Project Description

Sisters under 13 Moons on Turtle Island.

My vamps have two sisters on a wooden walkway looking at the moon. The first being a crescent moon, the second a full moon. No matter where you are, or how far apart, you can look at the same moon your loved one may be looking at too. We love and miss them 13 moons a year; every season, every harvest, every gathering. The moons are birch bark collected in Northern Wisconsin.

If you look closely at the sister with the heart wings, she has a halo – angels among us. They are near to our hearts. The medicine wheel circles the full moon. After beading, and I am a first time Vamp beader, I noticed it looked like one yellow bead was missing. I also noticed I attached the medicine wheel flip flopped. I decided not to fix it. The missing yellow bead and the backwards wheel symbolize lost youth to me, and sisters that had to grow up too fast because of these horrid experiences. Many did not live to that direction in the life circle.

The leather was gifted to me by a moccasin instructor at the 2013 Nagaajiwanaang Ojibwe Language Camp on the Fond Du Lac reservation in Sawyer, Minnesota. She was teaching how to make baby moccasins, in tribute to the babies who are born with fetal alcohol syndrome, or that fall victim to the high infant mortality rate among our Native people. You can still smell the campfire within six feet of them. For her and the missing sisters that may have been pregnant or did not have the chance to be a mother, I took the missing yellow bead and created the tiny yellow angel flying near the crescent moon.

Lastly, after my cousin Anna Martineau Merritt posted her picture and story of the Northern Lights on this page, I added the aurora borealis bead fringe to the bottom of my vamps. It was a coincidence that the sisters were already made with beads like this too – or maybe not a coincidence at all. Not being able to send my vamps Monday – gave me the time to make this addition. I used bone bead spacers and sinew to finish the sides and cover my stiches on the back. Between the two layers, I added my home grown sweetgrass – the hair of our Mother.

by Tina Slis