Hunter's Shirt, Donson Dlokiw

The ability to survive in a dangerous environment is what distinguishes hunters among the Mande-speaking peoples. Their shirts bespoke their ability not only to hunt in the earthly realm of the wilderness but also to transform organic matter into extraordinary materials with which to master the supernatural realm. Made of handwoven cloth stained brown with an herbal solution, the hunter's shirt is a surface upon which objects from the wild - canine teeth, raptor claws, antelope horns, and strips of leather - are sewn and transformed into objects that ally the hunter's powers with the strength, cunning, and quickness of dangerous animals who might be his adversaries. So, too, numerous small tooled leather amulets, which hold Koranic verses, were added to the shirt to protect him. Only the wearer knew the meaning of each of the shirt's elements, for they "contain" pieces of the secret personal knowledge he acquired. As the hunter matured and his power (nyama) grew, the components of his shirt augmented to make it more visually intricate and symbolically dynamic, to the point where its appearance approached the Mande concept of dibi, meaning obscurity, ambiguity, and potentially devastating strength.