Tradish’

Tradish’…NDN slang for “traditional”.  Even the word has changed, evolved and adapted through time.  What makes these women traditional?  Certainly not their adornment…and yet also their adornment.  What makes them old-style Cheyenne?  Clothing?  Hair?  Jewelry? Make-up?  Paint?  Beadwork?

Pre-glass beads, Southern Plains people used earth paints, hide fringe, and organic materials to decorate with.  Nowadays, people not only use glass beads but also plastics, mirrors, all types of metal and just about anything else they can turn into a decoration.  Their beadwork designs hold the same information that it did generations ago:  tribe, local, spiritual beliefs.  But now it is also informed by the urban lives they live, the wide variety of music they listen to, the video games and cartoons they watch, the basketball teams they root for, the neon flashing colors around them. 

Their tribe, or tribes of their fathers and mothers, grandfathers and grandmothers; the location of their home, urban or rural; their spiritual beliefs, native and/or Christian—these things are still visible if you look closely.  Nothing has changed, everything has changed:  Tradish’.

Teri Greeves

(Kiowa)

2006

 

Materials:  size 13 cut beads, bugle beads, fine silver, brain-tanned deer hide, glass beads, cotton cloth

Dimensions:  l-11 ¼”, h-13 ¼”