Creating Turtle Island

Sophie Hill is an Anishinaabe beadwork artist, and an enrolled member of the Bay Mills band of Ojibwe. Her beadwork journey began in 2019, and her work celebrates Indigenous life and material culture through both a traditional and contemporary lens. This showcase comes as an homage to the continent we live on, its Indigenous history, and the beauty of its natural landscape. 

“Creating Turtle Island,” the titular centerpiece of the exhibition, is a visual retelling of the Anishinaabe creation story. The piece, a beaded parure, features a medallion and a matching decorative hair comb. Made using multiple sizes of beads, the medallion has three pendants instead of one, each pendant representing an animal from the creation story. A loon is attached the the left side of the medallion, and a horned grebe to the right: these represent the animals that tried to dive for the bottom and failed, swimming upwards to the shallows, a signal of their defeat. Down at the bottom, hanging from the center of the medallion, is the muskrat, who bravely sacrificed his life to bring earth to the surface. The beaded fringe woven into the edgework symbolizes the flow of the earth through Muskrat’s fingers, a symbol of his triumph.  

The beaded rope that connects the medallion is made using a gradient of green to blue beads, to represent the water’s depths. Resting on the wearer’s head as though it were the surface of the water, the turtle hair comb brings the piece together. Indeed, the wearer themself becomes a part of the story, as the boundless ocean from which Turtle Island would form.

To accentuate the beaded parure, Hill created a collection of jewelry that embraces the natural beauty of Turtle Island, as well as its unique history. The collection includes a series of tassel earrings that embody the ocean waves, lapel pins made with abalone, and earrings adorned with cowrie shells. The collection also includes two pieces that were made with American coins: a pair of earrings beaded around buffalo nickels, and a bolo tie made with a Maria Tallchief quarter. Both coins harken to Native American history and cultural identity, and by using them for Indigenous artwork, Hill acknowledges Turtle Island’s colonial history while simultaneously subverting its power.  

Ultimately, Hill believes that North America is a beautiful continent, one that is too expansive, rich, and full of life to ever truly comprehend. She believes that our connection to the land should not be rooted in what we can take from it, but what we can give to it. Every figure in the Anishinaabe creation story makes a sacrifice: the divers sacrifice their pride, Turtle sacrifices his body, and Muskrat, brave Muskrat, sacrifices his life. We were indebted to this land before we ever set foot on it, and if we can take one lesson away from this story, it is that every single one of us has something we can sacrifice to protect this land we call home.