Well-established art markets like the 96th SWAIA Santa Fe Indian Market are also marketplaces of ideas. It’s a mystery what attracts collector to artist, but surely part of the magic must be the ideas circulating around the work.

Crow beader Elias Not Afraid beaded Wonder Woman-style cuffs on kevlar, a material developed at Dupont in 1965 that is five-times stronger than steel.

He had to pre-punch the holes and use buckskin needles. “I think about if my ancestors had had this material, they would have been bulletproof,” he told ICMN. “This would have been medicine for them.”

Not Afraid also showed a Crow man’s mirror bag that took more than 200 hours to make. It features a classic hourglass design from the late 1800’s. On the flip side is a floral design from the 1900’s. “I used vintage beads on the newer design, and modern beads on the more antique design,” Not Afraid told ICMN.

Joyce Growing Thunder and Juanita Growing Thunder, Sioux mother and daughter, worked together on their “doctor’s bag” from Switzerland, purchased on the Internet for its elegant shape, unusual brass fittings and houndstooth silk lining.

“I’d been looking for that bag for 20 years,” Juanita said, “but you can’t force things.” Depicted in porcupine quills, the bag commemorates past quill artists, and is called “Remembering the Quillwork Society.”

“It was a real society,” Juanita Growing Thunder explained to ICMN, “and a true Native art form, a women’s art. To be initiated, a woman had to be humble, hard working, from good people with good characteristics. The idea to make it came to me in a dream.”

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