A Convention of Satyrs

My name is Spider Moccasin and I'm an enrolled tribal member of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs. I'm a Wasco/Warm Springs person.

I'm a cartoonist and a rock and roll musician I'm currently collaborating with a Yakama tribal member, Jay Nightwalker.

Now jay is a writer and he has crafted an amazing story called ‘A Convention of Satyrs.' It's all about a murder mystery that takes place in Portland, Oregon featuring the coyote trickster character set in a modern landscape of cars and automobiles and all the citizens in the city are animal characters. You see turtle and bear and beaver and eagle all wearing suits and ties going about their regular business.

Coyote is a rock and roll musician in this mythological Portland where animals are the citizens and coyote deals with the terrible jealousy of another musician who's a very angry and desperate beaver. Jay Nightwalker is a wonderful singer/songwriter. I met him a couple years back. We performed a benefit for the Native American Rehabilitation Association clinic here in Portland, Oregon. Since then he has shared with me numerous modern horror and science fiction stories. It's very striking to take traditional mythological characters and place them in a modern context, but that's exactly what Jay Nightwalker has done and provided a challenging and thrilling concept for comic book stories. Naturally you can imagine that the murder mystery involves danger, excitement, and adventure and is it appropriate necessarily for small children, but coyote has always been used for lessons of good and evil right and wrong. Jay nightwalker's story definitely deals with these concepts. As a cartoonist I'm influenced by Native American cartoonists. Throughout the decades the underground comic book movement of the 60's created the very first underground comic before Robert crumb. Jack Jackson created Godnose in 1964 and has influenced underground cartoonists ever since. This tradition continues with modern indigenous cartoonists like Jaimi and Gilbert Hernandez, but it traces all the way back to Crazy Cat by George Herrimann. George Herrimann was half black and half southwestern Indian, Hopi or Zuni I believe. His Crazy Cat character featuring Ignatz the mouse was a very popular character in the early 20 th century. The modern cartooning storytelling that I illustrate follows up on all those traditions in a new and exciting way. Jay Nightwalker is my current writer/collaborator. He sends me scripts and I illustrate them in comic book form. Right now I'm working on inking these stories. I spent this summer working on this latest one ‘A Convention of Satyrs', which takes place at Satyrcon in Portland, Oregon. It's a modern example of punk rock and contemporary music trends used to reinvigorate Indian storytelling form. American Indians don't just exist in the past we exist in the present and we use modern tools like basketballs and pickup trucks to great affects. An electric guitar is just as worthy a tool for American Indians. Sure enough there are very popular American Indian rock and roll musicians out there across the United States like Black Fire, Gary Small and Arigon Starr. In our story ‘A Convention of Satyrs', coyote's portrayed as a modern punk rock Indian musician because believe it or not such things exist. There are modern American Indian heavy metal musicians, Goth rock musicians, disco musician and musicians of all sorts. Yakama tribal member Jay Nightwalker sent me a wonderful script I'm illustrating to turn into a modern American Indian comic book. Who knows where this will go. Perhaps it will show up at pow wows. We'll distribute it to all of our friends. Maybe we'll create a web site where folks can find our stories. Jay Nightwalker has also sent me wonderful science fiction scripts, which I hope to illustrate in the future. There's a very involved flying saucer graphic novel that we hope to make before the end of this decade. This current story ‘A Convention of Satyr' that Jay Nightwalker has written and that I'm illustrating in comic book form. It's 36 pages long. It's black and white. It's a modern Native American horror story perhaps in the tradition of Stephen King's work.

Although it does come to mind that Sherman Alexi, a Pacific Northwest writer from Wampinit up Jay Nightwalker's way there in northern Washington. He's very notorious for his brilliant storytelling. In fact I've read two or three short stories of his that are examples of horror and science fiction. He claims to be influenced by Stephen king. So perhaps it's a trend here in the Pacific Northwest. Jay Nightwalker and his storytelling is following up on that new development in the American native culture. American Indians deserve to have our own web site, our own compact discs, our own DVDs and our own films. Folks like Chris Eyre and Sherman Alexi are very inspirational to those of us in the creative media spectrum. We hope to use the Internet and modern techniques like animation and comic books. The great effect to communicate with our audience because contemporary Indians deserve to experience all the fruits of modern culture and I can't wait until we see American Indians on Saturday Night Live or the Today Show as correspondents or comedians and certainly we deserve to be storytellers and writers and even comic book artists. Hey well, thank you very much. Again my name is Spider Moccasin.