This article is part of an ongoing series of stories by ICT examining the complicated issues of Indigenous identity.
Amelia Schafer
ICT
As a journalist I’m no stranger to criticism. I’ve dealt with it since I first began reporting.
One of my earliest examples comes from my 2021 internship with the Times Citizen in Iowa Falls, Iowa, when I was covering the Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa when an attendant screamed “fake news” at me. I had an “America needs Journalists” shirt from RAYGUN on and was looking for something to eat for lunch amidst the chaos.
These comments are typical and even expected. What I’m not accustomed to is criticism about my beadwork.
A couple weeks ago I had the privilege to appear on the Oct. 22, ABC Live morning newscast to discuss my second shutdown story in a saga of other shutdown stories. I picked a pair of big beautiful beaded earrings to wear during my appearance on ABC, mostly because I liked them, but also because they were big, loud and proud – something you could still see on a semi-pixelated Zoom call.
In general I have a bad habit of reading comments on my articles, though I suspect this isn’t unique to me. I think it stems from the fact that I always really want to talk to people about my work, I want to know what they learned from the story or what I could’ve done differently. I always hope to see people comment about what they learned or how this taught them something.
This time something funny happened when I checked the comments.
Aside from the usual “Why is she so pale?” comments (which, yeah I wonder that too), a random unsuspecting Facebook user had said she was too distracted by my beaded earrings to listen to what I was saying. Now, this is cheeky and rude in nature and maybe a reflection of being a woman in journalism, but nonetheless a little entertaining…especially because of what followed.
I have a rule of never responding to comments, but I broke it this time. Part of me wondered if she’d never seen beadwork before, because I won’t lie my earrings were big. So I wrote her back explaining that they were a pair I’d bought at the Black Hills Powwow the prior weekend from a Native artist.
The thing is, I wasn’t the only person to respond: before the thread was removed either by ABC or by the original poster, there were a little over 100 aunties and uncles from across Indian Country sticking up for my earrings. I joked with my dad that if non-Natives ever wonder if any Natives still exist, just criticize someone’s beadwork and Indian Country will come running.
Some commenters took a more educational approach, attempting to teach the original commenter about the historical significance of beadwork, others were more comical and sometimes even brutal in their responses.
But for me, someone who was born and raised in rural Iowa hours away from a tribal nation, I wondered if she’d ever seen real beadwork before aside from the mass produced big-box store crap.
A lot of Americans don’t even know Natives still exist, let alone contemporary Native art – how time consuming it is, the strength and resilience it’s born from and the pure talent within.
Of course, you can read this and think “it’s not that deep” and wonder why I’m writing about this rather than the one million problems going on in the world I’ve been covering lately, but for some people it is “that deep.”
When I was picking out my outfit to wear on ABC, I knew I wanted to wear some form of beadwork. I wanted to wear something that was a nod to my heritage and also I just like those earrings.
I was torn between the two pairs I bought at Black Hills Powwow – the ones I ultimately picked and an even larger Ojibwe-style pair. I told myself the Ojibwe florals were too big (they’re almost the size of my palm), so I wore the beautiful cone-flower earrings I’d gotten instead.
Cone flowers are a prairie flower found only in North America. They’re a vibrant pink or purple and stand out amongst the rest of the green and brown plants in a prairie. The pair I bought stood out to me because they reminded me of the prairies back in Iowa.
Beadwork love and identity
I didn’t always wear beadwork. My relationship with beadwork in a way mirrors my identity – I didn’t know much about it until I was older. In both instances, I grew up without this knowledge partially because of how disconnected my family became through decades of assimilation and just in general moving around the country, but also because I wasn’t exposed to it.
I bought my first pair of beaded earrings from the Quapaw Senior Center in northeastern Oklahoma in May 2019. They were super small brick stitched earrings, red white and blue feathers roughly the size of a fingernail. I still have them. I keep them in my jewelry box, but this was the first time I’d seen authentic beaded earrings in real life, which sounds crazy to say, but it was. I was fascinated by them and soon became addicted to buying them.
My first few pairs I bought were all small dangly earrings that I got on Etsy from an Alaska Native artist. I wore them to my small Iowan college with pride and people started to ask me about them and about myself, in turn I also started to ask myself about beadwork.
When I moved to Chicago I worked up the courage despite my social anxiety to go to the American Indian Center for their bi-weekly beadwork class. I was nervous to attend, but this ended up being where I met my one of my best friends, Victoria Stewart, an Ojibwe mom just a couple years older than me with a fun personality and desire to learn about her culture that inspired me.
In Chicago, I learned a lot about both my Wampanoag and Brothertown identities and what it meant to be part of a community.
My love for beadwork expanded from there and I began beading obsessively. I beaded a couple pairs of really crappy earrings (that I still own), a bass medallion for my dad’s birthday and eventually I beaded and sold enough earrings that I could pay for my move to South Dakota to work for ICT.
Over time, beadwork became deeply tied to my exploration of my identity as a mixed Native person.
For a long time I wondered if beadwork was even something my tribes cared about. Living in South Dakota I’d seen countless historic examples of Lakota beadwork and it almost made me jealous. One day a Brothertown relative posted a picture on Facebook of a beaded purse located in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian made by what would have been a great-great-great aunt of mine. My mind was opened.
About 12 centimeters by 11 centimeters, the front of the orange purse depicts a raised beadwork sunflower surrounded by vines with a large plant on the background that I think is supposed to be a corn plant.
What really stood out to me was that the purse said it was created on Long Island in New York, our homelands, and came into the curator’s possession in Milwaukee. This meant the purse had survived every single move that the Brothertown Indian Nation was forced to make.
It was important enough that it had traveled over 1,000 miles and survived decades of forced assimilation and meant enough to this ancestor to be carried with her for the entire journey.
Brothertown isn’t a federally recognized tribe anymore. We were, but that was taken when the tribe refused to move for an eighth time to the Kansas-Oklahoma area after already moving to Wisconsin – a move the tribe wouldn’t have survived.
Even after losing federal recognition, Brothertown citizens were still Native enough to be forcibly sent to Indian boarding schools across the United States, something reflected in the Department of the Interior’s 2024 Federal Boarding School Investigation.
But through all those decades of removals, genocide and assimilation, this purse survived.
Because of our lack of federal recognition, the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin often repatriates our artifacts for us while we continue to wait to be reinstated as a tribe. So when I saw this purse in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian I knew there was little to no chance of it coming home on its own.
So I beaded a replica myself.
This was the first time I ever attempted raised beadwork – a style popularized by the Haudenosaunee in New York and likely exposed to Brothertown during our time grouped with them or through trade.
I spent hours working on the purse, and it turned out much better than I could have expected. It was almost like the memories came flowing through me. There were times when I’d get frustrated and have to walk away, but I kept coming back.
In April 2024, I gave the completed purse to Brothertown for the tribe’s museum in Fond Du Lac, Wisconsin. Since then the purse has traveled with the tribe to various cultural events across Wisconsin, just like it traveled with my great-great-great aunt, and that brings me hope.
In working on this project, and in creating beadwork in general, I learned so much more about myself and my tribe than I ever could have imagined. Of course not everything I create has a deep meaning, sometimes I bead silly things like Bobby Hill from my favorite cartoon “King of the Hill,” but every time I pick up that needle I’m engaging in a practice once taken from my ancestors.
So when I wore those big earrings, I was reflecting that storied past. I was reflecting something important to me, and trying to allow for Native viewers to see my earrings and see a part of themselves or their communities.
Native people are very rarely represented in legacy media. I know that because I am a White Native. I have better access to these opportunities. I’m more digestible for a non-Native audience because of my proximity to whiteness. I hoped that in wearing the big earrings I’d represent the community with a subtle nod.
These earrings were also big enough to see on a Zoom call, unlike the tiny subtle pair I’d picked up in Quapaw or the first pairs I’d made in Chicago. They were big, bright and proud – just like I feel about my Indigenous identity.
In the end, I wore the earrings, and I’d wear them again. If I’m invited back, I’ll wear even bigger ones and I’ll wear them because I’m proud of my people and I’m proud of myself.
So Happy Native American Heritage Month, and if you’re questioning if you should wear big auntie earrings this month or any month – do it.
Always wear the big auntie earrings, and don’t let anyone tell you not to.