Arts and Culture
Sarah Boston Fine Art
By Lindsey N. Kelley
What fascinates me most about Sarah’s development of a portrait, is her ability to piece together an original work by observing multiple sources related to her subjects. My favorite story involving her process is one of recreating an image of her Aunt Nell. Sarah used a school photograph of Nell, taken on the Fort Peck Reservation where she lived with her family, members of the Assiniboine Tribe. Sarah drew her in her grandmother’s regalia, which she referenced from another old family photograph. She braided Nell’s hair, as it would have been done traditionally, and not with bangs cut straight across in uniform. “I like to do that—take photos of people in boarding school and depict them how they would have looked in the traditional clothing, and insignias of their tribe,” she explains. The research Sarah does to characterize each person, and tribe, candidly, requires historian-level sleuthing. Last October, she visited the A.R. Mitchell Museum in Trinidad, Colorado, where she sorted through old photographs Mitchell had taken before he would paint from them. She takes time to determine, based on blanket patterns, clothing, and the design of jewelry, what tribe and timeframe the photos are from.
The Art of Resilience: The Quilt Ceremony Tradition Carried by the Brockton Warriors
By Paytyn Wilson
In Brockton, Montana, just 35 miles west of the North Dakota border and 60 miles south of the Canadian border, lies a longstanding tradition of honor and gratitude: the Star Quilt Ceremony.
“These come from our days of the buffalo, and a tradition from back in the day, where our people would honor the first buffalo hunt,” says Roxann Smith.
Today, Roxann carries this tradition with the young people of Brockton and surrounding communities when the Brockton Warriors’ athletic teams travel to the District 2C Basketball Tournament.
According to Smith, “In 1948, Dennis Blount was a senior, and a very good basketball player. Grandmother Tessie Four Stops stood up and cheered for him, then wiped his sweat on a shawl, and then tossed it on the floor. That was a symbol of honor; when you truly honored someone, you would give something away. The referee at the time, Marvin Elgie, tried to give it back to her. Another elder, who understood what was going on, came and took the shawl.”
This act of giving something up is an example of the virtue of generosity held in high regard for the Dakota people.