When Spanish colonizers arrived in the land now called the San Francisco Bay Area, they forced thousands of Indigenous* people into coerced labor and brutal assimilation at Catholic Missions.

Among the first taken were Indigenous women and girls—stolen from their families, stripped of their freedom, and forced into a system that sought to erase them. But their names were not lost.

They would not be forgotten.

Centuries later, the living descendants of these ancestors, alongside a group of urban Indigenous people learned about The Early California Peoples Population Records digitized from the missions which included the original names of the women and girls that had first been taken.

Working with Lisjan Nation, whose ancestors were held at Mission Dolores and Mission San Jose, a vision was born: to create 100 ribbon skirts in honor of each of the first 100 women that were stolen.

With the idea of creating an honoring project, Inés worked with Lisjan Nation to create a proposal for this exhibit and was selected for the Betti Ono Foundation Artist in Residency program.

Working with more than 40 Indigenous artists, Lisjan Nation, Sogorea Te' Land Trust, Betti Ono Foundation, and Inés Ixierda, have worked together over the last year to explore these histories through workshops, regenerating and sharing cultural knowledge while creating a beautiful tribute to the ancestors of the land we are on.

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.

These traditions were lost with 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.

Tule Skirt pictured by Deja Gould, Lisjan Nation.

As access to traditional materials was impacted by settler colonialism, Indigenous people across the continent 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 workshop series with Lisjan Nation culture keeper Cheyenne Zapeda, she shared that ribbon skirts can represent a round house and a womb. A skirt is a way to creates a sacred place around yourself when you wear it. A skirt is a ceremony, a prayer.

While ribbon skirt style and traditions can vary, what is often shared across geographies is a meaning of importance, a connection to the earth and the feminine and a expression of cultural heritage and pride.

The cultural tradition of ribbon skirts can honor not only the ancestors that were held in the missions, but also the intertribal Indigenous people who now live on Ohlone Land and who will help create the skirts. 

With this invitation, many of the Iweš-‘iweš Kečkeyma artists also incorporated pieces of their own cultures, stories and families into the skirts they made, transforming these difficult legacies of into beautiful works of resilience and remembrance.