Centralight

"How the stars got in the sky" The following native legend served as Brauker's inspiration for pottery commissioned by the Kalamazoo Valley Museum When the creator made the earth, he wanted to admire his handiwork, so he placed it on his hand and gave it a spin. And where he touched it to stop it from spinning is where Michigan was formed. The first day of creation everything was perfect – plenty of water, fresh air, sunshine, food, and the animals were all friends to each other. But the first night of creation it was black. So all the animals were scared, grumbling and frightened. The creator heard this, so he came down to earth the next day, and he brought a big giant bag and a big giant stick. In his mind, he was going to put all these little, tiny flowers that were as big as your fingernail on the end of the stick and put them up inside of the dome in these beautiful Ojibwe beadwork patterns. After he had collected all those flowers, the creator went up on the mountain to take a nap. And meanwhile, this coyote came. And he's seeing this big bag, and he's thinking, "Oh, it must be full of food. And I'm just going to go up there and take a little bite, and no one's going to miss it because it's such a huge bag." He takes a little bite in his mouth and then he gets all greedy and he says, "I'm taking the whole bag." The bag rips open, all the flowers fly out all over the place. The creator wakes up and thinks, "Who made a mess of my sky?" Finally the coyote goes over and says, "OK, it was me. I thought it was full of food." The creator didn't get mad at him, because he knows that dogs are always hungry. He said, "I will leave it up to the humans to make sense of it." That's where the constellations came from. And also, all the grandchildren of this coyote know what their grandfather did all these years later. And so that's why when the moon comes out they are always crying. • centralight winter '13 7

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