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By Katy Reckdahl, The Times-Picayune
February 15, 2010, 7:20AM
Edward Buckner, left, director of The Porch, teaches Nas Jackson, 11, center, and Jonathan Felder, 11, right, how to make their Indian suits for Mardi Gras on Thursday, February 11, 2010.Sitting in a car outside the 7th Ward Neighborhood Center, getting ready for Mardi Gras, four boys wiggled and wrestled. They rolled the windows up and down. They cranked up the volume when a favorite song came on the radio.
But once each of them grabbed hold of a needle and beads, they sat still for hours.
Last week, the four compared hands across the front seat of the car. They jockeyed to show off the calluses on their fingertips, formed by hours of sewing. They displayed the red spots where they had suffered needle punctures.
"All of us Indians, " said Nas Jackson, 11, proudly echoing the assessment made by generations of Mardi Gras Indians, who say you can tell a true Indian by inspecting his hands.
On Tuesday morning, the four boys, lifelong friends, will emerge from the neighborhood center in feathered suits they sewed. The four are able to make their debut as Indians because the Porch, a cultural organization housed in the 7th Ward Center, bought them the beads, sequins, stones, feathers, canvas and satin.
It's the first year for the project, which serves as both an after-school program that keeps children engaged and a cultural-preservation plan to pass down a revered, but expensive, tradition.
Nearly every Mardi Gras Indian tribe includes children, usually relatives of tribe members. And even though every chief welcomes neighborhood children with an interest and a knack for sewing, parents already juggling bills often discourage the idea.
Nas Jackson, 11, shows off the front chest plate of his Mardi Gras Indian suit that he made at The Porch on Thursday, February 11, 2010."A lot of kids don't mask because their families can't afford $300 or $400 for feathers they're going to wear a few times, " said Big Chief Jermaine Cooper Bossier, who started the program along with Ed Buckner from the Porch. The pair cobbled together about $3,000 from the Porch's budget and grants from Transforma and KID smART, two nonprofit organizations.
When the money started to run low, Buckner and Porch co-founder Willie Birch dipped into their own pockets, while co-founder Ron Bechet, an art professor at Xavier University, bought beads and other supplies.
Originally, about 10 kids said they were interested. But after the hard work of sewing began, the number dropped to four -- four boys who will serve as spyboys in the 7th Ward Creole Hunters, the tribe Bossier began last year.
With Buckner's blessing, Bossier launched the Creole Hunters from the Porch's building in honor of the late "chief of chiefs" Tootie Montana, who came out of that same door 60 years earlier as the founder of the Monogram Hunters, a tribe he started several years before he took over his longtime tribe, the Yellow Pocahontas.
Buying supplies
Bossier had to wait to "mask Indian" until he was 14 and had an after-school job. He learned from elder Indians that, as Mardi Gras nears, buying the final supplies often means sacrifice.
Last week, as he and girlfriend Triniece Gauthier worked to assemble five suits -- for him, a young son and three nephews -- Bossier needed a haircut, his home phone was shut off and his tennis shoes were worn to a nub. That was all OK, he said: "I would deprive myself of a lot of things just to mask."
In the Upper 9th Ward, Beverly Williams worked an extra job selling Avon products for the past four years to finance suits for her daughter, Nadia Robertson, 8, who sewed parts of her own suit this year, usually while sitting on her mother's bed watching the Hannah Montana show.
Nadia is the queen of a children's tribe, Young Guardians of the Flame, run by the family of the late, celebrated Big Chief Donald Harrison Sr. of the Guardian of the Flames, who was adamant about involving children in his tribe.
Other cultural organizations, such as the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival Foundation, occasionally help out families struggling to afford the expensive materials.
But all Indians struggle with a lack of money, said Monk Boudreaux, 67, an eminent Uptown big chief who has created suits each year since he was a 12-year-old learning to sew from William Well, a White Eagles spyboy who lived across the street.
Boudreaux hasn't paid his light bill this month, he said. But since he's a faithful customer, Entergy is lenient with him once a year, he said. "They know what time it is, " he said while sewing an Indian jacket for one of six grandchildren who mask with him in the Golden Eagles.
Tribal swapping
Even last year, when Spirit of the FiYiYi Big Chief Victor Harris landed a prestigious Prospect.1 retrospective of his needlework at the New Orleans Museum of Art, he found himself despairing about how he could afford to build both his intricate chief's suit and a legion of children's suits. Harris has been pinched financially ever since his longtime job at Charity Hospital was eliminated after Hurricane Katrina, he said.
Everyone in a tribe swaps resources at this time of year, said Big Chief Donald Harrison's daughter, Big Queen Cherice Harrison-Nelson last week, as she and Kevin Cooley, 8, sorted $675 worth of feathers into groups of 10 so that they could be tied together and attached to suits.
She and her mother, Herreast Harrison, work with the Young Guardians every Saturday. If they can finish all the suits, 10 children in varying shades of green will mask with Harrison-Nelson on Tuesday. As a nod to history, some of the smaller suits will include patches sewn by older Indians inducted into the Mardi Gras Indian Hall of Fame that Harrison-Nelson helped establish a decade ago.
Regardless of the state of the economy, Boudreaux said, when children come by his house with beadwork that shows promise, he tells them, "You're ready."
Boudreaux is convinced that his hallowed tradition will continue as those youngsters, like all Indians, learn to buy beads little by little, as they can afford them.
"We were born poor, " Boudreaux said. "It's been a bad economy for us our entire lives."
Edward Buckner, right, director of The Porch, teaches Nas Jackson, 11, left center, and Jonathan Felder, 11, right center, how to make their Indian suits for Mardi Gras on Thursday, February 11, 2010. The two boys show off the back of their aprons.'Do it right'
At the 7th Ward Center, Jonathan Felder, 11, said he wanted to follow in the footsteps of his uncle Nelson Burke, the big chief of the Red Hawk Hunters and now an Atlanta resident. But Jonathan, an algebra whiz at F.W. Gregory Elementary School, usually plays outside until 7 p.m. on school nights, leaving him only a couple of hours to squeeze in homework and sewing before his 9 p.m. bedtime.
As Mardi Gras neared, Jonathan for weeks declined friends' invitations to weekend parties, telling them he needed to sew. But despite the sacrifices, he's lagging, he said. Last week, it seemed to him that the necklace was "taking too long, " he said as he struggled with thread that too often became knotted. As he eyed the three headpieces and cuffs he had yet to finish, he admired Nas Jackson's evenly sewn patches, noting that his own work had spaces between sequins "because I've been trying to rush."
Justin "Tugga" Cloud, 11, who attends Drew Elementary, was also rushing. He also has Indians in his family; his aunt used to be the queen of the Red Hawk Hunters. So he had a lot of encouragement, and at first he thought sewing was easy. "Then I started sticking myself and it got complicated, " he said with a sigh.
Boudreaux remembered the impatience. "I tell kids, 'Slow down. Take the time and do it right, '" he said. But they have to learn that themselves, he said.
With his first suit, 55 years ago, he recalled, he beaded half of it properly and then took a shortcut, covering the rest with glued-down glitter that started to shed the moment he put it on.
Mesmerized by the ritual
Terrence Pipkins, 13, Jonathan Felder's cousin and a student at Craig Elementary, had no such jitters. Last week, he'd finished his patches and even forked over $18 for the wig that he'll braid into two plaits.
He said he finds sewing calming, the colors "beautiful" and the Indian rituals spellbinding. "I like how Indians meet each other and how they represent their cliques, " he said, describing how, when two tribes meet on the streets, the signals run through the Indian hierarchy, going from the spyboys out in front to the flag boys, the wild man and chief.
Like Terrence, Nas Jackson was already looking ahead to Tuesday. Two years ago on Mardi Gras, he saw "beaucoup Indians" in red and black feathers dancing a few blocks away. He begged his mother to walk there with him, and the two watched the feathered figures raise their wings to the sky and then dip and twist to the beat of tambourines and drums. He was hooked.
Last year, when Buckner started recruiting children to be part of the Porch's sewing program, Nas jumped at the chance. For months, he would come home from Live Oak Elementary School, do his homework and then sew. "I'd just sit down and do it. Do it till I fall asleep, " he said. He was always the first of the four to finish his sewing.
Nas pointed to his neck piece, showing how he'd beaded it with red pearls that contrasted with the green and blue sequins. On other pieces of what had been blank canvas, cut out by Bossier for each boy, he showed how he had looped borders of beads and sewed down big shiny stones.
"I can't wait to put it on, " he said, running his small but seasoned hand across his careful work.
Katy Reckdahl can be reached at kreckdahl@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3396.
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