Herstory Beads
Roxanne Swentzell Tower Gallery, Pojoaque, NM
August 2023-March 2024
Installation - Multimedia, handmade paper beads, vintage fabric, audio, abalone, & vintage beads
Her/Story Beads is an installation created from the many reports, names, data, research, and most importantly, the personal stories of the people directly impacted by the many injustices that continue to plague our peoples. Whether this is ongoing immigration, MMIWR, Boarding Schools, police brutality, or women survivors sharing stories, these are all results of ongoing colonial oppression and genocide. By addressing these issues in the transformation into prayer beads I am able to take it off the paper and create a tangible experience for the viewer. This guidance through the work of making prayer beads - the first of which date back to 100,000 BC - can be used to address colonial and other oppressive narratives as an act of personal empowerment. It is from our own history,words, images, and worlds can we reshape and reclaim our connection to spirit. With the creation of beads from these sources, I am determined to create another way of telling and holding our stories as prayer.
Over the past decade I have read these many reports and then I meticulously cut paper strips into the size of the bead that will represent this story and I pray in ceremony for what I am to learn, hold, and share so that I can be stronger advocate & handle my own trauma, and I have discovered the sharing into something tangible to be held and carried as part of the energy needed to understand how I can bring awareness, advocacy, and honoring to our ancestors whether in this realm or the others, so that with each bead, I am contributing the healing flow of my own generational trauma. It has been in this process that guidance is revealed on how I am to represent and hold these stories to share with the community and bring not only awareness but the feeling of reclamation that can occur through the process of rolling each bead.
Be A Good Ancestor Dancer 1950’s vintage dress, hand rolled paper beads, wire, jingles, vintage beads; abalone, dentalium, turquoise, crystal, and glass beads, woven belt, iron-on letters, antique magnifying glass
Help Me Nokomis Beads Hand typed prayer beads, wire, red shell abalone, crystal beads, vintage family heirloom beads, juniper berry beads (harvested by a Diné grandmother,& vintage turquoise and shell beads
Las Mujeres Fuertes September Issues Hand rolled paper beads from the pages of the original print of this article published in the September Issues given to me by publisher Mary Rizzo. Adorned with vintage beads and milagros, vintage hunting vest, Guatemalan worry dolls, abalone shell, orange string
Bring Back Our Girls Hand typed beads, vintage typewriter, cowrie beads, ball chain, gifted dashiki 2018
Here SIS, Hold My Beads 1950’s Vintage brown lace dress, Don’t Go Roxanne Swentzell sculpture photograph beads & hand typed prayer beads with words from Don’t Go, vintage rabbit fur, abalone, vintage ribbons, African porcupine quills, leather, local turkey feathers, printed photograph of Don’t Go sculpture and X-ray of lungs with turkey feather, vintage ribbon
Red Standing Dress Up
The Song Her Mother Taught Her Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut (1966- 2023)
Honor Their Names/First Nation Sisters Hand typed paper beads of MMIW in Canada 2012 report/thesis
Communication Beads Warrior Pamela Foster Each bead is a hand typed word, four times to honor each direction, of Pamela Foster’s testimony that she shared March 2022 on behalf of her daughter Ashlynne and son Ian Mike. Communication Bead/custom velvet dress
Anagoptan/To Listen (Dakota)
Awarded the Justice Through the Lens of Native Artists Initiative by the First Nations Development Institute Spring 2023
Metal vintage megaphone 10 x 5 ½ inches dimensions, hand rolled beads, white buckskin, porcupine quills
NFS
A sculptural piece made from handmade prayer beads from the pages of the MMIW Report released by the Urban Indian Health Institute in 2018. After learning the statistics and stories of the survivors, Tara Trudell made prayer beads that address the need for more awareness
and action. She is intent on creating ways to stimulate the needed dialogue to talk about these statistics. She hopes to honor the work of all involved in bringing this vital information to our families and communities. The report is very triggering and by honoring the women who represent these statistics, Tara sits in ceremony and offers collective healing energy in the process for the survivors, the families, the communities, and the ancestors.
The porcupine needles at the mouth of the megaphone are a reminder of the pain, danger, and harm that many of our women and girls face by speaking out and not being supported. This is the difficult path of accountability within our own communities we must address and overcome.
Holding Baby Star Ancestors with Roxanne Swentzell 2023
Holding Baby Star Ancestors with Roxanne Swentzell:
Hand rolled paper beads from the report with Roxanne Swentzell sculpture, Mother Holding Grief.
An Exploration in Global Ethnic and Cultural Cleansing by the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe Ziibiwing Center Of Anishinabe Culture and Lifeways. This is a brilliant and vital resource that I rolled into these tiny, as I call them, ‘baby star ancestors’ beads. I do this to honor our boarding school ancestors and the continual survival of our future generations to understand and dismantle the past that continues to threaten us today with a sense of helplessness and sadness. With each roll of a bead, I am allowing myself to transcend time and history to connect with our ancestors ‘before harm’ entered their world. This guide is powerful and painful. It is necessary to learn the truths as well as continue the dialogue of healing as well as honoring the impact of our collective source of remembering our power as people. The beads allow this to be a tangible and sensory experience as the energy is taken in and processed by all who are willing to remember a time before colonization came to our land and peoples and brought this harm. These beads are to uplift this important resource and to honor the work of all involved in bringing this awareness and action.
Our Bodies, Our Stories is a series of reports that details the scope of violence against Native women and people across the nation. The report that started this project highlighted data relating to sexual violence against Native women in an urban setting—Seattle, Washington *click on photograph to learn more
Our Bodies, Our Stories is a series of reports that details the scope of violence against Native women and people across the nation. The report that started this project highlighted data relating to sexual violence against Native women in an urban setting—Seattle, Washington *click on photograph to go to website
Our Bodies, Our Stories is a series of reports that details the scope of violence against Native women and people across the nation. The report that started this project highlighted data relating to sexual violence against Native women in an urban setting—Seattle, Washington *click on photograph to go to website
Our Bodies, Our Stories is a series of reports that details the scope of violence against Native women and people across the nation. The report that started this project highlighted data relating to sexual violence against Native women in an urban setting—Seattle, Washington *click on photograph to go to website
Our Bodies, Our Stories is a series of reports that details the scope of violence against Native women and people across the nation. The report that started this project highlighted data relating to sexual violence against Native women in an urban setting—Seattle, Washington *click on photograph to go to website
Our Bodies, Our Stories is a series of reports that details the scope of violence against Native women and people across the nation. The report that started this project highlighted data relating to sexual violence against Native women in an urban setting—Seattle, Washington *click on photograph to go to website
Our Bodies, Our Stories is a series of reports that details the scope of violence against Native women and people across the nation. The report that started this project highlighted data relating to sexual violence against Native women in an urban setting—Seattle, Washington *click on photograph to go to website