Lowak Shoppala' (Fire and Light) is a work that expresses Chickasaw identity through the medium of modern classical music and theatre. The work is in eight scenes and features orchestra, narration, children's chorus, traditional Chickasaw and modern dancers, traditional Chickasaw and classical vocal soloists and Chickasaw storytellers. Each scene depicts a part of Chickasaw culture and history:
Scene 1: Fire and Light
Scene 2: Double Header
Scene 3: Shell Shaker
Scene 4: Clans
Scene 5: Removal
Scene 6: Spider Brings Fire
Scene 7: Hymn
Scene 8: Double Header/Finale
Introduction: We have all been given the fire. Let us burn our way into the world, let it light our dreams. It will take us beautiful and grace-filled through the future the ones our grandmothers and grandfathers dreamed for us as they journeyed as they carried us inside them in the time before ours.
Introduction:
We have all been given the fire.
Let us burn our way into the world,
let it light our dreams.
It will take us beautiful and grace-filled
through the future
the ones our grandmothers and grandfathers dreamed
for us as they journeyed
as they carried us inside them
in the time before ours.
Minko
I stand in the green world,
its strands woven in all our breaths,
the delicate, the strong.
I am like seed, a memory of the future.
We are beautiful people, look how we
make a path for those we care for, light a fire,
sweep the path between us, human,
all my people it is time for the story
of a night of telling, the word another seed.
Bird (Foshi')
Wing, feather, light,
we make our houses of red grasses
or rushes at the river, of twig
and horse hair, and soft moss.
We live in clay
and the dark holes of trees.
With our minds of hummingbird, woodpecker, owl
you do not see us sleeping
in the deep quiet of our nesting places
only that most of us wake before first light
to announce the world is still here.
Alligator (Acho'chaba')
I am the river bottom.
I am the dead log on water,
half-smiling, the most deceptive of all.
You would not know this moss,
these short legs, the eyes that shine
two fires in the dark of night
able to fly, oh this log of a body ,
really a living tree, the river bottom rising
and how you think no danger is anywhere so fast
in the stillness of this hold.
Squirrel (Fani')
From the nest high off the ground
with the speed of a falling leaf
we look down on you and never do you know
except the tail which gives us away
or the apples stolen from the trees.
But ah, how we care for the little ones
and chatter as if ice had come
when it hasn’t, and pass from
canopy to swaying leaf
so lithe, a mouth filled with nuts
and seeds, and the little red fire of tail
following beneath the clouds.
Skunk (Koni)
Beautiful as night and day,
deep as the color of dark sky
with the milky way down my back,
I am all soft fur, sweet face,
but my smell inspires the fear of others.
Even the large run from me
And if the others do come to our secret places,
toward our young,
the lovely, slow, and loneliest fire of all,
we run, tail in air,
like a running tree, a pole,
with the milky way down its back.
Panther (Kowishto' Losa')
Warrior eyes at night, so silent
no one knows when she’s about
all sleek and muscle, ears like shells
that could hear the ocean from far away.
She admired our songs, our beauty,
the goodness she watched from hidden shadows.
She watched us gather fruit
and heard us talking, that creature
so beautiful and tawny,
the paws of first morning,
all that we see of her brilliant fire in this world.
Raccoon (Shawi')
Oh, striped tail, mask,
intelligent lover of peaches, grapes
and stolen things. We wash our food at the cleansing river.
Our long dark fingers keep busy
and we visit the conjurer at night. That’s why we are clever
night creatures on the prowl
going through your things
twigs in our striped fur, eyes hidden,
dressed as trees and shadows
looking through the hidden places
with another set of eyes.
Minko
And at the end of the spoken, the sung,
the dreamed into life and the fire, that is when
we are new and begin, the clouds rise up,
the creative life has spoken through all the nights
and fires, all along the sacred forest and river and stone
with its own words. The telling could begin
and once it begins it may continue
one seed, one life, one thing, one word,
growing after another.
Costume Design: Margaret Roach Wheeler
Poetry: Linda Hogan
Narrator: Richard Ray Whitman
Orchestra: Nashville String Machine
Conductor: Jerod Impichchaachaaha' Tate