Sophie Charlotte Belnos: A 19th-Century Company Artist's View of Indian Culture

Sophie Charlotte Belnos (1795-1865) stands as a significant figure among the Company Artists—European artists who documented Indian life during the British colonial period. Her meticulous illustrations of Hindu religious practices and Bengali cultural life represent some of the earliest ethnographic visual records of colonial India, offering unique insights into the intersection of European artistic techniques and Indian cultural documentation.

 ‘Nautch Girl or Bengal Singing Girl’

Early Life and Background

Born on February 18, 1795, in Danapur, Bengal, Belnos was raised in Calcutta as part of the European colonial community (Roebert, 2021). While British by nationality rather than Anglo-Indian, her upbringing in India profoundly shaped her artistic perspective and cultural understanding. Her marriage to French miniature artist Jean-Jacques Belnos, who had introduced lithographic printing to India in 1822, proved instrumental in her artistic development (USEUM, n.d.). This partnership not only provided her with technical expertise in lithography but also positioned her within a network of artists and cultural observers in colonial Bengal.

Artistic Development and Professional Career

Belnos began as an amateur artist but evolved into a professional lithographer and illustrator, demonstrating remarkable entrepreneurial spirit for a woman of her era. In 1847, she established her own lithographic studio in Calcutta, gaining artistic and financial independence (USEUM, n.d.). Her transition from amateur to professional artist reflected both the growing opportunities for European women in colonial India's artistic landscape and her own determination to document the culture surrounding her with professional rigor.

Major Works and Cultural Documentation

Belnos produced two landmark publications that established her reputation as a Company Artist and cultural documentarian:

Twenty-four Plates Illustrative of Hindoo and European Manners in Bengal (1832)

This seminal work featured hand-colored lithographs created from Belnos's original sketches, with lithographic work by A. Colin and her husband (Saffron Art, 2020; StoryLTD, n.d.). The publication included descriptive text in both French and English, reflecting the multicultural nature of colonial Bengal and making the work accessible to both French and English-speaking audiences. 

The work documented both male and female dancers, providing insights into Bengali cultural practices and social hierarchies. Notably, Belnos recorded that "natives of both sexes of respectability will never dance themselves; it is considered derogatory to their dignity," capturing indigenous attitudes toward performance that predated later colonial moral campaigns (Roebert, 2021).

The Sundhya or the Daily Prayers of the Brahmins (1851)

This comprehensive documentation of Hindu religious practices showcased Belnos's deep engagement with Indian spiritual culture over nearly two decades of observation. The work illustrated various prayer ceremonies, hand gestures (mudras), religious vessels, and devotional practices dedicated to deities including Vishnu, Ganesha, Hanuman, and Shiva (Rawpixel, n.d.; The Heritage Lab, 2021). This publication demonstrated her commitment to understanding and accurately representing complex religious practices that were often misunderstood or misrepresented by European observers.

Artistic Analysis and Cultural Significance

Belnos's work represents a unique fusion of European artistic techniques with Indian subject matter, characteristic of the Company School style. Her illustrations demonstrate several key analytical features:

Technical Innovation: By combining traditional European watercolor techniques with the newly introduced lithographic printing process, Belnos created works that were both artistically sophisticated and reproducible for wider distribution. The hand-coloring of her lithographs maintained the personal touch of original artwork while allowing for multiple copies.

Ethnographic Precision: Unlike many contemporary European artists who romanticized or exoticized Indian subjects, Belnos approached her documentation with anthropological rigor. Her detailed attention to religious gestures, ceremonial objects, and cultural practices suggests she spent considerable time observing and understanding the contexts she was illustrating (Roebert, 2021).

Cross-Cultural Perspective: Her work reveals a European woman's attempt to bridge cultural understanding during the colonial period. The bilingual text in her publications indicates an awareness of multiple audiences and a desire to communicate across cultural boundaries. Her documentation of both "Hindoo and European Manners" suggests she saw herself as documenting a hybrid colonial culture rather than simply exotic Indian practices.

Gender and Social Commentary: Belnos's inclusion of female dancers and her observations about social attitudes toward performance provide valuable insights into gender dynamics in colonial Bengal. Her work captures the complex social hierarchies and cultural tensions of the period from a female European perspective, adding a dimension often missing from male-dominated colonial documentation.

Historical Significance and Accuracy

Belnos distinguished herself through her commitment to ethnographic accuracy, a quality that sets her apart from many contemporary Company Artists. She included endorsements from members of the Royal Asiatic Society to validate the authenticity of her cultural representations (Roebert, 2021). Her collaboration with Jean-Jacques Belnos produced some of the earliest visual records of yoga practices during the colonial era, featuring detailed illustrations of yogic postures and spiritual practices that modern scholars consider remarkably accurate (The Heritage Lab, 2021).

Legacy and Later Life

Belnos's documentation provides invaluable insights into 19th-century Bengali culture and Hindu religious practices that might otherwise have been lost or misrepresented. Her work represents a bridge between European artistic techniques and Indian cultural subjects, embodying the hybrid nature of Company Art while maintaining respect for the subjects she documented. She died on April 24, 1865, in Copenhagen, Denmark, leaving behind a body of work that continues to inform our understanding of colonial Indian culture and early cross-cultural artistic exchange.

Examples of Her Work

Several of Belnos's illustrations are available in digital collections:

Religious ceremonial illustrations: Hand gestures and prayer poses from "The Sundhya" can be viewed at Rawpixel's Sophie Charlotte Belnos collection

Cultural documentation: Examples from "Twenty-four Plates" are featured in academic discussions at Pictorial Indian Dance History

Contemporary exhibitions: Her work has been displayed in modern contexts, as noted in the Artsy collection from Swaraj Art Archive

Sophie Charlotte Belnos's contributions to Company Art demonstrate how European artists in colonial India could serve as cultural interpreters, creating visual records that transcended mere documentation to become valuable historical and anthropological resources. Her work remains significant not only for its artistic merit but also for its respectful and accurate representation of Indian cultural and religious practices during a critical period of cultural contact and colonial transformation.

References

Roebert, D. (2021, September 5). Depictions of dancers in the Bengal Presidency by three artists: c. 1820-1840. Aspects of Pictorial Indian Dance History. https://pictorialindiandance.wordpress.com/2021/03/13/depictions-of-dancers-in-the-bengal-presidency-by-three-artists-c-1820-1840/

Rawpixel. (n.d.). Sophie Charlotte Belnos images. https://www.rawpixel.com/search/sophie%20charlotte%20belnos

Saffron Art. (2020, January 15-16). Sophie Charlotte Belnos. Antiquarian Books Auction [Lot 38]. https://www.saffronart.com/auctions/PostWork.aspx?l=29841

StoryLTD. (n.d.). Sophie Charlotte Belnos - Twenty-four plates illustrative of Hindoo and European manners in Bengal. https://www.storyltd.com/auction/item.aspx?eid=4253&lotno=4

The Heritage Lab. (2021, June 20). Yoga: A story in art. https://www.theheritagelab.in/yoga-art/

USEUM. (n.d.). Sophia Charlotte Belnos. https://useum.org/artist/Sophia-Charlotte-Belnos

Fountain Square, Baku, New Year's Eve 1999

The fountains surge at mechanical intervals against the Caspian night, their waters catching fragments of light from small fireworks that bloom and die in children's hands. Their sound mimics conversation—the rhythmic murmur of voices just beyond comprehension, like the Russian phrases that drift past my ears, half-familiar syllables that force me to strain for meaning that hovers always just out of reach. Art nouveau facades curve around the square in elegant contradiction—wrought iron railings twist into filigree dreams while Soviet concrete slouches behind them like a guilty secret. I stand among the cobblestones, foreign feet on ancient ground, watching elegant women drift past in their narrow-shouldered blazers and dark lipstick—the careful glamour of a decade that promised everything and delivered fragments.

photo by susan smith nash

The kimancha's bow draws across steel strings, weaving mugham's modal lamentation through the crowd. This is music that builds meaning note by note, like Wittgenstein's language games—each phrase a world, each ornament a way of seeing. The musician's eyes close as he navigates the ancient pathways between joy and sorrow, his instrument's voice threading through conversations that switch between Russian's familiar harshness and Azeri's liquid syllables, languages dancing around each other like cautious lovers constructing reality from borrowed words.

Wind from the Caspian carries the eternal scent of oil and gas seeps, that petroleum incense persistent as the fires that once burned without end from this earth. The wind is relentless, constant as the flames that now burn in hearts rather than temples. I think of Zoroastrian altars, of Leyla and Majnun's doomed passion, of Dede Gorgud's twelve tales that shaped meaning from nomad memory long before empires learned to name this place. The fountain spray catches my cheek, cold and sudden against the warm breath of ancient fires, and I am reminded that language, like love, like revolution, constructs the world it claims to describe. Here in Azerbaijan, at the crossroads of empires and languages, meaning shifts like the wind patterns across the Caspian.

The old Soviet buildings lean against art nouveau's flowering iron, concrete socialism crumbling into capitalism's uncertain embrace, while the mugham continues its spiral ascent through modal territories that know no borders. Above it all, Persian arches and Islamic geometries remember older grammars of power.

Tonight feels less about reconstruction than about witnessing—the way midnight fireworks illuminate faces caught between worlds, between languages, between the weight of empire's end and the lightness of small hopes ascending like sparks into the winter sky. In planters between the fountains, olive trees stand patient as prophets, their silver leaves catching wind and light, while winter roses cling to thorny stems with the same stubborn grace that keeps the human spirit flowering in the harshest seasons.

The kimancha falls silent, and in that silence, the wind carries whispers of Majnun calling Leyla's name across the centuries, while gas flames flicker in the distance like punctuation marks in an endless sentence we are all still learning to read. Here, among the poppies that will push through cracks in concrete come spring, among the jasmine that perfumes summer nights regardless of which flag flies overhead, I understand that the human heart rebuilds itself with the same persistence as these ancient fires—unvanquishable, eternal, finding ways to bloom even when the world above seems to crumble.

Yeni il mübarək, someone calls out, and the New Year arrives with the taste of petroleum and the promise that the spirit, like these olive trees, like the fountains that flow regardless of empire, endures and renews itself from sources deeper than any human design.

Susan Smith Nash, Ph.D. 

Norman, OK 

Time-Lapse Expressions: The Modernist Vision of Marcel Duchamp and Giacomo Balla

I would love to have seen the new art at the 1913 Armory Show and that which followed. Marcel Duchamp’s “Nude Descending a Staircase” was mocked and referred to as shingles flying everywhere.  Earlier, in 1912, Giacomo Balla’s  painting, likewise portrayed motion in multiples. Now, all audiences would automatically recognized it as individual frames from motion picture film.  The way of seeing reality is fascinating – it’s a convergence of the new technologies in x-ray (seeing the skeletal form), and silent film, evoking the Lumiere Brothers and also films from Edison’s studios.  The art corresponded to the new wave of innovation which we now refer to as the Second Industrial Revolution (the first was steam power, the second technology that included automation, communications, sanitation), etc.).

Nude Descending a Staircase (No. 2) - Marcel Duchamp

I had the chance to view “Nude Descending a Staircase (No. 2)” at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The experience of seeing Duchamp’s work in real life makes it clear that the viewer is supposed to enter the experience of the work – emotionally and cognitively – as the work itself requires the viewer to interact with it in a unique / different way than simply looking at a sculpture or painting. 

For example, the famous “objet trouvé / “found object” entitled "Fountain" and signed of R. Mutt, 1917, is a urinal that demands you perceive it as a sculpture, but you’re not at all prepared to do so, since you’ve interacted with this everyday item in the real world, and it’s a mass-produced industrial object which is gazed upon and regarded, but not in a museum and not as a work of art, but as a utilitarian, functional machine (is a toilet a machine?). 

"Fountain" by Marcel Duchamp

In “The Bride, Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even,” which is a mixed media installation also at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, you are forced to look through a tiny opening in a door to witness, voyeuristically, a Greek myth playing out in front of your eyes. It may not be literally Leda and the Swan, and the incubus concept may be outside your experience (well, one hopes!).

“Nude Descending a Staircase (No. 2)” is a painting, but it has the feeling of being a balsa wood construction. In the early 20th century, balsa wood was regularly used to build models and prototypes of machines, vehicles, boats, and fanciful inventions. Thus, by creating a painting that looks like a balsa wood prototype, Duchamp forces the viewer to reperceive the work of art, and to challenge the viewer to think of art as speculative, and all about the way that inventions can be made, and that it does not matter if you’re an artist or an engineer. If you have a mind that can think in multiple dimensions, and across time, you’re a part of the exciting, seemingly infinite future.

 

"Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash" (1912) by Giacomo Balla

The same can be said for Giacomo Balla’s hyperactive little dachshund in “Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash” – so cute!  But what makes the depiction so relatable?  Instead of focusing on the dog’s face, and instead of giving the dog oversized, emotional eyes that look directly into the eyes of the viewer, the dachshund is more quintessentially “dachshund” than a sentimental version could ever be, and every dachshund owner would absolutely agree. The dog is all about energy, action, and forward motion.  

If you look at the breed from its utility, you’ll think of how it was bred to hunt gophers. At the same time, if you look at the breed from the perspective of a modern urban owner, you totally relate to a frisky, territorial, and cutely aggressive little dog that loves to run on his tiny little legs. Instead of the face, the big, soulful eyes, and a setting in nature, we have a little urban sweetie whose energy somehow reflects and refracts the energy of the young woman walking her little darling. It’s all about sympathetic energy, and thus, Balla paints life itself.

The Joy of Gymnastics: OU Meets Arkansas at Norman - Joscelyn Roberson, Faith Torrez, Jordan Bowers, Frankie Price shine

I had an amazing experience!  I had the chance to attend the OU-Arkansas women’s gymnastics meet at Lloyd Noble on Friday, January 31. 

University of Oklahoma gymnast getting ready for floor exercise.

I love OU’s women’s gymnastics, and I was really excited to see that now that we’re in the SEC, we would have a meet against the University of Arkansas where World Cup Floor Ex champion and Olympics alternate, Joscelyn Roberson, is competing.  I purchased great seats for myself, Shandell, and little 3-year-old Brielle and 7-year-old Monty, in order to see Joscelyn Roberson in person.  What would she be like in person?  I’ve certainly seen her in videos, but do they do her justice? 

Three-year-old aspiring gymnast wearing her OU Sooners leo and dress.

It was so amazing to see Texarkana born and raised Joscelyn Roberson compete in person.  I first became aware of her during the 2023 Pan American Games and also the Cairo World Cup where she earned a Gold in Floor Exercise.  Her coaches in Texarkana should receive huge credit for developing such a great athlete and sportsman as well.  At any rate, when I first saw her, she was 16, and at 4 ft 8 inches, a little powerhouse.  Her music and her tumbling passes were incredible.  She did receive criticism for “lack of artistry,” but honestly, I think it’s only because she does not have the sylph-like appearance of a rhythmic gymnast.  Also the code of points privileges difficulty, so tumbling passes become superhuman in difficulty, along with floor-based wolf turns. I followed her career with avid interest, really disagreeing with her detractors, and I think they have no idea whatsoever about Joscelyn’s true “provenance.”  This is just a theory, but I suspect her tumbling prowess is due to the depth and breadth of tumbling talent and coaching in Texarkana, thanks to Cheer.  Texarkana high schools, such as Arkansas High School regularly rank in the top 10 nationally.  They are stunning!  Granted, their technique is quite different than gymnastics, but many of the tumbling passes require tucks, twists, and more.  

Joscelyn Roberson (far left) getting ready for vault. 

I was sad to see Joscelyn suffer a serious ankle injury during a warm-up for the vault.  She came back, better than ever, and earned a spot as an alternate for the U.S. Olympic Team going to Paris. I was secretly hoping that she would sign a Letter of Intent with the University of Oklahoma.  OU has earned a reputation as a team with tremendous concentration, discipline, mental toughness, and consistency.  They did not advance to the National Championships last year, but there were injuries, and they were rebuilding.  This year, OU’s women gymnasts are ranked #1 in the nation. It was exciting to see Jordan Bowers and Faith Torres (tied for all-around in this meet) along with teammates Lily Pederson, Audrey Davis, Addison Fatta, Danae Fletcher, and more.  I am incredibly impressed with OU’s coaching and the support behind the scenes.  I used to see the women’s gymnastics team at 6 am at Murray Case Sells doing low-impact cardio in the diving well and it was all I could do to restrain myself from going totally “fan-girl” on them and asking for autographs (on what?  My swim cap?).  I was a huge fan of the now graduated Ragan Smith, Madison Snook, and many others.  One true hero who led Oklahoma to national championships in 2017 and 2018 was Maggie Nichols (who was in the audience!!).  Maggie wrote about her experiences in a book. Her courage always stunned me – she was one of the gymnasts who testified against Larry Nassar.  In fact, she was “Athlete A,” who was the first to report to U.S. Gymnastics what Nassar had been doing to the gymnasts.  That took incalculable courage!! Instead of continuing to pursue elite gymnastics, she chose to go the college route.  When she was competing, it was almost unheard of for an elite gymnast to leave their club and to compete in college, where the rules are different, and the routines do not have the same degree of difficulty (or at least, didn’t).  This was before Jade Carey and Sunisa Lee broke that mold.  Apparently, Joscelyn Roberson is following in the tradition of Jade and Sunisa and is on the U.S. Nationals team.  I don’t know about members of the OU gymnastics team. 

The scoreboard after OU's final rotation on the floor. Their consistency is truly remarkable. 

It was reported that Joscelyn had been battling the flu earlier in the week, but she looked really strong. Her first event was the vault.  I could see her on the monitors, and more or less from our seats, but we were next to the floor, and away from the vault.  She did not seem to get the distance off the table that she has in the past, and there was a bit of a hop.  But – wow – what a difficult vault! She did a twist onto the vault before she blocked with her hands, and her hands where perfectly squared so she was able to push up high and get energy to do even more twists off the table.  It was really impressive. 

Her floor routine was really interesting to me. She still used the song “Stanga,” which OU gymnast Olivia Trautman had used in the past.  Sagi Abitbul & Guy Haliva recorded “Stanga” which has been remixed to infinity.  The first time I heard it, I literally had chills.  I used to listen to my CD-ROM of the “Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares” on my way to work in Oklahoma City for Kerr-McGee.  I would park in the parking lot east of the railroad tracks which is now Bricktown, and be really pumped up by it.  I had both collections, Vols, I and II, and just loved them.  “Stanga” borrows heavily, and is in my opinion, perfect floor ex music.  When I was in gymnastics, I had a routine choreographed to a literal bullfighting music from a record my mom had treasured, and it exuded pure passion as well. 

At any rate, Joscelyn is still incorporating “Stanga” (wonderful!).  Her routine has changed a bit.  Her first tumbling pass was incredibly high and she just totally stuck it.  I was a bit surprised because I thought that in college gymnastics you had to step back onto the back foot.  Perhaps she did, and I did not notice.  It went quickly and that is something I can review in recordings. The biggest change is that she took out the floor wolf turns (no wolf turns on beam, either).  She did have a great deal of sass in the dance elements, along with lots of playfulness and gestures to the crowd, encouraging them to pick up the volume of cheering.  I was going to say entreat, but it there was definitely a feel of play at work. The coaches at Arkansas are great for her. Jordyn Wieber is their head coach, and she is a champ.  She looked very elegant in a white flowing pants suit a drapy jacket (turns out she is expecting), and high heels.  OU’s coach was also elegant in black. Joscelyn totally stuck her second pass (which she always did in her elite performances) and the execution elicited gasps of admiration. Her floor flexibility moves were serviceable, but I think they could be more original.  Her split leaps have really come a long way, and she has made impressive improvements with turning her feet out and making sure her feet are all the way up.  Her final tumbling pass was a triumph.  I know I’m a bit at a loss for descriptors – my hands-on gymnastics experience was at a very rudimentary level, although I did take gymnastics classes for years that were offered to children through the City of Norman and OU, and then later, I had gymnastics every day in 9th grade at West.  I did not take gymnastics in tenth grade.  I’m not sure why. I focused more on swimming. 

Joscelyn was her team’s anchor on the beam, and she totally nailed all the skills. She did not have all the different skills that she had in her elite routine (no wolf turns), but she had really complicated combinations, and her dismount was a twisting one, with a blind landing.  Dangerous!  Her precision and confidence were palpable, and her team cheered her on.  She received her team’s highest score on the beam – I think it was a 9.925.

Scoreboard after the Arkansas Razorback's rotation. 

The scoring has been really stringent this year, especially after complaints about too many 10.0s and scoring inflation helping certain teams.  I guess it’s a good idea to reserve the 10s for the truly remarkable performances, and not succumb to the idea of going to a very complicated code of points that contains multipliers based on degree of difficulty.  With such an emphasis on dangerous skills, I’m actually surprised there have not been more tragic accidents.  Perhaps there have been, but we are just not hearing about it.  

Joscelyn Roberson congratulated by fellow Razorback after a great performance on the beam. The atmosphere is truly joyous and supportive. (photo Susan Nash)

I was expecting to appreciate the meet, but I did not expect to absolutely love it, which I did!  Wow.  The overall feeling is joyous and participatory, and I think it’s very healthy.  It’s a far cry from the gymnastics events I attended in the past where the waves of nervousness combined with parental obsession and coaches’ ambition created something pretty unpleasant.  I think I’d prefer electroconvulsive shock therapy to attending one of those kinds of meets. It reminds me of when I swam on the swim team as a 12-year-old and  saw a parent spank his little daughters at a swim meet in Enid for not getting their best times.  Perhaps his daughters were horsing around and merited some firm talk but that?  I was glad my parents did not like attending swim meets.  Competing is scary enough – why add aversion therapy??  

The meet concluded with a score of 197.828-195.975 as Oklahoma continued its winning streak against ranked opponents and remained the No. 1 program in the nation.  The Arkansas team was very impressive, and it is really thrilling to have the chance to see such high-level performances.  

Unsung Hero: My Mother-in-Law

 Myrtle Juanita Robertson was born July 16, 1924 at the Central State Hospital in Norman, Oklahoma.  Despite its name, Central State was no ordinary hospital. It was, in fact, the State of Oklahoma’s largest hospital for the mentally ill and the criminally insane. Her mother had been institutionalized after the death of her husband, but there are no remaining stories of why she was institutionalized, nor why her 11 children were all given up for adoption. Myrtle Juanita, who always went by “Juanita” did not realize that she was adopted until much later in life, and then, when she learned about it, she looked desperately for her brothers and sisters. She found one, Charles, who had lived a very difficult life. I met Charles and immediately liked him.  He was a small man with a wry sense of humor.  He had bleeding ulcers, however, and I think that the end was already near when I met him.

But, to back up a bit. Why on earth was Mary Etta (Shields) DeWitt treated in such a harsh way? The answer has to do with a hidden history of mental institutions.  Juanita’s parents were members of the Citizens Band Potawatomi, removed from Illinois to Kansas and Oklahoma, and then given allotments.  The DeWitts had land near Little Axe, Oklahoma.  After Juanita’s father died and her mother was institutionalized, something happened and it appears that the mother lost all her rights to anything at all.  This dark, shameful history is not acknowledged.  Juanita was raised by a family in the same town as the mental hospital, and she never had any notion that her mother was in the rather terrifying mental hospital on the east side of town, nor did she have any idea that she had 10 brothers and sisters.

https://fringejournal.blogspot.com/2022/11/oklahoma-sanitarium-company-1895.html

Juanita graduated from Norman High School and then went on to attend the University of Oklahoma, where she majored in education. She continued with her education and became a social worker for the State of Oklahoma.  Years passed, and she was contacted by the Bureau of Indian Affairs to let her know that she had inherited land from her parents, and that she had at least one surviving sibling.  This was a shock to Juanita, who did not realize that she had been adopted, nor did she have any knowledge of her Potawatomi heritage.

 

Ironically, at the University of Oklahoma, at the same time that Juanita’s mother was institutionalized and her children taken from her, the University of Oklahoma, literally 2 miles from Central State Hospital, efforts were made to preserve Native American culture at the Western History Collection. There are many harsh ironies in this situation, which will be the subject of a later, more detailed meditation.

Finding out that she was adopted, and then, the tragic circumstances, put Juanita in a state of shock, and she started to piece together all the things that had never made sense from her childhood, and also the deep sense of trauma, rupture, and horror that she could never shake off.

She immediately dug into her past and also into Potawatomi heritage, customs, and language. More than anything, she felt a deep, searing pain when she thought of those who were overwhelmed and helpless, who ended up losing everything, and dying alone, destitute, and sad. She could never change the past. There was nothing she could do to rectify the wrongs done to her mother and her 10 brothers and sisters.  However, she could fight for better conditions for the Elders.

 

Juanita was able to work with the State of Oklahoma, and in doing so, she worked on programs to benefit the elderly.  At the end of her career, she could look back and see all the programs she had helped shape that had to do with providing nutrition as well as emotional support to senior citizens in the State of Oklahoma.

Juanita died at the age of 90, an unsung hero, a Potawatomi who was able to reclaim her heritage and to fight for meals, companionship, and human dignity for elders.

Her funeral took place on a rainy, cool afternoon at a funeral home in Purcell, Oklahoma, where I had attended the funeral of my dear mother, just three years before.  I signed the guestbook and fought back tears until I looked out the window and saw my ex-husband running across the parking lot in a downpour, clutching a cardboard box.  Instantly, I knew what it was.  He was carrying the urn with the ashes of little Ricky, Juanita’s beloved white cat.  I remembered Ricky well. Ricky was the meanest cat you could possibly imagine. Ricky loved to hide under a sofa and then lash out with his razor-sharp claws.  I lost many a pair of tights to that crazy cat! But, Ricky loved Juanita, and Juanita loved Ricky.  Later, I wondered if somehow Juanita’s mom, Mary Etta DeWitt, had shared her spirit with Ricky, and she was there to do everything she could to protect her little lost baby.

Little Ricky, the cat, and his adored owner, Juanita DeWitt Robertson, are unsung heroes.

 

 

Unsung Hero: Susan LaFlesche Picotte (1865 - 1915)

 In July 2024, I had the chance to participate in an event at the National Academies of Science in Washington, D. C.   The topic was how best to clean up the orphan oil and gas wells that can pollute the air and groundwater, and thus improve the living conditions for many people, especially those who suffer from socio-economic hardship.

 

The building was a majestic example of intricate Art Nouveau with stained glass, wrought iron, and lovely nooks and hidden galleries where tributes to the nation’s most visionary scientists could be found.

 

I was excited and inspired to happen upon a tribute to women scientists.  I was deeply moved.  One of the first to really catch my eye was Susan La Flesche Picotte.  La Flesche was the first Native American woman to earn a degree as a medical doctor, returned home to build a system to provide medical care for the people of the Omaha nation, and to institute practices that would dramatically reduce communicable diseases.  

 

She was born in June 1865 on the Omaha Reservation in what is now Nebraska.  Her father, Joseph La Flesche (Iron Eyes) was chief of the Omaha tribe and her mother, Mary Gale (One Woman), encouraged their daughters to get an education. So Susan studied at a missionary school on the reservation before being accepted to study at the Elizabeth Institute for Young Ladies in New Jersey.  From there, she matriculated at the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania, where she graduated as valedictorian in 1889.

 

After returning to the Omaha Reservation, La Flesche instituted a number of changes:  She advocated the construction of a hospital and European-style frame houses to provide more ways to keep the patients in as sterile facilities as possible. She was a huge advocate of public health and encouraged families to install screens on doors and windows to keep disease-spreading flies and mosquitoes from entering. She discouraged the use of shared drinking cups at village wells, and was a dedicated physician, traveling great distances to see patients.  She was able to achieve her great dream of having a hospital built in Walthill, Nebraska, on reservation land.

La Flesche often spoke out against the great physical and mental toll that contact with European settlers and the Office of Indian Affairs had taken on the health of indigenous peoples.

 

To me, La Flesche is an inspiring figure for many reasons. The most obvious is that of overcoming the odds to become a doctor and go back home to fight for better conditions and treatment for her people. She never gave up, even when her own poor health made it difficult.

 

While Susan La Flesche Picotte has had the great fortune to have been remembered for her efforts, it is very important to keep in mind that there are many unsung heroes, especially within communities that are under-represented, isolated, and historically under-served.  It is a good idea to take a moment to think about those who made contributions, no matter how large or small, and to thank them.

A Philosophy of Teaching using AI

 Sharing my own thoughts and philosophy on teaching

With the advent of ubiquitous AI tools, I’ve renewed my emphasis on connections to real-world experiences as a way to both learn and to communicate the attainment of knowledge, and demonstrating achievement of learning objectives.

It is interesting to see how people use Large Language Model generative AI.  They may enter a prompt from the discussion board into AI to see what it delivers. It usually delivers information in the form of short lists, which are either bulleted or are bold-face in the topic or subject. When entire papers are constructed, they are very clearly structured.  The thesis statement is often very clear, but the introduction is unengaging. The body paragraphs have good topic sentences (as though from an outline), but any reference to relevant information is not cited properly (no in-text citations, no reference section at the end). If the topic is a common one (Write a paper about Hamlet’s conflicts in Shakespeare’s Hamlet), the information is likely to be pretty reliable, given that there are so many easily accessible papers on the topic.  However, it could be unreliable if the Large Language Model is using student papers, websites, and places like Course Hero for the data used to train the model.

My philosophy of teaching has to do with making emotional and cognitive connections to the topic and igniting a fire of curiosity and personal connection so that they feel real curiosity and a need to know about the topic because it could inform them of what could be a future path to a fulfilled and meaningful life.

I think back to my own experiences in life – when I was an undergraduate, I had dreams and there were aspects of life that really fascinated me.  I kept changing majors because the world around me kept changing, and I constantly wrestled with perfectionism, which made me feel either euphoric or in a pit of despair.  It took me many years to learn how to self-regulate, and now I think I may do it too much – if something negative happens, I immediately reframe it as something else, and my mind starts churning out affirmations as I seek “win-win” situations within my sphere of influence.

 

It's a lot of work, and it requires a steely resolve to maintain a positive outlook.  When I was a graduate student and had a part-time job, I was fascinated by emotional and cognitive “limit experiences” that would push me to the edge and inform me about the nature of reality.  I guess that proclivity was what inspired me to write my dissertation on mad messiahs and the apocalyptic narrative. It was the gift that keeps on giving, and I automatically process the day’s headlines through a debunking narrative mechanism that identifies key apocalyptic words and then classifies the narratives into apocalyptic genres and sub-genres. I’ve been doing it so long it’s automatic. These are good days for apocalypse, I must say.

That said, my world view has changed over the years to help me feel a sense of self-determination and well, joy & happiness, even in the face of clear chaos and uncertainty in the world. It helps that the world is always chaotic and so the panic-dread I felt the first five or six times economic meltdown and social discord were proffered up has dissipated into a “well, fortunately, no one has to live forever” mode.  What is that about?  I think  it is, ultimately, a recognition that there are things I can do to make life better.  But, I can’t control the world. Good grief – I can’t even get the information needed to be able to control the world. If I did have that key information, would I be able to interpret it?  Who knows….

And so, the world I view is one of the joy of discovery and the deep satisfaction of new connections to people, cultures, ways of thinking and living.

We can live.  We can live together. The more we know about the past, the magical intersections of history, art, and culture, the more joyous and open our futures can be.

We train our minds to see.