"Stunning Images Show How Native American Fashion Looks Without Cultural Appropriation"

"Her inspiration, she says, is encapsulated in the vision board she created before designing the pieces — old black-and-white photographs of her grandfather, Hawk with the Yellowtail Feather, and of her aunt performing a rare women's warbonnet dance in the 1940s juxtaposed with her sister participating in the same ceremony a few years back.

"It's beautiful to see the continuity of our people from then to now," she told Mic. "I wanted to convey that with my collection — we're still here, we're still a reflection of our ancestors."

In fact, much of Yellowtail's mission — which drives her work and, in a sense, elevates it above the fashion economy's more commercial ambitions — revolves around fighting cultural erasure, the tendency to treat Native people like they're gone or disappearing.

"At this point, they're taking our voices and our designs from us," she says. "They don't acknowledge us as living people and nations. This is not just fashion, it's part of our tribal identities.""
http://mic.com/articles/118150/stunning-images-show-how-american-indian-fashion-looks-without-cultural-appropriation

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