Once a child of the Poospatuck reservation in Mastic, artist creates wampum art to build connections

As a child on the Poospatuck reservation in Mastic, Lydia Wallace-Chavez lived in a world shaped by the ocean and its shells.

Those times of fishing, clamming and searching beaches to find shells with holes in them to make necklaces have given way to an artistic career doing much of the same but in the service of creating wampum. Made by the original people of the Northeast, wampum is created from beads carved from shells and denotes spiritual, cultural and legal relationships.

For instance, some wampum was used to ratify treaties between early European colonists and Native Americans. 

But for Wallace-Chavez, who is of Unkechaug/Blood descent, creating wampum is about building bridges between the past and the present, life on and off the reservation, conservation and identity.

"So that's always been my goal with all of these pieces and continues to be, that to make sure that I'm representing, in a respectful way, my tribe and my ancestors and my culture, but also connecting us to the present and to the future," said Wallace-Chavez, who is in her 40s. 

Deep family roots

Creating this art is also a family affair. Their company, Wampum Magic, is made up of Wallace-Chavez, her father, Harry Wallace, who has served as chief of the Unkechaug tribe for decades, and her husband, Christopher Chavez, who is of Eastern Shoshone descent.

Her father asked someone who knew how to create wampum to teach Wallace-Chavez and her husband. After finishing college, Wallace-Chavez fused the water culture ways of her people and her interest in three-dimensional art such as sculpture.

Wallace-Chavez and her husband, who divide their time between Colorado and the reservation, started making beads in their garage. Over the years, the work has found resonance, and has been featured in places such as the New-York Historical Society. Christopher Chavez re-created the traditional tools and sculptural pieces that went along with the historical society's wampum commission.

"So, part of what I'm doing is trying to re-educate what wampum really means to our people and what it really represents," Wallace-Chavez said.

Wampum was made by carving beads from knobbed whelks, periwinkle whelks and quahogs to form items such as strings and belts, according to the book "The Unkechaug Indians of Eastern Long Island: A History."

The colors of the beads signified various messages. The purple, the book said, could mean high-level concern over a diplomatic mission. Meanwhile, white shells could indicate friendship between two groups.

Wampum's historical meaning

The Iroquois have used belts to record important tribal history, while Pequots have exchanged them for military support, according to the book.

Joshua Carter, executive director of the Mashantucket Pequot Museum & Research Center in Connecticut, said wampum's popularity grew to other Native nations in distant parts of North America — and with colonists who distorted wampum's meaning.

With European colonists came the misconception that wampum solely represented money because of the high regard Indigenous people had for them in dealings, said Carter, who also creates wampum. Colonists saw that wampum couldn't be used for food or to build housing or grow anything, so they viewed it as money, he said.

But Indigenous economies at the time were resource-based and not monetary-based, he said.

"There was a time when non-Native folks certainly used it as a currency," but that turned out to be a "very dark time for our communities," he said.

To this day, Wallace-Chavez said, there are particular wampum creations that she would not sell because of their value to her community.

Wampam, she said, is a way of understanding the significance of what is happening, whether it is a marriage or a funeral. 

Wampum design represents parallel paths 

One wampum design she highlighted in her work is the Two Row, which speaks to two cultures that work in parallel paths but do not converge. Her Two Row wampum at the historical society shows cascading white rows next to purple ones. The purple rows, surrounded by white ones, don't appear to touch.

Wallace-Chavez sees this as a metaphor for her life and contemporary issues for Indigenous communities, such as fishing rights.

"We're still being represented as 'us and them,' " she said. "We're not connected in that way."

But Wallace-Chavez says her background of growing up both in downtown Brooklyn and on the Mastic reservation undergirds her understanding of wampum.

In Brooklyn, she was what she described as an "urban" Native American, where she would take part in cultural events with Indigenous people from various tribes. When she moved to the reservation in seventh grade, she became more acquainted with specific Unkechaug cultural practices and the idea of being constantly watched by "aunties everywhere."

However, she also saw how some non-Natives around the reservation looked down on the Unkechaug people.

"The people in the town don't like the reservation. They're always accusing it of being high crime and a lot of bad things going on in our community," she said.

Conversely, "We're always like, 'You treat us wrong. You treat us differently,' " she said.

Those experiences of life on and off the reservation, she said, gives her unique insights that influence her work..

For a recent Two Row wampum she created, one end is closed to show that there is "still a chance for us to try to connect," Wallace-Chavez said.

"It doesn't have to be a parallel where we don't understand each other," she said. "There's a way that we can evolve."

By Tiffany Cusaac-Smith

tiffany.cusaac-smith@newsday.com@T_Cusaac

Education: Howard University 

Tiffany Cusaac-Smith came to Newsday in 2023 after being a race and history reporter at USA TODAY, where she wrote enterprise and spot articles examining how the past shapes the present. Previously, she worked as the race and justice reporter at the USA TODAY Network of New York, covering issues such as criminal justice reform, housing, environmental justice, health care and politics. At The Journal News/lohud.com in Westchester County, she covered Yonkers, the state's third-largest city. She also worked at The Associated Press in Atlanta.

Honors and Awards: Criminal justice reporting fellowship with the National Press Foundation;  New York News Publishers Association award for distinguished investigative reporting;  Contributed reporting for Best of Gannett honor; Member of Table Stakes, a program funded by the Knight-Lenfest Local News Transformation Fund and managed by the American Press Institute to transform local news.