FORMS & MIND FORMAT

"The Indian symbol is the circle, the loop. Nature wants the roundness of things. Human and animal bodies have no angles, they are smooth. In what concerns the Indian nation, the circle is the symbol of men and women grouped and smoking goshawks around the campfire, parents and friends standing together in peace while the peace pipe passes hand by hand.

The camp in which each tipi had its place forms also a circle; also all the families of the village which represent the nation.

The nation is only a part of the universe, itself circular and composed by the earth which is round, by the sun which is round, by the stars which are round; and the moon, the horizon and the rainbow are
also circles included into circles, without beginning nor end... expression from harmony and nature.

The symbol of the white man is the framework. The framework of his house, the buildings where are set his offices, with walls and separations. Everywhere there are angles and rectangles: the door which prohibits the entry for foreigners, the US banknote, the jailhouse. Always rectangles, angles, frames.
It is the same thing for the gadgets of the white man - boxes, boxes and boxes again - television sets, radios, washing machines, computers, cars. All these boxes have corners, raw angles - there are also edges into time, the time of the white man, time of his apointments, time of his clocks, of his rush hours - it is what mean corners in my opinion. White men are prisoners of all these boxes.

But more and more, some white young people want to cease to be frames, to be framed and flattened and try to become round.
This is well."

Tachca Ushte,
American native,
Sioux medecine man