Au Tion Ma Woman with a Good Heart: Beadworks by Rankin Scholar Joy Tonepahhote

Woman with a Good Heart Beadworks by Joy Tonepahhote

About the Artist...

Joy Tonepahhote (born 1969, Doylestown, PA) is a Plains beadworker whose works have been shown at the Heye Center of the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, the Indian City USA Cultural Center in Anadarko, and the Museum of Indian Culture in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Tonepahhote, who is a member of the Kiowa Tribe of Anadarko, Oklahoma and the Guaymi Maya people of Conquito, Panama, comes from a respected lineage of Southern Plains bead artists (her grandmother was Massalena Ahtone), and is well-versed in the iconographic traditions of Plains cultures. Her designs are sought after by native peoples throughout North America, who commission her to make beadworks for personal adornment as well as powwow regalia.

But Tonepahhote is not a “traditional” Native beadworker. She is a contemporary one who uses imagery drawn from American popular culture and integrates materials from mass-produced commodities, flexing her imagination and improvisational skills to create works that respond to the twenty-first-century aspirations of her Native patrons. She is an artist who is deeply informed about contemporary social and economic inequalities and is committed to making not museum pieces but affordable objects for everyday people. In addition to her art, Tonepahhote has a distinguished career in social service, serving as the Shelter Coordinator for A Woman’s Place (a domestic violence organization in Bucks County) and as the Relief Counselor for At-Risk Youth at the Community Service Foundation of Pennsylvania.

Land Acknowledgement

This exhibition takes place on the historic homelands of the Lenape people. Settler colonialism dispossessed the Leni Lenape, just as it did the Kiowa, and Natives today live widely dispersed from their ancestral lands Plains tribal members, like Tonepahhote, residing in the Northeast, are not immigrants however. Indigenous people reside outside their homelands as displaced populations; people, according to historian Claudio Saunt, constituted by deportation, mass expulsion, and forced migration.

KIOWA or Cáuigú (the “Principal People”)

Source:

The Kiowa are a sovereign Indian nation in present-day Oklahoma. The Kiowa once inhabited a large swath of the Southern Plains, stretching south to Mexico, north to Kansas and Colorado, east to Arkansas and Missouri, and west to New Mexico. But the 1867 Medicine Lodge Treaty with the U S forced the Kiowa onto the Kiowa-Comanche-Apache Reservation (see map), which was dissolved in 1887, when the U.S. government violated the Medicine Lodge Treaty in order to break up tribal lands for Indian allotments and White homesteads. Despite the vigorous legal challenge to this dispossession mounted by Kiowa band chief Lone Wolf, going all the way to the Supreme Court in 1903 (Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock), the Kiowa lost their tribal land base, though they are one of the 574 federally recognized tribes in the U S today.

Map of former land base of Kiowa, with Kiowa-Comanche-Apache Reservation (marked by dotted line), established by 1867 Medicine Lodge Treaty and then dismantled by 1887 Dawes Allotment Act

Jacki Thompson Rand, Kiowa Humanity and the Invasion of the State (2008)

KIOWA BEADWORK

Kiowa women have used beads to embellish clothing and articles for everyday as well as ceremonial use since the early nineteenth century. Although beaded works are produced by many Plains peoples, the Kiowa are distinguished by their use of delicate, symmetrical designs composed of geometric and floral shapes, made out of small seed beads. Kiowa beadworks also show a preference for red, orange, yellow, blue, and black, which Tonepahhote refers to as the “fire” colors because of their similarity to the spectrum of colors in a flame Discrete shapes and fields of color may be outlined with a contrasting color, like black or yellow, to make them stand out more sharply from the ground.

Despite these general aesthetic principles, Kiowa designs vary from band to band and between individuals beadworkers. When it comes to the Kiowa beaded design repertoire, there are no hard and fast rules that can be set down for all time, as Kiowa bead artists continue to expand the range of artistic sources and motifs they use.

MATERIALS

Tonepahhote uses Nylon D thread–a type of thread favored among beadworkers because of its strength and fineness–and glass seed beads (Charlottes size 11) that are imported from Czechoslovakia These beads are very small–about 17 beads equals one inch! Although synthetic Nylon thread and imported Czech beads might not seem “traditional,” we should keep in mind that the Kiowa were well established traders on the Plains and had an extensive trading network from which to draw materials even before the arrival of White traders and European trade-goods. The metal discs and cowrie shells you see on Tonepahhote’s dress are examples of materials that predated contact with non-Natives and were accessible via indigenous trading partners in the Southwest and South The incorporation of imported goods and new materials has been a hallmark of the history of Kiowa artistry

PROCESS

Working from carefully drawn sketches, Tonepahhote creates a color-coded diagram of the finished design. The diagram plots the color of the beads for each line of the design, allowing Tonepahhote to build up the design in horizontal layers on her loom.

Tonepahhote’s loom was hand-made by her son-in-law, Ryan McDonnell (Seminoledescendant) Before she begins any beadwork, she must set the warp (vertical) threads on her loom, keeping them separate with a single weft (horizontal) row of beads at the top and at bottom of the loom. In these spaces in between the warp threads, she will string her beads, line by line

WORKING with CLIENTS

Tonepahhote is often contacted by people who want to commission her to make specific kinds of beaded garments or items. When working with individuals she is not personally familiar with, Tonepahhote consults with them about the colors and design motifs they want to include in the beadwork Usually, individuals will request to have the colors of their tribe or band and family incorporated into the work, oftentimes, too, a crest or symbol that is meaningful along these lines.

Tonepahhote will then use this information to create a prototype beaded panel that shows the central design motifs and patterns as well as the arrangement of colors. She presents this prototype to clients and elicits their feedback Sometimes, as in the panel in the center, the commissioners ask for a substitution for one or more of the colors.Or they make ask for adjustments of the design. Tonepahhote makes another beaded panel of the revised design (on the right) and re-submits it for approval This process of making commissioned beadworks is labor- and time-intensive and requires the artist’s sensitivity to the complex modes of Native identification.

Mary Kulesa

EXPERIMENT & EXPLORATION

Even in the exacting medium of loom beading, Tonepahhote demonstrates how improvisation and a sense of play can produce works of remarkable originality and formal rigor. This long, beaded band is not a commissioned work or one that Tonepahhote made with a recipient in mind. Tonepahhote states that she made it simply to see the effects of different combinations of colored beads

Thirty-one panels repeat the same zig-zag pattern, composed of alternating solid and checkerboard planes, but the diagonal composition and tension between figure and ground create a dynamic impression of spiraling movement. The combinations of colors, some starkly contrasting (like the sky blue and candy-apple red) and others more subtly paired (like the gold and canary yellow), as well as the mixing of iridescent and matte beads, attest to Tonepahhote’s expert understanding of color theory and design principles as applied to her chosen medium.

Mary Kulesa

Beaded Medallions

Beaded medallions are a Pan-Indian cultural object worn by American Indians from many tribes and nations across North America. Medallions are worn by all genders and ages, and are usually custom-made for the individual wearer-owner (though medallions can also be passed down among family members). Joy has beaded numerous medallions for friends, family and Native people who commission her to make medallions for them. When designing a medallion, Joy gives careful consideration to the individual’s tribal affiliation as well as band or moiety and family membership, as each of these socio-political organizations bestow specific choices in the use of colors and motifs.

But American Indians do not define themselves solely according to their tribes-nations and families. They are also members of the military, professions and trades, and educational-cultural institutions, as well as participants in contemporary popular culture. Hence, you will see that some of Joy’s commissioners have asked her to design and make beaded medallions reflecting these complex, multiple identifications.

Turtle Island medallion (2018) for Preston Tonepahhote III (Kiowa, Oneida)

Pride Runs Deep Navy medallion (2018), for Preston Tonepahhote II (Kiowa)

Medical EMS medallion (2019) for Ralph Melendez (Taino)

High School Graduation medallion (2018) for Preston Tonepahhote III (Kiowa, Oneida)

Iroquois medallion (2019)

Beaded tie (2021) for Gabe

Chiaparas-Tonepahhote (Kiowa)

MEDICINE WHEEL

The emblem you see here, a circle intersected by a cross, is a medicine wheel (also known as the Sun Dance Circle or the Sacred Hoop). The medicine wheel embodies the four cardinal directions (North, South, East, and West), the four stages of life (birth, childhood, adulthood, and death) as well as the four elements (earth, sky, water, and fire) and the four seasons (Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter). Medicine wheels are symbols of the interdependence and balance of life. They are also, as their name suggest, medicine–sources of potent protective or therapeutic powers. The medicine wheel can take material form as a small object like this one made by Tonepahhote out of a leatherwrapped metal ring, or a large construction built into the landscape, as you see in this photograph of the Bighorn Medicine Wheel in Wyoming (80 feet in diameter and used by the Crow, Shoshone, Nez Perce, and other Plains peoples).Smaller ones like this medicine wheel on display are worn by many powwow dancers to protect and bring them good luck when they perform.

Bighorn Medicine Wheel, Wyoming

Source: U S Forest Service (2011)

Powwows

Powwows are intertribal gatherings where Native people showcase their cultural competencies in dance, song, and other performances, but powwows are also important venues for the exhibition and sale of Native American visual arts, such as beadworks, leatherworks, and silver jewelry Tonepahhote regularly exhibits her works at powwows, such as Schemitzun in Connecticut, the Red Earth Native American Cultural Festival in Oklahoma, and the Gathering of Nations in New Mexico. She is herself a dancer, who has performed with the Thunderbird American Indian Dancers and the Silvercloud Singers, also serving as a judge in the dance contests at powwows. Many of Tonepahhote’s beaded works are powwow ensembles made for her family members or commissioned by other Native powwow participants

Dancing and singing are essential to powwows because, from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries, Native songs and dances were banned by the U.S. and Canadian federal governments Song and dance are critical elements of Native social and spiritual lives, and settler-colonial governments sought to break tribal beliefs and cohesion by suppressing their performances. American Indians at powwows recuperate and reanimate these cultural and religious forms, and most importantly, reaffirm the continued collective survival of Native peoples.

Powwow Regalia

Although powwows are intertribal and welcome Native peoples from not only all of North America, but the western hemisphere, the individuals who participate come representing their specific nations-tribes as well as clans, bands, and families. They do this through the dances and dance styles they perform or the songs they sing, and their dress. Dress and performance arts are, moreover, complementary forms of Native cultural expression, whereby powwow participants tailor their clothes and regalia for specific dances, such as the Gourd Dance or the Grass Dance for men and the Fancy (Shawl) Dance or Jingle Dance for women. Regardless of their chosen dances, Plains powwow participants wear elaborately beaded ensembles. Women typically wear beaded dresses, moccasins or boots, belts, crowns, braid-ties, shawls, chokers, and backdrops. Men’s dress can include beaded tunics, pants-leggings, aprons, capes, harnesses, side-drops, armbands, cuffs, anklets, leg-bands, moccasins, headbands, braid-ties, and bustles.

But please don’t call them “costumes.” The long history of non-Natives dressing up as Indians makes the term “costume,” used for clothing that American Indians self-consciously make and wear in order to affirm their Native identities, objectionable.

Southern Plains woman's ensemble (2000) for Joy Tonepahhote (Kiowa, Guaymi)

Southern Plains woman's ensemble (2008) for Rozlynn Tonepahhote (Kiowa, Oneida)

Southern Plains woman's ensemble (2011) for Robyn ChiaparasTonepahhote (Kiowa, Oneida)

Men's Grass Dance ensemble (2022) for Ben Geboe (Sioux)

Mary Kulesa

American Indian Resources

Museum of Indian Culture, Allentown, PA

https://www.museumofindianculture.org/

We Are the Seeds, Philadelphia, PA

https://www.wearetheseeds.org/

American Indian Community House, New York, NY

https://aich.org/

Flying Woman Eagle Fund, New York, NY

https://flyingeaglewomanfund.org/

Kiowa tribe of Oklahoma, Carnegie, OK

https://www.kiowatribe.org/

Indian Country Today

https://ictnews.org/ Powwows.com

https://www.powwows.com/

Acknowledgements

Many people contributed to making this exhibition and residency possible. We would like to thank the following:

Westphal College, Rankin Committee, Art and Art History Department, Sharon Wu, Nevaeh Hearn, Hanako Chen, Mary Kulesa, Jody Graff, Sarah

Steinwachs, Jacob Lunderby, Henry Merker, Cooper Wright, Adam Schachner, Nick Anselmo and the Black Box Theater, Monica Stevens Smyth, Shannon Lacek and the students of the Audience Engagement course.

Dennis Zotigh, Ralph Zotigh, Preston Tonepahhote Jr., Preston Tonepahhote III, Melanie Tonepahhote, Rozlynn Tonepahhote, Ryan McDonnell, Robyn

Chiaparas-Tonepahhote, Gabe X. ChiaparasTonepahhote, Ralph Melendez, Lance Richmond, Frances Grumbly, Patricia Tarrant, and Pat Rivera.

--Joy Tonepahhote and Linda Kim