In Sioux culture, an accomplished traditional quiltmaker is measured not only by a mastery of needlework techniques, of the creative use of the star motif, and of traditional aesthetic principles, but also by her dedication to the community in the practice of her art. Over her lifetime, Menard produced scores of quilts for traditional family and community purposes.
Kaurna woman who made South Australian legal history
A member of the Bitter Water Clan, she was raised in a community of traditional Navajo artists and religious practitioners. In the 1970s, encouraged by a burgeoning Native American art market and local traders, Black focused her creative work on basketweaving and introduced several innovations that proved critical to the tradition’s survival.
Passamaquoddy basketmaker
Mary Olympic’s life at Katmai represents a subsistence lifestyle in Alaska that has endured for thousands of years and continues today. Her recollections illuminate the practice of reindeer herding from a time when very few other first-hand accounts exist.
The matriarch of four generations of Passamaquoddy basketweavers
First Nations nun who sang for a queen
Dakotah Sioux/Hidatsa storyteller, historian and educator
World-renowned Aboriginal Australian opera singer, composer, playwright and creator of Australia’s first Aboriginal opera.
As a child, she learned the art of making pottery from her mother, who was herself an heir to the pottery tradition that had been passed on from one generation to the next for centuries by the speakers of the Tewa language in the Rio Grande Valley of New Mexico.