Gloria Maya, Professor of Art, Western New Mexico University announces the Twentieth year of celebrating Día de Los Muertos (Day of the Dead) on the campus of WNMU.  This year’s exhibit in the McCray Gallery titled: “Pu-we-chi – Connections – Conexiones – Ka-n-ke-i: Celebrating Ancestors” opens Wednesday, November 2nd at 4:30 P.M. to 8:00 P.M. The traditional and international ritual will take place at 5:00 P.M. followed by a potluck dinner and videos of traditional, artistic, Southwestern and international Día de Los Muertos celebrations. All communities are invited to participate in this important free event. Photographs of beloved ancestors or those remembered and honored may be included but please record your name & address plus a telephone number for their return.
Featured artist, Carolynne Whitefeather is visiting faculty from Utica, New York where she directs the gallery and teaches art history and has her M.F.A. from the University of Oklahoma. Ms. Whitefeather is conducting her second non-toxic screen-printing workshop at WNMU where she initiated this important component into the WNMU Non-toxic Printmaking program six years ago. Her second visit is not only the next phase of program growth but an important contribution to this year’s Día de Los Muertos Celebration that emphasizes this continent’s native roots of honoring ancestors, which gave rise to Día de Los Muertos. Ms. Whitefeather’s Workshop student’s prints will highlight the exhibit.
Carolynne recounts that her customs are different in that although she is Comanche, she was raised with the independent Seminoles who are very traditional to the moundbuilders, specifically the Apalachee, the primary culture in the Southeast. The Miccosukee and Apalachee went south and stayed to become called Seminola and the name stuck as the tribal name in South Florida. Ms. Whitefeather emphasized that “burial before Europeans was stratified earthen mounds, generations in sequential layers, all together in one place. It is the practice to remember them, but not to call them back. It is no longer where they live and if they come back they may not be able to go back to the night world. You remember them so you’ll know them when you join them. What you inherit is your clan, your lands, your family stories and your place in the society.
These are this continent’s ancient practices that survive in a variety of forms and this year’s Día de Los Muertos combines ancient and contemporary rituals. November 2 is set aside to greet returning souls of those ancestors that are continued to be remembered. Returning souls will be greeted with exhibit Ofrenda’s or offerings of special foods, water, traditional bread, flowers and candles to light their paths by Professor Patricia Cano, Maria Trillo, and WNMU students. Sybil Paradiso and Jesse Kriegal and their art students from Deming High will exhibit masks and papel picado, Judith Meyer, WNMU adjunct instructor and her Bayard community neighbors will install a casita ofrenda.
Sponsors for this year’s Dia de Los Muertos Celebration are WNMU: MEChA, Chicano/Chicana Faculty Caucus, Office of Multicultural Affairs and Student Activities, the Native American Club and Southwest Hispanic Roundtable.
For more information please contact Professor Maya at mayag@wnmu.edu or 538-6515 or Jackie Ritke Jones, graduate assistant at mccray@wnmu.edu, 538-6517.  
                                                -30-