Pinochet. I mean, who shall I'd say, damn, the Shanika Sean.
The rakish goddamn. Near a tumour. Misapply Nando La Raza.
Hi, my name is Dan. I am here to tell a story about beads.
And it's nice to meet you. Amazing. Thank you, Dan. Before we talk about who we are.
My hair. Can you explain what you just said? What was the language that you were speaking?
That was mischief. That is the traditional language of the native nation.
It's spoken mainly in parts of Saskatchewan, Manitoba and North Dakota, as well as if you smatterings here and there, like in Oxford currently.
Yeah, it's. And there's about a little bit less than a thousand native speakers, though, so it's a quite small language.
So my name's Daisy Cattle and I am the project curator on Beyond the Binary National
Lottery Heritage funded project taking place at the Pitt Rivers at the moment. And I am lucky enough to be here at my dad.
He was one of our community creators. And we're here to talk a little bit about the material that you've been researching and
curating for the put it exhibition and learn a little bit about your interest really,
and do the amazing work the EPA undertaking in partnership with a project.
So first of all, can you. You've introduced yourself amazingly.
And can you tell us a little bit more about yourself and what drew you to the project and why you why you've become a community curator?
So I am a recent graduate from Oxford. I've completed my masters here and I really wanted to get involved again with a museum
and the community curator project for the Beyond the binary was exceedingly generous,
an amazing programme that I wanted to jump in on. I had done museum work before the National Museum and the American Indian and the Smithsonian,
and I'm interested mainly in American Indians, specifically M80 Beadwork.
And the Pitt Rivers has a wonderful collection that is actually displayed.
Joe was quite pleased to see some meaty work, mainly mittens and some bandoleer bags and some octopus bags.
So I was very keen to see that and work with that. And before we talk a little bit more about the end, the beadwork on display in the museum.
Can you tell me about what you've got on today? Do you mind? You've got an amazing necklace on war.
I have my strong, resilient indigenous shirt. It's a wonderful brand.
And I also have one of these horsehead medallions that I've made with a multitude of beads.
I cannot tell you how many are in the museum is actually going to get one of these.
I'm going to be making, I believe, a paint horse for them.
Beadwork. It's a wonderful art form. I find that it's calming.
And also some artists will say beating is medicine. It levels you it makes you a little bit more in tune with your surroundings.
And it also connects you to an art form that, you know, we are known as the far ribhi work people.
It connects me to my ancestors. Each little bead is that little connexion sewn and looped.
And so that's why I enjoy doing it. Amazing. Thank you. And it's a really amazing red colour as well.
It's really vibrant. I say, yes, the panel is done that you're creating a an item for that paper is collection at beadwork.
I'm horsehide. So that's very exciting. And I think we talk more in a minute about the other objective creating for the main main collection.
So what have you actually been doing? So what is your what have you been doing to research and Retiro that you're writing about?
Have you been writing BBN? I'm not recording. What can you tell about what you've been up to?
So I've been doing a lot of individual research with this specific collection item at the Pitt Rivers.
It's known as eighteen ninety three point sixty seven point one eighty three.
Itzik session number, also known as the S black bag, also known as the Octopus.
Many guises, many names it has. And it is this bag that was probably made in the early eighteen hundreds.
It was collected by Pitt Rivers in 1883. It was acquired by the museum.
And it is a beautiful, very large panel style octopus bag.
It is gorgeous and it's a very pivotal object because it succinctly describes the M80 identity.
M80 people as an ethnic group are formed of two in a way heritages, heritage and lineage.
You have the French and European fur traders that came over to do trading and set up forts and businesses with colonialism, with settler initiatives.
And then you have this joining of that community with the original First Nations community to create this dualistic new birth of a nation, basically.
So this bag succinctly, succinctly identifies that because you have European motifs with these BURA.
Tulips. You have European style motifs of love with the heart.
The wolf shroud bag, the actual cloth that it's made from.
But then you also have this indigenous flair with the prairie roses as well as these beautiful seed beads that are attached to it.
Is the style by itself traditional? It's so we call it an octopus back.
I'm in the collections, but I'm not sure if that's what would be known as I'm locally.
And it's not just because it's got it's got four legs.
Right, but with two sides. Yes, I. Eight legs is where we've put a picture in the podcast I.
But yeah. Can you tell me a bit more about the meaning of the bag. Yeah.
So these bags have also been made in the Azores.
Pacific Northwest cultures, a little bit different materials used.
They've also been mimicked in Inish Nabay. Bandoleer bags are quite similar, similar functions.
You're carrying Flins, you're carrying tobacco. You're carrying ammunition.
The maty bag specifically is usually a flat panel bag to carry ammunition unnecessarily.
It can't hold that much, but it gets the job done for long journeys when you're either following buffalo
herds or you're out hunting and trapping and coming back from long occasions.
So it's really peaceful, like ASAP. And it's also quite functional. So that's really interesting.
It's, um, it's very useful, but also really beautiful. I'm wondering if could you tell me a little bit more about the meaning of
beadwork to you personally and possibly in an almighty culture as you see it?
So matey people. We are recognisable from our beadwork, especially with foreign motifs.
When the it's usually it's usually accepted that when the grey nuns came to sort of residential schools,
which, depending on how you view it, is is somewhat of a sort history for indigenous people.
They would teach the First Nations women certain skills and one of them was needlework.
And so you had these European patterns and motifs that they would first start with.
And then later the women would say, well, let's let's apply this to what's actually around me.
And they would do more indigenous flora and fauna and build up upon that to actually make a highly recognisable form of beadwork.
And so other nations started to view us as people who were very, very prolific with beadwork.
And other M80 artists sometimes use quills in their works.
They use specific there's this craft called mousse stuffing and it uses moose hair.
So that's another one. I have never done quite work and I've never done stuffing.
But being working was an accessible form of meat to connect with my culture.
I was a disconnected native. I knew my grandmother told me of our history when I was very young.
I was very young. I was more interested in cartoons and drawing in my colouring book.
My grandmother knew the language mischief.
My dad knew it when he was younger, but he lot later lost those skills when they moved from Canada to the United States.
I only visited our traditional territories in Winnipeg, handfuls that the year and I was young.
So I was separated from the land, separate from the culture, separated from the language.
And our elders constantly tell us you need to rekindle the hearth fires of home.
You need to make those connexions and rebuild those connexions. It's hard, but in the end it is worth it.
And so I started to do that. My language skills, if any other match, if listeners will say this, will say, oh, that is terrible.
Yes, it is. But at least I'm trying and bead work for me was something that was so matey that I felt.
It could be something I could grasp on to and feel comfortable with my heritage, safe, free, beat Kievan.
It's been awhile weeks for you. I didn't see you. And I would.
Unfortunately,
some of the records that I would be able to find out about my family when my grandmother had blanks in her memory were from land scripts.
And that was a way that the Canadian government, in a way, would try to negotiate M80 people.
Were they were they Indians or were they white people?
It was a very interesting way of trying to remedy that.
So but I would also come across these little titbits talking about how.
Oh, yes. And then this one great grandfather of mine, you know, were a beautiful beadwork vest or did this or did that.
And I said, well, OK, I want to incorporate that into my story.
That's why I started do the horse heads, because I had a relative who one of the anecdotes was he cured someone of some illness and and payment.
He was given this beautiful little black mare with a white lace on her. So I meet that horse medallion and say something to connect me to them.
Amazing. Say they. These family stories say survived. But I learnt for your grandmother.
Yes, I do. Yeah. I mean, it's yeah. She's very happy that I sort of do beadwork.
She herself is not the best sohr, but she'll frame anything that I give her.
So that's very nice. That's like a big fan when it's as big a fan as the pit refix isn't.
I think mazing. And.
It's I I'm kind of my questions to rooma Sopo got kind of a part way through now, so I'm vigilance, twitchy about to spirit and things like that.
Is there anything else you wanted to share about that,
the object that you were researching or the museum and anything anything you two talk about generally before we maybe move on to spare?
Oh, I know the narrative of being a First Nations M80 in UAT, American Indian.
It comes part and parcel with colonialism and that is a very important part of the story in the narrative.
But I also think these bags in there, you know, in eighteen hundreds, these bags and from forward,
I've seen people wear these beautiful bags during powwows and regalia dances and the tradition has kept on.
We've been through so many struggles and yet we're so resilient and we rise above it and we keep our culture.
And I encourage any indigenous youth, especially if they're disconnected like I was, to start rebuilding those connexions because it is worth it.
And how so? How do you see and the McCamey say, like the paper biz's, I'm kind of part to play in that.
Do you think we seems to have a part to play? Museums definitely do, especially when they become stewards of these objects.
I know the Pitt Rivers is especially working with the Haida communities.
And instead of buying artefacts from the ground and instead of doing that,
they're actually commissioning artists and bringing money and connexions back to the
community in a cycle that's a little bit more healthier than if you were to take,
you know, objects from the ground or, you know, buy them from private collectors.
I think it's important that museums recognise that if you house these items, these are someone's family traditional items, pet patrilineal items.
Someone can look into this museum and say, oh, yes, that was my great grandfather's or something.
And you need to be keenly aware that if you're using these objects,
they have a history, they have a story, they're not just static, inanimate objects.
And so with with, um, the the octopus bank that you I'm writing about for the exhibition and we're talking about today,
and it's on payment display in the museum in one of our beatbox sections.
What would you like to see the outcome of your research being?
So the object currently has a very small label.
It's very basic. How would you like to see the ritualised interpretation that you bring into the objects?
Kind of. And we want like to be shown permanently alongside the object. How would you like to see?
I have an object like that, the octopus bag and better displayed have more relevance to use.
I'm someone who's very connected to the object. I would think I mean, a label that invokes the idea of.
Oh yes. So this isn't just a nice piece of fashion. I mean, it's gorgeous.
It is a beautiful bag. And I whenever I get a chance to look at the close up of the edging and the stitching,
I just I can't fathom half how long this person's making everything completely perfect.
But I would like someone to come away from this bag and saying there is a connexion between however many people from two different sides of the world,
from Turtle Island and Europe. And this is just one of the narratives of that culture clash.
And something happened where, you know, this bag signifies the birth of a nation,
of a new type of people, of a new type of language and culture and way of viewing the world.
I don't know if you can offer that in a label. I think that's a little bit of a of a task.
But I also want people to realise that we're not the whole native stereotype of just feathers and paint and and like,
no, we we do have fine crafts and art. We're very skilled artists in our trades.
I mean, it's really it's so important to bring, I think, challenge, challenge stereotypes, like you're saying.
But also it's really how we bring to an object like the octopus back these multiple stories and how I'm a label is not not adequate for that.
So hopefully by creating these kind of recordings, we can slowly start to create more layers.
But I think what you've highlighted is the sheer inadequacy of most museum labelling.
So there is work for us to continue exploring.
And this is brilliants have summer recorded pointers for Huntingdale that is so generous and let in the community that I have.
Have you been a cotton before? You've had a research visit with a baguette? Yes. So you've seen it up close.
I was not expecting how big it was. It's huge. It's it's truly amazing.
And when you get down to the detail of how this artist interwove the threading on it, oh, I couldn't even or I would go cross-eyed.
I tried to do that. But definitely it is a piece of ingenious and I love the fact that it truly takes the technologies from
two different worlds that you see Mary and antagonistic and it make something beautiful out of them.
That's really interesting. Yes, I say the kind of coalescing of two different worlds and the idea that, you know, that's acute on tech antagonism now.
And I can't speak the antagonism between those two worlds.
But the fact you're saying abuse for objects come out of it, that's that tech can tell such a complex story.
That's really lovely. Can you maybe tell me a little bit about the bag that you're making inside this bag?
So it's going to be half the size of this beautiful monstrosity.
Just to explain side is they the beautiful monstrosity is cut is 610 millimetres M2 and 280 millimetres wide, according to folks.
I should give you a picture every six. Very good notes. Yes.
And I'm keeping with the traditional thar and woodland motif that is prevalent in many M80 art styles.
So there will be flowers and there will be swirls and there will be that patterning.
The bag, the original bag, the s black bag keeps the tradition of having the Four Corners, which is very prevalent in Maiti artwork.
So it shows the Four Corners, which are very sacred to native traditions, as well as showing the first stages of vegetation.
It shows the roots, the buds, the actual blooms and the leaves of the fruit of the plant.
So everything is accounted for in these four sacred directions, in these four sacred categories.
So I'm going to take that tradition for the new bag, but have a little bit more fun with the colours and the symbols,
because this bag is if I was to make this bag for someone else, it would probably be for like a two spirit regalia at a powwow.
I want it to say loud and proud. So I'm going to incorporate, like for the rosebuds instead of your traditional green and pink.
I'm going to have a little bit of blue, pink and white for the trans flag,
the edging that you see on the original bag and the S black bag instead of just the plain beautiful ivory.
It's going to be Rainbow Stitch. We will keep beekeeping, the European heart.
But we'll also be including strawberries, men. So you have the European version of love.
And then you have the strawberries, which are the heart berries for the indigenous motif.
So trying to bring those two worlds back together. It's really amazing, I think.
And you're highlighting so well that every symbol on the every object image on the original back has meaning.
I think we often forget that in the museum there's a cacophony of kind of patterns and colours.
They many of the artefacts are sun bleached and quite brown. And we do see a kind of an explosion of different designs and patterns rise.
It's really important to remember that everything on this back is has a meaning to it.
So I think you have the bank that you're creating for the collection really highlight that the
fact that you're putting continuing to put European symbols of love next to indigenous symbols.
I mean, it's pretty exciting. And we will make sure that we actually tell that story,
that it's not been the original story about that object is not disconnected and lost like so often is what happens in the museum situation.
So I can't wait to see the bags through. Exciting. I was going to ask you to maybe talk a little bit about your thoughts on the time to spirit.
Is there anything else you wanted to discuss before we move on to that?
I'm just like I just can't wait to really start finishing the details on this bag because it's the best kind of work either ever.
It's connecting to your culture and also relaxing and knowing that you're producing
something that will be shared and enjoyed by as many people as come to this wonderful,
you know. Can I ask you how you how you learnt feedback? Yes, it is true.
I learnt from elders because my grandmother I love my grandmother, but she's not good, sir.
So I learnt from elders that actually we're not part of my tribe or not part of my nation.
So I had the great fortune to work with co-workers at the Smithsonian.
A lot of different nations and tribes. Cherokee Nation, Blackfeet.
I had the good fortune of learning beadwork from elders because I was constantly
around professional indigenous co-workers from all sorts of tribes and nations,
and they kind of took me under their wing. And I remember I during one of my lunch breaks, I started working a little bag just.
Trying to get the stitches right? Trying to get everything to not look so lopsided.
And my co-worker next to me was like, oh, I'm going to a pout out.
Can you beat me a little bandoleer bag that I can have as part of my regalia?
And I was so excited that he wanted to wear something of mine that I just really it gave me validation.
And so I kept it up. I usually give my my work, too, as gifts.
So I try if I know one of my friends is sad, I will give them a patch or something that I've made that reminds me of them,
whether it's of using a far of their favourite colour or I've done animal pawprints that one of my, you know, was illogically inclined friends like.
So beadwork makes me happy. It connects me to people.
It makes me feel. It makes me feel like I'm honouring the people that have come before me and I never want
these traditions to wane or to stop with me because I feel like then my ancestors,
their dreams won't be fulfilled. We are ancestors, wildest dreams just by being here.
And I think that's important. That's what I want to be doing with my beadwork, he said.
Thank you for sharing through the amazing. So did you want to.
One of the things that we talked about. And you're writing about for the exhibition is the time to spare.
So I am I do quite a lot of workshops. I'm with young LGBT and Q plus people.
And it amazes me because I'm the type to spirit seems to be really quite well known amongst British kids, which is which is great.
And I was just wondering. They often have a very quite simplistic idea of what spirit means.
I am to be really interested to hear your thoughts on how would you describe to
spirits as maybe to a young person he might already be using time in the UK.
And can you tell me really more about the meaning of the time? So and these are my opinions on the term.
I know there are a lot of different viewings of it because it's such a holistic term and it's so accessible to native peoples.
However, you know, they use them. So the term is urging.
Coined in 1990 at a conference in Winnipeg, it was the Indigenous, Lesbian and Gay International gathering,
and it was proposed as a term to use instead of more Western terminology.
So instead of saying, OK, well, this person is gay or this person is bisexual or something like that,
indigenous people wanted to use a term that distance themselves from Western settler terminology.
And so we suggest the two spirit term and that term, some people use it as a stand in for other for the other LGBT terms.
But in my understanding, in use of it, it's informed a little bit more from indigenous rooted ceremonies and concepts, cultural concepts.
So it's a little bit different than saying, well, this is the native version of saying LGBT.
To be honest, when I'm talking to non natives, I kind of sometimes am lazy and I delegate that.
And that's what that means because it's just a little bit more translatable. But indigenous communities have always had our own specific terms,
and that's why there's some criticism with the use of to spirit in that some communities,
they already have words like in Lakota you have the Wynnstay, which means someone to become a woman.
You have the Natalya in Denay, which is a form of transformation of gender and sexuality.
And then you have also words in KRI like is queer Håkon, one who acts lives as a woman and all these different terms.
So our communities do have a language to describe these different identities, which I think is important to hold on to, but some communities don't.
So I think it's important that while we recognise that two spirit is a little bit more of a overreaching and I hate to see the word pan Indian,
but it's a little bit more holistic approach. I think people should be able to use it, especially if they're disconnected natives.
So to spirit just basically means it's an identity, a little bit of an alternative identity to Western terminology of what it means to be straight,
what it means to be cis gender, but it's informed by indigenous concepts and ceremonies was a whole lot of stuff.
Thank you. It's very complicated. It's it's a thing that's rooted in identity and clan culture in roles in so many different tangles.
But to some, it can also just mean that the indigenous version of LGBT.
So it's however you however indigenous people and I identify with how people might rise in time.
That probably doesn't help. But then again, people are people and they're very diverse.
And I'm like you said, say some. Some nations have terminology that's still in use.
Some nations might not. But then I suppose that's that could be relating to the disconnect from Clintonism is why was it so incredibly,
incredibly complicated there in the loss of language and the threat to language?
It may mean you started to when anthropologists would go in and ethnographers would do work with these
tribes and they would use certain outdated terms and the native community would then respond back with.
But that's not what that means. You know, that's not I'm not.
You know, that that. I'm not gay. I just do.
I just do a certain. I just wear a certain ceremonial clothing that, you know.
So there's all these different discrepancies.
So native people started to look back into their language and say, well, you know, we do have a word for that.
Oh, well, we do. Let's use that. Some nations and some tribes don't.
Sometimes a word is created, which I think is really great. So keeping that language up in proficiency and also keep adapting it and using it.
And I love it when I hear like, oh, this is the national byword for TV or this is that it's so great.
So I'm amazed I'm the reclaiming or developing new language.
How might that be affecting contemporary ceremonies and practises?
Is it or is it? So actually recently in Canada, unfortunately, can't remember what nation did it.
They had a sweat lodge ceremony.
But in order to make the adolescent person comfortable, the adolescent presented the findings as a non binary or an alternative gender.
And so the ceremony language and.
Mainly, most of the logistics were changed to accommodate this young person.
I thought that was amazing. And it came from the initiative of elders.
There is always that tradition where, you know, the old the old generation doesn't want to change.
But the elders recognise that our youth need us.
Our youth need to be taking care of ceremonies and medicines, take care of our people.
Everyone needs to be involved. Everyone needs to be accounted for. And everything needs to be accessible.
I think that's wonderful. The nation that my own family is from, Manitoba Matey Matey Federation.
They recently in August just issued a new chief to Spirit Local,
headed by two spirit people to do work with the Maiti community, make sure everyone feels accounted for.
Everyone feels loved, accepted. I thought that was amazing.
And these traditions are changing where you have jingle dancers and certain to spare powwows.
Anyone can do a jingle dance, which is traditionally a female form of dancing.
It's a healing dance. There is also a sweetheart couples dance where couples would dance in their beautiful regalia.
And recently there has been more to spirit couples joining in on that.
It's become less and less like weird. It's it's just it's wonderful.
And especially when it comes from elders who are saying, no, this is this is just as traditional.
We've had these concepts. We've had these languages.
Not to erase the fact that sometimes it is hard for indigenous youth to feel accepted if they do have a different identity,
controversial to either their bands or the tribal law or just the terminology of what they feel like they need to be.
But I feel like it is moving forward to reclaiming the past cultural ways of viewing our people that work to spirit.
And making them feel loved. That's right. That's really, really exciting.
I'm I think I get going back to how I've had young people in the UK using the term two spirit.
I think they found a lot of strength in the time because even if they haven't quite
understood the complexity of the time and the different ways in which it might be used.
I think for the young people I've worked with,
knowing that there is a history beyond the UK and beyond Europe that that there's a legacy for them queer lives.
I think the important work to be found really empowering and kind of aspirational,
too, that they can see their own identity reflected in other cultures.
Thank you for explaining that so eloquently himself in such detail.
What else would you like to share? If I were even up to. What are you talking about with the youth and I love.
I used to work in a museum and I would constantly be talking with kids.
And I am very involved in queer communities and projects and stuff of that nature.
So sometimes, occasionally I'll get an indigenous youth who is struggling with their identity and their suggesting will.
You know, is it my thinking this because it's a Western concept, it's a contemporary concept.
Is this going against how I should be an indigenous person? And I just remember all the elders that are told me, like you, who you are is traditional.
This this is not going against your ancestors wishes.
This is not going against your tribe's wishes. Your identity is just as traditional and just as valid as anyone else's.
And I think that gives us a lot of strength, especially when some people put it in the context of who you are as a gift from the creator.
And a lot of indigenous communities recognise a creator like getting married, too, or something like that.
And to have that strength, knowing that not only does your community have your back, your creator has your back, but your ancestors have your back.
That is incredibly powerful knowledge to carry with you.
And so I always try to remember them like you're not and you're not going against anything.
You are right where you need to be. It's amazing.
That needs to be a quote on the rule in the exhibition. Definitely. I've just really enjoyed learning from you, actually.
And I'm having you as one of our commune's creators. It's been fantastic because I am I remember as a student,
I researched the octopus bag with Laura Pearce press and repairs herem but until recently at the parents,
I and I found this bag absolutely fascinating as the meeting of coaches like like you said.
But you for me,
you've completely transformed how I see this object with bringing you in your own narratives and talking about the birth of a new nation.
I am talking about how beadwork has supported you to explore your own identity and reconnect so with your culture.
So I might want to say thank you so much for sharing these stories of millions, that everyday exhibition with a much wider public.
I think it's so important for us all to see that these objects have multiple layers, multiple meanings.
And they this object is currently sitting in the Pyramids Museum. It needs to be re accessed by people beyond the curatorial staff at the museum.
So thank you very much, Tom. Thank you to you and everyone working at the beyond the binary in the pictures
at large because you've made this accessible and a platform for these voices.
I know everyone on the team is extremely just grateful to have this opportunity.
And it is it is viewing these objects is like coming home.
I first came to Oxford and my parents went to the museum. I was in classes and I got the hurried text and my dad with the picture of these bags.
They had me to stuff and it was just so invigorating.
No matter how far away you are for hot from home, there's still there's ways to make those connexions.
And so thank you to the Pitt Rivers now. Thank you.
Amazing folks. Come and join us on doing the biotech's. It's really great, really great experience.
I am an entity. Would have been so nakamori a term anarchy kick.
Time cover palmerton mina sir.