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Stella Pretty Sounding Flute
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Stella Pretty Sounding Flute 47 48 [35.170.66.78] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 07:27 GMT) stella pretty sounding flute, a Wahpekute-Hunkpati Dakota, is from the Crow Creek Reservation in South Dakota. She was born on July 20, 1924, in a tent on the banks of the Missouri River with her grandmothers as midwives. As a child she helped her mother and grandmothers gather and dry fruits and medicines and tan hides. Her home in Aberdeen, South Dakota, is a cottage industry for making star quilts. A sewing machine sits in a corner of the kitchen covered in neat stacks of multicolored fabric diamonds, and a quilting frame is folded against one wall when not in use. Stella Pretty Sounding Flute grew up in an era when traditional spiritual practices were outlawed by the government. Now a pipe carrier, she helped organize the movement to stop the desecration of the Minnesota pipestone quarries and have them returned to native control. In 1999 she traveled to Costa Rica to attend World Peace and Prayer Day, an international indigenous gathering. 49 My grandmother used to say,“Ho,takoza,un’a ded iyotaka.Takuku ociciyakin kte.”That means,“My granddaughter,come here,let me talk to you. I’m going to tell you these things so then you can tell your takoza, your grandchildren.” I used to see her go to rummage [sales] and pick up some plain cloth and cut diamonds by hand, so I used to watch her make quilts. I was about eight, nine, in there. They didn’t make too much star quilts in those days when I was growing up because material was hard to get and then when they did get—oh that was just precious! Our grandmothers didn’t want us to touch their material or their threads. They’d have frames and they’d stretch them out and quilt.They put it together all by hand. The star quilt comes from the stars; that’s what my grandmother said.Our ancestors used to watch the heavens,the stars,the moon,and the sun. They would observe them and really study them; the stars are 50 so bright that they sparkle so they call it wicanhpi,a diamond .The star quilt was too sacred to even think about making because them diamonds belonged to God! Then all of a sudden it’s coming up and everybody’s using it. The first star quilt that our grandmothers made was four points; one color would be a black point and one color would be a white point,one would be a yellow point,and a red point.Our ancestors used to have the four directions of the four winds,so those were the four-directions star quilts that our ancestor grandmothers used to make, but pretty soon somebody come up with the idea where there’s eight points. Red was the favorite color of our ancestors because red represents the human blood and animals have blood that is red. Our grandmothers thought about making star quilts out of flowers so they represented the Mother Earth colors; there’s brown and red and orange and yellow. All of these represent the colors that God made; you see them in the rainbow and the setting of the sun, so I try to imitate what my grandmothers had in mind to design. When I was young I’d stand there at the frame in the kitchen.I’d tell my husband to put up kerosene lamps and he’d put ’em in the four corners, you know. I’d really be hand stitching! I sewed almost half of the night! In the wintertime,that’s when I hand-quilt because it’s easier.I can’t go no place, I can’t go to Bingo. [laughs] I can’t go to wacipis [powwows ], I can’t go to no pipe ceremonies. I just stay home and pray and I do whatever I want to do. So whenever some women come, we come in here and I say,“Put your stitches in there.” 51 I made a lot of star quilts,maybe over a thousand.My star quilts are all over South Dakota, and two went to Germany. I make them to give away, I make them to honor somebody, I give them to cover somebody when they die. So whenever I sit and sew these star quilts, I just wonder who’s going to get them. I’m...