By: Mary Pierpoint
ALBUQUERQUE, N. M. - In 1996, a chance encounter at a Mobridge pawnshop started Aberdeen, S.D., native Beverly Moran (Good Bear Heart Woman) on a journey she never could have envisioned.
All she saw that day was a pair of fully beaded moccasins she believed could start her on her lifelong dream of dancing in pow wows. At the time, she didn't realize that the $70 moccasins would one day bring her full circle in understanding her Lakota heritage and win her national acclaim as an artist. Eleven years later, the Standing Rock Sioux tribal member was one of six Indian artists in the country to be awarded a fellowship by the Southwestern Association for Indian Arts.
The pawnshop moccasins soon became the foundation for Moran's first beaded Northern Traditional elk skin dress. Although she had hired someone to do the beading for the yoke of the dress, she soon found she needed to make a purse and other accessories to go along with it before she could dance in competition. Her daughter, Andrea (Morning Star), then 2, also wanted to dance and so Moran was soon busy beading hair ties and other accessories for the little girl.
After putting in a full day at the office as a government employee, Moran worked at night on various beading projects. It was slow going at first, since she was self-taught, but soon she began envisioning pieces that held on to their traditional roots and expanded them to incorporate her own personality. Now living in Albuquerque, the mother-daughter pair began winning at pow wows. Moran feverishly used every spare moment to create new and more stunning fan handles, hair ties, purses, belts and other items to keep up with her growing daughter's dance regalia and traveled on weekends to compete at pow wows.
Read more here: http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096415342
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