For it is the mothers, not the warriors, who create a people and guide their destiny.
—Luther Standing Bear, Land of the Spotted Eagle
 
Much has been written about Lakota Sioux Indian men and their arts, especially those made in support of their hunting and warrior culture. Historically, however, very little scholarship has addressed Lakota women and their art forms. This lack of attention is still true today, even though the Lakota Sioux are the best-known of the Plains Indian tribal nations and their traditional regalia is widely recognized. These are the people of Chiefs Crazy Horse, Red Cloud, and Sitting Bull and of the infamous Battles of the Little Big Horn and Wounded Knee. In Lakota Women’s Arts, Marsha C. Bol gives recognition to the significant contributions made by Lakota women—particularly through their quillwork and beadwork embroidery—in supporting and maintaining the foundational values of traditional Lakota society. The author explores the underlying motivations that have impelled Lakota women to practice these arts over many centuries, with particular focus on the decades since 1820. To explicate the values expressed in these artforms, Bol gives primacy to first-person voices from members of the Lakota Nation, past and present.
            In addition to presenting an astonishing array of historic and contemporary Lakota art made by both women and men, this lavishly illustrated volume will provide today’s Lakota artists unprecedented access to historical examples of quill- and beadwork that are tucked away in museums and private collections. As Rosalie Little Thunder notes, “Lakota people must have the chance to see these [historic Lakota] things as a way of knowing where they’ve been so that they would know where to go.”
 

Marsha C. Bol, PhD, is director emerita of the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Over the past four decades she has worked as a director or curator at the Museum of International Folk Art, the New Mexico Museum of Art, the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, and the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology. She was formerly associate professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Bol holds a PhD in Art History from the University of New Mexico and is a specialist in Native American art and architecture and Spanish Colonial art and architecture. Thomas Red Owl Haukaas, MD, is a physician and an enrolled member of the Rosebud Lakota tribe. Over the last twenty-five years his artwork in media ranging from quillwork, beadwork, and doll making to ledger drawing and fabric design has earned numerous awards. His work in both traditional and contemporary forms is in the collections of major art museums and galleries.