Lunch and Learn with Mary Motah Weahkee

On Tuesday, September 26, Mary Motah Weahkee held a lunch and learn event.

She is a retired archeologist for the State of New Mexico, Museum of New Mexico Office of Archaeological Studies, Center for New Mexico Archaeology. She is currently doing archeoastronomy for the southwest. Weahkee is also a part of the Bear’s Ears consultation. But her work is centered around the buffalo butchering, which occurred on Saturday, Sept. 23.

“I returned back. I felt there was still a need to continue a little bit more aesthetic learning from the bison butchering,” Weahkee said. “Some finesse needed to be done. I felt that we were too rushed and unrushed, and this year, everything played out and panned out perfectly. We were done in record time. So, you know, I came back to make sure that Martina had the support she needed for her program, and the Intertribal Bison Cooperative is going to go on and be successful as far as harvesting and growing our own food.”

Weahkee said she needs to return because she uncovered last year’s bones and will teach the youth how to create tools.

“That includes needles, awls, scrapers, possible bow if I can accomplish it, you know,” she said. “The sinew I kept, so this time we can make a proper sinew bow, and I can teach the kids how to use sinew for sewing and weapons.”

The Lunch and Learn included a history lesson on a site that many Comanches visited when they were younger.

“It's been a long journey for that paint rock site. A lot of people know the site, but I would like the young people to be more interested in the site,” Weahkee said. “This is the first time in the history of the state of Texas Archaeological Society that they have allowed Native Americans to participate. And being an archaeologist, I have a little bit more, I get to do the dig, I get to analyze some of the objects that come out, I get to give my Native American perspective as opposed to a scientific perspective.”

She said being a part of human history is fascinating. 

“Being a part of the footprints that were found out in the White Sands Basin, it takes our history back even further than the white man's history would have placed us,” Weahkee said. “So, it's going back 27,000 years that we left our footprints in a location that is a possible Comanche migration site.”

She also gives presentations on locations and sites.

“So, I give them the archaeological information, and then I give them the Native American perspective from those Galisteo Basin sites and the upper Rio Grande River sites and aboriginal trail sites,” Weahkee said. “And how it brings us together is it binds science with metaphysics, because they don't ever hear the Native American side of it, and there's a lot of religious aspects involved in our science as opposed to their science.”

She said everything is orientated by archeoastronomy.

“We have solstice, we have summer solstice, we have spring solstice, and the alignment of the stars determines the orientation of your village site, your sun dance site, what way you face your tipi door,” Weahkee said. “All these things are in conjunction with the upper universe.”

She said the presentation is to make people aware of the work archeologists have been doing.

“As far as the scientific part of who we are as a people, we're tracking footprints, and we're trying to get the knowledge out to whoever was in those sites at that time. And it's a broad history, so I want to make sure that I share that with everybody,” Weahkee said. “I've been calling people out. I get like three or four. I don't get like a bunch. We're going to have another excavation in March, and I'm hoping to get younger people out there to shake the screen. I had 80-year-olds, 70, you know, 60, trying to lift buckets and screen, and I want young people to embrace this science so they can do these things for our own selves.”

She said it’s important because there are sacred objects that the outside world shouldn’t touch.

“We know how to approach them using our religious perspectives before we go in,” Weahkee said. “We mark ourselves. We pray, you know, and this year I actually made them pray at sunrise every morning before we started the dig site, and we sang, and we praised each other for our work, and it made it for a happy site.”

Those in attendance also saw area dig sites on Fort Sill and the work done in the Lawton area.