phones back then, I was always shocked at how they knew I had misbehaved.

SPEAKER_01 2:54

How quickly it traveled. Your

Elders Who Modeled Care

SPEAKER_01 2:59

family has r really deep roots in the combination. Who had the greatest influence on you when you were young?

SPEAKER_00 3:06

My great-grandfather, Chief Samuel Taylor Blue. I was 14 when he was passed, so I was blessed enough to be around him. You felt something when you were around him. Now I would consider it like it was spirituality or family connections, but he was always looked out for everybody. He always had a huge farm crops and you just went to his house and either picked what you wanted. I remember one time I was there and uh two of my brothers and a cousin they were going out into the woods to play. Well, being the second child of a family of nine and being there was my brother, me, and three other brothers before the next sister came along. So I grew up being a tomboy, so I just figured I'd just follow 'em into the woods and play whatever they don't play. Well, they threw rocks at me to make me turn around and go back. And so Grandpa Blue saw that and he took me out to the garden and that was when the cornmeal you get them in twenty-five pound bags. He put a watermelon in there. And for me to drag back to my house and he dared me to give my brothers any of it. And then um Albert Sanders, he was also one that looked out for family, and uh he didn't preach to you. You knew what to do by looking out for people, looking out for families, and when you can help, help.

SPEAKER_01 4:45

Sounds like a good role model.

SPEAKER_00 4:47

Yes. And so that's what I still try to do today.

SPEAKER_01 4:51

Were art and storytelling always part of your life, or did you just come to appreciate that as you got older?

SPEAKER_00 4:58

Both. You you hear it when you're growing up, but it's something that you hear. You don't necessarily embrace it, but because you heard it, it is a stored memory. So whenever you get older and you realize this this was important. This needs to be continued, just like a pottery. My mother didn't make pottery, and neither did my grandmother, Vera Blue Sanders. But uh they had large families. Well, back then they always had large families. Uh my mother was one of eleven. Oh wow. And I was one of nine. My mother was the secondborn, and I was the secondborn. And she had an older brother, and of course I have an older brother. I look at it now and it's it wasn't strange then, but then you realize that my mom got married when she was sixteen, so grandma and pop Sanders having eleven children, towards the end, they were both having children about the same time. Because I have an uncle that's actually six months older to the day than I am. Oh wow And then I've got two aunts that are four and six years younger than me.

SPEAKER_01 6:18

A lot of support around you. Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_00 6:21

You always had somebody to play with.

SPEAKER_01 6:22

Right.

unknown 6:23

Yes.

Learning Sacred Clay Respect

SPEAKER_01 6:25

Can you talk about your experience learning traditional top of pottery? What do you remember from the early lessons?

SPEAKER_00 6:32

When I was younger, we weren't allowed to touch the play until we were a certain age. And even as an adult, I can remember when we were having pottery classes at the culture center, there were several ladies that were that were teaching. And I made the mistake of saying I was gonna play in the mud. Oh, it was the look and the tone of her voice when Aunt Evelyn George told me is that is not mud and you do not play in it. You create something out of the sacred clay. And I said, Yes, ma'am. And I don't call it mud anymore.

SPEAKER_01 7:18

Right. And I'm sure you passed that down. Yes, I did.

SPEAKER_00 7:21

Yes, I did.

SPEAKER_01 7:22

When you think about the women who taught you, is there a lesson or a piece of advice from them that kind of stuck with you?

SPEAKER_00 7:29

Don't necessarily keep the first creation that you make. You can always do better. Because I can remember once again, ain't Evelyn George. She was a strict master when it came to how you made the pottery. She would pick up whatever you were making and she would turn it in her hand and she would look on the inside and she'd flip it over and look in the bottom, and she would go smash it right in front of you. Wow. Even Caroline Sanders, a a cousin who was also a master potter, she would make things and look at it, and I would be so, so excited if I could make something as good as she just got through making. She did the same thing with things that she made. We had a catfish that she had made when she was artist in residence here. And the one she originally made was twice as big as the one that's on display. She smushed it because there was just something about it that didn't set to her standards.

SPEAKER_01 8:33

How long did it take her to make something like that?

SPEAKER_00 8:36

Sometimes hours, sometimes weeks. It depending on how big it was, how you know, the drying polish, mm, then the polishing, and then the firing. I've actually been to her home in the past when she was doing her firing of the pottery. And like say we still do not use a potter's field nor a kiln because we're still doing it the traditional way. It's a six thousand plus cultural heritage thing that's been passed down. Whoever's making the pottery, like myself, we can't be the last ones to make it stop. It has to continue on the as long as there is a cataw.

When The Clay Changes The Plan

SPEAKER_01 9:18

When you are w working with the clay, do you go into it already knowing what you're you'll create, or does it just kind of reveal itself?

SPEAKER_00 9:27

The clay has to let my hands know what it wants to make. In my mind, I set out the what I want to make. It never works out the way that I think it's going to to make. When my younger sister passed, my other sister, Midge, was the one that passed, and my sister Pam asked me if I would make a urn for her. We were talking earlier just off camera about different things, how things you see things or hear things. Well the urn turned out perfect. The lid turned out perfect while I was making it. But I wanted to put something on top of the lid. And I wanted to put a turtle on there. And as many turtles as I have made, after six attempts to make a turtle, it wouldn't even look like a turtle.

SPEAKER_01 10:20

It wasn't happening.

SPEAKER_00 10:21

It was not happening. And I heard my sister Midge's voice say I like owls. And I said, But I don't, because in our tradition, depending on the type of owl, it's either a sign of good things or plenty, like the we call them barn owls if they were barbed owls. A barbed owl won't show up in your barn unless there's mice or other rodents that they eat, and those rodents aren't going to eat unless you have a food supply in there for them that you're store in like your corn or your wheat or anything else. So they're a messenger of good things. But the screech owl is a messenger of bad things. And we have some of our tribal citizens that refuse to have anything to do with owls because growing up it's all the herd that they were bad news. But anyhow, once again I said, But I don't like owls. I absolutely heard my sister stomp her foot. And whenever she wanted to distress something, she talked out of the side of her mouth and she said, But I like owls. Made a perfect owl. Really? And it and I put it on a little log and put it on the lid and been making owls ever since.

SPEAKER_01 11:44

I just have to say though, I for the first time ever after moving to further into Lancaster, into the area we are, I heard my first screech owl a couple of years ago. And now the most terrifying thing I have ever heard of my life. Especially not knowing what it was because I didn't know what it was. And I haven't thankfully we have you know Google and all these different things, and I was able to figure it out. But it was terrifying, and I was home alone, and then dogs were going crazy, and so yeah, had my experience.

SPEAKER_00 12:29

Well,

Tradition, Innovation, And Firing Risk

SPEAKER_00 12:30

like I say, strict standards of the clay that's used, how it's made, and how it's fired. And the biggest compliment is copying somebody else. The shapes and forms. It's just like I was telling people earlier, before European contact, our cooking vessels didn't even have flat bottoms on them. But after they brought, you know, the flat bottom cooking vessels and everything, shapes and forms changed. It's just like the wedding jugs that we make today. They're not traditional for our culture, but we had some of our cutables to go out west to do demonstrations and different things, and they saw it and they brought that form back. But now it's a tradition among us to have to make the wedding jugs now. So sometimes they evolve and ramp things up other things in. And if you're lucky when you do the traditional fire, you don't have an air pocket in one or it's still too dry and explodes into the fire. So that but that's a humbling experience too.

SPEAKER_01 13:38

So

Pine Needles, Baskets, And Art School

SPEAKER_01 13:40

you also work with longleaf pine needles. Yes. And other materials and you create jewelry from these things. Wha why these materials?

SPEAKER_00 13:51

Well, they're natural. It it's not that they haven't been used in the past, but it was just one of those traditions that got lost along the way because you don't have to make it now, you can go fight. Going from pottery being my passion to making the white oak split baskets to now the pine needles is more or less like a progression of learning something new. And so now the pine needles are my passion right now.

SPEAKER_01 14:24

So that's great though, that you you're also continuing to evolve just the same way as you mentioned the nation itself in terms of bringing things in. And um, I think that's great. You also earned your associate's degree in art in 2017 from USCL. Yes. What led you to return to school and what did that accomplishment mean to you?

SPEAKER_00 14:46

Well, uh, I can either give Dr. Stephen Criswell the credit or the blame. I was actually working at the Culture Center on the reservation and had different duties while working there too, but that particular day it was my job to work in the craft stores on Saturdays. But we had an events that come along too, and he he happened to come up there and when he was leaving, and I said, Well, half jokingly, how do I go to school? And he said, Well, when you're serious, contact me. And so I did, and because of my age, at the time I was sixty-five, mm-hmm and with in South Carolina, after you're a certain age, you get to go to school for free. Because you still have to buy your books and everything. And that was before they opened and so through the knowing people and they have student workers that come here. And so after a certain time, a length of time, um, I told them I said, I'm not going to school anymore. I'm gonna just go ahead and graduate with what degree it can, because originally it was supposed to be in in the thinking part was that I w might be the very first one that graduated with a Native American studies degree. Well, there's still not a degree here in South Carolina yet. So, um, but it's part of the humanities, and I said, two hundred and something credits. I'm gonna just take what I can get. I was supposed to be in the the first Well, we'll say we'll just say that you were.

unknown 16:32

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 16:33

I say I've earned it, I just don't have to be able to do it.

SPEAKER_01 16:35

Exactly. Exactly. You have already put the work in and you've already earned it.

SPEAKER_00 16:41

After a certain length of time, I retired for the fourth time. And I left and went to Florida for two years. And I was actually went down there to go to a metaphysical college. Oh. To become a metaphysical pastor. But of course that's when COVID happened. And so they had to shut down. And that's another w attempted degree that I didn't get.

SPEAKER_01 17:12

But uh and another one you've earned though. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:16

And so whenever Stephen found out that I was back in town, he called me up and he said, You want your old job back? I love that. You were meant to be here. Yeah. Always brought back here. Yeah, yes. Um

Storytelling In Catawba And English

SPEAKER_00 17:30

it's always a calling back.

SPEAKER_01 17:32

So you're also a storyteller and you use both the cottaba language and English in your stories. What do you enjoy most about telling stories for an audience?

SPEAKER_00 17:42

Sometimes I'll bring the kids up to interact while I'm telling some of the stories, but I also like to see the people's reactions when they hear a different language incorporated with it within English. And I like the reactions when they find out exactly what I'm talking about. Because I will not tell them if I'm doing a story like the dippin' dot duck souk soup, I will not tell them what that is until the end.

SPEAKER_01 18:10

Now, do you do that just in the local community? Do you travel across South Carolina?

SPEAKER_00 18:16

I've actually recently I was in Tennessee going up there for um a conference and uh told some of the stories then, but also taught how to make longly pineal earrings. What changes when you tell a story in the Kataba language rather than only in English? I actually feel my ancestors standing behind me. You're not alone. I'm not alone.

SPEAKER_01 18:41

In 2010, one of your Katawba folk tales was included in Trickster Native American Tales. How did that opportunity come about?

SPEAKER_00 18:49

Well, actually, I was working for the Tribal Historic Preservation Office and um got an email from someone and they had actually contacted the culture center and Dr. Hare, one on the hare uh referred it to me and she said, Would you be interested in this? And I said, um Yes. But because it's in a graphics form that had never been done before and it was all done through emails never met any single person that's in the book. And whenever I did the Yin Sosaurus, which means the little wild people story, whenever the book came out, somebody asked me, he said, uh, When did he see you to draw your picture? And I said, Never. Technology is an amazing thing. Yes, it is. Um It actually had gone gone into its second printing. And they changed the cover on the front of it, but it that's it went into its second second printing.

Great Grandkids With Clay In Hand

SPEAKER_00 20:03

Congratulations.

SPEAKER_01 20:05

So has becoming a grandmother and a great-grandmother changed the way you think about passing along these stories and memories and traditions?

SPEAKER_00 20:14

No, because it's just automatic. My granddaughter and two great grandsons are staying me right now, but the first thing the boys want to do when they get home from school is play in the clay. I don't tell them that it's not play, but as long as their hands are in it and they can create what they want to create. The seven-year-old, when he was six, he saw me making an owl. And he wanted to make one. So it's at the culture center right now. It's supposed to be going into the collections and not for sale. But his owl is looking like this. His head's turned, and I said, Why'd you make his head that way? He said, Because he's looking at you.

SPEAKER_01 21:06

That's really great that you can get them familiar with it though, even at a young age. That's really cool.

SPEAKER_00 21:11

And and the five-year-old amazes me more than anything because he's one of these germophobics at five, that as soon as something gets on his hand, he's automatically going to go wash it. But with the clay, it's it's not that way. So I think he feels the connection within it too, without him knowing that he's feeling the connection.

SPEAKER_01 21:35

Mm-hmm. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 21:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:37

I definitely believe that.

SPEAKER_00 21:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:39

Do you see younger members of the Catawba nation carrying these traditions? All of the traditions that we've talked about forward in their own ways.

SPEAKER_00 21:48

I do, but it's just like anything when they become teenagers, they lose interest. But as they get older, they'll always come back to it.

SPEAKER_01 21:57

Mm-hmm. Is there

Familiar Strangers And Past-Life Memory

SPEAKER_01 21:58

a moment with a visitor here at The Native American Studies Center or student or maybe a young person, just a moment that's really stuck with you?

SPEAKER_00 22:08

Yeah, there was a particular person that came in here and we've never met. But we know we've met.

SPEAKER_01 22:17

Don't you love those moments? Yes.

SPEAKER_00 22:19

I always love those moments. I actually believe in reincarnation.

SPEAKER_01 22:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:42

Because I distinctly remember four very vivid life experiences. Now I don't know if that's in the genes of that's something that happened to an ancestor, right? And it's gene memory, or if I've actually done these things myself. But, you know, it's very strong as far as these memories.

SPEAKER_01 23:12

I definitely agree with you. And I think as I've gotten older, that's become a stronger feeling and interest too, that when you're younger, especially, I mean, I grew up in a rural area too. Yeah, you you're not really introduced to those things very much or at all. No. I didn't even learn about anything like that until I was an adult and on my own. So I definitely think that there can be something too. Yeah, definitely. When

We’re Still Here And What To Remember

SPEAKER_01 23:35

someone sees your pottery or hears one of your stories, what do you hope hope that they take with them from that experience?

SPEAKER_00 23:43

That uh it's an emotional experience. I hope that they have an emotional reaction to it because it'll stay with you. You'll remember things more often if you have an emotional reaction to anything.

SPEAKER_01 24:00

What do you wish people outside of your community understood about the Catawba people today?

SPEAKER_00 24:07

And you hear this phrase over and over again in all native communities is we're still here. Every time there's been an anthropologist or a researcher or whatever that has come through every time they write a book, it's always these are the last other people. But like I say, we're still here. And um continue to be here as long as there's life. Absolutely. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:39

Thank you so much for taking time to be with me and sharing a little bit of your story. I do have one final question for you. Do you

Closing Words To Live By

SPEAKER_01 24:47

have a favorite quote or any other words you'd like to leave with listeners?

SPEAKER_00 24:51

Yeah, well, every time I write something, I always put down at the bottom um, if you don't know where you come from, how do you know where you're going? And if you don't know where you're going, how will you know when you get there? Oh, I love that. Thank you so much for sharing that.