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Butterfly Dreams Canvas Tote
- $38.00
Butterfly Dreams Canvas Tote
- $38.00
Blackfeet/Piikani artist and Inspired Natives Collaborator John Pepion created this tote with markings that represent the butterfly. Butterflies have unique meanings and spiritual connections to nature across Indigenous cultures. For the Blackfeet, the butterfly is the bringer of good dreams. You will often see butterflies on painted tipis and in the beadwork of Blackfeet people.
John drew inspiration from the rawhide parfleche designs of the Plains Indians. Traditional parfleche are beautifully embellished rawhide containers, decorated by painting, incising, or both. This unique tote bag is a modern tribute to the parfleche rawhide cases and cylinders that the Plains Indians have used for centuries to carry their personal belongings, perfect for the everyday traveler.
- Made and printed in Seattle
- Main compartment opens up 5" wide
- 19"W x 13"H x 7"5
Thank you for supporting Inspired Natives™, not "Native-inspired."
Cultural Context:
A parfleche is a container made of rawhide, historically created by Plains, Plateau, and Great Basin women artists. Today, parfleches are made by both men and women, and can be everyday items as well as ceremonial. Parfleche are often highly decorated with geometric designs. Traditional parfleche artists used natural pigments such as charcoal, algae, and ochre.
This example is a parfleche box John made. It is crafted from buffalo rawhide, and John used traditional natural earth pigment to paint the “butterfly” design.
about the artist
My name is John Isaiah Pepion, and I am a Plains Indian graphic artist from the Piikani Band of the Blackfoot Confederacy. I'm based out of the Blackfeet reservation in north-central Montana, where the Rocky Mountains meet the plains. I am best known for my ledger art, which is an art tradition that developed in Plains tribes: as the buffalo hide we traditionally used for painting became scarce, Plains people were forced to adapt by making artwork on ledger paper from accounting books. I come from a family of artists, and ledger art has been in my family for hundreds of years.