'She's representing all of us': the story behind Deb Haaland's swearing-in dress
It was a dress that triggered a flood of headlines. Standing in front of Vice-President Kamala Harris with her right hand raised, Deb Haaland was sworn in last week as the secretary of the interior dressed in a long rainbow ribbon skirt adorned with a corn stalk, butterflies and stars.
The skirt, a traditional Native garment with a variety of meanings often rooted in honoring the community’s heritage and symbolizing empowerment, outshone everything around her in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building during her swearing-in as the first Indigenous cabinet secretary in US history.
But there is also a story behind the dress: one of empowerment and survival of a community and also its designer. The garment was made as a “celebration-style skirt” in recognition of Haaland’s nomination, explained its creator, Agnes Woodward, who is Plains
Cree from Kawacatoose First Nation in Saskatchewan, Canada.
The 38-year-old devoted weeks to creating the distinct piece of clothing from her home in North Dakota. While the rainbow colors are meant to represent all people and the pair of dark blue butterflies serve to offer an uplifting message, the cornstalk is a symbol of Haaland’s enrolled membership of the Pueblo of Laguna, a tribe in New Mexico, explained Woodward.
The shimmering four-pointed stars, however, were Woodward’s own distinct addition. She said she likes to feature them in all of her ribbon skirts as a homage to both the stories she grew up with about stars being relatives looking down on them and to signify the connection Native people feel “to everything around us; that everything has a purpose; that everything that was created by creator has a purpose”.
Woodward, who also works as an advocate for victims of violence for the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation, started making ribbon skirts around 2010, when she was attending Native ceremonies with her husband, and she and her daughters, now ages 13 and nine, needed to wear them.
But she learned quickly that the act of creating such an important symbol of matriarchal empowerment that tells stories of survival, resilience and sacredness, also helped with her own healing and to restore her pride as a Native woman.
“So many women would inbox me and say, ‘This is my life story, can you put that on a skirt?’ or ‘This is my given Native name, can you put that on a skirt?’ Or ‘I’m a survivor of all this stuff and I need to heal, I’ve never owned a ribbon skirt,’” she told the Guardian.
“And so, as I’ve had those conversations, it’s given me so much empowerment
for myself, but also for all the women that I’ve connected with.”
Woodward explained that her father survived residential school and her mother the “60s scoop” – which involved thousands of Indigenous children being removed from their families in Canada and placed into foster care – and the year she was born her aunt was murdered. And then as a child growing up in Saskatchewan, Canada, she also experienced a wide array of racism, including being called a “dirty Indian”.
One instance when she was about eight years old and had to escape a domestic violence situation with her mother in the middle of the night is especially haunting. She said she remembers both of them being barefoot, dressed only in nightgowns, and running down a dark alley to get to a gas station to call for help. But instead of being greeted by concern, she remembers the clerk looking at them in disgust, before begrudgingly calling the police for them.
“I can’t explain how as a little kid you know that they’re looking at you in disgust because you’re Native, not for any other reason other than because you’re Native and this person doesn’t like Natives,” she said.
Woodward said the shame she felt about being Native meant her parents had to force her to wear ribbon skirts as a child. So, when she became an adult and made the active decision to start not only wearing the skirts again, but actually sewing them, she said it helped her heal and reclaim who she is as an Indigenous woman.
Once she started posting images of her creations on Snapchat, community members began reaching out to her requesting custom orders, and things just grew from there. Today, she has made hundreds of skirts, including ones helping to bring attention to the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two Spirit (MMIWG2) movement, and sells them through her organization, ReeCreeations.
Two of her MMIWG2 skirts had already made it on to the floor of the US Congress as part of discussions surrounding Savanna’s Act, a bill dedicated to Savanna LaFontaine-Greywind,
a Native American woman who was killed in 2017 in North Dakota. So, when she was connected with Haaland and sent her a draft of her design, it seemed only natural that her skirt would be just right for this occasion.
Woodward said Haaland wearing the skirt designed by someone from all the way up north in Saskatchewan while being sworn in, makes it clear to her that “she’s still representing all of us as a people”.