Project Description

These are my contribution on their way. They are porcupine quill embroidery on braintan buckskin. I call them “Dragonfly Spirit Dance With Me.” The large dragonflies have pink & blue double quill stitching on their bodies representing all the children left behind [or never born] when these women were taken. They are larger than life as they depict the spirit ascending to Creator leaving behind a white Spirit trail connected to the earth. The cattails are in important plant for many from the Great Lakes providing shelter and food. Perched on the cattails are tiny silver dragonflies, representing those who have already walked on waiting to greet their new sisters. I used blue cobalt beads to edge the sides and toes to represent the water and antique red Hudson’s Bay white heart trade beads of all sizes and shades of red to show the many different women on this journey. I was always taught that the dragonflies are our family & friends who’ve gone on before us who come back to check up on us, especially when we dance. I oriented them towards the “wearer” because they are asking those spirits to come in and dance with us.

When I first started making them I thought I was just making them for “someone else” but an old memory came back to me and made me realize these were also for my cousin who I lost. As a child, I thought abduction & murder only happened in the movies or in the big cities, certainly not in small town northern Indiana & definitely not in the beautiful woods of the U.P. of Michigan – a place I thought was Heaven…but I was wrong. My father’s beautiful cousin was abducted and her body was later found brutally murdered – it took away all of our innocence and my Great Aunt & Uncle never got over it. Their lives were filled with pain, fear and anger and after my uncle died, my auntie moved away because she couldn’t bear living in the place she had loved so much but where she lost her heart.

by Bonita L. Bent Nelson