Digital Scout


	Turtle Heart wears a buffalo hide and a mask he carved from cedar; he calls the mask "Old Man in Charge of Dreams." (Photograph by Pedro Meyer)

n a small town in California's remote Mojave Desert, Turtle Heart, a 45-year-old Ojibway artist, has become a modern-day scout. Traveling the info superhighway via his American Indian Computer Art Project website, Turtle Heart breathes electronic life into ancient art forms. "Tribal people have a horrible time being heard in the modern world," he says. "I feel that the Internet is the best opportunity we've had in 500 years to speak with each other and with the world."

To spread the word, Turtle Heart travels nationwide, meeting with tribal elders and introducing them to online technology. "It was great fun to sit in the shadow of Dawn Mountain in Taos, New Mexico, and show some elders how the World Wide Web works and what you can find there," he says.


	Perched on a cliff beside ancient petroglyphs at the China Lake Naval Air Warfare Center in California's Mojave Desert, Turtle Heart translates ancient art for the digital future. (Photograph by Pedro Meyer)


	"When a heart is open, it sometimes feels safest clothed in a disguise," says Ojibway artist Turtle Heart, founder of the American Indian Computer Art Project website. (Photograph by Pedro Meyer)

Besides creating his own digital art and archiving the creations of other Native Americans, Turtle Heart also paints and makes stone carvings. He barters his work for the latest technology: a painting and three carvings in exchange for a Macintosh PowerBook computer and a scanner, for example, or pottery for Adobe software.

Beyond the give-and-take of bartering, Turtle Heart sees a strong link between his electronic creations and the art of his ancestors. "I see my computer art as a continuation of the ancient petroglyphs," he says. "It really is my mark on the walls of the digital cave."

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