MELTING COLONIALISM | Whirling Log and Arrow

Chiricahua Apache silversmith Neil Zarama quit his Silicon Valley tech job during the pandemic and built a jewelry empire by transforming colonial-era silver into Native American art. His clients include Jason Momoa and Ralph Lauren, but his real mission is cultural resistance.

Neil Zarama never intended to be a silversmith. 

The self-described punk rocker and former Silicon Valley tech worker had a lucrative career, a house in San Francisco and a penchant for vintage motorcycles. One day, during a Zoom call at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, Zarama’s boss gave him a choice: return to the office or leave the company. 

Zarama quit on the spot. 

“I just went ‘I quit’ and I hung up on the meeting and seven years of a career,” Zarama said. 

Zarama (Chiricahua Apache) had enjoyed his time away from the office during lockdown. That, combined with a recent health scare, made him wary of returning. His wife looked at him like he was crazy when he quit and asked what he planned to do. He responded by saying he was going to make jewelry for a living. 

Up to that point, Zarama’s only silverwork experience was making a handful of accessories for his motorcycles. But the day after he quit his job, he called a close friend and tattoo artist and asked him to tattoo his hands.

“I'm out of this,” Zarama recalled thinking at the time. “I'm like, I don't want to go back.”

Five years later, working from the same modest studio where he hung up his tech career, Zarama has led his jewelry brand, Whirling Log and Arrow, to massive success. Zarama's clients include actors Jason Momoa (Native Hawaiian), Zahn McClarnon (Hunkpapa Lakota) and D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai (Oji-Cree). Momoa and McClarnon have worn his jewelry both onscreen and offscreen.

Zarama recently completed a collection of pieces for Ralph Lauren. The collection, which debuted at this year’s Men’s Fashion Week in Milan, Italy, will be available to the public in Dec. 2025 and Feb. 2026. 

Outside the Ralph Lauren collection, Zarama’s work sells for a few hundred dollars up to more than $7,000, according to his website.

“I never in my life would have imagined that doing jewelry would put me in a position where I actually could still pay for a mortgage, pay for my son to go to college, pay for our vacations,” Zarama said.

Zarama’s silverwork is heavy and bold, inscribed with Native designs and motifs and often inlaid with traditional materials like turquoise and coral. His signature is the whirling log, a Navajo symbol representing good luck, well-being and protection.

Zarama is self-taught, having learned much of his craft from YouTube and hours spent at his workbench experimenting with making rings, pendants and other pieces. His transition into entrepreneurship was self-funded. After quitting his job, Zarama used his savings and previous investments to keep himself afloat while his jewelry gained a following.

His clientele originated mostly through word-of-mouth, social media and Native markets. It didn’t take long before his art caught the attention of prominent Indigenous public figures like Momoa, best known for his acting work in Aquaman and Game of Thrones.

“I’ve been lucky all this all happened organically,” Zarama said. “Momoa has been huge for me as far as putting the word out there. He was one of the first people to hit me up and ask ‘Can you make this for me?’”

Actor D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai (left) and Jason Momoa wear Whirling Log and Arrow jewelry. Zarama's Native celebrity clients have helped spread word about his silverwork through social media and red carpet appearances. (Photos: Instagram)

The Motorcycle Connection

Zarama was born in a home for unwed mothers in the late 1960s to a first-generation German mother and a San Carlos Apache Chiricahua father. He was later adopted by a Columbian family and spent the bulk of his childhood living in Columbia before moving back to the Bay Area as a teenager. 

As a kid, Zarama was interested in skating, punk rock and metal music. He also found an early love for motorcycles. 

“I just loved motorcycles,” Zarama said. “The consistent thing in my life was always motorcycles.” 

Zarama grew up racing dirt bikes in Columbia and modifying them with his friends. While attending high school in California, Zarama built his first chopper. Choppers refer to a subset of motorcycles, typically vintage and stripped or “chopped” of amenities, with modified frames, tall handlebars, low-slung seats and little to no suspension.

He attended San Francisco State University where he studied psychology. From a young age, Zarama wanted to be a therapist and dedicated the early portion of his career to working as a case manager, helping homeless youth and doing gang prevention work. He also moonlighted as a producer, operating a trio of United Kingdom-based record labels focused on vinyl. 

His labels and presence in the music industry eventually led to a job at Epitonic, an early music-sharing platform from the dot-com boom of the 1990s. That sparked Zarama’s entry into the tech world and kicked off a decades-long career working around Silicon Valley. By the time Zarama quit his job to work on jewelry, he was a project lead working on multi-million-dollar projects.

Quitting his tech job not only allowed Zarama to plunge headlong into jewelry making, it also gave him more time to work on his motorcycles. Though jewelry comprises the majority of Zarama’s business, he has built a name for himself in the world of custom choppers, building bikes incorporating his silverwork and Indigenous symbols under the brand Arrow Choppers.  

“I think I might be the only high-end chopper builder in the U.S. that does strictly Native-style bikes,” Zarama said. 

For the past two years, Zarama has been one of 25 “invited builders” at the annual Born Free Show, one of the country’s largest and most prestigious chopper shows in the country. 

His 2024 entry – a 1946 Harley-Davidson knucklehead painted white with Navajo patterns, a seat made from an old Chimayo rug and 100 grams of handcrafted sterling silver – took home the awards for best paint and the Harley-Davidson Design Team Best Custom Motorcycle.

The bike, dubbed the “Wagon Burner” sparked personal interest from Harley Davidson’s CEO, Jochen Zeitz, who enjoyed Zarama’s fusion of Native American design and contemporary style so much that he offered to purchase the motorcycle for his personal collection. 

“Integrating his design elements and the Southwestern Native American style into a motorcycle and then connecting it to his jewelry, I think, is a great way to find a niche in the market, and he certainly has done that successfully,” Zeitz told Tribal Business News. 

Zarama declined Zeitz’s offer. 

Like most of the motorcycles Zarama maintains in his “quiver” he doesn’t plan to sell the Wagon Burner anytime soon. For him, building choppers is more a lifestyle and hobby than a business venture. 

“I don't necessarily build custom bikes for people,” Zarama said. “I build the bike, and then if somebody wants to buy it, the money's good and I want to keep playing, then I will sell it.”

Zarama plans to build a 1969 Harley-Davidson next. 

At first glance, jewelry and choppers may seem worlds apart. Jewelry with its delicate features and fine craftsmanship compared to the brashness of motorcycles with their roaring motors, crackling exhaust and squealing tires.  But Zarama says that the two complement each other. Not only does he incorporate his silverwork into his motorcycles and make parts like sterling silver gas caps, but the size and heft of his jewelry appeals to many in the chopper crowd. 

“A lot of the chopper dudes wear rings,” Zarama said. “It’s a mix of chopper culture with Native themes. They intertwine very symbiotically.” 

Zarama's sterling silver jewelry features Native designs and traditional materials like turquoise and coral. He crafts each piece by melting down old estate silver and colonial-era coins, transforming relics of American and British colonization into Native American art. His work sells from a few hundred dollars to more than $7,000, with pieces now included in a Ralph Lauren collection debuting in December 2025. (Photos: Courtesy Neil Zarama)

‘A Big Middle Finger to the Past’

Zarama spent the last decade exploring and reclaiming his own Indigenous heritage and studying the history of harm inflicted on Indigenous people. His jewelry serves as an expression of his own experience and the Native story, mixed with a healthy dose of punk rock rebellion. 

To craft his jewelry, Zarama purchases old estate silver and coins that he melts down and reshapes. Transforming those relics of American and British colonization into Native American art is a point of pride for Zarama, who views his work as a symbol of Native resistance and cultural rebirth. 

“In a way, it’s a big middle finger to the past, by building something from stolen land into something beautiful and new,” Zarama said. 

The same mentality has shaped his custom chopper work as well. After completing the Wagon Burner, he reached out to tattoo artist and friend Sergey Fedotov to design a shirt commemorating the bike. The scene shows an Apache man riding a motorcycle and sporting a rifle while a wagon burns and Native warriors fight cowboys in the background.

“I definitely tend to poke at things that might offend people,” Zarama said. “But you sometimes have to poke at the nest a little bit.” 

Even Zarama’s signature whirling log is not without controversy. At first glance, the symbol resembles the Nazi swastika, but the whirling log far predates both the Nazi Party and the rise of fascism. Zarama says he takes great care to explain the difference to people, particularly as the Nazi swastika has been displayed more frequently in the U.S. and abroad in recent years. 

“I don't want [the whirling log] to be confused with [the swastika], but I'm also not going to stop doing what I'm doing because it’s something that’s ours.” Zarama said. “It was taken. It was misused. Some folks burn crosses, but I don’t see anybody taking away Christian crosses or churches.”

With his Ralph Lauren collection set to release in the coming months and increasing demand for his sterling silver chopper parts from international markets, Zarama is cautious about expanding his one-man shop. Instead, he plans to keep his operation small, focusing on the quality, intricacy and size of his pieces instead of pushing more volume.  

While the stresses of self-employment persist and he finds himself worrying about his financial safety net as he ages, one thing is for certain – Zarama is never heading back to the office again.