Project Description

I had a hard time coming up with what I wanted to bead, but I eventually thought of the Cherokee Rose, which has a place in my people’s more modern lore. It goes that while on the Trail of Tears, the children were dying from of hunger and exposure to the cold. The elders prayed for a sign to lift the mothers’ spirits after losing their children and the Cherokee Rose began to grow from the mothers’ tears. The rose still grows along the Trail of Tears today. I pray that all of the vamps created for this project bring comfort to the families of missing and murdered women like the rose did for the Tsalagi people.

by Micalah Ann Ray