LaKeisha Wolf and Kandis Quam discuss Artwork and Creations available for the Holiday Season

VERNON OAKES: Good morning everybody. This is Vernon Oakes and welcome to Everything Cooperative this morning. You know, we’re getting ready for Christmas and that’s the gift-giving season. Today we have two cooperatives, two ladies from different co-ops. We have LaKeisha Wolf. She’s with the Ujamaa Collective out of Pittsburgh. And we have Kandis Quam, who is an artist and works with the Ancestral Rich Treasures of the Zuni Cooperative and she’s in Zuni, New Mexico. Good morning, ladies.

LAKEISHA WOLF: Good morning.

KANDIS QUAM: Good morning.

VERNON OAKES: Okay so let’s start with LaKeisha you’re out of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and you are Ujamaa Collective. So, what is your cooperative? What is it? How does it work?

LAKEISHA WOLF: So, we are named after the fourth principle of the African American holiday Kwanzaa. And Ujamaa simply means cooperative economics, and the mantra that goes with that is to build and maintain our own shop stores and other businesses, and profit from them together. And so, our work is rooted in shared work, shared wealth, and obligation to generosity. And so, what we do is we provide a fair trade marketplace for the cultural artistic and entrepreneurial exchange through cooperative economics of Africana artists. And we have a focus on women. So, we run a cooperative retail boutique, and an online store, and we do other pop-up events, and other place-making for community exchange, and for community healing.

LAKEISHA WOLF: And so, our work focuses on all of the folks throughout Africa in the diaspora. So, we work with local, regional, national, and then international Black artists. And it’s been a wonderful journey. We’ve been in existence — I think we began organizing in 2008, ’09. We’ve had the retail store for over 11 years now, and we’ve done a lot of other projects, but the principles we really focus on, again, are fair trade, community, creativity, and wellness. And of course everything we do is really rooted in cooperation.

VERNON OAKES: Fantastic. And so, you say, African, focus on women from the diaspora, Ujamaa. So, what is your webpage? If somebody wanted to buy something from your cooperative where would they go find it?

LAKEISHA WOLF: Yeah, so it’s ujamaacollective.org, and it’s U-J-A-M-A-A, C-O-L-L-E-C-T-I-V-E, Ujamaa Collective U-J-A-M-A-A Collective.org. And you’ll learn more about our organization, as well as be able to shop directly on our website.

VERNON OAKES: Fantastic. So, I want to come back and talk a little bit more about some of those projects you’ve done, and you mentioned community, but I would like to ask Kandis the same question. What is your Ancestral Rich Treasures of Zuni Cooperative? And how long have you all been going, doing and what do you all — what’s your products?

KANDIS QUAM: Sure, [indistinct]. So, good morning to everybody out there. Just greeting everybody in a formal, traditional way. But yeah, the rich treasures of Zuni started in 2019. If you know anything about Zuni Pueblo we’re very known for our art. You can toss a pebble and you can hit an artist, and another artist. And just to use myself an example, I’m an artist, my parents are artists, my late grandmother and great grandfather were well known artists, and so on and so forth. Most of my aunts and uncles are artists, and it’s kind of more uncommon to have somebody who isn’t connected to any sort of art in any other way. So, there’s one in any generation. My brother is one. So, he took all the sense of direction and I took all the talent for art, so it’s a fair trade. But our cooperative started as I said in 2019.

KANDIS QUAM: We came together as a group along with help with Cooperative Catalysts of New Mexico, a cooperative development organization. And they helped us to create this really wonderful co-op. Since around the 80s that we as artists started to market ourselves to as artists to the broader market. And unfortunately outsiders took it as a opportunity to exploit our work. They could dictate the market, they could tell us how much our product is worth, and we just have to take it just because we’re so isolated in our geographical sense. And just to update anybody, Zuni is about 30 minutes away from the next town, next Walmart just to give some reference, and about two and a half hours from the next large city which is Albuquerque, New Mexico or Flagstaff, is the same amount of distance.

KANDIS QUAM: So, if you want to get anything of specialty you either have to drive out or you have to — well before then in the 80s you just have to drive out. And there was a time where jobs were not in plentiful abundance let’s say. So with everyone really heavy-handed towards art, we started to really sell our artwork to these strangers or outsiders. And they saw it like if like a retail price, a really fair retail price, say I’m selling it for 50. And then I’ll look at you like, what about 20, and I want five more by the week? And like you just have to say okay because you have to put food on the table. And that’s kind of persisted until now. And this cooperative is kind of the answer to that, how can we lift everybody up to the same platform? Where you don’t have to drive so many hours away to sell your work, to pay your bills. You can stay home if you like to. You can have other people market your work.

KANDIS QUAM: You can get training how to market your work, how to price your work, how to take photos of your work. You can do that and you can come to our cooperative, and we’ll do everything for you. And if you’re not a member of the co-op you can pay a fee and you can give your artwork to us, and we’ll take photos of it. We can give our opinion on it. You can — we try to have the co-op to be a safe space for artists, and for customers alike, just to offer that authenticity for our artists and our buyers — our customers I should say — our customers. And just to give a safe space, a reputable place for our artists to sell.

VERNON OAKES: So you have a storefront also?

KANDIS QUAM: Yes, we do. If you ever come by the village it’s just on main street. It’s just one street that runs straight through the village. You cannot miss it.

VERNON OAKES: So you have one street going through Zuni, the pueblo, and what’s your — if somebody wanted to go online to buy your products where would they go?

KANDIS QUAM: Sure, it’s called zunipuebloart.com Zuni, Z-U-N-I, Pueblo, P-U-E-B-L-O, art.com. Ooh, you have me spelling so early in the morning.

VERNON OAKES: So Zuni, Z-U-N-I, Pueblo, P-U-E-B-L-O, art, A-R-T.com. And you could go online to buy your Christmas gifts or any other gifts that you may want to buy from Native Americans or you can go to ujamaacollective.org to buy art from the African diaspora, mainly the artists in and around Pittsburgh, mainly women — is that right LaKeisha?

LAKEISHA WOLF: Yeah, and our store, similar to what Kandis talked about, we open our stores to all artists of African descent even if they’re not members. So, our membership is only open to Africana women. However, we support all Black artists who have good, quality work. And so if it’s a fit in the store we’ll accept it and also support those artists as well.

VERNON OAKES: Great, great. So, why a cooperative? Either one of you, why a cooperative? Why not just a regular business? What does cooperative give you that you can’t get from a capitalistic business?

LAKEISHA WOLF: Kandis you want to go first?

KANDIS QUAM: Oh sure. For us it seems like it would stick better to the community more, rather than a overall capitalist business, just because other businesses have come here and they failed. Why? Because they don’t really incorporate our cultural values and they don’t stick. I kind of equate it to clothing. If you have — let’s say capitalism is like a really tight, itchy sweater, and it just doesn’t feel right. It doesn’t feel good to the skin, and we just felt like a cooperative is like when you come back home and you just put on your really comfy clothes. It feels right. You can work in this, you can play in this, this feels right. That’s why we chose a cooperative model is because it felt right.

VERNON OAKES: All right, feels right, it’s not itchy. Okay, okay, LaKeisha, what about–

LAKEISHA WOLF: Yeah, so similarly I would talk about the cultural principles part for us now. We recognize that there is a lot of diversity inside of the Africana community, right, and for us it’s important that we center those experiences, and specifically looking at Black people with a historical lens, and recognizing that the ways in which capitalism, and even consumerism, and the in the exploitation of that has caused harm to Black people here and around the world, right, and just people of color period. And so it’s not something that we saw as being the solution to some of the long-standing issues and challenges that Black people, particularly Black women, have faced. Right, so here in Pittsburgh, you know, Black women are very much on the lower rungs of the latter, in terms of economics and education and just quality of life.

LAKEISHA WOLF: And so, you know, Black women coming together to do something that would meet their shared needs and their shared challenges, right, and recognizing that cooperation, and the values and principles around cooperation are truly rooted in African American history. It’s really a part of who we are, right, like it’s really in our blood. And oftentimes we just have to remember that. And so I feel like, you know, beyond just the economic support that cooperatives offer its members, that cooperatives also, particularly for groups that have been marginalized, and groups that really rely on group solidarity in order to survive, right, that inside of a cooperative, beyond just the economic support, right, there’s also social, there’s cultural, there’s spiritual needs that also get met as well. So, for Ujamaa, we look at our work within this cooperative framework as really like a holistic way of being, it’s really a lifestyle. And so, when we talk with people, our members and just the network of support around us, we talk about building a community of practice.

VERNON OAKES: Community of practice?

LAKEISHA WOLF: Mm-hmm.

VERNON OAKES: Community of practice.

LAKEISHA WOLF: Yes, a community of practice around cooperative economics and all of the associated principles and values.

VERNON OAKES: So, you practice the principles and values?

LAKEISHA WOLF: Mm-hmm. Every day is a day of practice to make it a lifestyle.

VERNON OAKES: Okay. Kandis is that similar in your world, what LaKeisha just talked about, a community of practice?

KANDIS QUAM: Yeah, she just said it way more beautifully than I could, but yeah, that’s exactly it. She just said everything and more beautifully than I could.

VERNON OAKES: Well, on the show last time we talked that the Zuni people have been in New Mexico for 3,000 to 4,000 years. We’re going to take our first break and come back and talk about the history of both Africans and Native Americans. We’ll be right back. Please don’t touch that dial.

VERNON OAKES: Welcome back, everybody. This is Vernon Oakes, and the program is Everything Cooperative. And we have LaKeisha Wolf from Ujamaa in Pittsburgh, and Kandis Quam for the from the Ancestral Rich Treasures of Zuni Cooperative, it’s called ARTZ, A-R-T-Z, and I’ll just call it ARTZ from here out. And Zuni, New Mexico. Zuni, New Mexico is two and a half hours west of Albuquerque, and two and a half hours south of Flagstaff, out in the boonies. They have one town, it’s main street. One street that goes through the town, through the pueblo, and their store is on that on that main street. Ujamaa is in Pittsburgh. If somebody wants to come and see you in Pittsburgh where would they go? What’s the address there for your store?

LAKEISHA WOLF: Sure it’s 1901 Centre Avenue, C-E-N-T-R-E, Avenue. That’s Pittsburgh, PA 15219. We’re located in the Historic Hill District neighborhood of Pittsburgh, which is adjacent to downtown and to Oakland where the university of Pittsburgh and some other universities are located.

VERNON OAKES: In the Hills District there was a famous writer I know when I–

LAKEISHA WOLF: Yeah, August Wilson.

VERNON OAKES: August Wilson?

LAKEISHA WOLF: Yeah, there’s actually lots of folks who have called Pittsburgh home at one time or another, who are who are well known, but August Wilson, you know, wrote his ten plays, specifically, in and about the Hill District community.

VERNON OAKES: And so, when I came to visit you I came up and you all were having — you were teaching kids how to paint their faces or do paintings in the Hill District, and celebrating his birthday, I think it was.

LAKEISHA WOLF: Okay, yeah, yes, there was the, yeah there’s the August Wilson house, which is an organization that is revitalizing August Wilson’s childhood home, and they have an August Wilson birthday party, like community block party celebration every year. So, that’s probably the time that you came.

VERNON OAKES: And Kandis when we talked last time, which I was saying before we took the break, was that the Zuni Native Americans, indigenous people have been in New Mexico for three to four thousand years. And as you described in the first segment here, your family has been doing artwork, your grandparents, your parents, you, and it just goes down, but how does this co-op fit within the culture, the values of the culture?

KANDIS QUAM: Well our culture really values beauty, and beauty comes in all sorts of forms, to our regalia, our jewelry, our materials can’t be bought in like say a Walmart. You can’t buy that at Walmart, you have to make it. Especially if you want it to be truly authentic you have to harvest all the fibers, you have to weave it, you have to work it, or have somebody work it for you. So, we have all these things in our culture that can’t be store-bought. They have to be made, and that kind hard work is sewn into our culture, as we have to make these artworks to carry on our ceremonies, to carry on our daily life.

KANDIS QUAM: If you want to make our traditional foods the best way to get it is to get some willow switches out by the lakes. Get some dry ones, or some wet ones, form it together and tie them together to where it makes like a whisk, and then you can do that. So, any sort of art form or even food is kind of you have to go do it yourself if you want it to be in a traditional way, which is what you would like it to be. You just have to work it into it, and art is very much part of our culture. From pottery to jewelry to even paint things, everything is incorporated into our culture. So, if you want it to look pretty do it yourself, or have somebody you know do it for you.

VERNON OAKES: Okay, and LaKeisha you talked about the values and principles, community of practice. Every day you’re practicing the values and the principles. I like the values of what they call the ethical values of honesty, openness, social responsibility, and caring for one. Ethical values, are those the kinds of values you practice daily?

LAKEISHA WOLF: So yes. So, the sort of seven international principles of cooperatives, yes, but when we talk about the principles and values it encompasses a lot more than that. So, when we think about sort of Africana cultural values, right, the principles that are sort of the overarching universal ones that show up no matter where you find Black people, right. Whether you’re on the continent, whether you’re in the Caribbean, wherever you may be and African people are at we draw on some of the similarities of principles in practice. And so, they may be — one for instance is a principle out of Southern Africa called ubuntu, right, and it’s the principle which means I am because we are. Right, oftentimes there’s the proverb that folks use that goes with that principle and it’s that principle, right, which for me is like really rooted in cooperative work, right. If you want to go fast go alone, but if you want to go far go together.

LAKEISHA WOLF: And so, when we think about what it means to sustain a business, to sustain a community of people, to sustain a culture, just sustainability in general of the environment, right. Like, that is community work. That is work that that we all share in. It’s collective responsibility, right. So that’s one, and then inside of our collective, right, we have what are called our code of conduct, like our policies and procedures. And all of those are rooted in cultural principles. So, when our members become members they get a copy of the code of conduct. And it says, this is how we operate with one another inside of our marketplace. And so, with that we borrow from the West African Adinkra symbols, which come out of Ghana the Akan and the Ashanti people.

LAKEISHA WOLF: And so, we talk about creating products that don’t have harmful ingredients, or products that are not rooted in doing anything illegal. And there are Adinkra symbols and values that people can see, that folks can read about, that again is rooted inside of our own cultural understanding. And so, we use that in a way that — so that collectively we can conduct business, but also what’s important in our work right, we always talk about the fact that people don’t come into our space, into our net into our network just to exchange products for money. Right, like, Black people have been through so much and we carry a lot of generational trauma, and so there’s also a lot of healing work that also has to take place, right, like individual healing, collective healing. There’s a lot of work that is the unseen, intangible work that we also hold space for.

LAKEISHA WOLF: So, a woman is trying, you know, she may create clothing or maybe she creates natural body care products, right, and but when we get down to the business of it and say, hey sister, you know, let’s figure out how to best price your products, sometimes the issue of pricing the product we recognize in that conversation that some of the struggles may be rooted in the idea that that Black woman does not even fully value herself or doesn’t understand her own worth, because we’ve been inside of an oppressive culture that has always been extractive and exploitative to Black people, right. And so a lot of our work is like — and the idea of even owning ourselves, and owning our own contributions, and what we offer to the world, right, and it’s remembering and really learning how to value ourselves so that we have this personal and really collective power. Because you know, I’ve had to learn over time that everything is political, right, in that even our very presence to create, and operate a store, right, that is really rooted in centering Black people, and our contributions, and our value in the world, right, there’s a ripple effect.

LAKEISHA WOLF: Everybody doesn’t like it, but best believe folks are going to respect it when we stand together and kind of set the intentions and the power of who we are and what we bring. You know, sometimes I’ll say to folks like, even if we never sold another product that the intangible work of seeing somebody understand their worth in the world, right, seeing a young person revalue who they are is just amazing.

VERNON OAKES: Just amazing, and we’re going to stop there to take our next break. Yeah, you’ve said so much. I want to come back and talk about that. And then Kandis, I want to give you a chance to talk about what it’s like, and the extractive and exploitation. You talked about the extraction before, what would happen to the art, but we’ll be right back. Please don’t touch that dial. Vernon Oakes. The program is Everything Cooperative. We have LaKeisha Wolf, and Kandis Quam on with us this morning, and we had Jim Joseph on the on the show. Jim was the US ambassador to South Africa when Mandela was the president. aAd he came on the show to talk about ubuntu and as was where I got my introduction to ubuntu. He said ubuntu is I am because you are, and you are because I am. This is the thing that we work together, we are here together. That’s the core of humanity is what I’ve come to.

VERNON OAKES: Through the African diaspora, through the Native American people it’s the same thing, when you go back. Particularly if you go back and look at peoples and towns and tribes, everybody had what they were supposed to do, and everybody worked together, and if anybody didn’t carry their weight the whole community suffered. So people did their job. And so you can go to everything.coop, our webpage, and put in Jim Joseph and you can listen to that show. And he is a preacher, also has this deep, heavy voice and it’s mesmerizing.

VERNON OAKES: His was wonderful conversation. And on the show Dame Pauline Green who was a British lady, she was the president of International Cooperative Alliance said that co-ops help people to come out of poverty with dignity. And LaKeisha that’s what you were talking about with the Black ladies, the artists that you were talking about, may not have felt worth because she had been, you said exploited, as Black people have throughout the world. So, Kandis I said when we come back I’d like for you to talk about the cultural values of the Zuni people that you all have been living for three to four thousand years, and how this co-op, the values of the co-op, merge with or are similar to the co-op values of the Zuni people.

KANDIS QUAM: Yeah sure, so anything that we do we do together. We have this kind of mentality of one heart, one mind. So we all move together as one. If it applies anything to big ceremonial events everybody will go to their designated group that they belong to, and they’ll all help out together. And that’s a beautiful thing to watch, and just to see everybody converge, and everybody comes back home during these events. If they don’t live in the village and they live elsewhere, they always come back home and they’ll always help out their families. And it’s really beautiful to see these certain times of year to see the village really come alive, and everybody’s helping each other out. So you know, that’s what we try to do, and that’s what we try to do with the co-op too.

KANDIS QUAM: Anything that we need help with we’ll ask each other, and even towards like certain techniques that we know. Like, let me teach you. I’ll teach you how to do that. And before the cooperative that was really hard to do. And if you wanted to make things really awkward really fast you’ll ask another artist, how do you do this, how do you make this? And that’s just a really easy way to get them to freeze up, even if you ask me, myself, like how do you paint this, or how do you paint? Like, you paint it good, you paint it good. And I’ll just direct them to YouTube. I’ll just anything besides getting to how I do things. But now after the cooperative if you ask me how to do something like, oh come over let me show you. You can use my equipment, you can use my materials just to get you started, and once you get started you can do anything on your own, but ask me anything you want.

KANDIS QUAM: But before the co-op it was really easy — even now if you ask a person who’s not part of the co-op, how do you do this? Like, and they’ll just give you a roundabout answer, we won’t really answer you all the way through. But if you ask a co-op member now, for a while like, how do you do this? How do you process your paint for pottery for natural fire? How do you do that? And like, oh come over, I’ll teach you. And they’ll teach you start to finish, which is really cool.

VERNON OAKES: And you’re learning silversmithing now? You’re a painter.

KANDIS QUAM: That’s the goal. Right, it’s one of those few things I don’t know how to do yet is silversmithing.

VERNON OAKES: So what you said also in the last show that you were on that the Zuni people shared before the Spaniards came in.

KANDIS QUAM: Oh yeah, sure. So, that was a tradition to pass down your teachings, and when the Spanish came through they started to tax artwork and give it to the Pope or the Queen, whoever. And they would tax these really beautiful artwork like our traditional regalia, our pottery, anything that we had of value that they saw in their eyes they would take. And it was starting to be like, why should I create this artwork from my heart and my soul to this person that I’ll never see? Why should I do that? And it started to create this sort of thing, like, well I’ll put my artwork underground. They can’t take it if they don’t know I do it. So and that started to be so secretive to the point where we started to lose all these different techniques, especially towards textiles. What we know how to do in textiles now is the very top of the layer what we used to do.

KANDIS QUAM: We had such beautiful techniques. Fortunately we’re starting to regain that back, this sort of revitalization of art. And that kind of just further grew into what it is now, is I can’t teach you because you’ll take whatever business, whatever technique away from me, and I have to put food on my table. So that’s kind of evolved from let me teach you from what I know because that’s how it’s supposed to be, to all these outside influences teaching us the value individualism, which is really against what we are as a people. And it’s kind of created this sort of toxic environment which we’re hoping our cooperative is combating. So yeah, when it comes to techniques and artwork we were the most secretive that you could possibly be, but now it’s starting to be better, a lot better. And it’s a really cool, unintended benefit of our cooperative.

VERNON OAKES: Really cool, really cool. And if you want to go get this great artwork you go to zunipuebloart.com, Z-U-N-I-P-U-E-B-L-O-A-R-T.com. And LaKeisha when you were talking, did you find when you ladies got together that there was this don’t share information? Or was it always sharing? And are you sharing information now about how each one of you do? And you make jewelry, right? That’s what your art is?

LAKEISHA WOLF: So yeah, I design jewelry, and I create natural and organic skin and hair care products. And then I’ve actually lately I’ve been painting. I just like to make things in general, so I’ve been exploring my own artistic practice, because I’m currently in an artist’s residency for creative Black mothers that’s called Sibyls Shrine. So, it’s giving me a little bit of space to explore my own creativity more, because I do a lot of work of supporting and holding space for other folks to do their work. And I needed to do you know a little bit of my own work more. So, that’s happening, but you know similar again to what Kandis talked about, you know, I think that our stories are similar and then they have some differences, but you know, through enslavement and colonization of Black people around the world there’s always been this extractive process.

LAKEISHA WOLF: And one of the things that I think about is when we came together in our collective one of the things we were looking at was the ways in which Black women had been in business. So before the Europeans came into Africa, before we were taken out of Africa, right, what were we doing? How were we operating? How were we moving in the marketplace? And in doing that research, in doing that study we learned that African women, Black women were at the center of the marketplace. And one of the practices that that they used was called the [SOUNDS LIKE: asusu], and it’s a practice that traveled with us through the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, continued to travel through immigration around the world for centuries. But what we learned was that the so the asusu is what’s known as what they would call now a rotating savings and credit association right. So, it’s a way of taking money and keeping it circulating within a community of people, right, who are all in in agreement.

LAKEISHA WOLF: And so, it’s saving money and then loaning it to folks in that community, so you get to see your money at work with people who you trust. And so this was a process that within Nigeria that Black women had been doing for forever, right, but when the Europeans came into West Africa they gathered up all of these women and tried to convince them to stop doing the asusu, right, so that they would take all of their money and resources and put them into these European banking systems right. So, it was okay we’re going to — and then try to kind of like convince and brainwash folks to believe that what they’ve been doing for all of this time wasn’t worthwhile, and was not valuable, and was antiquated, and all of this and that, right, and convinced them to do this other thing. But, the asusu was a practice that withstood that and lasted, and it’s still a practice that Black people are using today.

LAKEISHA WOLF: So when we formed our collective and started learning about the asusu we had members who are from the Caribbean, and they talked about the ways in which their families and their close ancestors had practiced the asusu, and how they had bought their first house using the asusu practice, had sent their family to college, right, had done all of these things by circulating this money within their family and friends and community. And so, that’s a practice that we also use. But you know, to your question we definitely recognize that living under American culture, the focus on being an individual that’s focused on, you know, this fake idea of not being interdependent and not being interconnected to other people really has had a lot of Black people struggle for a really long time. Because one is it’s outside of our cultural context, right.

LAKEISHA WOLF: And so, you might have some small examples of people who’ve quote-unquote made it, right, but the reality is that the majority of us are not going to make it inside of this capitalistic system. And so you see again, like, these masses of Black folks who’ve really been struggling in poverty, right, and in generational poverty for a very long period of time, and we strongly believe that cooperatives and using cooperative strategies are the ways for folks to get out of that, but also to regain a sense of dignity, right, like a sense of themselves, to be in in in spaces that value the humanity of who we are, not just the ways in which our labor can be used for somebody else’s benefit.

VERNON OAKES: You’ve said a lot and I totally agree with you. Just last week on this program I had Dr Caroline Hossein, Associate Professor at the University of Toronto talking about asusu. Okay she called them roscas, R-O-C-S-A, all right. But all over the world and in Canada, not only have the Canadian government and police tried to convince Black women from the Caribbean, or from Africa, or Somalia — she talked, and they’re called different names, not just asusu, she had a list of names that they are called. But in Toronto when they would go in and raid — maybe had a good reason for raiding a community, drugs or whatever — they would find all of this money, and they assumed it was drug money or if they were Muslims that they were collecting this money to fund terrorists around the world.

VERNON OAKES: And they kept the money. And so, this was sort of like this was terrorism. She was talking about explorative, and when they found out what it was they didn’t give the money back. I mean, so it’s really terrible stuff, but what I like about your idea of this example is this is the culture by which we come out of, okay. And I’ve often wondered how Native Americans got here, Kandis, how he got to North America believing that humanity started in Africa, and how did you all go across the straits or whatever and come into New Mexico three, four thousand years ago or eons ago. But we may have common values, Natives and Africans, Native Americans and Africans, in the way we’ve lived and worked, and as you talked about the cultures. Did you all have anything like this in in Zuni of collecting money together
and sharing?

KANDIS QUAM: Yeah, sure. Well, we didn’t have money, but that’s how we use our cultural values like building these religious houses.

VERNON OAKES: We’re going to come back and talk about building those houses and how you did things together, after we take our final break here. Please don’t touch that dial.

VERNON OAKES: This is Vernon Oakes. The program is Everything Cooperative. We have Kandis Quam from New Mexico, the Zuni Pueblo and LaKeisha Wolf from Ujamaa in Pittsburgh. And before we took break Kandis was going to talk about how the culture is working together. LaKeisha talked about asusus, saving money together, and borrowing money, and working together with money. And you were getting ready to tell us, Kandis, about some of the things you worked together in past and maybe currently Zunis coming together and working together.

KANDIS QUAM: Yeah so there’s every so often where there’s a ceremonial event. And, each family will go to their designated group. We call them kivas and each kiva is dedicated to a directional direction, not the regular North, East, South and two more, the sky realm and the underground. So, let’s just use my family as an example, we’ll go to our kiva’s designated house, and all the men will do all their associated obligations. And during that time us women will bake bread. And this if you ever have the pleasure of having pueblo bread, it will have these big vats of dough — and I do mean a vat — and each lady will be punching the dough.

KANDIS QUAM: And it’ll take all morning to punch that dough, and then we’ll let it rise, and we’ll do other things, we’ll get the ovens ready. The ovens are an outdoor oven made out of mud, and we have to build the build a fire in that oven, and let it cook and get it really nice and hot, clean out the ashes. And we don’t use any sort of modern tool. It’s just a long wooden pole with fresh juniper branches and we clean it out. And we just use all these — though actually the only thing modern or innovative is leggings — we actually use leggings to tie the juniper to the wooden pole. That’s just because it doesn’t burn. So, we’ll just clean it out, all the ladies will clean it out. They’ll clean out all the ashes out, they’ll get it all nice and ready, while that’s happening, while the dough’s rising — finish rising to the lady’s preferred risen-ness I should say — they’ll roll it out, put it into these nice loaves, let it set again, and all the ladies will come back, and they’ll shape the dough.

KANDIS QUAM: Once the dough is shaped all the younger ladies will put it on their boards, they’ll take it out on their shoulders, and they’ll give it to the ladies who are putting it inside the oven. So, while that’s happening all the ladies are cleaning up, they’re doing other things, and they’re making lunch for all the men, and all the ladies who are helping, they’re making sure everything is done. So, everybody has their own role and we all kind of fall into line, and it kind of goes into this matriarchal system. So, we’ll all look to — if I’m just walking into a new house — I’ll look to the older lady and I’ll ask what do you want me to do? I’ll do it.

KANDIS QUAM: Or I’ll look to the head of the lady, the head of the house, and I’ll look to her like what do you want me to do? I’ll do it. And but she’ll kind of delegate all these things and we’ll all go with — kind of move as one, and we kind of know our role. Unless you’re younger, then you’ll kind of be — if you’re a young lady and you’re just kind of going to your first cooking you’re always going to be put as the dishwasher, and you’ll stay there for the whole day just because dishes never end.

VERNON OAKES: Working together as one, getting it done, and knowing what to do and how to do it. So, let’s talk because we only have a few minutes, left but what are the products — LaKeisha what are the products that one can get at Ujamaa?

LAKEISHA WOLF: Yeah, so we have a huge range of products at Ujamaa in our store, lots of different kinds of jewelry, a lot of clothing items for men, women, and children, lots of textile items so like we have a lot of home decor items, so textiles, you know, aprons, tablecloths, coasters. We carry, you know, one of our values is wellness. And so when we think about you know the health of the body, the things we put on our body, and in our bodies. So we also sell natural body care products, hair care products, herbs, teas, tinctures, all kinds of things. We have lots of wall art, like table art. We have mugs with — some of our new members have these really dynamic mugs with a lot of their own art on the mug — with like social justice messages, and like images, like, a lot of image-based stuff.

LAKEISHA WOLF: And we have lots of dolls for children. We have books for children and adults. And we have just a range of things in our space. You know I think that anybody who comes looking for a gift for somebody is going to find something special for that person, plus a whole bunch of other wonderful gems. So, you know, I definitely encourage folks, if you’re local or coming through Pittsburgh it’s definitely a destination in the Historic Hill district, but you can also check us out online. And I’ll give that address again, it’s ujamaacollective.org. That’s U-J-A-M-A-A, C-O-L-L-E-C-T-I-V-E, ujamaacollective.org, but you can also, you know, you can Google us, and you’ll find our information.

VERNON OAKES: And Kandis, what kind of products do you all serve?

KANDIS QUAM: Sure, so we have everything that Zuni is known for. We have pottery, we have fetishes, we have jewelry, we have something that Zuni is even not really known for skate board decks. We have painted skate board decks, we have paintings, we have greeting cards, we have coffee mugs, and we do have some keychains as well. So we’re trying to accommodate everybody and anybody.

VERNON OAKES: So, what you did not name was your artwork that you do, your paintings that hang on the wall.

KANDIS QUAM: Yes we do. So yes, I’m a painter. I’m mostly known for painting. So, I do have some paintings up there on the website, and I’m also a co-curator for a traveling art exhibit called Pivot Exhibit.

VERNON OAKES: And you have — I’ve been on your web page — you have masks that people can wear with your artwork on the mask, and if you haven’t seen that LaKeisha, I think if you go you may even find something you might want to do with masks because, I think they’re going to be here. And you have postcards, which I like, your artwork on it.

KANDIS QUAM: Yeah and yeah we do. But I’m really excited to see — I saw her website before prior to the show — it looks really beautiful, and all the postcards are really beautiful as well.

LAKEISHA WOLF: Thank you. Yeah, yeah, we have lots of like paper craft, greeting cards, handmade cards, and notebooks, and cute little textile bags to slip your laptop in, and your tablet. We have a lot of really cool and interesting, functional art, you know, really making things a part of your everyday life.

VERNON OAKES: And Kandis, what kind of jewelry do you have? What kind of jewelry?

KANDIS QUAM: We have earrings, rings, some really nice necklaces. There’s a bolo tie, and in terms of earrings we have everything from small posts to big dangles. And we also have some — let’s see I mentioned a bolo tie and a really beautiful, big, sterling silver necklace with the handmade chain. It’s really beautiful. I encourage you to look at it.

VERNON OAKES: And that goes to zunipuebloart.com. Same question, LaKeisha, what kind of jewelry do you have?

LAKEISHA WOLF: Oh wow, we have a lot of dynamic jewelry artists in our collective. One woman I’ll shout out, her name is Marsha, she actually creates paper beads. And so she upcycles old paper magazines and all of that, and then creates these really dynamic pieces of jewelry using these paper beads. And when you see them you wouldn’t think, or know even touching it that it’s made out of paper. But yeah, so we have chunky jewelry to kind of fine jewelry, like, metal based, lots of beaded work. Yeah there’s a huge range of jewelry and wearable art, a lot of accessory items, scarves, and purses, and things like that incorporate textiles, and beads in prints. So, it’s definitely a range of items. You could find probably something to match any outfit.

VERNON OAKES: Okay, in the last minute or two here, what do you see how you all will fare with this Coronavirus? How do you see the future? Kandis, you want to go first? You only have-

KANDIS QUAM: Oh sure let me just say [SOUNDS LIKE: they’re so great, to give the LaKeisha time], but yeah we only had one year where we were completely allowed to thrive and then the virus hit. So we’ve kind of been in survival mode since then, but struggle same thing with any other minority is not new to us. So, we will survive this, we will get through this so, and we’ll get through it together.

VERNON OAKES: Wonderful.

LAKEISHA WOLF: Yeah and similarly again, you know, for us it’s been leaning deeper into our practice of cooperation. One thing that we’re working on right now is we actually have an African-centered cooperative research project that we’re spearheading with some partners. And looking at how we can advocate and really encourage Black people and other people of color to operate cooperatives, to think about how the cooperative model and how cooperative strategies can help meet a lot of the needs that were present before COVID, but because we’re in this season of COVID we recognize that, you know, folks need to come together safely, but in ways in which they can practice cooperative economics, and as well as getting those additional benefits that come with cooperatives, of the social, the cultural, and the spiritual benefits of doing things together.

VERNON OAKES: Kandis, give us your webpage one more time.

KANDIS QUAM: Sure, that is zunipuebloart, Z-U-N-I, Pueblo, P-U-E-B-L-O, art, A-R-T, dot com.

VERNON OAKES: And LaKeisha?

LAKEISHA WOLF: Yeah, it’s ujamaacollective.org. U-J-A-M-A-A-C-O-L-L-E-C-T-I-V-E dot org, Ujamaa Collective.

VERNON OAKES: Thank you, ladies. Thank you very, very much. I hope you all have a great holiday season. Everybody else out there we’re going to sign off now, and please live cooperatively.