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These days, many of Linda Haukaas' night dreams, waking dreams and spontaneous dreams emerge in pictographic form - a flat, representational style of drawing used by her Lakota ancestors on buffalo hides. When her people were forced onto the Great Sioux Reservation in 1868, they found substitutes for hides - filled-in ledger paper for drawings and muslin for paintings.
Haukaas and her brother, Tom Haukaas, are part of a revival in ledger drawing that began just a decade or so ago. With museums and historical societies making these old drawings available for study, the Haukaases have been able to remain true to the tradition while bringing it into a contemporary context.
It is quite possible that Linda Haukaas is the first woman ever to practice pictography. Lakota tribal art forms were traditionally
gender-specific - the men did the drawings and paintings, while the women expressed their artistry in quillwork and beadwork. Through her extensive research, the artist has found no evidence of female pictographers in the past. Nor is she aware of any other female pictographers in the present.
Historically, the ledger drawings made by men primarily depicted hunting and warfare events. "They were telling their own warfare and militaristic stories to preserve their...