Indigenous Archives - Page 2 of 42

Norma Jean Serena

Serena, a Native American woman, filed a civil lawsuit in 1974 seeking damages for violations of her constitutional rights to procreate and bear children

Minnie Spotted Wolf

One of the first Native American women to enlist in the U.S. military, who joined the United States Marine Corps Women’s Reserve.

Gladys Kukana Grace

Gladys Kukana Grace learned the art of weaving lauhala (lau = leaf, hala = pandanus tree) from her maternal grandmother, Kukana, through a longstanding oral tradition.

Grace Henderson Nez lived her entire life in a hogan at the base of Ganado Mesa on the Navajo Reservation in Arizona. For more than seven decades, she raised and sheared sheep, carded and dyed the wool, and wove intricate and distinctive Navajo rugs.

Georgia Harris

Over the course of her life, Harris worked to preserve the Catawba pottery tradition that originated centuries ago.

Yvonne Walker Keshick

A basket maker and porcupine quillworker, Yvonne Walker Keshick creates birchbark masterpieces realistically decorated with quills that depict natural images as well as cultural symbols of the Odawa tribe. Also a devoted teacher, she has developed resources and provided instruction to ensure this art form is passed down to others as it was to her.

Gayle Hazelwood

Gayle Hazelwood began her long career with the National Park Service at Cuyahoga Valley in 1983 and was among its first interpretative rangers. Gayle helped pioneer the park’s first Junior Ranger programs, introducing urban children to outdoor recreational skills, laying the foundation for today’s community engagement programs.

Genoa Keawe

Renowned Hawaiian music icon

Georgeann Robinson

Robinson and her two sisters, Genevieve Tomey and Louise Red Corn, began to produce the old design of Osage ribbonwork, a form of needlework that they had learned from tribal elders. Soon they were researching additional designs, digging into neighbors’ trunks, and traveling to distant museums. In time, their trademark, “Ribbonwork a Specialty,” attracted customers nationwide.

Esther Littlefield

Through the years, Littlefield applied the skills she learned as a child to make traditional Native costumes and other regalia. She adapted new materials and designs while maintaining the traditional Native art style. In making button robes, for example, she used wool blankets, felt beads, and buttons, sewn onto the blanket in a detailed design.