Detail from Buffalo Eagle Spirit Meeting at Oyaken Creek
Glued onto the balancce sheet is a tin-type photograph (copy) of Shwin-whit (Green Leaves or John Stephens) and daughter. John Stevens was one of Flett's ancestors living in the Oyaken Creek area. The photograph was used on Spokane tribal stationery until the early 1970s.
"In the 1890s through 1910, there were. . . relatives who lived in the Oyaken Creek area on the Spokane Reservation. And I can remember my mother telling me stories about these relatives. They would have their winter medicine dances or they might ride to various family locations out there or maybe have meetings or talk about, for example around 1910 . . . the reservation land allotments."
"To this day I think I can really understand more and more and more about the traditions these people had. . . .
When I do these pieces of ledger work, I try to put their feelings into the work that I do. . . . Maybe 20, 50 years down the road these pieces will become more important, because it's really getting harder and harder and harder to remember some of the old legends that were told to me by family members."--George Flett narrating exhibit video.