Turquoise has a long-standing tradition amongst Native cultures of the Southwest, holding special significance and profound meanings to specific individual tribes. Even before the more contemporary tradition of combining silver with turquoise, cultures throughout the Southwest used turquoise in necklaces, earrings, mosaics, fetishes, medicine pouches, and made bracelets of basketry stems lacquered with piñon resin and inlaid turquoise. Found on six continents across the world, turquoise forms in arid regions through the process of water seeping through rock and interacting with copper, aluminum, and iron deposits. In the Southwest, used decoratively for millennia, this iconic art form has a compelling story all its own. This talk explores a long tradition of distinctive cultural styles, history, and transition of the wondrous stone.
About the Speaker
Carrie Calisay Cannon is a member of the Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma, and also of Oglala Lakota and German ancestry. She has a B.S. in Wildlife Biology and an M.S. in Resource Management. By weekday she fills her days as a full-time ethnobotanist with the Hualapai Indian Tribe of the Grand Canyon of Arizona, by weekend she is a lapidary and silversmith artist who enjoys chasing the beautiful as she creates Native southwestern turquoise jewelry.