The pandemic also created a period of imposed contemplation for all of us. The loss of so many elders like Grant Bulltail has been enormous-and its impact on cultural knowledge and living traditions is immeasurable.
Bulltail carried those memories forward through his service in Vietnam, his days as a folklore student at Utah State University, as an interpreter in state and national parks, in leadership roles in Crow Agency, Montana, and on into the chaos of 2020. Bulltail held the living memory of pre-treaty times: as a young boy, he learned the origin stories of the Crow people and their place-names from his grandfather, Comes Up Red, who could recall a time before President Andrew Johnson ratified the treaty between the United States and the Crow Nation in 1868. To share just one example of this incalculable loss, when NEA National Heritage Fellow Grant Bulltail was lost to COVID in 2020, the Crow Nation lost one of its most treasured fluent speakers and teachers of Apsáalooke language. While the loss of major festivals and concerts caused real and crushing economic loss to artists, communities, and organizations, it was the human toll of COVID on elders and keepers of tradition that was most profound. If a tree is only as strong as its roots, 2020 was a reminder that the roots of a multicultural nation remain resilient.
The field of folk and traditional arts-that is, those that practice living traditions and the individuals and organizations that work in service of them-has always been a useful guide in navigating complex spaces of cultural identity. In hindsight, it’s clear we were only at the very beginning of a long and painful reckoning. The last “State of the Folk Arts” I wrote was in 2016, while the nation was in the midst of what I hoped at the time was a fraught moment of divisiveness. Courtesy of Craft in America, photo by Denise Kang NEA National Heritage Fellow Grant Bulltail Photo by Kate Milford 2016 Dia de los Muertos Community Altar at Grand Park designed by NEA National Heritage Fellow Ofelia Esparza. (clockwise from top left) A parade during the Egg Rolls, Egg Creams, and Empanadas Festival.
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