Survivors

Kanienkaháka artist Carla Hemlock learned both beadworking and quilting in an immersive environment surrounded by women in her family who were constantly sewing and beading. Of the Bear Clan, she was given her Indigenous name, Kowenni, by her maternal great-grandmother, Mary Kaweiennitakhe Montour Cross, who taught her to quilt. Hemlock sewed clothes and blankets for children and other family members, but about fifteen years ago this work took a different turn when she began to explore issues ranging from environmental injustice and violence toward women to Indigenous sovereignty.

The composition and materials of Survivors speak to centuries of interaction between Native American and non-Indigenous people. Hemlock surrounded a pieced star pattern with red appliquéd wampum figures. A symbol of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy that includes the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, and Tuscarora, these figures serve as a guide to Haudenosaunee history and traditions. The outermost ring features forty-eight linked wampum figures in red beads, inscribed with names of individual Native American nations that survive today, despite, in the artist’s words, “centuries of genocidal policies by settler governments to wipe out our identity and our People’s existence.”