Smithsonian scholar to give lecture on Kiowa drawings

Transcript Staff

June 12, 2009 01:33 am

— Smithsonian scholar Candace Greene will give a free public lecture 7 p.m. Tuesday on the exhibition "One Hundred Summers: A Kiowa Calendar Record," on view at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History through Aug. 23.
The lecture will be in the museum's Kerr Auditorium and will be followed by a reception during which Greene will be available to sign copies of her book by the same title.
Greene's illustrated lecture will explore the pictorial calendar featured in the exhibition. This calendar -- or winter count -- is a chronicle of Kiowa history drawn by the artist Silver Horn (Haungooah).
Greene will talk about how she deciphered the meaning of the drawings, which trace 100 years of Kiowa history from 1828 to 1928. The calendar's tiny pictures provide a native perspective on events ranging from horse raids in Mexico to service in the first World War, tracing Kiowa life from buffalo hunts to car wrecks.
Candace Greene is an anthropologist with the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History and the author of "One Hundred Summers: A Kiowa Calendar Record" (2009); "The Year the Stars Fell: Lakota Winter Counts at the Smithsonian" (2007); and "Silver Horn: Master Illustrator of the Kiowa" (2001).
The Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History is on the University of Oklahoma campus. Additional information about the museum is available online at www.snomnh.ou.edu, or by calling 325-4712.