JagBytes

Issue date: 11/28/07 Section: Art & Culture

Media Credit: Dee Sorrell Traditional Native American ceremonial pieces beautifully displayed

Media Credit: Dee Sorrell IUPUI students take part in beading workshop for forensic science learning community.

Media Credit: Dee Sorrell Students look on as Donald Cleveland husband of Marilyn Cleveland demonstrates the art of "beaded looming."

Media Credit: Dee Sorrell Marilyn Cleveland instructs students and faculty on beading in the Lower Level of University College.

As part of the celebration of Native American Heritage Month, Campus & Community Life and the Native American Student Alliance (NASA) teamed up to present the first bead working workshop.

The event, which was Nov. 13 in the lower level of University College, featured Marilyn Cleveland sharing her knowledge of bead working. Cleveland, a native of Bedford, Indiana, is an elder in the First Nations Education and Cultural Center at IU Bloomington and belongs to the White Mountain Apache and Cherokee tribes. Cleveland says she is excited to share her Native American culture with others.

Cleveland has been teaching bead working since she was 3 and feels that sharing her gift of beading is also a way to share with others her culture that has been passed down from many generations. Most beading work is used for Native American ceremonial purposes, but sometimes is also made as gifts.

"I don't really look at it so much as teaching, but more like sharing a part of what makes me who I am, with each and every person," Cleveland said.

Charmayne (Charli) Champion-Shaw, a IUPUI graduate student in Applied Communications and member of the IUPUI Native American Faculty and Staff Council, assisted Marilyn Cleveland in the teachings and demonstrations of bead working to those who attended. Charli is a member of the Southern Cheyenne tribe and has been beading since the age of 3.

"For me beading is a way to represent our culture through the patterns used and displayed within each tribe," Charli said.

The audience was shown two types of beading, although there are more than two-dozen Native American beading styles. The first style was called "loom beading," which is usually used to make items such as belts, and works best when beads are sewn onto leather. The second style was the way Marilyn Cleveland's grandmother used, a style that stays intact after cutting the beading patterns with scissors, which is unlike the loom beading that falls apart when cut.

Within the Native American culture different tribes are identified by patterns used when beading. Geometric patterns are associated with tribes from the plains while leaves and floral patterns identify with forest or eastern tribes.

One of the common misunderstandings outside of the Native American community is that beading is a form of arts and crafts instead of a tradition that dates back centuries. Before there were beads, Native Americans used porcupine needles, dipping the needles in heavy dyes of reds, yellows, and blues and when dry sewing the needles into the desired patterns on their garments.

Kaleigh Hedges, a freshman at IUPUI majoring in forensic science, said she attended the bead working event for her criminal justice learning community and to gain cultural enrichment. Before attending she had no prior knowledge of beading and the reason behind it.

"It looks really pretty, but now I really understand the hard work and patience that goes into. I have a whole new appreciation," Hedges said.

For more information, go to www.indians.org

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