21st Century Traditional: Beaded Tipi

My tipi is about a Kiowa way of life, passed down through the generations. The tipi represents the home and the heart of family, community, and tribal nation. In staking down a tipi, a way of life is staked down and thus sacred space is created and held. This is what the Water Protectors are doing by staking their tipis down—they are creating and holding sacred space in a place that once again is under threat by the United States government. For Plains people, both northerners like the Standing Rock and southerners like the Kiowa, the tipi is the center of life and its presence declares that Natives hold that place.
—Teri Greeves, 2019

The artist Teri Greeves celebrates Kiowa culture with this model tipi featuring beaded images of modern-day family and community life as well as of the ancestral beings who created the Kiowa people and brought the stories, ceremonies, and values that continue to be passed down from generation to generation.

The tipi is also the center of life and identity for another Plains tribe, the Standing Rock Sioux of South and North Dakota (see photograph). The tribe’s water source is threatened by the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), which has been transporting crude oil from shale fields in northwestern North Dakota to a terminal in Illinois since June 2017. Originally slated to cross the Missouri River near Bismarck, North Dakota, the pipeline was moved just upstream of the Standing Rock Reservation to avoid the possibility of contaminating the state capital’s drinking water. Despite numerous lawsuits and protests, many of which culminated in violence toward the protesters, the pipeline was completed after President Donald Trump issued an executive order in January 2017. The pipeline currently handles 570,000 barrels a day, but the companies that own it (Energy Transfer and Sunoco) have applied to double its capacity to 1.1 million barrels a day. The Standing Rock Sioux are still engaged in court battles to challenge the pipeline permits.