Wampum belts have been on my mind for a while now. When I learned that folks were reproducing ancient wampum belts with Fimo-type clay, I thought “Hey, if we can make wampum belts out of Fimo, then why constrain ourselves to purple and white? Bring on the multi-couloured wampum!”   

One of the questions I ask repeatedly in my work is what traditions can we leave behind and which ones can we evolve? What things must we keep and what can we change? Can a multi-coloured wampum still be read as such? Obviously, I think so. In 2017, I made a machinima –a movie shot in a video game—called The Peacemaker Returns, a sci-fi retelling of the Haudenosaunee Confederation Story. Among other things, it features a number of digitally rendered wampum belts, some recreated from historical records, and a few that I designed, imagining what might be made in the future. Some of the wampum belts in the movie were also created in real life. I used multicoloured wampum beads, found from an online store specializing in Czech glass beads. Basing my designs on historical belts, I extrapolated what one might look like in a future where we meet aliens. I chose white leather for the weft instead of tan because it looks more futuristic, of course.