Michael Running Wolf, a Sicangu Lakota artist from the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota, is redefining the boundaries of Indigenous adornment through his extraordinary hybrid works combining porcupine quillwork and glass bead embroidery. Rooted in traditional Lakota techniques and cosmology yet firmly situated in contemporary Indigenous art discourse, Running Wolf’s pieces embody a dynamic interplay between old and new, land and light, ceremony and design. His work revives the sacred labor of quillwork—a technique that predates the introduction of glass beads to the Plains tribes—and fuses it with the polychromatic brilliance and structural possibilities of modern beadwork, creating objects that shimmer with cultural memory and visual innovation.
Quillwork among the Lakota is more than ornamentation. It is a practice of spiritual significance, often associated with rites of passage, protection, and storytelling. Traditionally, dyed porcupine quills were softened, flattened, and stitched into hides or wrapped around rawhide and hair adornments to form geometric patterns imbued with meaning. The arrival of glass seed beads via European trade networks in the 18th and 19th centuries offered a new material vocabulary, and while beads eventually eclipsed quills in mainstream use, the most skilled artists have long maintained both traditions. Michael Running Wolf does not simply preserve these methods—he fuses them in complex and intentional ways, creating tactile dialogues between the past and the present.
His signature hybrid style juxtaposes flattened quills in natural and vegetal dyes with carefully stitched seed beads from Czech and Japanese manufacturers. Each material plays a distinct role in his compositions. The quills, matte and fibrous, evoke earth, bone, and animal—anchoring the piece in the physical world of land and kinship. The beads, by contrast, catch and refract light, suggesting water, sky, and spirit. When combined, the two surfaces create a rhythmic contrast: quill forms radiating outward like sunbursts or lightning, interrupted and framed by luminous beadwork that might represent rivers, constellations, or the bead trails of dreams.
Running Wolf’s work is meticulously crafted. His quill preparation involves traditional methods passed down through elders—collecting quills ethically, cleaning them in wood ash, dyeing them with wild-harvested plants like wolfberry, chokecherry, and wild indigo, then soaking and flattening them with bone tools. His color palette reflects the Northern Plains: iron red, sage green, sun-washed ochre, and buffalo bone white. He often introduces modern bead finishes—AB-coated, metallic, or transparent beads—to expand the chromatic range and create a kind of visual echo between materials. This nuanced use of color and texture enables him to layer cosmological and ecological references into even the smallest patches of surface design.
One of his most acclaimed works, “Taté Topa / Four Winds Breastplate,” combines a traditional bone breastplate form with quilled motifs at the cardinal points and beadwork bands in turquoise, deep lapis, and silver. The piece functions as both regalia and metaphysical map, its symmetry invoking balance and directional protection. Another piece, “Star Quilt Shield,” transforms the iconic Lakota star quilt pattern into a round, shield-like format executed entirely in alternating rings of dyed quill and bead embroidery. The central star is composed of fire-dyed quills, encircled by beadwork that mimics rippling water—symbolizing the connection between fire and life-giving moisture in Lakota thought.
Running Wolf often works on traditional substrates—brain-tanned deer hide, buffalo rawhide, and birchbark—but has also created wall panels and contemporary garments using textile backings for wider exhibition audiences. His moccasins, cuffs, and pipe bags are frequently worn in ceremonies as well as shown in museums, blurring the distinction between sacred object and gallery artifact. For Running Wolf, the spiritual integrity of the work is never compromised by display; rather, he views his pieces as carriers of language, history, and prayer—whether worn, danced, or hung on a wall.
Each design is not just decorative but narrative. Running Wolf frequently integrates symbolic language tied to Lakota oral traditions. A band of triangular quillwork might reference mountain ranges; stepped motifs suggest journeys or intertribal migrations. His use of negative space—areas where the hide is left bare between quills and beads—is deliberate, creating visual breathing room and inviting contemplation. He likens these spaces to the silent moments in a song, where meaning rests not only in sound but in the pauses between.
He is also engaged in education and cultural reclamation, teaching quillwork and beadwork to younger members of the Sicangu community through workshops and apprenticeships. He insists on using the full Lakota names of patterns and designs when instructing, reviving linguistic knowledge alongside material skill. In this way, his art practice becomes a holistic act of preservation, ensuring that each stitch carries more than color—it carries a way of seeing and being in the world. His students do not merely learn how to bead or quill; they learn how to read the land, listen to ancestors, and understand their role within an intergenerational web.
Running Wolf’s work has been featured in institutions such as the National Museum of the American Indian and the Heard Museum, as well as in major Indigenous art markets. Critics have praised his ability to maintain cultural fidelity while innovating within the form, noting how his pieces feel timeless yet unmistakably of this moment. The hybridity in his work is not a compromise, but a statement—an insistence that tradition and modernity are not opposites, but mirrors, each reflecting a different facet of Indigenous identity and endurance.
Michael Running Wolf’s quill-and-bead hybrids are more than beautiful objects. They are sacred codes stitched into skin and cloth, affirmations of resilience and artistry born from centuries of adaptation and survival. Through his work, he invites viewers to look beyond the gleam of glass or the texture of quill, into the layered stories of a people, a land, and a future braided from memory and movement. Each piece he creates is a quiet revolution—a testimony that the old ways not only endure but evolve, alive in every stitch, every bead, every flattened quill.