Chris Ravenshead
Non-Native American.
Chris Ravenshead was born in the Walloon region of Belgium on April 27, 1957. His interest in Lakota Sioux culture began very early in life. In 1976, while on leave from the Belgian Army, he visited the Cheyenne River Indian reservation in South Dakota. This visit left an indelible impression on him. After leaving the Belgian army a few years later, he came back to the Cheyenne River Indian reservation and lived in Cherry Creek, South Dakota. While there, he learned the Lakota culture, language and quillworking from tribal elders. As time went on, Chris became an artist and his reputation grew.
With his reputation established, museums such as the Akta Lakota Museum in Chamberlain, South Dakota began to commission Chris to craft reproduction quillwork items. In 2004, in celebration of the 200th anniversary of the Lewis and Clark expedition, Chris was commissioned by the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts to reproduce historical items. For this commission, Chris recreated a quilled otter pipe bag, a shirt and leggings that were given to the Lewis and Clark expedition by various tribes on their journey west.
Chris has always aimed to preserve the traditional forms of Sioux art in his quillwork. He takes pride in the fact that he has learned the craft not from books but from the elders of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe.
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