Southern Cheyenne Orthodoxy: A Study In Materiality

Abstract

The study of materiality teaches us that the connections between objects and subjects express themselves in a variety of ways. Focusing on historic and contemporary challenges of knowledge transmission, this study explores the materiality of Southern Cheyenne moccasins through the lens of religious orthodoxy. Based on research conducted with Southern Cheyenne consultants in Oklahoma, I demonstrate how moccasins serve as the material manifestation of religious ideology and actively circulate within an orthodox Cheyenne system of cultural values. I explore the indexicality of moccasin designs to highlight the didactic function of moccasins as religious art and provide a detailed analysis of an orthodox Cheyenne system of indigenous knowledge and issues of design ownership. The research I present here contributes to anthropological understandings of knowledge transmission, regimes of value, symbolic capital, indexicality, and indigenous knowledge systems. This study, when coupled with earlier work by anthropologists who worked with the Southern Cheyenne, also contributes to a longitudinal study of cultural change and knowledge transmission.