Bead Cultures: A Comparison of Dakota and Navajo Histories through Beads
Why compare Dakota and Navajo beadworking?
As a Navajo beadworker, I often contemplate my relationship to beads. I used to focus most of my energy on painting but fell out of my painting groove as life became more complicated. I had also been practicing Navajo weaving but eventually found myself with a new constant companion, sciatica, who won’t let me weave anymore. Eventually, I turned to beads and the sciatica, at least so far, seems to be tolerating this activity satisfactorily. The more I bead, the more I ponder the tradition of Navajo beadworking and how it has evolved over time. I wonder how it differs from other tribes and how is it similar. While questioning these things, I ran across an article written by Leah Bowe and published by the Minnesota Historical Society called “Evolution of Dakota Beadwork,” which I found to be especially well-written and enlightening. I realized that to understand Navajo beadworking, its helpful to compare it to another North American tribe. Being that I am a Navajo woman living in Dakota territory, I found this comparison appropriate. For this blog, I primarily draw on Leah Bowe’s article as well as the only book that I know of written on the subject of Navajo beadwork called Navajo Beadwork: Architectures of Light written by Ellen K. Moore and published by the University of Arizona Press.
by Holly Young (Dakota)
Inkjet print on acid-free card stock. Digital reproduction, floral appliqué beadwork on blue velvet. Featured on the cover of the book, A Council of Dolls by Mona Susan Power, 2023 HarperCollins. There are two versions of this print. One version is a photo of the beadwork on velvet only. The other version is embellished with a white outline, which has been digitally applied.
Paper size: 8-1/2” x 11”
Framing recommendation: 8-1/2” x 11” frame size without a mat.
Enclosed in a protective sleeve. Reinforced with acid-free backing board. Ships flat.
Read our blog article, “Bead Cultures: A Comparison of Dakota and Navajo Histories Through Beads”
The Dakota Adopt Glass Beads
European trade introduced glass beads to the Americas somewhere around 1500. Prior to 1500 Native peoples made beads with shells, stones, bones and teeth. Shell and stone beads were highly valued and traded transcontinentally as a form of currency. In addition to shell, stone and bone beads, the Dakota often used paint and quills to decorate their clothing, moccasins or pouches. By the 1830s, glass beads largely replaced quillwork. It seems like it took some time for the Dakota to become accustomed to working with this new material because during this period, they experimented with new techniques while continuing with older Dakota designs. Then in the 1850s there was a noticeable shift in their designs, which began to feature more contrasting stripes, bilateral symmetry, and freestanding elements such as flowers, leaves, and stars against a bead-free background.
The Impact of Colonization and War on Dakota Design
Day and Night Earrings by Carolyn L. Anderson
In 1862, the increasing encroachment of European settlers on Dakota territory reached its breaking point resulting in the Dakota War. Many people died and the Dakota were nearly eradicated from the State of Minnesota. The survivors were sent to prison camps or were expelled from the State and relocated to reservations in Nebraska, North and South Dakota, closer to their Lakota kin. Although a very small population of Dakota people were allowed to stay in their homelands. Not surprisingly, almost no artwork from the decade following the Dakota War survived, but when the practice was revived in the 1870s, Dakota beadwork took on Lakota characteristics. Leah Bowe says “without abandoning the delicate, bilaterally symmetrical, standalone pastel florals of pre-war Dakota work, Dakota women began to incorporate the geometry, bold colors, and repeated shapes of Lakota objects. They also beaded objects more heavily, in the style of Lakota pieces.”
Stringing Beads and Navajo Religion
Like the Dakota, the Navajo also have an ancient history of using shell, stone and bone beads. It is also worth noting that the Navajo have long used juniper berries as beads, often referred to as ghost beads, stringing them together to create necklaces and bracelets, which are said to offer protection to the wearer. Turquoise, jet and abalone shell are especially important as sacred materials in Navajo religious beliefs and ceremonies. Beads made from these materials are mentioned in chants and they are used in ceremonies such as in Kinaalda or the puberty ceremony for young women. In the Blessingway ceremony, a medicine man presents the patient with a medicine bag containing corn pollen and beads. Later, the patient will string these beads to wear on their body, either in the hair, as a necklace, or around the waist. A person’s strung beads have often been acquired over time and represent an accumulation of experiences.
The Navajo Aesthetic
Historically, the Navajo aesthetic differed from the Dakota and many other tribes who lavishly decorated their clothing, moccasins and belongings using dyed quills, shell beads, and paint. Therefore, glass seed beads are not considered as a replacement for quillworking. What evidence that does exist, suggests that the Navajo began to use glass seed beads in the early 1700s. Initially glass beads were strung as necklaces but by the mid 1800s, glass beads were used to embellish the edges of pouches, quivers, and around the collars or along the hems of shirts.
My grandmother and 8 of her 10 children. My mother is pictured standing, second from the left.
Traditions Converge
As the reservation system became more firmly established, by 1890, the traditional Native economy had collapsed. Increasingly, beadwork and other historically traditional Native American crafts were less made for use within the tribes or for trade with neighboring tribes, and more for the purpose of selling to Euro-American tourists. This became a vital strategy for Native American communities to survive since opportunities for earning a living on the reservations were sparse.
In 1956, the same year that my mother was born, the U.S. Government instituted a relocation program, which moved Native Americans to cities like Minneapolis, Chicago, and Los Angeles, a historical event, which had a significant impact on me personally. Let me explain: shortly after my mom was born, my grandmother, newly divorced and desperate to find work, enrolled in the relocation program. Bravely, my grandmother loaded up her 5 children from her first marriage, including my newborn mother, and moved them to a town just outside of L.A. called Riverside. It is there where she met her second husband, an Ojibwe man from Red lake, Minnesota who happened to be stationed nearby in the Air Force. Shortly thereafter, my grandmother moved again to Minneapolis, Minnesota, where her new husband’s family members were living, where my mom decided to make her home, and where I am currently living.
Interestingly, Leah Bowe says that the relocation program had the “unintended effect of strengthening Native identity—and art traditions—through pan-Indian unity.” I think this idea of pan-Indian unity is key to understanding the evolution of Navajo beadwork. Wikipedia explains Pan-Indianism or Pan-Amerindianism as a philosophical and political approach promoting unity and, to some extent, cultural homogenization, among different Indigenous groups in the Americas regardless of tribal distinctions and cultural differences. There are many examples of Pan-Amerindianism. Powwows would be an example of Pan-Indianism as well as the American Indian Movement of the 1960s and 1970s.
It is difficult if not impossible to pinpoint when Navajo people started to branch out into other bead working techniques aside from bead stringing and edging as there were many avenues through which one could learn, but the process took place over time probably starting in the early 1900s. Some have mentioned that they learned loom beading in boarding school. Neighboring tribes like the Ute, who were known to intermarry with the Navajo, was another influence, and a Pan-Indian religious movement called the Native American Church (also known as peyotism or the peyote religion) had a major influence on Navajo culture and beadworking traditions. There are different versions of this religion, which was founded in the late 1800s in Oklahoma, but very often it blends Christianity and Native American beliefs. As the church became established in the Southern Plains and rapidly spread to other tribes north and south, the influence of the church resulted in many Navajo tribal members adopting the practice of bead weaving techniques like the peyote stitch or gourd stitch, which is used for decorating the handles of feather fans, rattles and other objects that are used in church ceremonies.
In 1979 there was a sudden spike in silver prices and about the same time, the wholesale cost of quality turquoise increased from pennies to dollars per carat. By then beads had become more available at trading posts and switching from selling silverwork to beadwork became an adaptive strategy for economical survival. In the 1980s and 90s, beadworking among the Navajo has become a widespread practice for all people, not just women. To this day, beadwork is made for ceremonial purposes, for powwow regalia, for personal use, and for sale on the Native art market.
by Holly Young (Dakota)
Inkjet print on acid-free photo paper. Digitally reproduced image of floral appliqué beadwork on leather featured on the cover of the book, Seed Keeper by Diane Wilson, 2021 Milkweed Editions.
Paper size: 11” x 14”
Enclosed in a protective sleeve. Reinforced with acid-free backing board.
Navajo Cornstalk Earrings by Carolyn L. Anderson
There are certainly design trends, which make Navajo beadwork distinct from the beadwork of other tribes, but modern Indigenous artists as a whole are much less limited and increasingly daring, which makes 21st century Native American beadwork that much more exciting. I find it inspiring that at the same time we have Indigenous artists who are breaking the mold, there are just as many artists like Holly Young, a Standing Rock Dakota beadworker, who derives her designs by studying the beadwork from the period just before the Dakota War, from 1850 to 1862. By reviving old designs and techniques, modern artists like Holly are reclaiming their culture and passing their knowledge along to future generations.
Where does my beadwork fit into the history of Native American beadwork?
I know that my grandmother was a beadworker, and she taught beadworking to grade school children in Lawrence, Kansas for a time while she was raising my cousins. My grandmother probably inspired me to take up the practice, but she did not teach me to bead. I am a self-taught beadworker, for the most part, though I did learn the two-needle bead appliqué technique from Brittany Turner, the owner of Cheyanne Symone, an Indigenous woman-owned beadworking company who employs Native American beadworkers such as myself. As a painter, as a graduate of the University of Minnesota’s art program, as a Navajo, and as a Minnesotan, there are multiple influences on the way that I conceive of designs. My beadwork is a reflection of a complex interplay of my life experiences and my Navajo identity, which makes the beadwork that I produce uniquely mine.
Written by Carolyn L. Anderson
Carolyn is an enrolled member of the Navajo Nation, an artist, and the owner of Old Cedar Native Arts
If you enjoyed this article and/or found it thought-provoking, I’d love to have your feedback! Please comment below.
Sources:
1. Bowe, Leah. "Evolution of Dakota Beadwork." MNopedia, Minnesota Historical Society, October 9, 2023. http://www.mnopedia.org/evolution-dakota-beadwork (accessed September 23, 2024).
2. Moore, Ellen K. “Navajo Beadwork: Architectures of Light.” University of Arizona Press, October, 2003.
3. “Pan-Indianism.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, August 29, 2024. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan-Indianism (accessed September 23, 2024).
