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Rocks of ages: Tour explores local American Indian art

The Bakersfield Californian | Friday, Apr 30 2010 05:18 PM

Last Updated Friday, Apr 30 2010 05:18 PM

An upcoming tour offers a rare opportunity to view Kern County's collection of American Indian rock drawings and rock paintings, one of the richest records in the Western Hemisphere of prehistoric American Indian graphics.

The field trip and a companion workshop and lectures will provide an in-depth understanding of the meaning and religious importance attached to such sites. The rock art tour will view the protected and well-preserved Rocky Hill Yokuts Indian cave paintings.

The lecture and tours are led by two scholars on American Indian rock art, Dr. Alan Garfinkel and Donald Austin.

The Rock Art 101 course teaches attendees respect for the sites and educates them on their age, what the paintings may mean, and how the images functioned in Indian society. Significantly, a number of these rock art sites are still being used today for American Indian rituals and worship.

Garfinkel, an archaeologist, lecturer and tour leader, has been studying Kern County prehistory and Native American lifeways for three decades. In an e-mail to The Californian, Garfinkel wrote:

"These paintings were fashioned by ritualists who painted their visions of the supernatural world," Garfinkel said. "They are fashioned in vibrant colors of orange, white, red and black and depict dream-trance experiences of the spirit world. They are other-worldly masterpieces that incorporate the fusion of animal forms -- mystical and mythical gigantic birds, colorful animal shapes of bear, deer and antelope. Paintings feature depictions of spirit helpers of medicine men and women (shamans) -- rattlesnake, eagle, and other supernatural animals. This painted rock art is some of the most elaborate, detailed, and creative in California and is exceptionally fluid and sophisticated in its use of color and complex imagery."

Austin, retired engineer, rock art replicator and co-founder of the Rock Art 101 program, said via the e-mail:

"One rarely has the opportunity to step into a time machine and view the world from the perspective of people who lived a Stone Age life. ... To Native Californians the world was and still is full of spirit beings that merge animal and human traits and were active agents in the world.

"These representations on rocks and even the rocks themselves are often believed to be living beings, alive with power."

A daylong experience is available to students who attend the multimedia program through www.rockart101.com. Live lectures, PowerPoint presentations, class exercises, television documentary and an evening keynote speaker (Jack Sprague) fill out the weekend's events. The highlight of the class is an instructor-led field trip to the Rocky Hill Yokuts paintings.

Garfinkel is working with several American Indian groups, including local Indian tribes (Kawaiisu, Yokuts, Tubatulabal and Panamint Shoshone), archaeologists and historians and the interested general public to foster awareness of the cultural resources of local Kern County Indians.

Many American Indians, including members of local tribes with direct ancestry in Kern County, are in the midst of an extended cultural reconstruction and are poised for a new chapter of revitalization. Exemplifying this trend are local groups of Tubatulabal (South Fork Kern River Valley -- Lake Isabella), Kawaiisu (Tehachapi Mountains) and Yokuts (Le Moore -- Tule River Reservation). Indian people are now teaching their native languages to the old and young, relearning oral traditions, and providing their members with opportunities to harvest and share native foods, acquire traditional medicine, practice native arts (basketry), music and conduct religious ceremonies.

-- Information provided by Rock Art 101 organizers