Our Grandfathers Ride with Us Today ~ Don Montileaux (Oglala Lakota)

There is a long tradition of artwork among the native peoples of the Plains, who originally painted on animal hides – particularly buffalo hides. When buffalo became scarce after eradication programs encouraged by the US federal government, Plains artists began painting and drawing on paper, canvas, and muslin. In the 19th century, an increasing supply of ledger books and other paper came from Europeans, along with pencils, fountain pens, crayons, and watercolor paints.

A revival of ledger art began in the 1960s and 1970s. Modern Plains artists create contemporary ledger paintings, often using 19th-century documents on which to paint, creating ironic juxtapositions between the printed text and the paintings.

A world-renowned artist and illustrator, Donald Montileaux (Yellowbird) is an enrolled member of the Oglala Lakota Tribe. He is a modern-day storyteller, rekindling the images of the Lakota lifestyle by painting the people as they were. He says his mission is to portray the Lakota in an honest way, as people who hunted buffalo, made love, raised children, cooked meals, and lived.

“To describe my work is to reflect back to my forefathers. The surfaces that they used were hides, rock walls and surfaces both smooth and rough and hides both tanned and rawhide.
I use ledger and water color papers as well as canvas and animal hides to create my work. In this way I can achieve somewhat the same look as my forefathers created with their work. The art is a flat two-dimensional intense color; fiery red, brilliant yellow and translucent blues. These colors, I feel, are the colors that my ancestors would have used if they had access to the wealth of color we have today.”