I lived out in the country so that provided me with many other things to do. My mom and dad have a horse herd of appaloosa, raise appaloosas and we have a big horse herd. I really love to ride horses and in many of my pieces that is what you will see, a horse. To the left is a Native American on horseback and he is in the mountains and he is welcoming the basketball into his life. It is kind of story of Native Americans playing hoop, how basketball is such a big part of our lives. I see basketball as a real good outlet, a good way to express yourself and be who you are. Traveling to tournaments and doing all that, getting to know your brothers, your friends more on a basis like that is really good. I see this as looking at how in present day we are welcoming basketball into our lives as an outlet from other things that you could do but to stay on the right path and follow that path into basketball. That is more where that one is going. It is kind of an abstraction so the average person would have to look a little closer to see just what I am trying to say, but a person who knows basketball and plays would just pick that up right away.

The other one behind me I have just started and that is actually I took that from a picture of my uncle Irvin Waters that I was talking about earlier, uncle Irvin Waters. He is really important in my life as far as when I was younger. I’d go riding in a rig with my dad and Irvin and he taught us the Native American language when I was real young and the music. That is really important to me. He was always there for us and I wanted to put him on there in one of my pieces and show what the Native American people are or what he has kind of instilled in me. Some of the words like pride and heritage and family, all them words are in my paintings somewhere. In this painting especially because I wanted to get across that those are the things that are important to me as a Nez Perce. He is carrying a flag, which I thought was kind of that representation that Native Americans are proud to be Americans and they are proud to be who they are. He actually fount in World War II I think it is in the navy and so he’s real proud to be Native American and American. I wanted to get that across to maybe people that don’t know that Native Americans are real proud of who they are. They got both sides but they are really proud to be Americans. So that kind of came across and of course the horse, I got to put a horse in there every time.