Because they are so ingrained in everyday life and have not been widely marketed to outsiders, quilts have until recently been taken for granted in native communities. In 23 years of documenting quilts in Michigan and elsewhere, MacDowell and her husband, Kurt Dewhurst, the director of the Michigan State University Museum, discovered historic Odawa quilts, which combine European applique techniques learned from missionary wives with floral designs clearly inspired by their own distinctive Woodlands Indian beadwork. Today many Native American quilters are reconfiguring traditional motifs, turning log cabins into arrowheads or incorporating Hopi cornstalks into Irish chain quilts. Margaret Wood, whose background is Navajo and Seminole, merges her identities by blending Seminole patchwork and Navajo designs. She spices her quilts by adapting decoration from Blackfeet Indian boys' shirts and Mimbres pottery.
Traditional motifs can have special significance.
The star, for instance, used in Amish and German-American quilts, symbolizes the morning star rising, or new life. Many quilts are deeply rooted in a sense of place. Like their non-native counterparts, many Native American quilters are breaking with tradition, creating quilts that are more like paintings, complete with art's social and political messages. They reflect strife on the St. Regis-Akwesasne Reservation in 1990 in which a dispute over whether to allow casino gambling led to indiscriminate gunfire and the deaths of two people. While working, she frequently heard gunfire on the St. Lawrence River.