Rituals and Traditions

WilderUtopia celebrates world culture with a frame of environmental sustainability. Our inspiration sources from ethnically-based indigenous arts, myth and storytelling, as well as dance and music, played out in the rituals, customs, and traditions of the many peoples of the planet.

One More Dance, Dancing Devils of Yare
Rituals and Traditions, Urban Art

Dancing Devils of Venezuela Challenge US Consumer Culture

An exhibition by artist Cristóbal Valecillos in Los Angeles invoked the Dancing Devils of Yare, a 400-year old Venezuelan tradition celebrating life, the triumph of good over evil, and renewal.  His provocative interpretation of the diablo masks, hand-sculpted from repurposed waste materials, takes aim at culture and consumption in the US, a plea for overcoming. 

Crow Nation, Apsaalooke People
Myth

Myth: The Crow Who Visited the Land of the Seven Cranes

The original lands of the Crow or Apsáalooke peoples were east of Yellowstone National Park in Montana/Wyoming, the Absarokas, across the Basin to the Big Horn Mountains, and southeast to the Wind Rivers. This story, recounted to anthropologist Robert Lowie at the turn of the 20th Century, reveals the esoteric visionary experience of a young Crow, and his interest to visit the Land of the Birds.