In season one, episode four of Reservation Dogs—the successful FX series following four Indigenous teens in Oklahoma—one of the main characters, Bear (D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai), wants to purchase a beaded medallion for his distant father, who is passing through town. Bear and his friends visit “Auntie B,” one of their community’s best beadwork artists, to peruse the options: They come across kooky necklaces, including a fully-beaded pickle and a deliberately phallic-shaped microphone. “This is amazing, but I don’t know if my dad is that into pickles,” says Bear, inspecting the otherwise intricate craftwork.
These whimsical pieces on the show reflect the work of a real-life artist. They were created by Jill Kaasteen Meserve (@jill.kaasteen), who is Lingit and based in Juneau, Alaska. “That was so fun and surreal to do,” says Meserve of making the comical pieces in the show (she is a close friend of the series’s co-creator, Sterlin Harjo). “I love creating pieces that I hope will amuse people, and what’s funnier than a classic dick joke?” Meserve is not the only beadwork artist who is rethinking their traditional craft with a contemporary (if not kitschy) slant: Across the Indigenous community, a new crop of beadwork artists are infusing their jewelry pieces with a sense of humor. There’s two, in particular, that stand out.
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