For the people saying that it wasn’t on theme need to watch her Met Gala interview. The style of jewelry and materials used were the same used during that point in history (1870-1890). They’re made from bone, porcupine quills, and shells harvested responsibly from her tribe.
Also, for indigenous tribes during the time period, this was not a “Gilded Age.” This was the time where gold was found in the Black Hills, and where the Fort Laramie Treaty was broken. Displacing and forcibly removing families from their homes. Children were kidnapped to be put into Christian boarding schools and never saw their families again. This was the time where Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse formed their alliances against Custer and the 7th Cavalry at the Battle of Little Big Horn. The tribes may have pushed the regiment back, but it lead to more tension and violence from the US Government in retaliation.
It was during this time where a camp in South Dakota was filled with the desperate tribe of Lakota families during the winter. They looked for comfort in their traditional ways and began praying for their ancestors to help them. The soldiers that had surrounded the camp didn’t know that what they were doing was a traditional Ghost Dance, they thought that they were trying to somehow communicate with other tribes and fight back against them. In the dead of winter, they killed over half of the tribe’s men women and children for no reason other than their paranoia.
From my perspective, the dress and the jewelry are representative of the beauty and the hardship of that Gilded Era. We may not have dressed in tulle and gold and jewels, but she is the splitting image of the spirits that would have come to answer the ancestor’s prayers. She represents the absolute spite that we Lakota and indigenous people have lived through. And she is such an icon for that.
Mahpiya techawin, pilamaya ksto.
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