Dinosaur Bones and a Teepee
Tales as old as time… Do you remember those lyrics? When I was painting the Teepee the painting almost seemed to paint itself. It came from an experience I had when I was Cadette going into Senior Girl Scouts. I had always loved Native American history and culture. I had been given the opportunity to travel to Montana and stay on the Blackfoot reservation while digging at paleontological website with Jack Horner. Yes THE JACK HORNER! It was a change of a lifetime! I never would have dreamed of having this opportunity had it not been for the Girl Scouts wider opportunities.
Me with my T-shirt from the wider opportunity .
I was a twelve year old Ohio preteen who was just exploring what she wanted to do with her life. In Ohio, you are completing career exploration in middle school and deciding if you wanted to go to college or not in eighth grade. Mind you this was the late 80’s and early 90’s. I feel in love with archeology because it blended together my favorites of history and science. I even had the chance to go on my first archeological dig that spring because one of my mom’s friends knew an archeologist and had conviced my mom to let me go on his dig. It was so cool! Can you even imagine a twelve year old girl in the woods on a dig with an actual archeologist!
Ok, so back to my story. So later that Spring it was time to decide if I wanted to go on a wider opp or not. Of course I did! But where to? I flipped through the catalog, hoping there would be another dig site I could go on. Yet there wasn’t. Then I found it! I had no clue what paleontology was but all I knew is that they would be digging something up and I would be meeting Jack Horner. I knew he was because of Jurassic Park. I had read the book. So I applied and sure enough a month later I had been chosen to represent my troop on the trip!
I arrived in Montana and when I got there they told us that the Blackfoot tribe had invited us to stay at their reservation. I felt so honored. I had always loved Native American history and cultured. As soon as I approached my teepee I was in awe of how tall the teepee was. The movies and tv shows try to depict this but they don’t really show it well enough. It has always stuck in my mind how warm and inviting the teepee is. Once you sleep in a teepee you don’t forget it. That first night in the teepee wasn’t like anything else I had ever experience before or since. Sleeping in the teepee is comforting. It’s as if the inside of it tells you that you are safe. The wind blows but the outside just guards you from it all. Nothing can harm you while you are inside that teepee. It’s warm and loving. While I slept inside, I began to think about the history of the plains natives. What stories could they tell us that history never told us.
My painting, ‘The Teepee,” is a reminder to my viewers that the Native Americans want to invite you into their homes so you can hear their stories and their side of history. Native Americans are gentle, loving people who never had the chance to tell us about their culture, their history and their daily lives.
“The Teepee”
