Assiniboine Scalp Shirt Wearer

Rhonda Holy Bear’s earliest sculptures were made of cloth covering a wire armature. This was her first “transitional” figure, in which she carved the head from wood. She based the work on watercolor portraits of Assiniboine men painted by Swiss artist Karl Bodmer in the 1830s. These images inspired Holy Bear to create the details of the figure’s garments and beadwork. The ancestral homelands of Assiniboine peoples, who traditionally call themselves the Hohe Nakota, stretch along the Missouri River. Today, Assiniboine communities are centered at the Fort Peck and Fort Belknap reservations in Montana, as well as in Saskatchewan, Canada.