Transcript: Ramona Peters: Voice, the Body, and the Spirit of Pottery Making

ANTHONY TRUJILLO: You came to pottery a bit later.

NOSAPOCKET: Mm hmm.

ANTHONY TRUJILLO: What, I guess, insights, has pottery making offered into just how you use your voice in the Mashpee community and beyond?

NOSAPOCKET: Right. So I actually used to do artifact reproduction. So I was very crafty with my hands. Love doing making things out of wood.

And I learned how to do things out of metal. I used to do some smithing. But I also used to do copper work. And leather and porcupine quills, and all kinds of things, making stuff. Loved it. And one museum asked me to make a piece of pottery.

So they gave me a picture of a shard, just a piece, to say, OK, this is the impression that was on that piece. We don't know how big it was, or whatever. But whatever.

So I took that. And I said OK. I got some clay. And in the process of making that piece, yeah, you know, it's – something inside me has shifted and I've never been the same.

I feel it to this day. It was a connection with the Earth that I had not had. It had seemed like I had been just looking at the surface. It seemed like I was just – But also, it’s like when you hold that first ball, to make a little pinch pot.

When you first saw that, I always make the prayer, too. All right, let's give thanks for all that is. Just thankful and grateful.

And also, trying to be responsible to the Earth. It's like, I don't make a lot, a lot of pieces. Because I can't be responsible for them. If they go to people that want them, and they're going to take care of them, that's fine. It's like the Earth. You're going to take care of Earth: I love you.

[LAUGHTER]

Yeah, whatever's there that's willing to come forward, and through me, and through this form. I'm so grateful for that opportunity, to actually be allowed to shape or participate in the shape of the Earth, that this piece of Earth is going to take. My own pleasure is really when there's still water in the clay.

When it's fired, I really lose some level of interest, I'm sorry to say. That connection is really with the water in my body and the water in the clay. Other people might feel differently and have a process. But it definitely shifts for me.

But the spirit of it, of the Earth, of chemistry, and it just mingles. And it's in everything. It's in the bones.

That piece, you’re looking at that's in there? When I lost my thumb, was working in a boat yard. I was afraid I couldn't do pottery anymore. So that was my first piece.

ANTHONY TRUJILLO: This was your first piece?

NOSAPOCKET: Yeah, I call it "The One Thumb Pot."

ANTHONY TRUJILLO: Is that right?

NOSAPOCKET: Yeah, one thumb, but yeah.