This piece is called “The Ones Who Gather” 2025 - Rez Dog Art Studio
This is in the permanent collection of The Museum of the Cherokee People.
Artist Statement - “The Ones Who Gather”
“I come from a long line of women who gather—around the table, around the fire, around each other.
This piece honors them: the ones who stir the pot, string the beads, tell the stories, and stitch the threads of our lives together. These dolls represent the heartbeat of my Cherokee and Appalachian heritage—women who carry culture not in books, but in their hands, their voices, and their everyday acts of care.
In our community, healing happens when we gather. We cook. We create. We laugh. We remember. This is how tradition survives—not only through ceremony, but through shared meals, quiet making, and talk that moves like water between generations.
I made this for the seventh generation, so they’ll know:
We were here, and we loved each other deeply.
We held onto beauty, even when the world tried to take it.
We made things—because making is remembering.
These dolls are not just figures.
They are the circle I come from.
And the circle I leave behind.”
I created this last year. I was asked to create a piece that would represent me and that people 7 generations from now would see. I wanted to let others know the memories some of us have when we did purposefully gathered to cook meals , socialize and work on something."
Each doll represents an era of Cherokee time. Pre colonization, colonization, the trail of tears and today. The ghost of each era sit with the woman who sat alone. They sit with her. She feels their spirit around her as she beads. We are never alone.
Notice the tiny details of the doll making a cornhusk doll. And the one beading a tiny tsi-s-du medallion. The older woman who has river cane splints (splints from Gabe Crowe’s basket scraps) given to me from Gabe Crowe’s mother.
Friends, Gabe Crowe is still Missing since January 2024. Please share his information and alert Cherokee police to any sightings or leads to his where abouts.