An interview with Chrystos

JB: Like all of us I suppose.

Chrystos: Well, I think I'm probably more obnoxious than you are. I'm harder for people to deal with. For one thing, I'm talking about genocide and that's a nasty subject. Particularly in the United States, nobody wants to agree that that's what happened. You know, and I just don't let it go. And I don't write pleasant, what I call tom-tom poetry, which is a really derogatory thing, I shouldn't say that. But [it is the kind of poetry] you can read and enjoy all the little Indian feathers and bells and not ever feel responsible to find out what Indian country is really like. One of the reasons I annoy people is because I write about real Indian country instead of feathers and bells and that's not pleasant. But there are plenty of other people writing with feathers and bells...[laughter] so we don't need any more, right?

JB: You spent some time in mental institutions and I believe that at least some of that time was involuntary, is that correct?

Chrystos: I was put in one time when I was underage, 17, and I did a summer there. Another time I was put in Napa (infamous mental institution in Napa county, California) and then I started thinking I really was crazy. [After that], when I was in excruciating pain I would take myself to the nuthouse. However, I finally figured out that the nuthouse made everything much much worse. So I decided in 1975 that I wasn't ever going back and I have been able to keep that promise to myself even though sometimes things go really terribly bad.

JB: How do you think it impacted your art?

Chrystos: Oh...I'm sure that it made my art more bloody and that the affinity that my work has with pain is definitely an outcome of having done over 10 years in and out of nuthouses. What I would say about my experience in nuthouses is that they were salt in the wound and in some senses I would say they kept the wounds from healing. They stole a lot of my joy. They made me really frightened of expressing that joy in public because I could get locked up that way. I often write poems that are lunatic celebrations of nature, just way, way out there, being the tree and things like that, and that kind of stuff is considered crazy. I don't publish any of that. So they put a damper on me in a lot of ways and also I think increased my pain considerably. Although I don't know if I would have survived on the streets if I hadn't been put in nuthouses. Cause I was a pretty raw person when I was put in there. I didn't know how to protect myself at all. The things that had happened to me as a child and a young woman were so overwhelming that I couldn't cope with any of it.

JB: You are multi-talented in the arts-a visual artist as well as a writer. How did you start? Do you consider poetry as your main medium? Do you see a connection between writing and painting?

Chrystos: I started drawing and writing when I was eight or nine. And I actually love drawing more than I do writing. Art is my first love and that's because when I am doing an art piece, I'm pouring my soul into it and it feels very safe because nobody can tell that your soul's there.