Issues Background
Vol. 14 No. 2
Summer 2013
Summer 2013 Cover

On the Cover

 

The strength of the people comes from its women. This saying, so appropriate to this issue, shines through this lovely composition Maternal Journey by Rhonda Holy Bear (Cheyenne River Lakota), part of the new exhibit Grand Procession in the Sealaska Gallery, Second Level, at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C., through Jan. 5, 2014. This exhibit celebrates Native identity through 23 colorful and meticulously detailed objects that are much more than dolls. Traditionally made by female relatives using buffalo hair, hide, porcupine quills and shells, figures like these have long served as both toys and teaching tools for American Indian communities. Outfitted in intricate regalia, these dolls, representing Plains and Plateau tribes, are on loan from the Charles and Valerie Diker Collection.

Rhonda Holy Bear (Cheyenne River Lakota), Maternal Journey (detail), 2010. Wood, hide, cloth, paint, glass beads, hair, shell, metal.

 

Articles

Driven by the memory of starving Blackfeet ancestors, Elouise Cobell set out to win restitution for Federal mismanagement of Indian trust accounts. Her campaign lasted years longer than anyone would have thought, but it ultimately won her posthumous success.
Trade routes, religious processions and social visits bound together the ancient world of Central America, home to vibrant civilizations of millennia past that are now receiving renewed attention from scholars and the people of the region.
Diplomatic missions to Washington, D.C., were hazardous duty for Native delegates. More than one met his end under mysterious circumstances.
When the most famous of all Native women chose a Christian name, she harked back to a Biblical figure fraught with ironic meaning for the Jamestown settlers and the project of inter-marriage. What were she and her spiritual mentors thinking?