Travis Erickson, Wahpeton Sioux

 

In a one-man quarry at the Pipestone National Monument, Travis Erickson worked out a personal theology involving canupa, the sacred pipe that is central to the traditional spirituality of many Native American tribes.

 

With sledgehammers, pry bars, chisels and wedges, he reduced an 11-foot wall of pink quartzite into a mound of sharp-edged slabs, a 30-foot-high pile of tailings he calls "Mount Erickson."

 

He broke and moved all this rock to expose a retreating deposit of heavy, red stone from which the sacred pipe is carved.

 

"Every time you come out and quarry, it should be a spiritual experience. You are within the womb of Mother Earth, in the stone," says Erickson, who was born and raised in Pipestone, Minn., and is an enrolled member of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Sioux Tribe. "Hopefully, the harder it gets, the more humble I will become."

 

Erickson carves the rich red stone he harvests into pipes. Some of them are simple elbows and T's, others ornate, fanciful eagles, bears, bison and horses. These are viewed variously as sacred objects or as art by the people to whom Erickson sells or trades them.

 

"A lot of people come to me, and they want the pipe in their life," he says. "White, black, it doesn't matter as long as their heart is into it. My responsibility is to carve the pipe. My responsibility is not what they do after that."