Look closely at this beaded tipi. How would you describe the people represented on this object? What types of activities do they engage in?
This beaded, almost 4 foot tall tipi was made by Kiowa artist, Teri Greeves. The opening of the tipi faces east. As we look at it, we are greeted by images of Kiowa life. The images are divided into two registers. The first register is closer to the ground and focuses on earthly aspects of life, while the upper register focuses on the heavenly.
Let’s start with the lower register. On either side of the entrance, are a mother and father. The mother stands on the left side of the entrance. She wears a blue dress and red embroidered shawl, the fringe of which extends to just below her knees. She cradles in her arms a small baby, wrapped in blankets. On the other side of the door is a man in T-shirt and jeans, carrying a toddler. Moving clockwise around the outside of the tipi, we encounter various scenes of women. A woman with grey hair plays with a small child; a woman in dance clothing leads a young girl in shorts by the hand; an older woman in a beaded shawl, high heels, and an umbrella walks into the distance. Next, at the back of the tipi, is a drum circle where men sing, their song amplified or recorded by the microphone that hangs above. To their left is a man dancing. Further on, a man in Kiowa regalia, identified by the artist as a Vietnam vet, shakes the hand of a new army recruit. Beyond them, an older grey-haired man and young boy stand.
The tier above also continues Kiowa life, but through ancestral and spiritual figures. Starting again on the east side, a crescent new moon and the morning star flank the entranceway. To the left of the moon is Bear Rock, also called Devil’s Tower, and several dots that represent the Seven Kiowa Star Girls, known also as the Pleiades constellation. At the back, above the drum circle, is Spiderwoman and Stony Road, her husband. Above them, a setting sun dips below the horizon. Between Stony Road and the soldiers is a herd of buffalo; the medicine of buffalo is often called upon and is particularly important for soldiers. Between the buffalo and the morning star is the Big Dipper.
Throughout, the figures - both ancestral and contemporary - wear a mixture of what may be read visually as “traditional” and “modern” clothes. Greeves also intentionally uses traditional techniques and materials (brain-tanned hide, beads), even as she departs from typically geometric tipi decoration in favor of these more narrative, figural scenes. In doing so, Greeves intentionally interrogates what it means to be “traditional” and what it means to be “modern.” Yet, as Greeves herself has noted, materials once considered new have since become traditional; glass beads, for instance, were introduced by European settlers, but are now considered mainstays of Kiowa art. In mainstream media, Indigenous peoples are often presented as frozen in time or as no longer in existence. Greeves’ tipi corrects both of these notions. The blending of Kiowa life—historical and contemporary, and Kiowa history into a seamless continuum. It asserts Kiowa ways as ever present, ever developing, and very much thriving. In Greeves’ own words: “Their tribe, or tribes of their fathers and mothers, grandfathers and grandmothers; the location of their home, urban or rural; their spiritual beliefs, Native and/or Christian—these things are still visible if you look closely. Nothing has changed, everything has changed.” How might these ideas relate to the work’s title, Twenty-first Century Traditional: Beaded Tipi?
This beaded tipi, commissioned by the Brooklyn Museum, is currently on display in Climate in Crisis: Environmental Change in the Indigenous Americas, where it highlights a dialogue around Indigenous resistance to environmental destruction. Tipis are a type of dwelling common to many Indigenous peoples of the Great Plains, but they also demarcate the land on which they stand as sacred. As part of the protests over the North Dakota Access Pipeline at Standing Rock, the Lakota and their allies, including the Kiowa, erected tip is on the land they sought to protect—demarcating the land itself as sacred.
According to Teri Greeves, “My tipi is about a Kiowa way of life, passed down through the generations. The tipi represents the home and the heart of family, community, and tribal nation. In staking down a tipi, a way of life is staked down and thus sacred space is created and held. This is what the Water Protectors are doing by staking their tipis down - they are creating and holding sacred in a place that is once again under threat by the United States government. For Plains people, both northerners like the Standing Rock and southerners like the Kiowa, the tipi is the center of life and its presence declares that Natives hold that place.”
Think about an identity you hold that ties you to a larger community. How is that identity expressed? How does it change over time? What responsibilities come with being a part of that community? Share your thoughts in the comments below and be sure to check out Climate in Crisis at the Museum.
Posted by Christina Marinelli
Teri Greeves (Kiowa, born 1970). 21st Century Traditional: Beaded Tipi, 2010. Brain tanned deer hide, charlotte cut glass beads, seed beads, bugle beads, glass beads, sterling silver beads, pearls, shell, raw diamonds, hand stamped sterling silver, hand stamped copper, cotton cloth, nylon “sinew” rope, pine, poplar, bubinga, includes base. Brooklyn Museum, Florence B. and Carl L. Selden Fund, 2008.28. Creative Commons-BY
