My Winter Count (Primary Title)
Lynne Allen, Lakota descent, born 1948 (Artist)
Writing systems among early Indigenous peoples were uncommon, but not altogether absent. A winter count is a basic timekeeping system written in a circular pictograph. Rather than keeping a chronological calendar, it references significant events and experiences that add to the historical document of a community. In Lynne Allen’s work, the writing in red represents her own winter count, while the writing in grey is taken from her grandmother’s written manuscript. Embedded in the left figure are pictographs found in the journals of her great-grandmother Ita ta win, a woman who lived through both forced relocation and boarding schools. Within the right figure, cowboys chase Indigenous figures against a background of stripes that recall an old television and part of the culture in which she herself grew up. Allen also includes a quote from Eleanor Torrey West, an admired environmentalist.
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