Two Orcas

Oh man, am I nervous about posting these two.
I had about... well, a good 1-2 weeks of deliberation, and admittedly put it off until tonight.

Why the deliberation this time?
Many things.
Predominantly, many would notice that since my return from out West- and some time before hand- I didn't post any of this art. Due to some occurrences out west, and a bad public humiliation at the hand of some people, I felt uncomfortable doing this kind of art. I just decided to lay off it. I have other things that could be worked on, and other poeple have been hounding me down to do stuff for them, so I'd just leave it at that.

With my return to the East, again I was introduced to being part of the NCC (Native Community Center).
My MM moved on to work at CAMH, and so we received a new elder/MW.
Feeling somewhat disheveled and upset about many personal things at the time, I didn't introduce myself to her. But she smelled me coming from a mile away- and one morning when waiting for a shift at the store, she approached me and asked if I wanted to smudge (she does the smudging ceremony in the mornings).
I really was touched- one of the previous MM knew quite well that I wasn't native, so never even asked when he would pass by and ask any people standing around me if they would like to smudge.
She smiled and told me to come see her later.

Well, we got to talking [later on] and obviously I didn't want to hide form her what was bothering me so dearly. I spoke to her- and trust me was it EASY to do that- and she confessed that she was a "Westerner" as well. And that she knew how "standoffish" they could get out there, and that she wasn't surprised. After all, my good friend and co-worker in the store who is 100% NWP Coast Native was labeled and degraded by the same communtiy people.
To quote her:
"They are angry out there. Angry with what? Mostly themselves. But the first thing someone does when they are angry and don't want to blame themselves is blame others. Lucky for them, there are lots of other things they can blame out there."
I told her I didn't know what to do about my art. I told her I didn't care to stop and just drop it. But I'm carrying a baggage here that needs to be put to rest. She asked to see my art- and after a sample viewing (thank god we had a computer with internet access handy), she simply looked at me and asked "Do you take requests?" Of course I did, and told her so. She said "My request is, you don't stop drawing these until I tell you. And before you show anyone, show me first. I'll tell you what you can and cannot show."
I laughed and asked her if she didn't think that was a little well, "funny"- she couldn't speak on behalf of EVERY NWP native and tell me if I had permission to do this, so might as well not. She said "And maybe might as well do? If I can't speak on behalf of everyone, why do you think that that fellow [the one in the scenario out west] has the authority to speak on behalf of everyone out there and tell you what he did? It's easy to think that 'no' is stronger than 'yes'."
And then I got what she meant.
"No" IS much more simple.

Since that talk, I took 2 commissions from people with ties to the communtiy. Both asked for Orca tattoos. I showed my Elder/MW both of them. She thinks that it's a sign for me and I should heed my "Summer depression" while taking into account the Orcas gift.

And as you can tell, two very distinct styles. The left more along the lines of (but not authentic) Haida, the left more Tsimshian (and there inside the Orca, the white wolf that became the sea wolf as per legend).

And that's about it. I'm still somewhat put off by the whole ordeal, but I'll work that out on my own.
Right now, I just want to get the feeling of inevitable failure OUT of my head.