Johnnie Diacon
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Summary:
An interview with Muscogee (Creek) Nation citizen Johnnie Diacon.Description:
An interview with Muscogee (Creek) Nation citizen Johnnie Diacon. A downloadable transcript may be found by link: Johnnie Diacon. This interview has been indexed through the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History Center’s Oral History Metadata Synchronizer system at the University of Kentucky. For an indexed copy of the video, please follow the external link found in the bar on the right of this page.
Transcription:
The Muscogee (Creek) Nation
Historic and Cultural Preservation Department
Oral History Program
“A Twenty-First Century Pandemic in Indian Country:
The Resilience of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation Against Covid-19”
As Remembered by: Mr. Johnnie Diacon
Interview by: Ms. Midge Dellinger
Date: March 17, 2022
Transcription: The Audio Transcription Company
Edited by: Ms. Midge Dellinger
MIDGE DELLINGER: This is Midge Dellinger, oral historian for the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. Today is March 17, 2022, and I am interviewing Muscogee citizen and artist Mr. Johnnie Diacon. For this interview, we are in Mr. Diacon’s art studio located in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I am performing this interview on behalf of the Muscogee (Creek) Historic and Cultural Preservation Department for the oral history project titled, “A Twenty-First-Century Pandemic in Indian County: The Resilience of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation against COVID-19.” Mr. Diacon, thank you so much for taking time out of your schedule to be here this morning and do this interview with me. We’re going to start the interview with some questions about your personal life and background. And so, I’d like to begin with, what is your tribal town and clan?
JOHNNIE DIACON: Thlopthlocco is my tribal town. I’m Deer Clan.
DELLINGER: Okay, and where were you born?
DIACON: In Okemah, Oklahoma.
DELLINGER: Now, is [00:01:00] Okemah where you grew up?
DIACON: No, I was only there for probably the first year of my life. I lost my mother in a car accident. But before she died, I was adopted. I was adopted by Delmer “Bud” Diacon, who was Cherokee, and his wife, Helen. They adopted me in—Christmas Eve is when they came and got me. Actually, they took me home with them on Christmas Eve. My mother died about a month and a day later in a car wreck. And then, I wasn’t officially adopted until much—just before I went into first grade. And they got me adopted, so I could have a last name, and I got all my baby shots. Get everything that was done that you normally do with a newborn baby. Because I was born at home. I was delivered by my grandmother. So, I didn’t have shots or a birth certificate or anything. I was just living. (laughs) Existing out there. And so, when they started getting me [00:02:00] ready for first grade, they had to do all this stuff to get me ready. Shots, and name, a social security number, and all that stuff. Birth certificate.
DELLINGER: Now, would you like to share the name of your birth mother?
DIACON: Yes, it was Margaret Harjochee. She was the daughter of Adam and Jennie Harjochee and they lived there in Okemah. And my Grandpa Adam, he was Nuyuka Tribal Town, Bear Clan. And of course, Grandma was Thlopthlocco and Deer Clan.
DELLINGER: And so, this was the grandmother who birthed you?
DIACON: Yes.
DELLINGER: Okay. What about grandparents on the Diacon side?
DIACON: His father was named Fred Charles Diacon. But he went by the name Mike. So, everybody knew him in the Okemah area as Mike. His mother was Julia Suttles. And she was the one with the Cherokee blood. [00:03:00] I believe his father was French. And that’s where the Diacon name is actually a French name. But his father was French. They had French ancestry. And they both lived there in Okemah. In fact, they’re buried there in Okemah. That’s where they lived. He was a World War I veteran and my father was a World War II veteran.
DELLINGER: Now, I’d like you to share, if you will, a little bit about your father and what he did as an occupation.
DIACON: He was a sign painter. He was an old hand-letter sign painter. He started that when he was—he said at seven, he started apprenticing with a man there in Okemah. And I can’t remember the man’s name. I think it was—and I’m not sure if this is right—I think it was Gray Powers, I think that’s what he said his name was. But he started at [00:04:00] age seven, he was—I guess he was watching him and he just picked it up. So, he was doing that. As he was growing up, he was making a little extra income. His father was a farmer and so, he worked on the farm, but he painted signs on the side and made a little extra cash for himself. I know he said at the time, when he was fifteen, he had bought a car with money he had made from sign painting. And I know his father was not real happy about that, because he was—instead of farming, a lot of the times, he was out riding around in that car. (laughs) But yeah, that’s what he did for a living. He did all kinds of sign work, neon, gold leaf. All the stuff that sign makers did back then as their repertoire of what they did, he did it all. Electrical work for signs, neon, glass blowing, silk screen, he did all of those things. If you needed signs, he could do whatever sign they needed. And that’s where I got my interest in art, because [00:05:00] he did a lot of art. A lot of paint around the house, so I just fell in love with paint.
DELLINGER: Now, did your mother work outside of the home?
DIACON: She didn’t at first. She just stayed at home. She took care of me. She was a homemaker. Later on, she started doing work as a nurse’s aide. In the forties, right about the close of World War II, she went to nursing school. And she was going to be a nurse during the war, but the war ended and so she ended up not going that route. But she had done nursing work for a while. But then she quit and she was a stay-at-home mom until I guess it was probably about 1975, or so, she went back to work as a—working in a hospital is where she worked in Springdale.
DELLINGER: And what about siblings? Will you share a little bit about your siblings?
DIACON: Yeah. I have older brothers and sisters. [00:06:00] I was the youngest of all of them. And we’ve lost two of them—I lost two brothers that were older than me. One died of suicide when he was twelve, and the other one—I’m not sure how old he was when he died. He died before I was born, but he was sick. He had had some kind of lung issues and that’s what he passed from. But he was a young child when that happened. The rest of them are all—like I said, I’m the baby of all of them. (laughs) There’s three girls and I’ve got two brothers.
DELLINGER: Do they live here in Oklahoma?
DIACON: Yes. They all live here in Oklahoma.
DELLINGER: So, do you all get to see each other, or spend time together with each other?
DIACON: Every now and then we do. You know, we’re kind of like most siblings anymore. We just don’t get together. After Grandma passed away, the family hasn’t gotten [00:07:00] together as much as they used to. The ones that still live around Oklahoma City—most of them are around Oklahoma City. The ones that live in the city, get—see each other more than the ones that live outside, me and my other brother, I think he’s up in Disney, Oklahoma. Here, I’m in Tulsa, and we don’t get down there that much like we used to. He used to live in Broken Arrow and I never hardly saw him when he lived in Broken Arrow. We’d see each other every now and then, but—I wish we had. I wish we’d stay there—I mean, we’re close, we get along, we just don’t make that extra effort.
DELLINGER: Would you like to share the names of your siblings? I think names are important.
DIACON: Yeah, my oldest sister’s named Susie. She’s ten years older than I am. I’ve got another sister named Geneva. And a sister who’s—her name is Lillian Faye, but she goes by Faye. She’s the youngest of the girls and she’s kind of like [00:08:00] the family historian. She kept all these records and she keeps track of everybody’s birthdays and she always remembers my birthday. I always get a text message from her on my birthday, “Happy Birthday!” And she’s—every now and then, they’ll do a surprise drop-by visit, which is always nice. They’ll just show up and it’s always great to see them. And then, I’ve got a brother, Alvin, and then another brother, Earl. And it’s Alvin, Earl, and me, as far as the boys. The ones that we lost was Michael and—I believe the one that passed away as a child, I think he was just a baby, his name was—I believe it was Gold. He was named after his father—his father’s name, I think, was Goldman. Goldman Johnson.
DELLINGER: Okay. Where did you graduate from high school?
DIACON: Springdale, Arkansas. [00:09:00] That’s where—after we left Okemah, we lived in Miami for a while, and then Dad moved to Springdale, Arkansas in the—about ‘65, I believe it was, because the sign business was opening up over in that area. That area was really starting to grow in northwest Arkansas. So, he followed where the work was at, so that’s where we ended up at.
DELLINGER: And I know when you and I talked previously, you shared a little bit with me about what it was like for you as an Indigenous young person to be over in Springdale, Arkansas. Will you share a little bit about that?
DIACON: Yeah, that was—Dad didn’t vet that area out real well when he moved us there. He picked Springdale because, like I said earlier, he was a World War II veteran. And he painted signs, but he also [00:10:00] knew how to work on cars. And so, he got a gas station there in Rogers, Arkansas—and if you know the northwest Arkansas area, there’s Rogers, Springdale, and Fayetteville. And so, he bought a home in Springdale because he had that gas station in Rogers, and there was a lot of sign work in that area. And what he did was he would work on cars on one of the stalls in the station and then the other side he would paint signs. So, when he wasn’t in there painting signs, he’d be over there working on cars. And then, Mom would run the islands, pump the gas and things. And then, Fayetteville played into it because there was a VA hospital there. So, he picked Springdale as the place, kind of central location—he found a nice house over there, I think. But the thing was, he didn’t realize at the time that Springdale was kind of a—now, this was in the sixties, and this was just as the Civil Rights Movement was getting—that town was a sundown town. And there were no people of color at [00:11:00] all in that town. And there were no Indians. And when I got there, I was out playing all the time outside, so I was always getting that full sun and I was just dark. And so, ended up in a class around kids—white children that have never seen anybody darker than they were. You know, these blond head, blue-eyed kids. And I here was, dark brown skin, at the time I had black hair and brown eyes. And they didn’t know what to make of me. So, they called me the N-word, because I was dark. You know, I figured these kids have never actually seen a person of color—a Black person in person there where they lived. At the time, they just weren’t allowed. So, they never saw them, never had any interactions with them, never seen Indians. And when [00:12:00] I would tell them I was Indian, they didn’t believe. They said, “Well, you can’t be, because they’re all dead.” And they’ve never seen an Indian and they just didn’t think they existed anymore. So, I faced a lot of weird interactions with the children.
But you know, you figure kids don’t know, but I had really bad dealings with adults that should have known better. They—you know, they—it wasn’t good. And it was teachers, storekeepers, and stuff. It was uncomfortable growing up there at the time. Yeah, so, Mom used to have to go to school a lot. It’s just like they didn’t get the fact that here I was dark—and they didn’t think she was my mom at first, because she didn’t look anything like me. Because she was non-Indian and I was adopted. And it was like, I don’t understand—[00:13:00] I don’t know why they couldn’t figure that out. The adoption route or whatever. But it was some fun times looking back on it. Yeah. That’s why I didn’t date in high school. I couldn’t get girls to go out with me. I’d ask them and, “Oh, yeah, sure, we’ll go out.” And a couple days later they’d come back and have some excuse why they couldn’t, because their parents said, “Well, you got this or something or other to do.” So, I didn’t ever date in high school.
And I had friends that lived there—we met—who were Indian and they were Canadian. And they were younger—or older guys—and there were some younger ones—and so, there were a few Indians starting to come into that area. They were adopted by a man that lived there. And I guess I didn’t realize at the time, they might have been part of that sixties scoop, bringing Canadian kids and adopt them out to American families. But those were the only Indians there at that time. And when I got older, one of the guys was [00:14:00] telling me he had to come over to Oklahoma to get girls to date. So, he was dating a lot of Cherokee girls. He would come over and meet girls in Oklahoma. Which, you know, Springdale was pretty close to the Oklahoma border. So, he made a lot of trips over to Oklahoma just to meet girls. (laughs)
DELLINGER: Now, what year did you graduate from high school?
DIACON: Nineteen-eighty-one.
DELLINGER: Nineteen-eighty-one. After high school, I know that you have earned multiple degrees from various institutions of higher education. Will you please talk about these life accomplishments?
DIACON: Yeah. You know, always been interested in art and as a child growing up, I had really bad eyesight. And I didn’t realize it—or I realized it, but I didn’t really realize it because it was just how the world looked to me. I just thought that’s how things [00:15:00] were. It was when I got into school and we had to take eye tests and they sent home a letter to my parents saying, “You need to get him to an eye doctor, because he’s got some really bad issues with his sight.” So, they took me to an eye doctor. And of course, at the time, I didn’t realize—he was this doctor in Springdale, Arkansas—was a collector of the flat style Indian paintings. And so, when I got my first glasses and I put them on, I saw those paintings that just stuck in my head. Those little flat style from the old masters. And here I was facing some of the things that I did growing up in that town, and then this is also the same town where I was first introduced to Indian art. Yeah, that’s kind of a weird thing there, you know? He was a collector of the flat style work. And I think that’s one of the reasons why it stuck me, being made ashamed—being made to feel ashamed and just weird about who I was, [00:16:00] compared to everybody else, and out of place. In the fourth grade, I have this epiphany and I see these Indian artworks and I said, “This guy is collecting this stuff. That’s me. These are Indians.” And I just fell in love with that style of art.
Of course, this was in—I was in fourth grade—this is probably about ’73. Pre—there’s no internet or any way for me to research these paintings. But they stuck in my head. And so, through the years, I was just trying to replicate them and replicate them. And I finally found out about Bacone College. And I had been out of high school about seven years and I heard about their art program there—Indian Art Program. And then, starting to find out that a lot of those old artists had gone to school at Bacone. And they’d either gone to school there, taught there—somehow, they were associated with [00:17:00] Bacone. So, that’s where I went. I went to Bacone. At seven years out of being in high school, that’s where I went to school, for the art program. And I only went there for two years and graduated.
From there, I went to Northeastern State University. I went there for a semester—and my mother got sick. She had cancer. She’d had it for a while, but it just kept getting worse. And she really got down bad. She had bone cancer. And they’d taken her right leg and her right hip probably about ’85. But through the years, it just kept spreading through her body and they kept removing organs and things. And they’re just whittling her down real gradual like. And she got really sick and my dad said, “I’m really worried about her.” And said, “Could you come home and maybe help me with her? Stay here. And you can go to school at the University of Arkansas and continue on [00:18:00] with”—you know, because I was in the BFA Program at Northeastern and I was going the art route. So, I transferred to the University of Arkansas. I never thought about going to the University of Arkansas when I lived in Arkansas, because they didn’t have an art program that I was interested in. I mean, NSU, it had enough—there was Indians there. I mean, that’s simply—there was Indians in that school. They were used to them and things. And then, I got—fell in so love with the curriculum and the setting at Bacone, that I wasn’t going to go back. And so, I went to NSU and then transferred to the University of Arkansas. And that’s—and of course, at the time, I’d gotten married to a girl at met at Bacone, and she was a Hopi. And we were married, and so, [00:19:00] we were living there with Mom and Dad there in Arkansas.
And after a while, I was almost done with my BFA when we got divorced. And so, I dropped out of school, got a job, and I was working. And so, I kind of put my art education on hold there for a while. And then, I got remarried to a girl that I’d—this is a long story about my art career, but kind of—my life just kind of weaves into these ways. So, it’s kind of hard for me to separate how I got to that point without adding—because it’s kind of like each little thing that happened in my life kind of leads to the next. This girl that I met—I met her—a friend of ours my dad knew and I went to school with [00:20:00] from first grade on up through high school worked at Kmart there in Springdale. And she had a friend and she hooked—introduced us. And at the time, I was twenty-four and I’d been divorced, and I had a kid. And so—she was only eighteen, so, she was kind of scared of me. She thought I was like too worldly. And here I was just already married and had a kid and she was just out of high school. But we became friends and we stayed friends for a long time. And I got—and as I said, I went to Bacone, and I met this girl. We got married and then we were divorced. But I still was friends with this girl through the years, so I decided to ask her out again. And she was older, and she wasn’t the young girl (laughs), and she agreed and we started dating. Anyway, we eventually got married and [00:21:00] I—she said, “How come you never went back to school? You need to go back to school for this art.” And I said, “Yeah, I need to. I always wanted to go to the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe.” I said, “I always—it was one of the places I wanted to go, you know.” And she said, “Well, let’s do it.” And so, that’s how I ended up there at the Institute of American Indian Arts. And so, those were the places I got my art education. Bacone, Northeastern State University, University of Arkansas, and Institute of American Indian Arts.
All through those years, I’d been entering art shows. I started—the first art show was The Trail of Tears in 1986. The Trail of Tears Art Show.
DELLINGER: I want to go back to something and ask you a question. When you were at the University of Arkansas, you said that you earned your BFA. And so, for folks who don’t know, what is a BFA?
DIACON: Oh, yeah, I was a Bachelor of Fine [00:22:00] Arts. I didn’t actually earn it, I was close. I was three semesters short of earning it when I dropped out. And so, that’s one of the reasons my wife said, “Have you ever thought about going back and getting that?” And I was so close to getting that BFA that I should have just—I should have stayed with it. But I think life needed me to go a different direction. It always seems like things that I come up—the Creator sends me in a different direction for some reason. Because he’s got a plan and it always seems to work out for me. So, I’m trusting in him, because he’s always pointed me in the right direction every time. (laughs)
So, I didn’t get my Bachelors of Fine Art—I did apply a few years ago to TU. I thought—you know what , just so I could say I got it for my own personal self. I applied to TU, got accepted, and I just never did follow through on it, because when I went for the interview and [00:23:00] everything, all the things that I was already doing with my art, it was almost like, “Why do you want to come to this when you’re already doing things more than what most of our graduate students are already doing?” And it would just be for my own personal thing, but I just never did go back and get that BFA or MFA. And I see now, the Institute of American Indian Arts—at the time I went there, didn’t offer degrees up past the AFA, which is what I got there—Associate of Fine Arts. So, I always thought about, “Well, I might go back out there one of these days.” (laughs) I don’t know, I’m chasing that degree. I don’t really need it; I just want it. (laughter)
DELLINGER: All right. Now, what year did you finish up at the Institute of American Indian Arts?
DIACON: In 1999.
DELLINGER: Okay.
DIACON: And I got—I always joke I spent more time, it seems like, [00:24:00] in art school than most doctors do in med school, (laughter) because I just—I kept taking all these art classes and stretched it out. I started in ’88—Spring of ’88—January of ’88 was when I started Bacone. Graduated in the Spring of '90, went to Northeastern that Fall, and then started U of A the Fall of ’91. And then, I was out for a few years, and then went back out to Santa Fe, and I was out there for like a year—or two years, in Santa Fe, and got that degree.
DELLINGER: Okay, now, Mr. Diacon, you’ve already shared with us that you have been married multiple times. And I’d like to ask you now, who is your wife now? And then, also, if you would talk about—I know you have multiple children, as well. I’d like to let you talk about your children, too.
DIACON: Okay, [00:25:00] well, my first wife, I met her when I was working at a hospital there in Springdale. It was one of those kind of things where I say I couldn’t get anybody to date me, and then, all of a sudden, when I got out of school, I was meeting different people. Different people were moving into that area and I met a woman who was thirteen years older than I was. And we started dating. And we got married. And that didn’t last very long. It lasted about three years. And so, that marriage ended. And with that marriage we had one daughter, and her name is Mika, and she’s thirty-eight. She lives up in Jefferson City, Missouri, right now. She’s married and has two—we have two grandchildren from her. A boy and girl. Mai-Lin and Makoto. And so, that’s our grandchildren—my grandchildren.
DELLINGER: And what’s Mika’s last name?
DIACON: Clardy. Yeah, Clardy. So, when [00:26:00] I married the Hopi—she was from Arizona—her name was Karen Onsae. And it was kind of a flip on that. She was younger than I was. I was like almost eight years older than she was. (laughs) We had one child and her name is Melissa. And she’s thirty-one? Thirty. No, she’s thirty. And she lives in Springdale, Arkansas, right now. I had a—in-between those two, I had a girlfriend that I had a daughter with, and she was Cheyenne (Arapaho). Her name was Chrissa Hicks. And we lost Chrissa in 2008. She committed suicide at the age of nineteen. And so, she was—at the time, she was my middle daughter. It was Mika, Chrissa, and then Melissa. [00:27:00] So, when I—so, I was married twice. And then, I got my third wife, who I’m married to now, her name is Nikki. Nikki Stephens was her name. That’s the one I met years ago at the Kmart. She worked at Kmart. And when we got married—we were married for a while. We got—we had a daughter, her name was Annabelle. And she was born premature—she was at six months when she was born. And so, she didn’t live with us more than ten minutes at the time of birth. And that was in 2000. So, she’d be twenty-two now in June. And so, she’d be almost twenty-two. She’d be twenty-two—coming up on twenty-two. And then, we have another child, Emerson Diacon, but he goes by Mekko [00:28:00] now—they go by Mekko now. They dropped the Emerson; they go by Mekko. So, full name is Emerson Jacob Mekko Diacon. We picked up the Jacob because my wife’s mom always said she wanted a grandson named Jacob, after her dad. And come to find out, her dad’s name wasn’t Jacob. She just—she was kind of a trickster character. (laughs) She just threw that name in there. My wife could kill her now if she wasn’t dead, (laughs) because “I don’t want Jacob.” But he never uses that name. But he goes by Mekko now. And he’s nineteen. And they’re the youngest of the kids. Yeah. So, I got a thirty-eight, a thirty, and then nineteen. He’ll be twenty in July. And I have to keep their ages—I have a hard time keeping my own age straight sometimes, I got to stop. Because [00:29:00] they keep getting so old and I still think of them as babies, you know? (laughs)
DELLINGER: Right. Now, I don’t think you mentioned Melissa’s last name.
DIACON: It’s Diacon.
DELLINGER: Diacon, okay.
DIACON: Diacon. Yeah, they’re all Diacon except for Chrissa. Hers is with—her mom’s name was Hicks.
DELLINGER: Okay. Now, along with your artwork, you do also maintain a full-time job. Will you talk a little bit about that?
DIACON: Yeah, I work with Broken Arrow Public Schools. I work in the central warehouse—I’m a warehouse lead, and so, I do all the—when I first started about—I was almost—it was nineteen years ago I started. I was doing all the dry good groceries for the district. Receiving them and pulling orders for the school cafeterias. And delivering to certain sites—the bigger school sites. I did that for three years and then the warehouse manager asked if I’d be [00:30:00] interested in the lead position. And I said, “Sure.” I was a little worried about taking that on, because it was a little more responsibility and I was—at the time, I wasn’t painting though. I wasn’t—I had quit painting after we lost our daughter, Annabelle. And I wasn’t painting at the time. So, I was just working. But then I became warehouse lead and I’ve been doing that for the last, (laughs) gosh, sixteen years. And what I do now is I do all the receiving and routing out of all the things that come into the district that go out to the sites. And it’s any computers, textbooks, furniture, it’s all kinds of things. I just don’t mess with the grocery part of it anymore. But it’s everything else that comes into the district. I’m the guy that takes the POs and makes sure everything we got matches what they ordered, and contacts the vendors if it’s [00:31:00] wrong or damaged. And then, list it for—and stage it for delivery for our warehouse guys to deliver it to the sites. It’s an easy job. I mean, it’s a lot of work, you’ve got to stay on top of it.
But it does afford me enough time—I’ve been there long enough that I’ve got enough vacation time that now I can do a lot of the art shows like I used to do—the art markets and the shows that I have to be gone for and travel for.
DELLINGER: All right. I do want to go back to your artwork and what specific style or styles of paintings do you create?
DIACON: You know, I do a lot of the flat style—the old style, flat style, because I just love that. And there’s—it’s kind of—[00:32:00] the art is always evolving and changing the styles and whatever’s popular changes. And that kind of is not really the style that people seek out, but they recognize it right often. And they specifically think of Oklahoma Indian art as looking that way. But a lot of artists have moved on to different ways of doing it. That’s kind of like—like I always say, “The old guy’s way of doing it.” Because they talk about the older people that painted that way. I have a really strong respect for it and a deep appreciation and a love for it. So, I still continue it. I kind of like a lot of the Plains artists are bringing back that ledger-style art that they used to do. And that’s becoming popular again. And I kind of like to do that with the flat style.
But yeah, I paint all kinds of different [00:33:00] ways, because I’ve been taught by so many non-Native artists, as well. And just my interest in art. That I’ve—it’s always Native subjects, because I paint from what I know, using what I’ve learned—the techniques that I’ve learned. It’s always Muscogee subjects, because that’s—I am Muscogee and I feel like if I’m painting—I want to make something accurate of our people. I want paint and I want to represent our people that way. When I do—because I know it’s not just me, it’s for our people. And I think—and I know our people like to see us—see our art, see our images, like I like those images. Like how important it was for me to see those images. So, I do it for my people. Non-Natives like it and I like the fact that they like it and it gives them a glimpse of who we are, because through my life, I’ve had to face [00:34:00] just people assuming who I am—and not in a good way. So, I kind of like this—it's accurate. This is who we are, this is us, and it’s from the heart. And I know from the compliments I get from our people that I’m doing a good job. And it’s for them.
So, as far as the mediums, I paint anything—I’ve had watercolor classes—I took three semesters of watercolor painting from Robert Ross—and not that Bob Ross—but his name was Robert Ross. He was a watercolor art professor at the University of Arkansas. And when he was younger, he had studied at Yale with Josef Albers who was from the Bauhaus in Germany. And so, he had—he brought this to him. So, I got that experience. Of course, I went to the Institute of American Indian Arts and I had teachers out there—Linda Lomahaftewa, [00:35:00] Karita Coffey, the guys that were at the beginning of the modern movement—the art movement—the Native art movement—that were my teachers and influences. When I went to Bacone, Ruthe Blalock Jones was my instructor there and I learned from her the flat style techniques. And of course, her instructor was Dick West, the Cheyenne artist who was an instructor there. He was the grandfather of some of that flat style. He was a contemporary with Kiowa Six, and Acee Blue Eagle, and Woody Crumbo, and all those guys like that. So, there’s that background there that influenced my art. I painted—one of my painting teachers was Ken Stout—he was non-Native—at the University of Arkansas. And he taught me oil painting techniques—that’s what we used there at the [00:36:00] U of A in the BFA program is oil paint. So, on canvas and a lot of times it was just primered poster board is what we started with, just for our artwork in class. Yeah, and he was a muralist, and so, I picked up a lot of painting techniques from him. He was an interesting man.
There were just so many instructors that influenced me that I just paint in all kinds of styles. So, it’s kind of hard to peg down the exact—I know people say I’ve got a style. I didn’t really realize I got a technique that—or style that people recognize when they see it as one of mine. I think that’s kind of cool because I never thought about having a technique or style. When I was at Bacone, I was just so excited about art. I was just hyper about it. [00:37:00] I was just trying all kinds of styles and stuff. And I know Ruthe said I had a schizophrenic style because it’s hard to peg down what style I was going to do next. But I was just enjoying it. I don’t know, I was like, “If you could be in a band and play every instrument there was, it would be like that.” And so, that’s how my art is. I paint different styles. Watercolor—I’m working on some things now that is just—I’m thinking about putting in some collage work, mixing up the medium on it. I’m doing a lot of mixed media work. I’ve done 3D assemblage work. When I was going to school, I did have a few—I did some pottery, some photography, some print making, because that was some of the classes you had to take when you’re working on your BFA. Some of it I really enjoyed.
When I was at the Institute of American Indian Arts, I took printmaking with Melanie Yazzie, and I really enjoyed doing silk screens. And I think I liked that so much because of [00:38:00] my father being a sign painter. I used to help him with a lot of silk screen decals and things that he would make. But he was making more decals and these political posters that you see that they put out in yards and stuff now. He was making those for guys that were running for sheriff, or local politicians. I’d help him with that. But this is the first time I got to use it for an art—as an art medium—a fine art medium. And so, I really enjoyed that. And I think I’d do more of that if I had a bigger studio with setup to do it along with the painting, just—I did silver smithing at Bacone. Bronze casting. I was kind of like my dad, as far as all those different crafts, I guess, that he learned to do to make signs. Whenever somebody wanted a sign, he knew how to do it. And it’s kind of like I was doing that with art. I’ve taught myself [00:39:00] how to do bead work. My ex-wife, she used to do bead work for me. If I needed anything beaded, she was fantastic at bead work. She’d do all my bead work. And then, when we got divorced, I didn’t have anybody to do my bead work anymore and I needed stuff beaded. So, I taught myself how to bead. And I really enjoy doing that. And silver smithing, I’d kind of like to do that again, but I just—like I said, I don’t have the setup for it. But yeah, I know how to do that.
DELLINGER: All right. Well, thank you so much. All of that is so interesting and thank you so much for sharing all these things with us about yourself. Mr. Diacon, we’re going to transition now, our interview, and I’m going to ask you some questions about your experiences with the [00:40:00] COVID-19 pandemic. We are now past the two-year mark of COVID-19 being in existence. But when, in 2020, did you first hear about the coronavirus—COVID-19—and how did you hear about it?
DIACON: Well, you know, it’s kind of funny. Working at the school, we had a lot of custodial products in there. And our boss is in charge of the warehouse and the custodians. And in November—they’re always—because they have to go through and keep these schools clean and disinfected, they’re always keeping track of what the next flu or whatever bug might be spread around to these schools, so they’ll know what products they need and how much of it they need to keep the places clean. In November, there was—it was [00:41:00] just—and I know the media wasn’t talking about it or anything, but they heard about it somewhere. There was some new bug in China where most of the flus in Asia starts, and then comes over and stuff. So, they’ll always look at that area of the country. I guess they follow the CDC or whoever keeps track of this. Something was up, so they decided that we better order some gloves and some other cleaning products to get ready. And they went on backorder. It was hard to get here in the States, because everything was going to China, because they had this outbreak of stuff. So, we weren’t able to get anything here and everything was on backorder. Well, this happened in December. Tried to get more and it was still hard to get. And then, January it was hard to get. And then, it was about January we started hearing about what it was. And of course, at the time, there was still [00:42:00] no—they hadn’t called it COVID or anything yet. I think they were just still referring to it as a coronavirus. But there were still no cases here, that we knew of, and it was in February that we’d heard the person had died—the first person that died here in the States of it.
And so, we were just—me and my wife, we heard it on the radio—we were out doing our shopping for the weekend, and we heard it. And we thought, “Wow, I wonder how bad is this going to get?” And so, March rolls around and we’re at spring break time, and so, I took the week of spring break off so we could go do some things. And when spring break was over, I was fixing to go back to work. But then, I got a call from work saying, “Don’t come in. We’re closing everything down because of this virus. Don’t come to [00:43:00] work.” And so, this is about this time in March of ’20. And so, I was at home and I had plenty of time to do art now, because I wasn’t going to work. I was still getting paid. Thank goodness they were still paying us. They just told us to stay home. And just keep checking to find out when we can come back. So, I sat here. And of course, I was watching the TV and the daily briefings they were having. And we were just kind of wondering, “How bad is this going to get? What’s going on?” And started hearing more about it. And of course, at the time, I was a little concerned about my job, our safety, our health. And so, I wasn’t really interested in doing any artwork. My mind was somewhere else at that point. And then, I started hearing, [00:44:00] you know, reports coming in about how it’s affecting the—it seems like more older people. The elderly were coming with it. And then, I started worrying about our elders. I thought how important they are to us. I thought, “Man, that’s—a lot of these people, they’re our last speakers of our language and the hold a lot of traditions. And a lot of them take care of their children. They’re really important people.” And I thought, “Wow, it’s hitting them.” I said, “That’s bad, that’s really bad.”
And so, the artist in me started coming out. I just had to respond to it. I had to do something to just put these feelings out or these images. And so, I came up with this idea that I—of these two elders—a male and a female standing there. [00:45:00] And I was trying to think, “How can I convey this sense of unknowing with this danger with these elders in a painting form?” And I started thinking, I thought, “Well”—it kind of came out like a sci-fi kind of an image, you know? I had these two elders standing side-by-side. The background’s kind of dark, kind of mysterious, and I kept seeing all these images on the news. They kept showing that image of that coronavirus, what it looked like. That little orb with the little red dots all over it and everything. And I just kept seeing that, kept seeing that. And I thought, “Okay, what I’m going to do, I’m going to—since it’s everywhere”—that’s what I did on that painting. I put them and then I put those little dots that are just different sizes, like they’re floating around all over, like they’re just everywhere. And that’s the first one that I did. [00:46:00] It looks like an Invasion of the Bodysnatchers kind of vibe to it. Like science fiction kind of—you know. And that’s kind of the feeling you had from this. It’s kind of like a science fiction thing. Like, here is this weird organism that was coming in and just taking over. And I thought, “You know, it’s kind of thinking about here we are, we’ve got another invader coming into our land.” As an Indigenous person, I’m thinking, “Here’s another invader coming into our land.” It kind of got that feeling to it. So, that was first painting I did. I did that acrylic on a stretched canvas.
So, more time passed and I was still not going back to work. It just seemed to keep getting worse. But then, I was hearing reports coming out of Indian cOuntry from the nurses and everything at the Indian hospitals and stuff. [00:47:00] Especially out on the Navajo reservation, taking care of all the people that were sick. And I used to work in a hospital. I know when you go in there and take care of these people. I was thinking about all the doctors, and the nurses, and everybody there on the front lines, really, like a war. They’re taking care of these people. They could get sick, too. But they’re putting these other people’s needs ahead of their own. And to take care of them. And I thought, “Wow, that’s really brave. That’s really fantastic they’re doing that.” So, that’s when I came up with this flat style painting. I went back to the old techniques that I knew from flat style and I did a flat style piece. I did it in acrylic on illustration board. And it was based on the old Quincy Tahoma, In the Times of Plenty, I believe was the name of it. It was a buffalo hunt painting where he’s on a horse and the buffalo’s reared up and they’re both kind of—[00:48:00] this action painting. And I thought, “I want to do something like that and I want to do one with the rider, he’s wearing the PPE, he’s got on the mask and everything. He’s gloved up and the shoe covers and everything. And he’s on a horse. And instead of a buffalo, it’s a coronavirus.” There’s that coronavirus again. (laughs) And the only thing, he’s fixing to put an arrow in it. And then—so, that’s what I did. It was like a panoramic scene and here’s this guy on a horse and it’s reared back, and there’s coronavirus are down here. You know, big, big virus and he’s about ready to put an arrow in it. And in the background, there’s some—they’re running like buffalo and there’s another rider in the back with a lance. He’s going after them. And then, I put these symbols above it—the power symbols coming out—spirit symbols coming down. A cloud—and did all the old flat style imagery. And as a tribute—it was a tribute to the healthcare warriors—I called it—in Indian Country [00:49:00] during COVID-19. And that painting—I got that one out of the way.
Still going on into—I did that in March. And now we’re going into April and it’s still looking, you know, not much better. I’m still at the house, plenty of time to paint, still got a lot of emotions I’m trying to work out through my work. And I’m watching these daily briefings and I’m just getting angry because I’m not seeing any leadership coming out of who was in charge at the time. I was just seeing a lot of talk and no action. No direction. And so, it gave me my third painting. What I did was I took that guy’s head—and everybody knows who he is and what he looks like—I just made that an orange skull—I gave him that hair that he’s got. And he’s behind [00:50:00] this American flag and I’ve changed the stars—they’re little skulls—and there’s just skulls in the background. And man, there’s that coronavirus still floating through it. And I just pegged it on him. I said, “We’re not—it’s not getting any better and he wasn’t helping the situation.” So, there was some anger coming out of that.
It kept going. It was probably about the—toward the end of April, first part of May, we were still venturing out once a week to go to the store. We’d always wear a mask now everywhere we went. They were saying, “Wear a mask.” So, we’d mask up. And so, at that time, I thought, “Well, this is just the new reality of life now.” So, I did a painting—and this time I—I went—that third one was an acrylic one on stretched canvas. I went back to acrylic and stretched canvas. But there are [00:51:00] some mixed media. So, the first one was strictly acrylic; and then I did a flat style on illustration board; I went back to the stretched canvas again, but this time I used some oil pastel, and acrylic, and some enamel and it was a mixed media piece. And the third one is an oil piece. I did it in oil and what it is is kind of a sort of a self-portrait. Because I was thinking of me, what I had to do to go to the store—just to go to the store now. And it was just a mask, but it was more than just a mask.
You had to stop and think about your distance between the next person, and your time in there, and there were certain places that you had to wait to get in, because they only allowed a certain amount of people into the stores at a time. And you’d go to Walmart and you’re just walking into a Walmart. But at this point, you got there and then you had to wait in line until they let you go in. They counted the [00:52:00] number of people in there and stuff. And then, you had to be a certain distance from each other. And then, you could only buy a certain amount of things. You couldn’t buy—bread you couldn’t buy more than one loaf. Toilet paper you can only buy one pack. Things like that. So, I just—I titled it, “Going for Groceries in the Time of Pandemic.” And it’s just me and this one black hat I used to always wear and a face mask. And of course, the background is still kind of apocalyptic looking because it’s the purple stormy-looking clouds and a kind of brown desolate background. Kind of in reference to it’s bad, but still don’t see any getting better.
And that was my fourth one. And at that time, I finally got to go back to work. One day a week they had me come in for five hours a day. So, every Tuesday, I’d go in for five hours. And that was just to catch any freight that [00:53:00] might come in that didn’t get cancelled and anything people were having shipped to the school sites—and a lot of personal stuff. Like, people would have shipped to the—teachers would have stuff shipped to their sites—their schools where they worked. Personal things. Things they didn’t want sitting on their porch all day long while they were at work. Little personal things. Amazon stuff and things like that. They’d have—normally ship to their sites that didn’t get cancelled. Well, UPS, FedEx, they would reroute that stuff to come back to the warehouse. So, what I did was go through and just separate that out for the people. So, whenever we got the chance to get back they could get their stuff. There was a few freight stuff that was already in transit that couldn’t get stopped before they closed down all the POs for the year. So, I took care of that stuff as it came in. And of course, at that time, I was [00:54:00] working once a week, so I was little more—not so much worried about my job aspects, because they still paid us. They said they’re going to keep us. There’s no problems about us losing our jobs, so I kind of relaxed on that.
I didn’t want to do anymore COVID paintings. I didn’t want to be known as, like I said, “the COVID guy.” I didn’t want all my artwork to be COVID related. I just needed to get those pieces out, at the time, for where I was at. And being an artist, I always kind of fell back on my art as a way of dealing with things. That’s one of the reasons I was so interested in art growing up, because I didn’t get much interaction with other people. But I had my art. I always had my art. So, that’s what I went to on that and that’s how I produced those four pieces. The first piece—the coronavirus piece—and then “Going for Groceries at the Time of the Pandemic,” [00:55:00] Muscogee Nation purchased those two pieces. The third—the second piece, the flat style one, a doctor contacted me and I sold that one to him. And it’s in a hospital in Santa Fe, it’s hanging up in there, and he sent me a picture with him and his staff holding—they had it framed and everything. The Trump one that I’ve got, I still have it, the original. I made prints of it because people wanted prints. I still have the original because I figured nobody wants this guy’s portrait. I thought maybe if they want his official portrait, I’ve got this one, they can have it. There’s your official portrait, hang that.
But yeah, during that time, all the art shows closed down, all my venues that I go to for my art were stopped. And so, my printer who I sent—take my stuff to for him to scan so I can make prints and stuff, he [00:56:00] was closed down. So, here I had those four paintings, and all I had was a little—my little phone or my little tablet thing to take pictures. So, they weren’t real good pictures. But I post them on Facebook or Instagram, whatever. And that’s how people found out that I had these, because I wasn’t able to get them to a printer, get good photographs of them or anything. Or take them to shows or get them anywhere. And so, it was kind of weird how that pandemic played out like that, as far as my art, because people still wanted art. So, they started contacting me. Wanting to know if I had any pieces. And so, yeah, that’s—it was kind of weird because I wasn’t set up to go online—internet sales or anything. I hadn’t progressed to that like a lot of artists do. They sell their work online and everything. [00:57:00] And I hadn’t—I don’t have a website or anything. So, a lot of them transitioned to that because they weren’t able to do the live shows. But I didn’t have that. I didn’t have that set up there or ability. But I was fortunate enough that I was able to just Facebook it out there. And people were saying, “Yeah, he’s still painting”
But yeah, that’s what I did on my art during the pandemic. And I was fortunate enough that we stayed home. The only time we went anywhere was to get groceries. Early in the mornings once a week. We’d go early in the mornings, me and my wife would go. And we’d get in there and we’d get what we need and we’d get out. And we were just home. We didn’t go anywhere, we didn’t see anybody, we had nobody come over. Of course, any kind of family gatherings or anything, we didn’t do. Nobody had em, you know? So, there was no holidays or anything. We didn’t do anything. We were just here. [00:58:00] So, we’re fortunate that we didn’t get sick, because we weren’t around anybody. And my son, at the time, was—he was in his senior year in school, and so, he did it all virtual after spring break. That was his junior year, did it all virtual. Senior year, all virtual. He didn’t go back at all. And so, he was here. And so, the three of us were in this house. (laughs) So, we were fortunate enough that way we didn’t get sick. We know people that did get sick. Some of them didn’t make it. Some of them got sick before there was a vaccine. We were just waiting, hoping for a vaccine. Some kind of a cure or something. For it to ease up, or whatever, and go back to normal.
We were fortunate, when they got the vaccine, we got it through Creek Nation. They called—[00:59:00] when they got down to our age group—the elders got it first. Well, they get the healthcare workers, and then the elders, and we were waiting for them to get down to my age group. I had existing health conditions, and then they got down to my age group and I called and scheduled. And they said, “How about your wife?” And I said, “Well, she’s non-Indian.” And they said, “Well, it doesn’t matter. We’re giving these shots for everybody in your family that’s in the household to make sure we’re safe. That the people are safe.” So, I told her and she at first didn’t believe me. She’s like, “Are you sure?” Because she always asks me that. “Are you sure?” (laughs) And I said, “Yeah, yeah, they said—they told me to bring you. I didn’t suggest it, they told me. And I told them you’re a non-Indian, it don’t matter.” And so, me and her got our first vaccines. And then, [01:00:00] about that time, they dropped it down to—our child’s age is eighteen. So, by then, all the Creek Nation ones were already booked up for that time period. But the Indian Health Services were doing them at Claremore, so I took Emerson up there. So, he was a week behind in getting his from ours, so he got his first one a week after we did. He got his. And then a month later, we got a second one. And a week after we got our second one, he got his second one. So, we got those. Thank goodness we got that.
Of course, we were still to this day doing the handwashing, distancing, and we still wear masks when we go to the store. I always have one with me. We always carry them with us, when we go to the store we wear them, we’re still pretty much doing the things—because it’s not over yet. I mean, we’re—it’s getting toward the end of it, but it’s not gone yet. And so, it’s kind of like when they give you an antibiotic, they tell you to take them all until they’re all [01:01:00] gone, not just stop when you start feeling better. Just keep taking them. And there’s a reason why. And so, we’re playing it safe. We haven’t had it, we don’t want it, we don’t want to give it to anybody if we’re a carrier. So, we’ve been playing it safe. We’ve got—all three have our boosters, too. And if they say you need the fourth one, we’ll get that one, too. Because better safe than sorry. I sure would hate to know that if I was asymptomatic and got it, I do something foolish and give it to someone, especially an elder who it would devastate them. I mean, to me, that’s almost like drunk driving. Being that irresponsible, or just playing with a gun, or just being foolish. When you know what causes it, what you can do to prevent it, it’s real easy. So, yeah, I don’t see why there’s so much—[01:02:00] well, I know why, it’s all political. Just take your shots. You know, I don’t understand the mindset of the people that won’t take it. I don’t want to get too political with it, but that’s just how I feel. Just take it. Just take your shots. It’s not going to—they’re not chipping you or whatever. (laughs)
Yeah, we got ours and we’re just so glad that—at first, we were doing all the things, because they didn’t know. We were washing our stuff when we got it home, at first. And we’re washing cans and everything before we put them away, because we just didn’t know. And it reminded me, years ago, when I worked at the hospital, when AIDS first came out. We didn’t know what it was. So, when we had our first patient that tested positive for [01:03:00] AIDS, we would double-gown everything like it was a reverse isolation kind of thing, because we didn’t know what we were dealing with. He was in isolation and we were doing all these procedures—through experience and time, you realize you didn’t really need to do. But at the time, nobody knew what it was or how it really spread. So, it’s better to be safe than sorry. And I think also working in the hospital those many years, I learned a lot of things about aseptic technique and good handwashing and just trying to protect yourself and others. Nosocomial infections were big in the hospital. You’d pick up something from somebody, you’d take it over to the next patient you’re working with. So, you want to make sure when you’re done working with somebody, you wash your hands. And when I worked in the hospitals, back before HMOs, they were just starting to take effect. So, cost containment was real [01:04:00] big. And so, gloves—like nowadays, everybody—they don’t even take your temperature if they don’t put on gloves. Everything’s got gloves. And this is before COVID. Everything’s gloved up and gloved up. Disposable gowns and everything. When I worked there, you didn’t have that. We didn’t have gloves. They’d tell you, “Don’t waste gloves because gloves are expensive and cost money.” And all this cost containment. “Wash your hands.” So, good handwashing was just what they preached. And when I worked there, there was all kinds of drains and pumps that we had to empty. Medical science has advanced so much from gallbladder surgeries now, where they do the little laser surgery and go in there and it’s nothing. When I worked in the hospital, when they used to do those, it was a big—they almost gut you like a fish [01:05:00] from stem to stern. And I remembered watching one once and they’re pulling organs out, they flip that liver out, and then that gallbladder comes up. And then, when you get out, you go into ICU and you’ve got a tube into your stomach to drain your stomach. And we used to have to go empty those, and it was bare-handed. Just these big glass gallon jugs on these suction units. And we’d have to go in and pop it, and pour it, and measure it. Catheters—putting in catheters. Of course, you wore gloves—sterile gloves there. But when you went to empty the bags—or a person’s urinal, everything like that. It was bare-handed. Cleaning up incontinent patients was bare-handed. And you just washed. You just washed real good.
And so, things have changed, but you got used to [01:06:00] making sure you’re clean and things are not soiled and dirty when you go from place to place. And so—and wearing masks. I worked in a surgery unit—I was a surgery attendant for a while and people talk about masks—oh, they don’t do anything. But you know, there’s certain little things you do that it’s just—it’s not completely preventive, but it’s just an extra little precaution. And masks was one of them. It’s like when I worked in the OR as a surgery attendant, if we left the OR suite—we had on the greens—or scrubs, they were green at the time—if we left the OR suite, we had to wear a white lab coat when we went out onto the hospital floor. That was just procedure. If you got caught out on the floor in just your scrubs, without a white lab coat, [01:07:00] you could get written up, because that lab coat whatever was out on that floor from getting onto your scrubs that you would wear back into the surgery suite. Well, of course, when you’re in the surgery suite, you took that lab coat off, because you didn’t want to wear that lab coat in there. You had shoe covers and then you had a sticky pad on the floor when you walked in that pulled anything off.
But you know—and they kept the surgery suites real cold—they keep hospitals cold because it keeps things—germs from floating around as quick or getting around as quick. It’s why they keep it so cold. But it doesn’t prevent all this stuff, but it’s just a little extra—it’s one little extra thing. And that’s the way it was with masks. I had no problem with wearing a mask. I put it on and I know it isn’t 100 percent effective. But it was a little more. Like [01:08:00] when I worked—I worked in jobs—when you go into a construction site, you had to have steel-toed shoes or a hard hat. And the hard hat, a lot of times, they’re just hard plastic. And you’re thinking, “What kind of protection is that really if something heavy really does fall on you?” It’s not strapped on or anything. But it does protect you. It does protect you from certain things. It don’t protect you from everything, but it’s kind of like that mask. So, I didn’t have any trouble with the mask.
I don’t know, I probably got off subject on there. I just—that’s how I got through it. I did what I was supposed to do. I stayed away from people.
DELLINGER: Let me ask you, what is your knowledge and understanding about the COVID-19 [01:09:00] virus, including how it’s spread and what it can do to the body if you get it?
DIACON: Well, you know, I understood it was a respiratory. And so, I’ve got—I’ve always had lung issues, ever since I was little. I’ve had really bad lungs. And I get pneumonia real easy a lot. And I was always—when I heard about that being spread that way, I was really worried. I thought, It’s looking for me because I’ve got what it likes to eat. I’ve got bad lungs. I’m diabetic. I’ve got all these things that—you know. And so, I knew it came in through water droplets—this is what I was learning about it. At first, I had no idea how it spread. I just know you could get it. But then I found out it was respiratory. [01:10:00] And I know viruses work a lot different than germs. So, I knew at that point some of the things you could do about it, as far as germs, it’s not going to work on a virus. And I think that helps having just—and I’m not like a doctor, or a healthcare professional really, anymore. But I had enough background and enough knowledge that I knew not to mess around with things. And the more I heard about it—it kind of eased up, especially as time came—it kind of eased up on my fear of it—of catching it. I was taking precautions not to. Not that I didn’t think that I could. I didn’t want to get foolish with it and [01:11:00] get careless. But yeah, it was just—the main thing is just getting breathed on, because I knew it was—how you can pick up a cold so easy, or just—when you’re around somebody at work, and you work somewhere, and somebody catches a cold—and having kids. If they catch a cold then you pretty much know everybody else is going to end up with that cold, too. So, I was just worried about it getting spread around real easy like that. And it seemed to be spreading fairly easy. And then, as the variants came out like variants do—that virus is fighting to survive, so it’s adapting to keep doing what it does. I was always worried that it was going to find some other way to kill me. (laughs)
DELLINGER: And what about—like what have you [01:12:00] seen—because you said that no one in your family has had it, right? But as far as other people having it, we’ve watched this on the news and whatnot. What have you seen that it does to people’s bodies after they have it?
DIACON: I’ve known people that have had it that first go around. A lot of them there was a loss of taste and smell. It took forever for it to come back. But they were tired. And to this day, they still get tired easy. And these are guys that are younger than I am, they get it. I know the older I get, especially when I have pneumonia, it’s hard to get over that the older you get. You don’t get over it as quick. And so, I figured that’s going to really be tough if I did [01:13:00] get it and I did survive. It would probably linger with me and I don’t know if I would be back to the way I was before. And these guys are still—and this is over a year ago now, these guys—some of them had it, and they’re telling me they still get tired. That seems to be the main complaint I’ve heard about people that I’ve known that have had it. Of course, you know, there are ones that had it that are no long with us. And a lot of them got it before—this happened before the vaccines—before even the Delta variant came out. They’d gotten it. Of course, you know, they were out—unfortunately, a lot of people weren’t as fortunate as I was. They had to go to work. They had to go to places. And they got into it not because they were looking to get it, but it was there. And it found them. [01:14:00] That’s tragic. That you’ve got to live your life, you’ve got to go to work, and you’ve got to do things, and you don’t have—you weren’t as fortunate as I was to have a place where you could—they said, “Stay home. We’ll continue to pay you, just stay home.” But yeah, all the ones that I’ve seen that had it, it just—it seems to wear on their ability to—their energy levels have dropped a lot. And it’s still to this day, it’s that way. So, that’s—I’m not quite sure if that’s going to clear up for them. I mean, some of them that’s lost their taste and smell got it back. It was several months before they got it back. But the fatigue that comes with it still lingers.
DELLINGER: Okay. Since the beginning of the pandemic, how do you think the Muscogee (Creek) Nation leadership and administration has [01:15:00] performed throughout the pandemic in taking care of Muscogee people?
DIACON: I think they did a fantastic job. I mean, they were getting those shots out there, they got that vaccine in here. They were—it seemed like they were really more about it being real than the state government was—and the federal government, even. I think that’s a difference in your leadership there when you got someone that actually leads and not someone who’s just—I don’t even know how to explain who was in charge when it first started. What was going on with that mindset? To me, he—if he was as brained as what he said, and as just tenacious about getting everything, that was his chance to shine and show us how smart he was, and to lead, and not just—I don’t what to use the [01:16:00] words I really want to describe what he did with that. And it went down to the state level who was just like mirroring what they—you know. But the tribes—Muscogee Nation stepped up. The tribes and the state stepped up. They started getting those shots out—those vaccines—and they were taking precautions, and they were taking it serious. They were letting people know, “Protect our elders, protect yourselves, stay home, do this.” And they were doing—as far as I knew—I heard they were shutting down their offices, but they were still open working virtually, had you wear masks. I know I had to do some things through the tribe stuff. But if I did have an appointment, I had to wear a mask, which was fine with me. I had no problem with that.
Yeah, it was just—it seemed the leadership was there, that they took it serious, that they were leading, that they knew that this was affecting [01:17:00] not just their political career, but it was affecting people’s lives that they were needing to take care of. So, I felt they did a real good job and I’m proud of them. I mean, it made you feel good to be Indian. And you know that they were helping not only Indian people but non-Indians, like my wife. They were saying, “We’re all in this”—and they actually took the old—during the pandemic here—that we’re in this in together. And they seemed to really take that to heart, because it’s like I was saying, “United Oklahoma.” We’re all Oklahomans. This is Oklahoma. We’re all here together. We’re all living here together and we need to step up together. And I like that there was that—and I guess—I don’t know if it’s always seemed to be like that with Indians. There’s always that unity. We always—we don’t seem like we do, but we do band together a lot more than what we think we do. We have this way of persevering. [01:18:00] And it always seems like Indians in-fight and fight a lot, which we do. But we band together. I mean, we’ve gone through a lot. Our tribe—the removal, the whole removal here and everything. If we hadn’t had leadership and banded together, we wouldn’t have made it to where we are now. We would have just fell apart. But we’re strong and resilient. And it makes you feel good.
DELLINGER: Yeah, thank you for that. Here in Oklahoma and the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, we have been in a COVID lull for several weeks now. But what are your thoughts about COVID-19 ever going away completely?
DIACON: You know, I just don’t think—I don’t think it’s going to go away. I think it’s the new—like they were saying, yearly, like the [01:19:00] flu. It just—it’s going to be with us. Like all diseases and things that start, there had to be a first time around. You know? Measles, chicken pox, smallpox, all these things. There had to be a first time around with it. At least, we know how to deal with it. And these steps is why they’re not quite as—I can’t think of the word. Prevalent. I have a hard time saying it. But you know, it’s not—you don’t have to worry about a lot of diseases now like you used to. They’re still there—smallpox is still out there, but it’s something that we don’t really have to worry about. Polio. You know, you see these diseases start coming back when people get lax and just start [01:20:00] doing things that they shouldn’t do. But I think it’s going to be with us, but we know now how to handle it. So, I think we’re going to be all right once we get past this—these last few variants as they seem to be getting weaker. We’ve got the vaccines. And if I remember right, it seems like they’ve got some kind of—not a cure, but a pill that will help with it, if you get it. So, that’s good. And as time goes, they’ll probably come up with even more—something even better, stronger, better that will take care of it. So, I think it will eventually go into a—I don’t know, what you used to call your childhood diseases kind of thing. Like chicken pox, or mumps, or something. Something not real serious like they are now.
DELLINGER: So, [01:21:00] at this time, are you engaging in a life that is more similar to what your life was like before the start of the COVID pandemic?
DIACON: Yeah. You know, I’ve gotten out more, I’ve seen people. I actually went to a concert in Dallas, and it was one of those—of course, it was before the Omicron. But it was another one of those where you didn’t get in unless you showed your vaccination. You had to have proof of vaccination to get it. And once you got in, you had to wear a mask. So, you know, it was one of those kind of things. So, I felt safe with that. You know, before that point, I wouldn’t have. And if they hadn’t had that, I wouldn’t. I’m still a little leery about—and I don’t go places that I don’t wear my mask. Grocery stores, to this day, I still wear a mask. I always have a mask with me in case I go somewhere or there’s a group of people that I [01:22:00] don’t know their vaccination status, or how serious they’ve taken this. I don’t want to run that risk.
So, I’m slowly getting into it. Art shows are starting to open up. I haven’t been to a big art show, yet. The Art Market—the Muscogee Art Market is coming up next month. That will be my first indoor big event like that since—well, the Cherokee Art Market was the last one I did in 2019. So, I’m looking forward to it. I’m feeling better. I know there are people that are vaccinated. I’m still taking a mask with me when I go to these things. I’m looking forward to it. I think we’d have been—we’d be a lot better off if a lot of people had done what they needed to do to begin with. It helped it linger a little more than what it needed to, I think. [01:23:00] And then, it seems like here, lately, the ones that are getting sick with it now and dying from it are the ones that haven’t done what they needed to do. It’s finally catching up with them. And it’s just like—I guess some lessons in life are learned real hard. And I guess that’s one of them. And it’s kind of sad. You see them—you just want to say, “Told you so,” but at the same time, you pity them. Because it was needless. It was really needless. And it’s sad. It’s really sad to see that happen.
DELLINGER: Yeah.
DIACON: You know, I mean, I just—I don’t know, I’ve always been a coward, I guess. I never learned how to swim, so I never got in the deep—I never got in the water—deep water, water I couldn’t stand up in. I always had enough sense. To me, it always seemed like these kind of guys that did that were like—they didn’t know how to swim, but they were jumping off into [01:24:00] the deepest water they could find. And, or othese guys that drink too much and “I’m okay to drive. I’ve done it before.” And get out there and end up in a wreck. Unfortunately, they end up taking other people with them. And I just don’t see the sense in behaving like that. I mean, I’m not saying that I’m better than anybody else. It’s just that I just like to be more aware of my actions affect other people. It’s not just me, but other people. So, I need to—I could go all day long and not wash my hands, and eat, and do whatever. You know, go to the bathroom and just whatever for me. But there’s other people. Courtesy and decency go with that. You need to think about other people. It’s not just you. (laughs)
DELLINGER: Yeah, those are definitely some good words of advice. And so, [01:25:00] with that, that’s a good lead in to our next question here—which, we’re down to the last two questions of our interview. But for future generations of Muscogee who may find themselves dealing with a global health and economic event, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, what words of advice or wisdom do you have for them about living with and surviving such a catastrophic event, as what we’ve just come through?
DIACON: Well, you’ve got to think about how your actions—like I said, how it will affect others during it. You want to think about, “If I do this, how is that going to affect someone else?” Once something like this comes up, if leaders in charge say—[01:26:00] and this is kind of hard. I guess, if you don’t trust those leaders, if you think they’re trying to pull something, I could understand why. But they’re just trying to get you into believing a certain thing to get to their agenda. But when it doesn’t really benefit them, you’ve got to look at it that way. Like, how did wearing a mask and getting these vaccines benefit a certain agenda, when it affects everybody? It’s not trying to get—take your rights away or anything. There was something serious coming on. You’ve got to look at it that way. If something like this comes up again, you need to stop and think, “This is affecting people. It’s only going to be a temporary inconvenience if I have to do this.” Otherwise, it could end up being a life-long inconvenience for somebody. Yourself or somebody else. So, you just need to use common [01:27:00] sense. Think of other people. Hopefully—and I’m sure some—it seems like this—the flu pandemic in 1918, and then 100 years later we end up with this COVID pandemic. They just roll around. You know, there’s other little pandemics that came up in-between that time that haven’t got as serious as this. But there’s always going to be something. You just need to be aware and be careful. And just be careful and do what you need to do to stay safe during that time. Just remember, it’s only going to last as long as you do what’s right and try to limit its effect. And hopefully make it not last as long. (laughs) So, there are some sacrifices that you’ll have to make. But [01:28:00] we’ve all had to make sacrifices for the greater good. That’s just how—and Native people, we’ve always had to make sacrifices. We do it for other people, for the greater good. That would be my advice.
Just think of others before you do something. How will it affect them? If you want to look at just being selfish about that, how you affect—what you do that will affect others basically does affect you in the long-run. So, you know, when you put others first, that does benefit you. If you want to—if you’re just in it for benefitting yourself, when you benefit other people, it benefits you. You may not see it at the time, but as time goes by, you’ll realize your actions. [01:29:00] That’s my advice, yeah.
DELLINGER: All right, fantastic. So, in closing, is there anything else that you want to say or share about your experiences with the COVID-19 pandemic?
DIACON: Well, I’m just very grateful for everybody. From my employers for giving us that opportunity. I’m grateful that I was—I didn’t lose my job, I didn’t lose any pay directly like that. I did lose some of my art market venues, but I still was producing work and people were still interested in my work. I’m fortunate that none of my close family got it, that we were safe. My daughter—my one daughter did get it. She was one of the ones that unfortunately had to go to work and that’s where she got it. But she [01:30:00] pulled through. But you know, it’s just so much to be grateful for. That I was fortunate enough and that I’m very, very thankful for that, that I was in a position where I could have got it, but I took my precautions. I’m glad I listened. I thought about my wife, my children, and people. There’s just so much—it was a very emotional time. Even though it didn’t affect me, it did affect me, because I saw this happening to other people and that’s rough to watch it happen to somebody else. You feel for them. You feel these [01:31:00] families who have lost loved ones—because I’ve lost loved ones. I know what that’s like to lose someone that’s important to you. I know what it’s like to lose someone who might have been not only the love of your life, but it was a partner, someone who helped you take care of the family, or just—yeah. It was really an emotional time. I really don’t know how to word it real well, but I’m grateful that I made it through it. That my family made it through it. That my children and my wife made it through it. And we’re here.
DELLINGER: All right, very good. Mr. Diacon, mvto.
DIACON: Enkv.
DELLINGER: And I wish you continued health and well-being.
DIACON: Mvto.
END OF INTERVIEW
Historic and Cultural Preservation Department
Oral History Program
“A Twenty-First Century Pandemic in Indian Country:
The Resilience of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation Against Covid-19”
As Remembered by: Mr. Johnnie Diacon
Interview by: Ms. Midge Dellinger
Date: March 17, 2022
Transcription: The Audio Transcription Company
Edited by: Ms. Midge Dellinger
MIDGE DELLINGER: This is Midge Dellinger, oral historian for the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. Today is March 17, 2022, and I am interviewing Muscogee citizen and artist Mr. Johnnie Diacon. For this interview, we are in Mr. Diacon’s art studio located in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I am performing this interview on behalf of the Muscogee (Creek) Historic and Cultural Preservation Department for the oral history project titled, “A Twenty-First-Century Pandemic in Indian County: The Resilience of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation against COVID-19.” Mr. Diacon, thank you so much for taking time out of your schedule to be here this morning and do this interview with me. We’re going to start the interview with some questions about your personal life and background. And so, I’d like to begin with, what is your tribal town and clan?
JOHNNIE DIACON: Thlopthlocco is my tribal town. I’m Deer Clan.
DELLINGER: Okay, and where were you born?
DIACON: In Okemah, Oklahoma.
DELLINGER: Now, is [00:01:00] Okemah where you grew up?
DIACON: No, I was only there for probably the first year of my life. I lost my mother in a car accident. But before she died, I was adopted. I was adopted by Delmer “Bud” Diacon, who was Cherokee, and his wife, Helen. They adopted me in—Christmas Eve is when they came and got me. Actually, they took me home with them on Christmas Eve. My mother died about a month and a day later in a car wreck. And then, I wasn’t officially adopted until much—just before I went into first grade. And they got me adopted, so I could have a last name, and I got all my baby shots. Get everything that was done that you normally do with a newborn baby. Because I was born at home. I was delivered by my grandmother. So, I didn’t have shots or a birth certificate or anything. I was just living. (laughs) Existing out there. And so, when they started getting me [00:02:00] ready for first grade, they had to do all this stuff to get me ready. Shots, and name, a social security number, and all that stuff. Birth certificate.
DELLINGER: Now, would you like to share the name of your birth mother?
DIACON: Yes, it was Margaret Harjochee. She was the daughter of Adam and Jennie Harjochee and they lived there in Okemah. And my Grandpa Adam, he was Nuyuka Tribal Town, Bear Clan. And of course, Grandma was Thlopthlocco and Deer Clan.
DELLINGER: And so, this was the grandmother who birthed you?
DIACON: Yes.
DELLINGER: Okay. What about grandparents on the Diacon side?
DIACON: His father was named Fred Charles Diacon. But he went by the name Mike. So, everybody knew him in the Okemah area as Mike. His mother was Julia Suttles. And she was the one with the Cherokee blood. [00:03:00] I believe his father was French. And that’s where the Diacon name is actually a French name. But his father was French. They had French ancestry. And they both lived there in Okemah. In fact, they’re buried there in Okemah. That’s where they lived. He was a World War I veteran and my father was a World War II veteran.
DELLINGER: Now, I’d like you to share, if you will, a little bit about your father and what he did as an occupation.
DIACON: He was a sign painter. He was an old hand-letter sign painter. He started that when he was—he said at seven, he started apprenticing with a man there in Okemah. And I can’t remember the man’s name. I think it was—and I’m not sure if this is right—I think it was Gray Powers, I think that’s what he said his name was. But he started at [00:04:00] age seven, he was—I guess he was watching him and he just picked it up. So, he was doing that. As he was growing up, he was making a little extra income. His father was a farmer and so, he worked on the farm, but he painted signs on the side and made a little extra cash for himself. I know he said at the time, when he was fifteen, he had bought a car with money he had made from sign painting. And I know his father was not real happy about that, because he was—instead of farming, a lot of the times, he was out riding around in that car. (laughs) But yeah, that’s what he did for a living. He did all kinds of sign work, neon, gold leaf. All the stuff that sign makers did back then as their repertoire of what they did, he did it all. Electrical work for signs, neon, glass blowing, silk screen, he did all of those things. If you needed signs, he could do whatever sign they needed. And that’s where I got my interest in art, because [00:05:00] he did a lot of art. A lot of paint around the house, so I just fell in love with paint.
DELLINGER: Now, did your mother work outside of the home?
DIACON: She didn’t at first. She just stayed at home. She took care of me. She was a homemaker. Later on, she started doing work as a nurse’s aide. In the forties, right about the close of World War II, she went to nursing school. And she was going to be a nurse during the war, but the war ended and so she ended up not going that route. But she had done nursing work for a while. But then she quit and she was a stay-at-home mom until I guess it was probably about 1975, or so, she went back to work as a—working in a hospital is where she worked in Springdale.
DELLINGER: And what about siblings? Will you share a little bit about your siblings?
DIACON: Yeah. I have older brothers and sisters. [00:06:00] I was the youngest of all of them. And we’ve lost two of them—I lost two brothers that were older than me. One died of suicide when he was twelve, and the other one—I’m not sure how old he was when he died. He died before I was born, but he was sick. He had had some kind of lung issues and that’s what he passed from. But he was a young child when that happened. The rest of them are all—like I said, I’m the baby of all of them. (laughs) There’s three girls and I’ve got two brothers.
DELLINGER: Do they live here in Oklahoma?
DIACON: Yes. They all live here in Oklahoma.
DELLINGER: So, do you all get to see each other, or spend time together with each other?
DIACON: Every now and then we do. You know, we’re kind of like most siblings anymore. We just don’t get together. After Grandma passed away, the family hasn’t gotten [00:07:00] together as much as they used to. The ones that still live around Oklahoma City—most of them are around Oklahoma City. The ones that live in the city, get—see each other more than the ones that live outside, me and my other brother, I think he’s up in Disney, Oklahoma. Here, I’m in Tulsa, and we don’t get down there that much like we used to. He used to live in Broken Arrow and I never hardly saw him when he lived in Broken Arrow. We’d see each other every now and then, but—I wish we had. I wish we’d stay there—I mean, we’re close, we get along, we just don’t make that extra effort.
DELLINGER: Would you like to share the names of your siblings? I think names are important.
DIACON: Yeah, my oldest sister’s named Susie. She’s ten years older than I am. I’ve got another sister named Geneva. And a sister who’s—her name is Lillian Faye, but she goes by Faye. She’s the youngest of the girls and she’s kind of like [00:08:00] the family historian. She kept all these records and she keeps track of everybody’s birthdays and she always remembers my birthday. I always get a text message from her on my birthday, “Happy Birthday!” And she’s—every now and then, they’ll do a surprise drop-by visit, which is always nice. They’ll just show up and it’s always great to see them. And then, I’ve got a brother, Alvin, and then another brother, Earl. And it’s Alvin, Earl, and me, as far as the boys. The ones that we lost was Michael and—I believe the one that passed away as a child, I think he was just a baby, his name was—I believe it was Gold. He was named after his father—his father’s name, I think, was Goldman. Goldman Johnson.
DELLINGER: Okay. Where did you graduate from high school?
DIACON: Springdale, Arkansas. [00:09:00] That’s where—after we left Okemah, we lived in Miami for a while, and then Dad moved to Springdale, Arkansas in the—about ‘65, I believe it was, because the sign business was opening up over in that area. That area was really starting to grow in northwest Arkansas. So, he followed where the work was at, so that’s where we ended up at.
DELLINGER: And I know when you and I talked previously, you shared a little bit with me about what it was like for you as an Indigenous young person to be over in Springdale, Arkansas. Will you share a little bit about that?
DIACON: Yeah, that was—Dad didn’t vet that area out real well when he moved us there. He picked Springdale because, like I said earlier, he was a World War II veteran. And he painted signs, but he also [00:10:00] knew how to work on cars. And so, he got a gas station there in Rogers, Arkansas—and if you know the northwest Arkansas area, there’s Rogers, Springdale, and Fayetteville. And so, he bought a home in Springdale because he had that gas station in Rogers, and there was a lot of sign work in that area. And what he did was he would work on cars on one of the stalls in the station and then the other side he would paint signs. So, when he wasn’t in there painting signs, he’d be over there working on cars. And then, Mom would run the islands, pump the gas and things. And then, Fayetteville played into it because there was a VA hospital there. So, he picked Springdale as the place, kind of central location—he found a nice house over there, I think. But the thing was, he didn’t realize at the time that Springdale was kind of a—now, this was in the sixties, and this was just as the Civil Rights Movement was getting—that town was a sundown town. And there were no people of color at [00:11:00] all in that town. And there were no Indians. And when I got there, I was out playing all the time outside, so I was always getting that full sun and I was just dark. And so, ended up in a class around kids—white children that have never seen anybody darker than they were. You know, these blond head, blue-eyed kids. And I here was, dark brown skin, at the time I had black hair and brown eyes. And they didn’t know what to make of me. So, they called me the N-word, because I was dark. You know, I figured these kids have never actually seen a person of color—a Black person in person there where they lived. At the time, they just weren’t allowed. So, they never saw them, never had any interactions with them, never seen Indians. And when [00:12:00] I would tell them I was Indian, they didn’t believe. They said, “Well, you can’t be, because they’re all dead.” And they’ve never seen an Indian and they just didn’t think they existed anymore. So, I faced a lot of weird interactions with the children.
But you know, you figure kids don’t know, but I had really bad dealings with adults that should have known better. They—you know, they—it wasn’t good. And it was teachers, storekeepers, and stuff. It was uncomfortable growing up there at the time. Yeah, so, Mom used to have to go to school a lot. It’s just like they didn’t get the fact that here I was dark—and they didn’t think she was my mom at first, because she didn’t look anything like me. Because she was non-Indian and I was adopted. And it was like, I don’t understand—[00:13:00] I don’t know why they couldn’t figure that out. The adoption route or whatever. But it was some fun times looking back on it. Yeah. That’s why I didn’t date in high school. I couldn’t get girls to go out with me. I’d ask them and, “Oh, yeah, sure, we’ll go out.” And a couple days later they’d come back and have some excuse why they couldn’t, because their parents said, “Well, you got this or something or other to do.” So, I didn’t ever date in high school.
And I had friends that lived there—we met—who were Indian and they were Canadian. And they were younger—or older guys—and there were some younger ones—and so, there were a few Indians starting to come into that area. They were adopted by a man that lived there. And I guess I didn’t realize at the time, they might have been part of that sixties scoop, bringing Canadian kids and adopt them out to American families. But those were the only Indians there at that time. And when I got older, one of the guys was [00:14:00] telling me he had to come over to Oklahoma to get girls to date. So, he was dating a lot of Cherokee girls. He would come over and meet girls in Oklahoma. Which, you know, Springdale was pretty close to the Oklahoma border. So, he made a lot of trips over to Oklahoma just to meet girls. (laughs)
DELLINGER: Now, what year did you graduate from high school?
DIACON: Nineteen-eighty-one.
DELLINGER: Nineteen-eighty-one. After high school, I know that you have earned multiple degrees from various institutions of higher education. Will you please talk about these life accomplishments?
DIACON: Yeah. You know, always been interested in art and as a child growing up, I had really bad eyesight. And I didn’t realize it—or I realized it, but I didn’t really realize it because it was just how the world looked to me. I just thought that’s how things [00:15:00] were. It was when I got into school and we had to take eye tests and they sent home a letter to my parents saying, “You need to get him to an eye doctor, because he’s got some really bad issues with his sight.” So, they took me to an eye doctor. And of course, at the time, I didn’t realize—he was this doctor in Springdale, Arkansas—was a collector of the flat style Indian paintings. And so, when I got my first glasses and I put them on, I saw those paintings that just stuck in my head. Those little flat style from the old masters. And here I was facing some of the things that I did growing up in that town, and then this is also the same town where I was first introduced to Indian art. Yeah, that’s kind of a weird thing there, you know? He was a collector of the flat style work. And I think that’s one of the reasons why it stuck me, being made ashamed—being made to feel ashamed and just weird about who I was, [00:16:00] compared to everybody else, and out of place. In the fourth grade, I have this epiphany and I see these Indian artworks and I said, “This guy is collecting this stuff. That’s me. These are Indians.” And I just fell in love with that style of art.
Of course, this was in—I was in fourth grade—this is probably about ’73. Pre—there’s no internet or any way for me to research these paintings. But they stuck in my head. And so, through the years, I was just trying to replicate them and replicate them. And I finally found out about Bacone College. And I had been out of high school about seven years and I heard about their art program there—Indian Art Program. And then, starting to find out that a lot of those old artists had gone to school at Bacone. And they’d either gone to school there, taught there—somehow, they were associated with [00:17:00] Bacone. So, that’s where I went. I went to Bacone. At seven years out of being in high school, that’s where I went to school, for the art program. And I only went there for two years and graduated.
From there, I went to Northeastern State University. I went there for a semester—and my mother got sick. She had cancer. She’d had it for a while, but it just kept getting worse. And she really got down bad. She had bone cancer. And they’d taken her right leg and her right hip probably about ’85. But through the years, it just kept spreading through her body and they kept removing organs and things. And they’re just whittling her down real gradual like. And she got really sick and my dad said, “I’m really worried about her.” And said, “Could you come home and maybe help me with her? Stay here. And you can go to school at the University of Arkansas and continue on [00:18:00] with”—you know, because I was in the BFA Program at Northeastern and I was going the art route. So, I transferred to the University of Arkansas. I never thought about going to the University of Arkansas when I lived in Arkansas, because they didn’t have an art program that I was interested in. I mean, NSU, it had enough—there was Indians there. I mean, that’s simply—there was Indians in that school. They were used to them and things. And then, I got—fell in so love with the curriculum and the setting at Bacone, that I wasn’t going to go back. And so, I went to NSU and then transferred to the University of Arkansas. And that’s—and of course, at the time, I’d gotten married to a girl at met at Bacone, and she was a Hopi. And we were married, and so, [00:19:00] we were living there with Mom and Dad there in Arkansas.
And after a while, I was almost done with my BFA when we got divorced. And so, I dropped out of school, got a job, and I was working. And so, I kind of put my art education on hold there for a while. And then, I got remarried to a girl that I’d—this is a long story about my art career, but kind of—my life just kind of weaves into these ways. So, it’s kind of hard for me to separate how I got to that point without adding—because it’s kind of like each little thing that happened in my life kind of leads to the next. This girl that I met—I met her—a friend of ours my dad knew and I went to school with [00:20:00] from first grade on up through high school worked at Kmart there in Springdale. And she had a friend and she hooked—introduced us. And at the time, I was twenty-four and I’d been divorced, and I had a kid. And so—she was only eighteen, so, she was kind of scared of me. She thought I was like too worldly. And here I was just already married and had a kid and she was just out of high school. But we became friends and we stayed friends for a long time. And I got—and as I said, I went to Bacone, and I met this girl. We got married and then we were divorced. But I still was friends with this girl through the years, so I decided to ask her out again. And she was older, and she wasn’t the young girl (laughs), and she agreed and we started dating. Anyway, we eventually got married and [00:21:00] I—she said, “How come you never went back to school? You need to go back to school for this art.” And I said, “Yeah, I need to. I always wanted to go to the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe.” I said, “I always—it was one of the places I wanted to go, you know.” And she said, “Well, let’s do it.” And so, that’s how I ended up there at the Institute of American Indian Arts. And so, those were the places I got my art education. Bacone, Northeastern State University, University of Arkansas, and Institute of American Indian Arts.
All through those years, I’d been entering art shows. I started—the first art show was The Trail of Tears in 1986. The Trail of Tears Art Show.
DELLINGER: I want to go back to something and ask you a question. When you were at the University of Arkansas, you said that you earned your BFA. And so, for folks who don’t know, what is a BFA?
DIACON: Oh, yeah, I was a Bachelor of Fine [00:22:00] Arts. I didn’t actually earn it, I was close. I was three semesters short of earning it when I dropped out. And so, that’s one of the reasons my wife said, “Have you ever thought about going back and getting that?” And I was so close to getting that BFA that I should have just—I should have stayed with it. But I think life needed me to go a different direction. It always seems like things that I come up—the Creator sends me in a different direction for some reason. Because he’s got a plan and it always seems to work out for me. So, I’m trusting in him, because he’s always pointed me in the right direction every time. (laughs)
So, I didn’t get my Bachelors of Fine Art—I did apply a few years ago to TU. I thought—you know what , just so I could say I got it for my own personal self. I applied to TU, got accepted, and I just never did follow through on it, because when I went for the interview and [00:23:00] everything, all the things that I was already doing with my art, it was almost like, “Why do you want to come to this when you’re already doing things more than what most of our graduate students are already doing?” And it would just be for my own personal thing, but I just never did go back and get that BFA or MFA. And I see now, the Institute of American Indian Arts—at the time I went there, didn’t offer degrees up past the AFA, which is what I got there—Associate of Fine Arts. So, I always thought about, “Well, I might go back out there one of these days.” (laughs) I don’t know, I’m chasing that degree. I don’t really need it; I just want it. (laughter)
DELLINGER: All right. Now, what year did you finish up at the Institute of American Indian Arts?
DIACON: In 1999.
DELLINGER: Okay.
DIACON: And I got—I always joke I spent more time, it seems like, [00:24:00] in art school than most doctors do in med school, (laughter) because I just—I kept taking all these art classes and stretched it out. I started in ’88—Spring of ’88—January of ’88 was when I started Bacone. Graduated in the Spring of '90, went to Northeastern that Fall, and then started U of A the Fall of ’91. And then, I was out for a few years, and then went back out to Santa Fe, and I was out there for like a year—or two years, in Santa Fe, and got that degree.
DELLINGER: Okay, now, Mr. Diacon, you’ve already shared with us that you have been married multiple times. And I’d like to ask you now, who is your wife now? And then, also, if you would talk about—I know you have multiple children, as well. I’d like to let you talk about your children, too.
DIACON: Okay, [00:25:00] well, my first wife, I met her when I was working at a hospital there in Springdale. It was one of those kind of things where I say I couldn’t get anybody to date me, and then, all of a sudden, when I got out of school, I was meeting different people. Different people were moving into that area and I met a woman who was thirteen years older than I was. And we started dating. And we got married. And that didn’t last very long. It lasted about three years. And so, that marriage ended. And with that marriage we had one daughter, and her name is Mika, and she’s thirty-eight. She lives up in Jefferson City, Missouri, right now. She’s married and has two—we have two grandchildren from her. A boy and girl. Mai-Lin and Makoto. And so, that’s our grandchildren—my grandchildren.
DELLINGER: And what’s Mika’s last name?
DIACON: Clardy. Yeah, Clardy. So, when [00:26:00] I married the Hopi—she was from Arizona—her name was Karen Onsae. And it was kind of a flip on that. She was younger than I was. I was like almost eight years older than she was. (laughs) We had one child and her name is Melissa. And she’s thirty-one? Thirty. No, she’s thirty. And she lives in Springdale, Arkansas, right now. I had a—in-between those two, I had a girlfriend that I had a daughter with, and she was Cheyenne (Arapaho). Her name was Chrissa Hicks. And we lost Chrissa in 2008. She committed suicide at the age of nineteen. And so, she was—at the time, she was my middle daughter. It was Mika, Chrissa, and then Melissa. [00:27:00] So, when I—so, I was married twice. And then, I got my third wife, who I’m married to now, her name is Nikki. Nikki Stephens was her name. That’s the one I met years ago at the Kmart. She worked at Kmart. And when we got married—we were married for a while. We got—we had a daughter, her name was Annabelle. And she was born premature—she was at six months when she was born. And so, she didn’t live with us more than ten minutes at the time of birth. And that was in 2000. So, she’d be twenty-two now in June. And so, she’d be almost twenty-two. She’d be twenty-two—coming up on twenty-two. And then, we have another child, Emerson Diacon, but he goes by Mekko [00:28:00] now—they go by Mekko now. They dropped the Emerson; they go by Mekko. So, full name is Emerson Jacob Mekko Diacon. We picked up the Jacob because my wife’s mom always said she wanted a grandson named Jacob, after her dad. And come to find out, her dad’s name wasn’t Jacob. She just—she was kind of a trickster character. (laughs) She just threw that name in there. My wife could kill her now if she wasn’t dead, (laughs) because “I don’t want Jacob.” But he never uses that name. But he goes by Mekko now. And he’s nineteen. And they’re the youngest of the kids. Yeah. So, I got a thirty-eight, a thirty, and then nineteen. He’ll be twenty in July. And I have to keep their ages—I have a hard time keeping my own age straight sometimes, I got to stop. Because [00:29:00] they keep getting so old and I still think of them as babies, you know? (laughs)
DELLINGER: Right. Now, I don’t think you mentioned Melissa’s last name.
DIACON: It’s Diacon.
DELLINGER: Diacon, okay.
DIACON: Diacon. Yeah, they’re all Diacon except for Chrissa. Hers is with—her mom’s name was Hicks.
DELLINGER: Okay. Now, along with your artwork, you do also maintain a full-time job. Will you talk a little bit about that?
DIACON: Yeah, I work with Broken Arrow Public Schools. I work in the central warehouse—I’m a warehouse lead, and so, I do all the—when I first started about—I was almost—it was nineteen years ago I started. I was doing all the dry good groceries for the district. Receiving them and pulling orders for the school cafeterias. And delivering to certain sites—the bigger school sites. I did that for three years and then the warehouse manager asked if I’d be [00:30:00] interested in the lead position. And I said, “Sure.” I was a little worried about taking that on, because it was a little more responsibility and I was—at the time, I wasn’t painting though. I wasn’t—I had quit painting after we lost our daughter, Annabelle. And I wasn’t painting at the time. So, I was just working. But then I became warehouse lead and I’ve been doing that for the last, (laughs) gosh, sixteen years. And what I do now is I do all the receiving and routing out of all the things that come into the district that go out to the sites. And it’s any computers, textbooks, furniture, it’s all kinds of things. I just don’t mess with the grocery part of it anymore. But it’s everything else that comes into the district. I’m the guy that takes the POs and makes sure everything we got matches what they ordered, and contacts the vendors if it’s [00:31:00] wrong or damaged. And then, list it for—and stage it for delivery for our warehouse guys to deliver it to the sites. It’s an easy job. I mean, it’s a lot of work, you’ve got to stay on top of it.
But it does afford me enough time—I’ve been there long enough that I’ve got enough vacation time that now I can do a lot of the art shows like I used to do—the art markets and the shows that I have to be gone for and travel for.
DELLINGER: All right. I do want to go back to your artwork and what specific style or styles of paintings do you create?
DIACON: You know, I do a lot of the flat style—the old style, flat style, because I just love that. And there’s—it’s kind of—[00:32:00] the art is always evolving and changing the styles and whatever’s popular changes. And that kind of is not really the style that people seek out, but they recognize it right often. And they specifically think of Oklahoma Indian art as looking that way. But a lot of artists have moved on to different ways of doing it. That’s kind of like—like I always say, “The old guy’s way of doing it.” Because they talk about the older people that painted that way. I have a really strong respect for it and a deep appreciation and a love for it. So, I still continue it. I kind of like a lot of the Plains artists are bringing back that ledger-style art that they used to do. And that’s becoming popular again. And I kind of like to do that with the flat style.
But yeah, I paint all kinds of different [00:33:00] ways, because I’ve been taught by so many non-Native artists, as well. And just my interest in art. That I’ve—it’s always Native subjects, because I paint from what I know, using what I’ve learned—the techniques that I’ve learned. It’s always Muscogee subjects, because that’s—I am Muscogee and I feel like if I’m painting—I want to make something accurate of our people. I want paint and I want to represent our people that way. When I do—because I know it’s not just me, it’s for our people. And I think—and I know our people like to see us—see our art, see our images, like I like those images. Like how important it was for me to see those images. So, I do it for my people. Non-Natives like it and I like the fact that they like it and it gives them a glimpse of who we are, because through my life, I’ve had to face [00:34:00] just people assuming who I am—and not in a good way. So, I kind of like this—it's accurate. This is who we are, this is us, and it’s from the heart. And I know from the compliments I get from our people that I’m doing a good job. And it’s for them.
So, as far as the mediums, I paint anything—I’ve had watercolor classes—I took three semesters of watercolor painting from Robert Ross—and not that Bob Ross—but his name was Robert Ross. He was a watercolor art professor at the University of Arkansas. And when he was younger, he had studied at Yale with Josef Albers who was from the Bauhaus in Germany. And so, he had—he brought this to him. So, I got that experience. Of course, I went to the Institute of American Indian Arts and I had teachers out there—Linda Lomahaftewa, [00:35:00] Karita Coffey, the guys that were at the beginning of the modern movement—the art movement—the Native art movement—that were my teachers and influences. When I went to Bacone, Ruthe Blalock Jones was my instructor there and I learned from her the flat style techniques. And of course, her instructor was Dick West, the Cheyenne artist who was an instructor there. He was the grandfather of some of that flat style. He was a contemporary with Kiowa Six, and Acee Blue Eagle, and Woody Crumbo, and all those guys like that. So, there’s that background there that influenced my art. I painted—one of my painting teachers was Ken Stout—he was non-Native—at the University of Arkansas. And he taught me oil painting techniques—that’s what we used there at the [00:36:00] U of A in the BFA program is oil paint. So, on canvas and a lot of times it was just primered poster board is what we started with, just for our artwork in class. Yeah, and he was a muralist, and so, I picked up a lot of painting techniques from him. He was an interesting man.
There were just so many instructors that influenced me that I just paint in all kinds of styles. So, it’s kind of hard to peg down the exact—I know people say I’ve got a style. I didn’t really realize I got a technique that—or style that people recognize when they see it as one of mine. I think that’s kind of cool because I never thought about having a technique or style. When I was at Bacone, I was just so excited about art. I was just hyper about it. [00:37:00] I was just trying all kinds of styles and stuff. And I know Ruthe said I had a schizophrenic style because it’s hard to peg down what style I was going to do next. But I was just enjoying it. I don’t know, I was like, “If you could be in a band and play every instrument there was, it would be like that.” And so, that’s how my art is. I paint different styles. Watercolor—I’m working on some things now that is just—I’m thinking about putting in some collage work, mixing up the medium on it. I’m doing a lot of mixed media work. I’ve done 3D assemblage work. When I was going to school, I did have a few—I did some pottery, some photography, some print making, because that was some of the classes you had to take when you’re working on your BFA. Some of it I really enjoyed.
When I was at the Institute of American Indian Arts, I took printmaking with Melanie Yazzie, and I really enjoyed doing silk screens. And I think I liked that so much because of [00:38:00] my father being a sign painter. I used to help him with a lot of silk screen decals and things that he would make. But he was making more decals and these political posters that you see that they put out in yards and stuff now. He was making those for guys that were running for sheriff, or local politicians. I’d help him with that. But this is the first time I got to use it for an art—as an art medium—a fine art medium. And so, I really enjoyed that. And I think I’d do more of that if I had a bigger studio with setup to do it along with the painting, just—I did silver smithing at Bacone. Bronze casting. I was kind of like my dad, as far as all those different crafts, I guess, that he learned to do to make signs. Whenever somebody wanted a sign, he knew how to do it. And it’s kind of like I was doing that with art. I’ve taught myself [00:39:00] how to do bead work. My ex-wife, she used to do bead work for me. If I needed anything beaded, she was fantastic at bead work. She’d do all my bead work. And then, when we got divorced, I didn’t have anybody to do my bead work anymore and I needed stuff beaded. So, I taught myself how to bead. And I really enjoy doing that. And silver smithing, I’d kind of like to do that again, but I just—like I said, I don’t have the setup for it. But yeah, I know how to do that.
DELLINGER: All right. Well, thank you so much. All of that is so interesting and thank you so much for sharing all these things with us about yourself. Mr. Diacon, we’re going to transition now, our interview, and I’m going to ask you some questions about your experiences with the [00:40:00] COVID-19 pandemic. We are now past the two-year mark of COVID-19 being in existence. But when, in 2020, did you first hear about the coronavirus—COVID-19—and how did you hear about it?
DIACON: Well, you know, it’s kind of funny. Working at the school, we had a lot of custodial products in there. And our boss is in charge of the warehouse and the custodians. And in November—they’re always—because they have to go through and keep these schools clean and disinfected, they’re always keeping track of what the next flu or whatever bug might be spread around to these schools, so they’ll know what products they need and how much of it they need to keep the places clean. In November, there was—it was [00:41:00] just—and I know the media wasn’t talking about it or anything, but they heard about it somewhere. There was some new bug in China where most of the flus in Asia starts, and then comes over and stuff. So, they’ll always look at that area of the country. I guess they follow the CDC or whoever keeps track of this. Something was up, so they decided that we better order some gloves and some other cleaning products to get ready. And they went on backorder. It was hard to get here in the States, because everything was going to China, because they had this outbreak of stuff. So, we weren’t able to get anything here and everything was on backorder. Well, this happened in December. Tried to get more and it was still hard to get. And then, January it was hard to get. And then, it was about January we started hearing about what it was. And of course, at the time, there was still [00:42:00] no—they hadn’t called it COVID or anything yet. I think they were just still referring to it as a coronavirus. But there were still no cases here, that we knew of, and it was in February that we’d heard the person had died—the first person that died here in the States of it.
And so, we were just—me and my wife, we heard it on the radio—we were out doing our shopping for the weekend, and we heard it. And we thought, “Wow, I wonder how bad is this going to get?” And so, March rolls around and we’re at spring break time, and so, I took the week of spring break off so we could go do some things. And when spring break was over, I was fixing to go back to work. But then, I got a call from work saying, “Don’t come in. We’re closing everything down because of this virus. Don’t come to [00:43:00] work.” And so, this is about this time in March of ’20. And so, I was at home and I had plenty of time to do art now, because I wasn’t going to work. I was still getting paid. Thank goodness they were still paying us. They just told us to stay home. And just keep checking to find out when we can come back. So, I sat here. And of course, I was watching the TV and the daily briefings they were having. And we were just kind of wondering, “How bad is this going to get? What’s going on?” And started hearing more about it. And of course, at the time, I was a little concerned about my job, our safety, our health. And so, I wasn’t really interested in doing any artwork. My mind was somewhere else at that point. And then, I started hearing, [00:44:00] you know, reports coming in about how it’s affecting the—it seems like more older people. The elderly were coming with it. And then, I started worrying about our elders. I thought how important they are to us. I thought, “Man, that’s—a lot of these people, they’re our last speakers of our language and the hold a lot of traditions. And a lot of them take care of their children. They’re really important people.” And I thought, “Wow, it’s hitting them.” I said, “That’s bad, that’s really bad.”
And so, the artist in me started coming out. I just had to respond to it. I had to do something to just put these feelings out or these images. And so, I came up with this idea that I—of these two elders—a male and a female standing there. [00:45:00] And I was trying to think, “How can I convey this sense of unknowing with this danger with these elders in a painting form?” And I started thinking, I thought, “Well”—it kind of came out like a sci-fi kind of an image, you know? I had these two elders standing side-by-side. The background’s kind of dark, kind of mysterious, and I kept seeing all these images on the news. They kept showing that image of that coronavirus, what it looked like. That little orb with the little red dots all over it and everything. And I just kept seeing that, kept seeing that. And I thought, “Okay, what I’m going to do, I’m going to—since it’s everywhere”—that’s what I did on that painting. I put them and then I put those little dots that are just different sizes, like they’re floating around all over, like they’re just everywhere. And that’s the first one that I did. [00:46:00] It looks like an Invasion of the Bodysnatchers kind of vibe to it. Like science fiction kind of—you know. And that’s kind of the feeling you had from this. It’s kind of like a science fiction thing. Like, here is this weird organism that was coming in and just taking over. And I thought, “You know, it’s kind of thinking about here we are, we’ve got another invader coming into our land.” As an Indigenous person, I’m thinking, “Here’s another invader coming into our land.” It kind of got that feeling to it. So, that was first painting I did. I did that acrylic on a stretched canvas.
So, more time passed and I was still not going back to work. It just seemed to keep getting worse. But then, I was hearing reports coming out of Indian cOuntry from the nurses and everything at the Indian hospitals and stuff. [00:47:00] Especially out on the Navajo reservation, taking care of all the people that were sick. And I used to work in a hospital. I know when you go in there and take care of these people. I was thinking about all the doctors, and the nurses, and everybody there on the front lines, really, like a war. They’re taking care of these people. They could get sick, too. But they’re putting these other people’s needs ahead of their own. And to take care of them. And I thought, “Wow, that’s really brave. That’s really fantastic they’re doing that.” So, that’s when I came up with this flat style painting. I went back to the old techniques that I knew from flat style and I did a flat style piece. I did it in acrylic on illustration board. And it was based on the old Quincy Tahoma, In the Times of Plenty, I believe was the name of it. It was a buffalo hunt painting where he’s on a horse and the buffalo’s reared up and they’re both kind of—[00:48:00] this action painting. And I thought, “I want to do something like that and I want to do one with the rider, he’s wearing the PPE, he’s got on the mask and everything. He’s gloved up and the shoe covers and everything. And he’s on a horse. And instead of a buffalo, it’s a coronavirus.” There’s that coronavirus again. (laughs) And the only thing, he’s fixing to put an arrow in it. And then—so, that’s what I did. It was like a panoramic scene and here’s this guy on a horse and it’s reared back, and there’s coronavirus are down here. You know, big, big virus and he’s about ready to put an arrow in it. And in the background, there’s some—they’re running like buffalo and there’s another rider in the back with a lance. He’s going after them. And then, I put these symbols above it—the power symbols coming out—spirit symbols coming down. A cloud—and did all the old flat style imagery. And as a tribute—it was a tribute to the healthcare warriors—I called it—in Indian Country [00:49:00] during COVID-19. And that painting—I got that one out of the way.
Still going on into—I did that in March. And now we’re going into April and it’s still looking, you know, not much better. I’m still at the house, plenty of time to paint, still got a lot of emotions I’m trying to work out through my work. And I’m watching these daily briefings and I’m just getting angry because I’m not seeing any leadership coming out of who was in charge at the time. I was just seeing a lot of talk and no action. No direction. And so, it gave me my third painting. What I did was I took that guy’s head—and everybody knows who he is and what he looks like—I just made that an orange skull—I gave him that hair that he’s got. And he’s behind [00:50:00] this American flag and I’ve changed the stars—they’re little skulls—and there’s just skulls in the background. And man, there’s that coronavirus still floating through it. And I just pegged it on him. I said, “We’re not—it’s not getting any better and he wasn’t helping the situation.” So, there was some anger coming out of that.
It kept going. It was probably about the—toward the end of April, first part of May, we were still venturing out once a week to go to the store. We’d always wear a mask now everywhere we went. They were saying, “Wear a mask.” So, we’d mask up. And so, at that time, I thought, “Well, this is just the new reality of life now.” So, I did a painting—and this time I—I went—that third one was an acrylic one on stretched canvas. I went back to acrylic and stretched canvas. But there are [00:51:00] some mixed media. So, the first one was strictly acrylic; and then I did a flat style on illustration board; I went back to the stretched canvas again, but this time I used some oil pastel, and acrylic, and some enamel and it was a mixed media piece. And the third one is an oil piece. I did it in oil and what it is is kind of a sort of a self-portrait. Because I was thinking of me, what I had to do to go to the store—just to go to the store now. And it was just a mask, but it was more than just a mask.
You had to stop and think about your distance between the next person, and your time in there, and there were certain places that you had to wait to get in, because they only allowed a certain amount of people into the stores at a time. And you’d go to Walmart and you’re just walking into a Walmart. But at this point, you got there and then you had to wait in line until they let you go in. They counted the [00:52:00] number of people in there and stuff. And then, you had to be a certain distance from each other. And then, you could only buy a certain amount of things. You couldn’t buy—bread you couldn’t buy more than one loaf. Toilet paper you can only buy one pack. Things like that. So, I just—I titled it, “Going for Groceries in the Time of Pandemic.” And it’s just me and this one black hat I used to always wear and a face mask. And of course, the background is still kind of apocalyptic looking because it’s the purple stormy-looking clouds and a kind of brown desolate background. Kind of in reference to it’s bad, but still don’t see any getting better.
And that was my fourth one. And at that time, I finally got to go back to work. One day a week they had me come in for five hours a day. So, every Tuesday, I’d go in for five hours. And that was just to catch any freight that [00:53:00] might come in that didn’t get cancelled and anything people were having shipped to the school sites—and a lot of personal stuff. Like, people would have shipped to the—teachers would have stuff shipped to their sites—their schools where they worked. Personal things. Things they didn’t want sitting on their porch all day long while they were at work. Little personal things. Amazon stuff and things like that. They’d have—normally ship to their sites that didn’t get cancelled. Well, UPS, FedEx, they would reroute that stuff to come back to the warehouse. So, what I did was go through and just separate that out for the people. So, whenever we got the chance to get back they could get their stuff. There was a few freight stuff that was already in transit that couldn’t get stopped before they closed down all the POs for the year. So, I took care of that stuff as it came in. And of course, at that time, I was [00:54:00] working once a week, so I was little more—not so much worried about my job aspects, because they still paid us. They said they’re going to keep us. There’s no problems about us losing our jobs, so I kind of relaxed on that.
I didn’t want to do anymore COVID paintings. I didn’t want to be known as, like I said, “the COVID guy.” I didn’t want all my artwork to be COVID related. I just needed to get those pieces out, at the time, for where I was at. And being an artist, I always kind of fell back on my art as a way of dealing with things. That’s one of the reasons I was so interested in art growing up, because I didn’t get much interaction with other people. But I had my art. I always had my art. So, that’s what I went to on that and that’s how I produced those four pieces. The first piece—the coronavirus piece—and then “Going for Groceries at the Time of the Pandemic,” [00:55:00] Muscogee Nation purchased those two pieces. The third—the second piece, the flat style one, a doctor contacted me and I sold that one to him. And it’s in a hospital in Santa Fe, it’s hanging up in there, and he sent me a picture with him and his staff holding—they had it framed and everything. The Trump one that I’ve got, I still have it, the original. I made prints of it because people wanted prints. I still have the original because I figured nobody wants this guy’s portrait. I thought maybe if they want his official portrait, I’ve got this one, they can have it. There’s your official portrait, hang that.
But yeah, during that time, all the art shows closed down, all my venues that I go to for my art were stopped. And so, my printer who I sent—take my stuff to for him to scan so I can make prints and stuff, he [00:56:00] was closed down. So, here I had those four paintings, and all I had was a little—my little phone or my little tablet thing to take pictures. So, they weren’t real good pictures. But I post them on Facebook or Instagram, whatever. And that’s how people found out that I had these, because I wasn’t able to get them to a printer, get good photographs of them or anything. Or take them to shows or get them anywhere. And so, it was kind of weird how that pandemic played out like that, as far as my art, because people still wanted art. So, they started contacting me. Wanting to know if I had any pieces. And so, yeah, that’s—it was kind of weird because I wasn’t set up to go online—internet sales or anything. I hadn’t progressed to that like a lot of artists do. They sell their work online and everything. [00:57:00] And I hadn’t—I don’t have a website or anything. So, a lot of them transitioned to that because they weren’t able to do the live shows. But I didn’t have that. I didn’t have that set up there or ability. But I was fortunate enough that I was able to just Facebook it out there. And people were saying, “Yeah, he’s still painting”
But yeah, that’s what I did on my art during the pandemic. And I was fortunate enough that we stayed home. The only time we went anywhere was to get groceries. Early in the mornings once a week. We’d go early in the mornings, me and my wife would go. And we’d get in there and we’d get what we need and we’d get out. And we were just home. We didn’t go anywhere, we didn’t see anybody, we had nobody come over. Of course, any kind of family gatherings or anything, we didn’t do. Nobody had em, you know? So, there was no holidays or anything. We didn’t do anything. We were just here. [00:58:00] So, we’re fortunate that we didn’t get sick, because we weren’t around anybody. And my son, at the time, was—he was in his senior year in school, and so, he did it all virtual after spring break. That was his junior year, did it all virtual. Senior year, all virtual. He didn’t go back at all. And so, he was here. And so, the three of us were in this house. (laughs) So, we were fortunate enough that way we didn’t get sick. We know people that did get sick. Some of them didn’t make it. Some of them got sick before there was a vaccine. We were just waiting, hoping for a vaccine. Some kind of a cure or something. For it to ease up, or whatever, and go back to normal.
We were fortunate, when they got the vaccine, we got it through Creek Nation. They called—[00:59:00] when they got down to our age group—the elders got it first. Well, they get the healthcare workers, and then the elders, and we were waiting for them to get down to my age group. I had existing health conditions, and then they got down to my age group and I called and scheduled. And they said, “How about your wife?” And I said, “Well, she’s non-Indian.” And they said, “Well, it doesn’t matter. We’re giving these shots for everybody in your family that’s in the household to make sure we’re safe. That the people are safe.” So, I told her and she at first didn’t believe me. She’s like, “Are you sure?” Because she always asks me that. “Are you sure?” (laughs) And I said, “Yeah, yeah, they said—they told me to bring you. I didn’t suggest it, they told me. And I told them you’re a non-Indian, it don’t matter.” And so, me and her got our first vaccines. And then, [01:00:00] about that time, they dropped it down to—our child’s age is eighteen. So, by then, all the Creek Nation ones were already booked up for that time period. But the Indian Health Services were doing them at Claremore, so I took Emerson up there. So, he was a week behind in getting his from ours, so he got his first one a week after we did. He got his. And then a month later, we got a second one. And a week after we got our second one, he got his second one. So, we got those. Thank goodness we got that.
Of course, we were still to this day doing the handwashing, distancing, and we still wear masks when we go to the store. I always have one with me. We always carry them with us, when we go to the store we wear them, we’re still pretty much doing the things—because it’s not over yet. I mean, we’re—it’s getting toward the end of it, but it’s not gone yet. And so, it’s kind of like when they give you an antibiotic, they tell you to take them all until they’re all [01:01:00] gone, not just stop when you start feeling better. Just keep taking them. And there’s a reason why. And so, we’re playing it safe. We haven’t had it, we don’t want it, we don’t want to give it to anybody if we’re a carrier. So, we’ve been playing it safe. We’ve got—all three have our boosters, too. And if they say you need the fourth one, we’ll get that one, too. Because better safe than sorry. I sure would hate to know that if I was asymptomatic and got it, I do something foolish and give it to someone, especially an elder who it would devastate them. I mean, to me, that’s almost like drunk driving. Being that irresponsible, or just playing with a gun, or just being foolish. When you know what causes it, what you can do to prevent it, it’s real easy. So, yeah, I don’t see why there’s so much—[01:02:00] well, I know why, it’s all political. Just take your shots. You know, I don’t understand the mindset of the people that won’t take it. I don’t want to get too political with it, but that’s just how I feel. Just take it. Just take your shots. It’s not going to—they’re not chipping you or whatever. (laughs)
Yeah, we got ours and we’re just so glad that—at first, we were doing all the things, because they didn’t know. We were washing our stuff when we got it home, at first. And we’re washing cans and everything before we put them away, because we just didn’t know. And it reminded me, years ago, when I worked at the hospital, when AIDS first came out. We didn’t know what it was. So, when we had our first patient that tested positive for [01:03:00] AIDS, we would double-gown everything like it was a reverse isolation kind of thing, because we didn’t know what we were dealing with. He was in isolation and we were doing all these procedures—through experience and time, you realize you didn’t really need to do. But at the time, nobody knew what it was or how it really spread. So, it’s better to be safe than sorry. And I think also working in the hospital those many years, I learned a lot of things about aseptic technique and good handwashing and just trying to protect yourself and others. Nosocomial infections were big in the hospital. You’d pick up something from somebody, you’d take it over to the next patient you’re working with. So, you want to make sure when you’re done working with somebody, you wash your hands. And when I worked in the hospitals, back before HMOs, they were just starting to take effect. So, cost containment was real [01:04:00] big. And so, gloves—like nowadays, everybody—they don’t even take your temperature if they don’t put on gloves. Everything’s got gloves. And this is before COVID. Everything’s gloved up and gloved up. Disposable gowns and everything. When I worked there, you didn’t have that. We didn’t have gloves. They’d tell you, “Don’t waste gloves because gloves are expensive and cost money.” And all this cost containment. “Wash your hands.” So, good handwashing was just what they preached. And when I worked there, there was all kinds of drains and pumps that we had to empty. Medical science has advanced so much from gallbladder surgeries now, where they do the little laser surgery and go in there and it’s nothing. When I worked in the hospital, when they used to do those, it was a big—they almost gut you like a fish [01:05:00] from stem to stern. And I remembered watching one once and they’re pulling organs out, they flip that liver out, and then that gallbladder comes up. And then, when you get out, you go into ICU and you’ve got a tube into your stomach to drain your stomach. And we used to have to go empty those, and it was bare-handed. Just these big glass gallon jugs on these suction units. And we’d have to go in and pop it, and pour it, and measure it. Catheters—putting in catheters. Of course, you wore gloves—sterile gloves there. But when you went to empty the bags—or a person’s urinal, everything like that. It was bare-handed. Cleaning up incontinent patients was bare-handed. And you just washed. You just washed real good.
And so, things have changed, but you got used to [01:06:00] making sure you’re clean and things are not soiled and dirty when you go from place to place. And so—and wearing masks. I worked in a surgery unit—I was a surgery attendant for a while and people talk about masks—oh, they don’t do anything. But you know, there’s certain little things you do that it’s just—it’s not completely preventive, but it’s just an extra little precaution. And masks was one of them. It’s like when I worked in the OR as a surgery attendant, if we left the OR suite—we had on the greens—or scrubs, they were green at the time—if we left the OR suite, we had to wear a white lab coat when we went out onto the hospital floor. That was just procedure. If you got caught out on the floor in just your scrubs, without a white lab coat, [01:07:00] you could get written up, because that lab coat whatever was out on that floor from getting onto your scrubs that you would wear back into the surgery suite. Well, of course, when you’re in the surgery suite, you took that lab coat off, because you didn’t want to wear that lab coat in there. You had shoe covers and then you had a sticky pad on the floor when you walked in that pulled anything off.
But you know—and they kept the surgery suites real cold—they keep hospitals cold because it keeps things—germs from floating around as quick or getting around as quick. It’s why they keep it so cold. But it doesn’t prevent all this stuff, but it’s just a little extra—it’s one little extra thing. And that’s the way it was with masks. I had no problem with wearing a mask. I put it on and I know it isn’t 100 percent effective. But it was a little more. Like [01:08:00] when I worked—I worked in jobs—when you go into a construction site, you had to have steel-toed shoes or a hard hat. And the hard hat, a lot of times, they’re just hard plastic. And you’re thinking, “What kind of protection is that really if something heavy really does fall on you?” It’s not strapped on or anything. But it does protect you. It does protect you from certain things. It don’t protect you from everything, but it’s kind of like that mask. So, I didn’t have any trouble with the mask.
I don’t know, I probably got off subject on there. I just—that’s how I got through it. I did what I was supposed to do. I stayed away from people.
DELLINGER: Let me ask you, what is your knowledge and understanding about the COVID-19 [01:09:00] virus, including how it’s spread and what it can do to the body if you get it?
DIACON: Well, you know, I understood it was a respiratory. And so, I’ve got—I’ve always had lung issues, ever since I was little. I’ve had really bad lungs. And I get pneumonia real easy a lot. And I was always—when I heard about that being spread that way, I was really worried. I thought, It’s looking for me because I’ve got what it likes to eat. I’ve got bad lungs. I’m diabetic. I’ve got all these things that—you know. And so, I knew it came in through water droplets—this is what I was learning about it. At first, I had no idea how it spread. I just know you could get it. But then I found out it was respiratory. [01:10:00] And I know viruses work a lot different than germs. So, I knew at that point some of the things you could do about it, as far as germs, it’s not going to work on a virus. And I think that helps having just—and I’m not like a doctor, or a healthcare professional really, anymore. But I had enough background and enough knowledge that I knew not to mess around with things. And the more I heard about it—it kind of eased up, especially as time came—it kind of eased up on my fear of it—of catching it. I was taking precautions not to. Not that I didn’t think that I could. I didn’t want to get foolish with it and [01:11:00] get careless. But yeah, it was just—the main thing is just getting breathed on, because I knew it was—how you can pick up a cold so easy, or just—when you’re around somebody at work, and you work somewhere, and somebody catches a cold—and having kids. If they catch a cold then you pretty much know everybody else is going to end up with that cold, too. So, I was just worried about it getting spread around real easy like that. And it seemed to be spreading fairly easy. And then, as the variants came out like variants do—that virus is fighting to survive, so it’s adapting to keep doing what it does. I was always worried that it was going to find some other way to kill me. (laughs)
DELLINGER: And what about—like what have you [01:12:00] seen—because you said that no one in your family has had it, right? But as far as other people having it, we’ve watched this on the news and whatnot. What have you seen that it does to people’s bodies after they have it?
DIACON: I’ve known people that have had it that first go around. A lot of them there was a loss of taste and smell. It took forever for it to come back. But they were tired. And to this day, they still get tired easy. And these are guys that are younger than I am, they get it. I know the older I get, especially when I have pneumonia, it’s hard to get over that the older you get. You don’t get over it as quick. And so, I figured that’s going to really be tough if I did [01:13:00] get it and I did survive. It would probably linger with me and I don’t know if I would be back to the way I was before. And these guys are still—and this is over a year ago now, these guys—some of them had it, and they’re telling me they still get tired. That seems to be the main complaint I’ve heard about people that I’ve known that have had it. Of course, you know, there are ones that had it that are no long with us. And a lot of them got it before—this happened before the vaccines—before even the Delta variant came out. They’d gotten it. Of course, you know, they were out—unfortunately, a lot of people weren’t as fortunate as I was. They had to go to work. They had to go to places. And they got into it not because they were looking to get it, but it was there. And it found them. [01:14:00] That’s tragic. That you’ve got to live your life, you’ve got to go to work, and you’ve got to do things, and you don’t have—you weren’t as fortunate as I was to have a place where you could—they said, “Stay home. We’ll continue to pay you, just stay home.” But yeah, all the ones that I’ve seen that had it, it just—it seems to wear on their ability to—their energy levels have dropped a lot. And it’s still to this day, it’s that way. So, that’s—I’m not quite sure if that’s going to clear up for them. I mean, some of them that’s lost their taste and smell got it back. It was several months before they got it back. But the fatigue that comes with it still lingers.
DELLINGER: Okay. Since the beginning of the pandemic, how do you think the Muscogee (Creek) Nation leadership and administration has [01:15:00] performed throughout the pandemic in taking care of Muscogee people?
DIACON: I think they did a fantastic job. I mean, they were getting those shots out there, they got that vaccine in here. They were—it seemed like they were really more about it being real than the state government was—and the federal government, even. I think that’s a difference in your leadership there when you got someone that actually leads and not someone who’s just—I don’t even know how to explain who was in charge when it first started. What was going on with that mindset? To me, he—if he was as brained as what he said, and as just tenacious about getting everything, that was his chance to shine and show us how smart he was, and to lead, and not just—I don’t what to use the [01:16:00] words I really want to describe what he did with that. And it went down to the state level who was just like mirroring what they—you know. But the tribes—Muscogee Nation stepped up. The tribes and the state stepped up. They started getting those shots out—those vaccines—and they were taking precautions, and they were taking it serious. They were letting people know, “Protect our elders, protect yourselves, stay home, do this.” And they were doing—as far as I knew—I heard they were shutting down their offices, but they were still open working virtually, had you wear masks. I know I had to do some things through the tribe stuff. But if I did have an appointment, I had to wear a mask, which was fine with me. I had no problem with that.
Yeah, it was just—it seemed the leadership was there, that they took it serious, that they were leading, that they knew that this was affecting [01:17:00] not just their political career, but it was affecting people’s lives that they were needing to take care of. So, I felt they did a real good job and I’m proud of them. I mean, it made you feel good to be Indian. And you know that they were helping not only Indian people but non-Indians, like my wife. They were saying, “We’re all in this”—and they actually took the old—during the pandemic here—that we’re in this in together. And they seemed to really take that to heart, because it’s like I was saying, “United Oklahoma.” We’re all Oklahomans. This is Oklahoma. We’re all here together. We’re all living here together and we need to step up together. And I like that there was that—and I guess—I don’t know if it’s always seemed to be like that with Indians. There’s always that unity. We always—we don’t seem like we do, but we do band together a lot more than what we think we do. We have this way of persevering. [01:18:00] And it always seems like Indians in-fight and fight a lot, which we do. But we band together. I mean, we’ve gone through a lot. Our tribe—the removal, the whole removal here and everything. If we hadn’t had leadership and banded together, we wouldn’t have made it to where we are now. We would have just fell apart. But we’re strong and resilient. And it makes you feel good.
DELLINGER: Yeah, thank you for that. Here in Oklahoma and the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, we have been in a COVID lull for several weeks now. But what are your thoughts about COVID-19 ever going away completely?
DIACON: You know, I just don’t think—I don’t think it’s going to go away. I think it’s the new—like they were saying, yearly, like the [01:19:00] flu. It just—it’s going to be with us. Like all diseases and things that start, there had to be a first time around. You know? Measles, chicken pox, smallpox, all these things. There had to be a first time around with it. At least, we know how to deal with it. And these steps is why they’re not quite as—I can’t think of the word. Prevalent. I have a hard time saying it. But you know, it’s not—you don’t have to worry about a lot of diseases now like you used to. They’re still there—smallpox is still out there, but it’s something that we don’t really have to worry about. Polio. You know, you see these diseases start coming back when people get lax and just start [01:20:00] doing things that they shouldn’t do. But I think it’s going to be with us, but we know now how to handle it. So, I think we’re going to be all right once we get past this—these last few variants as they seem to be getting weaker. We’ve got the vaccines. And if I remember right, it seems like they’ve got some kind of—not a cure, but a pill that will help with it, if you get it. So, that’s good. And as time goes, they’ll probably come up with even more—something even better, stronger, better that will take care of it. So, I think it will eventually go into a—I don’t know, what you used to call your childhood diseases kind of thing. Like chicken pox, or mumps, or something. Something not real serious like they are now.
DELLINGER: So, [01:21:00] at this time, are you engaging in a life that is more similar to what your life was like before the start of the COVID pandemic?
DIACON: Yeah. You know, I’ve gotten out more, I’ve seen people. I actually went to a concert in Dallas, and it was one of those—of course, it was before the Omicron. But it was another one of those where you didn’t get in unless you showed your vaccination. You had to have proof of vaccination to get it. And once you got in, you had to wear a mask. So, you know, it was one of those kind of things. So, I felt safe with that. You know, before that point, I wouldn’t have. And if they hadn’t had that, I wouldn’t. I’m still a little leery about—and I don’t go places that I don’t wear my mask. Grocery stores, to this day, I still wear a mask. I always have a mask with me in case I go somewhere or there’s a group of people that I [01:22:00] don’t know their vaccination status, or how serious they’ve taken this. I don’t want to run that risk.
So, I’m slowly getting into it. Art shows are starting to open up. I haven’t been to a big art show, yet. The Art Market—the Muscogee Art Market is coming up next month. That will be my first indoor big event like that since—well, the Cherokee Art Market was the last one I did in 2019. So, I’m looking forward to it. I’m feeling better. I know there are people that are vaccinated. I’m still taking a mask with me when I go to these things. I’m looking forward to it. I think we’d have been—we’d be a lot better off if a lot of people had done what they needed to do to begin with. It helped it linger a little more than what it needed to, I think. [01:23:00] And then, it seems like here, lately, the ones that are getting sick with it now and dying from it are the ones that haven’t done what they needed to do. It’s finally catching up with them. And it’s just like—I guess some lessons in life are learned real hard. And I guess that’s one of them. And it’s kind of sad. You see them—you just want to say, “Told you so,” but at the same time, you pity them. Because it was needless. It was really needless. And it’s sad. It’s really sad to see that happen.
DELLINGER: Yeah.
DIACON: You know, I mean, I just—I don’t know, I’ve always been a coward, I guess. I never learned how to swim, so I never got in the deep—I never got in the water—deep water, water I couldn’t stand up in. I always had enough sense. To me, it always seemed like these kind of guys that did that were like—they didn’t know how to swim, but they were jumping off into [01:24:00] the deepest water they could find. And, or othese guys that drink too much and “I’m okay to drive. I’ve done it before.” And get out there and end up in a wreck. Unfortunately, they end up taking other people with them. And I just don’t see the sense in behaving like that. I mean, I’m not saying that I’m better than anybody else. It’s just that I just like to be more aware of my actions affect other people. It’s not just me, but other people. So, I need to—I could go all day long and not wash my hands, and eat, and do whatever. You know, go to the bathroom and just whatever for me. But there’s other people. Courtesy and decency go with that. You need to think about other people. It’s not just you. (laughs)
DELLINGER: Yeah, those are definitely some good words of advice. And so, [01:25:00] with that, that’s a good lead in to our next question here—which, we’re down to the last two questions of our interview. But for future generations of Muscogee who may find themselves dealing with a global health and economic event, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, what words of advice or wisdom do you have for them about living with and surviving such a catastrophic event, as what we’ve just come through?
DIACON: Well, you’ve got to think about how your actions—like I said, how it will affect others during it. You want to think about, “If I do this, how is that going to affect someone else?” Once something like this comes up, if leaders in charge say—[01:26:00] and this is kind of hard. I guess, if you don’t trust those leaders, if you think they’re trying to pull something, I could understand why. But they’re just trying to get you into believing a certain thing to get to their agenda. But when it doesn’t really benefit them, you’ve got to look at it that way. Like, how did wearing a mask and getting these vaccines benefit a certain agenda, when it affects everybody? It’s not trying to get—take your rights away or anything. There was something serious coming on. You’ve got to look at it that way. If something like this comes up again, you need to stop and think, “This is affecting people. It’s only going to be a temporary inconvenience if I have to do this.” Otherwise, it could end up being a life-long inconvenience for somebody. Yourself or somebody else. So, you just need to use common [01:27:00] sense. Think of other people. Hopefully—and I’m sure some—it seems like this—the flu pandemic in 1918, and then 100 years later we end up with this COVID pandemic. They just roll around. You know, there’s other little pandemics that came up in-between that time that haven’t got as serious as this. But there’s always going to be something. You just need to be aware and be careful. And just be careful and do what you need to do to stay safe during that time. Just remember, it’s only going to last as long as you do what’s right and try to limit its effect. And hopefully make it not last as long. (laughs) So, there are some sacrifices that you’ll have to make. But [01:28:00] we’ve all had to make sacrifices for the greater good. That’s just how—and Native people, we’ve always had to make sacrifices. We do it for other people, for the greater good. That would be my advice.
Just think of others before you do something. How will it affect them? If you want to look at just being selfish about that, how you affect—what you do that will affect others basically does affect you in the long-run. So, you know, when you put others first, that does benefit you. If you want to—if you’re just in it for benefitting yourself, when you benefit other people, it benefits you. You may not see it at the time, but as time goes by, you’ll realize your actions. [01:29:00] That’s my advice, yeah.
DELLINGER: All right, fantastic. So, in closing, is there anything else that you want to say or share about your experiences with the COVID-19 pandemic?
DIACON: Well, I’m just very grateful for everybody. From my employers for giving us that opportunity. I’m grateful that I was—I didn’t lose my job, I didn’t lose any pay directly like that. I did lose some of my art market venues, but I still was producing work and people were still interested in my work. I’m fortunate that none of my close family got it, that we were safe. My daughter—my one daughter did get it. She was one of the ones that unfortunately had to go to work and that’s where she got it. But she [01:30:00] pulled through. But you know, it’s just so much to be grateful for. That I was fortunate enough and that I’m very, very thankful for that, that I was in a position where I could have got it, but I took my precautions. I’m glad I listened. I thought about my wife, my children, and people. There’s just so much—it was a very emotional time. Even though it didn’t affect me, it did affect me, because I saw this happening to other people and that’s rough to watch it happen to somebody else. You feel for them. You feel these [01:31:00] families who have lost loved ones—because I’ve lost loved ones. I know what that’s like to lose someone that’s important to you. I know what it’s like to lose someone who might have been not only the love of your life, but it was a partner, someone who helped you take care of the family, or just—yeah. It was really an emotional time. I really don’t know how to word it real well, but I’m grateful that I made it through it. That my family made it through it. That my children and my wife made it through it. And we’re here.
DELLINGER: All right, very good. Mr. Diacon, mvto.
DIACON: Enkv.
DELLINGER: And I wish you continued health and well-being.
DIACON: Mvto.
END OF INTERVIEW
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March 17, 2022Original Date:
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