Ribbon Skirts
And PostColonial Traditions
Traditional Ohlone* Skirts
The traditional skirts of Indigenous people of the Bay Area’ were made of Tule or buckskin and at times decorated with abalone or bone ornamentation.
Loss of land, forced relocation, forced assimilation, loss of cultural knowledge, destruction of traditional habitats, development, and genocide all contributed to separating Ohlone people from their ancestral traditions.
About Ribbon Skirts
As access to traditional materials was impacted by settler colonialism, Indigenous people adapted, incorporating fabrics and ribbons gained through trade into their clothing and regalia. Over time, ribbon skirts, shirts, and other beribboned garments have become an important part of today’s urban Indigenous and intertribal communities and cultural expressions.
In our workshops with Lisjan Nation culture keeper Cheyenne Zapeda, she shared that ribbon skirts represent a round house and a womb. A skirt is a way to creates a sacred place around yourself when you wear it.
Modern Traditions
There are ribbon skirt traditions unique to different regions, incorporating different styles, symbols, ornamentations, stories and medicines connected to specific lineages. What is often the same, is that across many Indigenous communities, ribbon skirts are now worn in ceremony and important moments as a connection to the earth and the feminine and a expression of cultural heritage and pride.
As cultural regeneration and rematriation movements return Indigenous access to land, natural resources, and lifeways, many original regalia practices are being remembered and restored. Both ways of dressing are active and considered traditional in different ways.
Intertribal Indigenous artists on Ohlone Land
In our visioning and consultation for Iweš-‘iweš Kečkeyma we chose ribbons skirts to honor these ancestors as a way to uplift the role of women in our cultures as well and the Intertribal urban Indigenous communities that now live on these lands.
The contemporary Indigenous tradition of ribbon skirts can honor not only the ancestors that were held in the missions, but also the intertribal Indigenous people who will create the skirts along with all the histories that brought them from their own ancestral lands.
With this invitation, many of the Iweš-‘iweš Kečkeyma artists also incorporated pieces of their own cultures, lineages, stories and families into the skirts they made, transforming these difficult legacies of into beautiful works of resilience and remembrance.
