Textile Society of America Colloquium Series presents

Session 1: (re)claiming Lost Traditions in Native American Textile Art

This panel discussion highlights two case studies for community-based research that prioritizes Indigenous traditions and knowledge systems. The moderator for this session is Joe Baker, a Native American artist, educator, and co-founder and Executive Director of the Lenape Center.

• Jennifer Byram will describe a project in which Chahta (Choctaw) community members collaboratively recreated an eighteenth-century style Chahta skirt. Made of fibers sourced, processed, and woven by group members, this skirt and its production process served to strengthen bonds within the community and between the community and the natural environment. Jennifer Byram is a Research Associate in the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma Tribal Historic Preservation Office and a PhD student of Archaeology in the University of Arizona School of Anthropology.

• Vera Longtoe Sheehan will discuss how a team of Abenaki women designed and made regalia to be worn in recently revived agricultural ceremonies. Sheehan describes the consensus-based collaborative processes that enabled the creation of the regalia and ensured the passing on of skills, designs, and histories from one generation to the next as “a form of Indigenous resistance and exercise of sovereignty.” Vera Longtoe Sheehan is the Director of the Vermont Abenaki Artists Association and Founder of the Abenaki Arts and Education Center. She has a MALS in Interdisciplinary Studies from SUNY: Empire State College.

$10 TSA members / $15 non-members

You will receive a Zoom link in your registration confirmation email. A recording will be available to everyone who registers for 7 days after the event for later viewing.