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art, creativity and tradition
The yarn and the dolls
The Native American connection to yarn started when settlers would give the indigenous people surplus blankets, calico cloth, and other textiles. They would pull the blankets apart to use the yarn to make finger woven straps and belts, clothing, and dolls. Those dolls were fashioned in the same way the corn husk and cattail dolls were made.
Yarn was later incorporated into modern grass dancer regalia, and woven blanket designs.
My mother made dolls for me when I was a small child. Then she showed me how to make them as I got older, and we began making them them together.
I make them now to honor her, and keep a very old tradition alive, and honor her memory.
About The Designs and Materials
Eastern Woodland Native American regalia commonly featured natural materials such as animal hides, feathers, porcupine quills, and plant fibers for textiles and basketry, decorated with shells, stones, and wood. After European contact, materials like European cloth and glass beads were incorporated, but traditional styles and the use of local materials like copper and wood remained important.
About Wampum
Wampum or Wampumpeg, is a traditional shell bead of the Eastern Woodland tribes of Native Americans. These white and purple shell beads made from the quahog or Western North Atlantic hard-shelled clam. In New York, wampum beads have been discovered dating before 1510.[1] Before European contact, strings of wampum were used for storytelling, ceremonial gifts, and recording important treaties and historical events, and also as a means of exchange or currency. Wampum is a very special shell with a long history of value and meaning in our cultural history.
About Feathers
Specific meanings vary by tribe, but generally, feathers signify honor, trust, strength, freedom, wisdom, and a reminder to live with purpose and dignity. Receiving a feather is a high honor, often for acts of bravery or service to the community.
Smudge feathers are a symbol healing, spiritual guidance and help carry rhetorical smoke of the sage up to Creator.
Medicine Bag
The medicine bag is known in many cultures for centuries. In Native American culture, these bags would contain spiritual items such as sweetgrass, sage, cedar, and other objects which have meaning or are spiritually significant. Native American medicine bag is a pouch, traditionally made of leather and decorated with beadwork, that holds personal items of spiritual significance for the wearer, providing protection, healing, or a connection to nature and personal harmony.
Dream Catchers
Traditional dream catchers were made from natural materials like a willow hoop, sinew (animal thread), and feathers.
Bad dreams were trapped in the web and perished with the light of dawn, while good dreams passed through to the dreamer. Traditionally, they are made after sundown, and smudged before gifting or hanging.
ethically sourcing white sage
Ethically sourced white sage means it was sustainably harvested, typically by or in direct partnership with Indigenous peoples who have deep cultural ties to the plant, to protect it from over-harvesting and environmental degradation. This process respects the plant's sacred status, allows for its regeneration, prevents poaching, and ensures that the communities who use it traditionally benefit from its cultivation and sale.
White sage is vulnerable to becoming endangered due to increased demand for smudge sticks, and sustainable harvesting is crucial for its survival.
This practice works to prevent "poaching" or over-harvesting driven by commercial demand and instead supports fair trade and sustainable growing practices.
Some ethically sourced white sage is cultivated on farms under permits, rather than being wild-harvested, which reduces pressure on wild plant populations.
It avoids cultural appropriation by ensuring the plant is not taken without permission or understanding of its sacred meaning within Indigenous traditions.