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Material Culture of the Prairie, Plains, and Plateau


 



 

2024 MCPPP SCHEDULE

Santa Fe, New Mexico, Sept 27-28, 2024

 

Thursday, September 26, 2024

 

Welcome to Santa Fe, get settled, connect with friends, and have dinner on your own for tonight.  Registration packets will be available in the conference room at 8 am Friday morning.

 

 Friday, September 27, 2024

 

8:00 am                       Kachina Ballroom (second floor of The Lodge) opens to attendees. 

8:30 am                       Welcome & Announcements

Cathy Smith & Craig Jones

8:40 -9:40                    Missouri River Floral Beadwork: Fort Laramie, 1800’s

Allen Chronister is a retired attorney who lives in Montana.  He is an independent researcher with a lifelong interest in the history and people of the American West.  He maintains particular interests in the history and ethnology of Native Americans and the material culture of the Fur Trade. He has published numerous papers on those topics. 

9:45-10:45                  Beaded Flat Bags from the Columbia River Plateau

Scott Thompson raised and living in Spokane, Washington, has been learning from Spokane, Coeur d’Alene, Kalispel, Chewelah, Yakama, and Nez Perce friends since 1966.  A career as a public school art teacher made appreciating the beauty and aesthetics of native art an easy task, while Native friends added technical information about the construction and the use of much regional material culture.  Helping behind the scenes with pow-wows, root digging trips, Native weddings, and funerals, naming ceremonies, and Native culture groups such as the Spokane School District Indian Education Program and the Drum and Feather Club (an independent organization run by local elders for urban Indian youth) helped keep the focus on the people who made, used, and regarded items of material culture that we so appreciate.

 

10:45-11:00                Break

11:00-12:00                Passion, Art, and Dreaming in the Time of Buffalo:  Winyan Numpapika, Double Woman, and Sacred Quillwork

                         Cathy Smith

12:00-1:30                   Lunch

1:30-2:30                    Early Nineteenth Century Pony Beadwork: A private collection

Robert Vandenberg has been a recognized collector and dealer of Native American material culture for over forty years. His knowledge and his collection of early Plains material is outstanding.  Part of Bob’s collection of pony beadwork, 1830-1870, was exhibited at the Museum of the Fur Trade in 2016.

2:35-3:35                    Edward Curtis: Visions of the First Americans

Bob Kapoun, Rainbow Man Gallery, is an important collector and dealer of Edward S. Curtis photographs in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He collaborated, with Gerald Hausman, on the book The Image Taker: The Selected Stories and Photographs of Edward S. Curtis, employing his extensive knowledge of Curtis' work with American Indian tribes during the first decades of the twentieth century.  


3:45-5:00                      Navajo Chief Blankets, Saltillos, Serapes, & Rio Grandes on the Northern Plains    

Mark Winter has been the premier dealer and collector of Navajo weavings for fifty-five years.  He is the author of The Master Weavers, a book 23 years in the making, dedicated to the Navajo weavers of the Two Grey Hills areas of the Navajo Reservation.  Mark and his wife Linda own the historic Toadlena Trading Post at Two Grey Hills where they have a weaving museum as well as continuing to operate the trading post for the local trade.

 

5:00-5:30                     Show & Tell

Dinner on Your Own

Saturday, September 28, 2024

8:30-9:30                    Porcupine Roaches

Barry Hardin was born in Chadron Nebraska, has lived in Texas and Oklahoma, and Colorado.  He was one of the founders of Crazy Crow Trading Post.  Barry has a BA in Biology, a BS in Communications, a BSN, and an MFA in Broadcast/Film. He and his wife, Peggy, reside in Sheridan, WY where he continues to be an active crafter in beadwork, leatherwork, and German silver smithing which he markets on his website www.americanindianroom.com

9:30-10:30                  Bird Quillwork

                                    Bill Plitt

10:30-10:45                BREAK

10:45-11:45                The Shirtwearer’s: Recreating the Regalia of Twelve Chiefs from Paintings & Black & White Photos

Cathy Smith was commissioned in 1996 to recreate the regalia of 12 historic Plains chiefs for a private museum. Each of the chief's regalia presented a “treasure hunt”- because the regalia exists in most cases, only in rare photos or paintings. What do those black-and-white photos reveal? This will be an audience participatory presentation- what does that photo reveal to you?

11:45-1:15                  LUNCH

1:15-2:15                    The Symbolic Use of Hair in Plains Material Culture

Mathieu Morey

2:15-3:15                    Crow Shields

Bill Mercer has worked extensively in numerous museums as a curator and administrator for many years. His primary areas of inquiry are Native American cultural history and arts. Bill’s education consists of an undergraduate degree in anthropology and history from California State University Northridge, an M.A. in museum studies from Texas Tech University, and he was advanced to PhD candidacy in Native American art history at the University of New Mexico.  Bill has worked at various museums including the Plains Indian Museum in Cody, and served as the Curator for the Art of Africa and the Americas at the Cincinnati Art Museum, Curator of Native American Art at the Portland Art Museum, Associate Director and Curator of Art at the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, and Director of the Montana Historical Society Museum.  

3:15-4:15                    Shields and Bladed Weapons: Items of Intimidation for the Bloody  Business of Battle

Richard Kuh and Scott Thompson:  Rick Kuh was raised in Eastern WA, he attended WSU, and after college Rick moved to NE WA, near Colville. There he got reinvolved in the Boy Scout program and Native American culture.  Rick was employed by Boise Cascade and worked for 30 years in EMS, & for the past 15 yrs worked as the county deputy Coroner. Rick is now retired.

4:15-5:15                    The Use and Distribution of Elk Hide Lodges

Bradley C. Bailey is a passionate researcher and craftsman, dedicated to the study of the material culture and skills of the mountain men and Native Americans pre-1850. He has been studying hide lodges for nearly a decade, and as an accomplished braintanner, he has made an authentic reproduction sinew-sewn elk hide lodge. Beyond research, he spends much of his time exploring the American West, including hiking the Rocky Mountain continental divide from Mexico to Canada. Bradley is a Hiveranno member of the American Mountain Men and a founding member of the Rocky Mountain Outfit party. He resides near Denver, Colorado.

 

6:00-8:00                    Dinner, Drinks, and tour at The Nambe Trading Post and Museum of Western Film & Costume                                       

 Please carpool for the 15-minute drive to Nambe Pueblo as parking is limited.

 

SUNDAY, September 29, 2024

Arrange yourselves into groups to tour Santa Fe and the surrounding area. 


Option 1: Visit the Brant Mackley/Susan Swift Gallery at 1405 Paseo de Peralta, Santa Fe, NM 87501, and Buffalo Tracks Gallery at 924 Paseo de Peralta Ste 1, Santa Fe, NM 87501-2775 from 10am-12pm then grab a bite to eat on your own followed by a tour of the Segesser Hide Paintings (the earliest known hide paintings of a battle between the Otoe, Pawnee, and the Spanish in what is now Nebraska) at the New Mexico History Museum 113 Lincoln Avenue, Santa Fe, NM 87501 at 1 pm

Option 2: A self-guided tour of Bandelier National Monument (about an hour North of Santa Fe, near Los Alamos).