Storied Beads: the Art of Teri Greeves
by Richard Pearce, author of Women and Ledger Art: Four Contemporary Women Artists, published by the University of Arizona Press.
SHE LOVED HER PEOPLE
Raw silk, canvas, wood, glass beads, wood beads, mother of pearl.
80 x 36 x 2 inches.
She was 16 years old and living with her family. It was winter and they were camped on the Washita River. Her family was being forced onto lands the white man said they could live on. Her chief said he didn’t want any more bloodshed, and they were going to be safer now that they were moving. So they camped with some other tribes in a warm spot by the river, waiting out the cold Southern Plains winter.
And then Custer and his American soldiers came without their knowing why. He came with the hand of their angry god, killing everyone. She witnessed Custer come through the camp and kill her parents, her siblings, her cousins, her aunts and uncles, her grandparents…perhaps even that handsome boy she had her eye on. She witnessed that white man, Custer, slip his fancy sword into the pregnant belly of a dead Cheyenne woman. It was My Lai only 101 years earlier, and instead of being in the rice paddies of Viet Nam, it was on a frozen river bend in what later became Oklahoma.
She and her brother were of the few who survived. She knew they were joining forces with other tribes and were going to meet that same white man and his soldiers up north. And she wanted to go and fight. Her brother said no; she was girl and a young one at that. But she slipped into their war party anyway and made it all the way up to Little Big Horn. And she fought with the men who killed Custer and his soldiers.
When the battle was over, she walked through the smoking field and found his body. That man who had cut open one of her relative’s bellies and had so sadistically killed an unborn baby. She saw his sword and took it from him. And she cut him open from navel to neck.
Today, when Southern Plains Indian women get dressed in their finest traditional clothing, they wear a long German silver “drop” or “trailer” off of their belts. I have one, my sister has one, my mother has one, my aunts and cousins have one. I have worn this trailer my whole life and someday I hope to have a granddaughter who will wear one as well.
We wear this out of respect and in honor for what that young Cheyenne woman did. She did it because she loved her people.
This story was passed on to me through my mother. She heard it from an elderly Cheyenne woman who had heard the story from her grandfather. This is how our histories are passed on to us: through the vibrations of sound spoken from one individual to another. It is also the basis of much conflict between how we hear history and how history is written and read by non-Natives.
Sunboy's Women
Raw silk, canvas, wood, glass beads, wood beads, Swarovki crystals.*
72 x 72 x 2 inches.
*Swarovski is a well known Austrian crystal company that makes some of the finest crystal beads, components, and objects. They've been around for generations and are considered the "best" of crystal beads available on the market today--Teri Greeves.
Sunboy’s mother was an earth woman and his father was the Sun. His father was a jealous man and didn’t want his wife to return to her people. She lived alone with him and her son in the sky world. She was lonely and missed her family.
When she finally plotted her escape through the clouds and back to earth, she failed. The rope she tied around herself and her child was too short, and they were left dangling from the sky only to be discovered by her husband upon his return. He was very angry and enraged; he threw a rawhide wheel at her and killed her. She fell to the earth, dead. Her baby was alive but now an orphan; his mother was dead and his father had abandoned him.
Sunboy was left in this new world to nurse on his dead mother’s breast.
Eventually he found Spider Woman’s camp next to a river. She was an old lady and she knew who he was, the son of the Sun and an earth woman. Half from this world and half from that world. Eventually he trusted her, and she became his Taah, his grandma. She raised him like only a grandma can. She loved him like only a grandma can. He became strong and powerful and eventually became the Sun Boys, two men, two halves of the same self.
The Sun Boys’ story is as old as the beginning of our time, yet it is a story I have heard many times among my own family and friends. How many people do I know who were raised by their grandmas? How many people do I know whose father could not be a good father? Whose mother was not able to be there for them? Who were abandoned, orphaned and raised by the elders?
The Sun Boys are us.
WA-HO: THE FIRST SONG AFTER THE FLOOD
Raw silk, canvas, wood, glass beads, wood beads, brass beads.
Khaw. Mother. Me.
My babies changed everything for me. Bringing them into this world is a scary thing. With my first son, there were complications, and I know that if I had given birth in my grandma’s day, neither I or my sons would be here.
And so, like all mothers, I look to those who came before me for guidance. My mother was adamant that I sing a certain lullaby to my boys when they were infants. It was the lullaby sung to her by her mother and sung to my grandmother by her mother and so on. It is the first song that was sung after the flood.* It has traveled in the breath of Kiowa women through time, since our beginning to me, and I have sung it to my boys: these boys that gratefully, thankfully, do not know what it is to be pursued, to be starving, to live under constant threat of death in all its forms.
A-ho to all the mothers that came before me. My sacrifices are pitiful compared to yours. A-ho.
Wa-ho Wa-ho Oh oh oh Wa-ho
Wa-ho Oh oh oh Ah khaw-khaw gyah bone daw ahle ah tha maw
Wa-ho Wa-ho
Oh oh oh Wa-ho Wa-ho Oh oh oh
Wa-ho Wa-ho Oh oh oh
Wa-ho Wa-ho Oh oh oh
Your mother is decaying and yet you still nurse from her.
Wa-ho Wa-ho Oh oh oh Wa-ho
Wa-ho Oh oh oh
*The flood I reference in my pieces comes from the Kiowa "mythology" that make up our spiritual world and teachings. I find it striking that the story of the flood is referenced around the world in many peoples' "mythology" and because much of my audience understand the flood in reference to the Old Testament of the Bible. I find it's a place of common ground where the idea links us as human beings and is ultimately greater than any of the individual religions. They say that the first lullaby, the Wa-ho song, was the first song to be sung after the great and cleansing flood: this song of precious new life born out of tragedy and death"--Teri Greeves.
NDN Girrl*
Swarovski Crystals and glass beads.
l x 38 x 60 inches
*NDN is the acronym for Indian.
Grrl represents the third wave of feminist thinking, which recognizes that women must deal with issues of color, class, and culture that were not included in the previous generation's understanding of what women's rights are or should be.
Thunderbird Memories
Czechoslovakian cut glass beads, stamped sterling silver, brain tanned deer hide.
Boy with Chair
Czechoslovakian cut glass beads, sterling stamped silver, bugle beads, raw silk.
"In Thunderbird Memories and Boy and a Chair I have used props from the modern world to show this two-worldliness that generations of Native people have lived in. In Thunderbird Memories a car, considered vintage today, is the modern day horse for my sunglass-wearing subject. And, finally, my young Cheyenne boy leans as comfortably on a chair as he is comfortable in his own Cheyenne regalia. Using bold black beaded lines and a canvas of red two-tone silk, I’ve tried to make my Native kid 'pop' into the here and now."
War Mother
Raw silk, canvas, wood, glass beads, wood beads (on staff and hair tie), pressed glass hair pipes,
and semiprecious stone beads, 80 x 36 x 2 inches.
We have been sending our young men to battle for generations. Not so long ago, these men were fighting the US cavalry in Texas and Oklahoma territory. Today our young men are a part of the US cavalry in Iraq and Afghanistan. And their grandpas were on the Rhine River in Germany and in the POW camps of Manpo, North Korea and in Binh Long Province in Viet Nam.
And what were their mothers, wives, sisters, aunts and cousins doing for them while they were so far from home? What are they still doing for those Kiowa men and women serving in the deserts of the Middle East? Exactly what they’ve been doing for all those generations before: praying and dancing for their safe return not only in the flesh but in spirit as well.
Wearing a Battle Dress that is unique to Kiowa War Mothers, holding a lance decorated with the colors of Iraq War service, remembering a grandfather who served in Viet Nam in the colors of her drop, painting her leggings with hatch marks indicating action seen, my War Mother prays in a timeless Victory Dance for her man’s safe return to our people.
War Mother is wearing a pictograpic dress. For more on pictographic dresses, see Pictographic Dresses.
Cheyenne Mona Lisa
Czechoslovakian cut glass beads, glass beads, brain tanned deer.
"Many people have commented to me about the blank faces I bead. I’ve always liked the idea of a blank face as it allows the viewer to read into the piece whatever feelings they want to see. Probably one of the most famous pieces of art to have such a mysterious face like this is the Mona Lisa. This not-so-beautiful woman has the knowing look that generations of viewers have tried to understand. It seemed quite appropriate that I pair one of the most famous women on the planet, Mona Lisa, with my version of the knowing and mystery of a Cheyenne woman, as replete in her wool and shell finery as the Mona Lisa is in her velvet and handmade lace."
For Greeves's stories beaded in a different medium see: Beaded stories around objects.
Teri Greeves is a Kiowa Indian but was raised on the Shoshone and Northern Arapaho Wind River Reservation in Wyoming. As a little girl Teri would sit in her mother’s store and enjoy all of the intricately beaded objects that were on sale. At eight years old she began to bead. The women in her family and the other bead workers on the reservation taught her the traditional stitches and always offered suggestions for improving her skills. Beadwork in Native culture is a custom that celebrates heritage with exceptional beauty. Teri has expanded this art form to include the Native experiences of today with those of the past, staying true to traditional roots while also incorporating her modern perspective.
ELK TOOTH d'ESTREES
Czechoslovakian cut glass beads, stamped sterling silver, brain tanned deer hide.
"Gabrielle d’ Estrees was the mistress of King Henry IV of France. She had a sister, or just perhaps a friend who was like a sister, who traveled through life with her. Towards the end of her days the King gave her his coronation ring and the famous painting of her and her sister in the bathtub, with a servant lady in the background doing chores. Elk Tooth d’Estrees is my indigenized interpretation of this painting. And of course, the Gabrielle of my piece is holding Indian "gold” an elk tooth."