UPDATE: In 1997, Buffy Sainte-Marie founded the
Cradleboard Teaching Project, a U.S.
Some degree of infant restraint, known as swaddling (also called binding or bundling), with or without the use of a
cradleboard, was an almost universal childcare practice before the 18th century (Lipton, Steinschneider, & Richmond, ^65).
"She shared the teachings of the tikinaagan (
cradleboard) and how to care for your newborn.
In the same way, the
cradleboard in the "generations" piece needed some adjustment to be historically accurate, he said.
Unintentional head shaping can come about through cultural infant-care practices such as letting a baby sleep with its head constantly in a certain position on a hard surface, for example, securing the child's head on a
cradleboard for long periods.
Quite literally: Each came home from the hospital in the same wooden
cradleboard, built by their father, an Italian American sculptor, and beaded by a Shoshone friend of their mother's (who ran the local trading post and is herself a member of Oklahoma's Kiowa tribe).
She is especially enthusiastic about her
Cradleboard Teaching Project, which is "a model of delivering Aboriginal education to everyone in a way that people can understand.
For example, Iroquois women who produced and sold embroidered whimseys at Niagara Falls in 1904 were referred to as "squaw traders" and described as nut-brown maids and mothers accompanied by a papoose in a
cradleboard leaning against a tree.
Visit Buffy Sainte-Marie's
Cradleboard Project, with free curriculum resources, at www.cradleboard.org/main.html.
Considering the hypothesis of the use of deforming apparatus or
cradleboard, a tying device probably caused this modeling.
They seem to "grow" across this
cradleboard. In contrast, Blackfeet patterns emphasized bilateral symmetry (Glassie, 1995).
The particular Clan Mother depicted in the painting may be in the process of naming the small child who lays on a
cradleboard. Strawberries decorate the surface on which the child rests and grow in profusion from the earth--the first fruit of the eastern spring and an Iroquois symbol of new life.