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Subject: Sacagawea To Grace Dollar Coin
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1999 02:14:36 EST
Sacagawea To Grace Dollar Coin
.c The Associated Press
By DAVE SKIDMORE
WASHINGTON (AP) -- When Randy'L He-dow Teton was a little girl growing up in
the Shoshone-Bannock tribe near Blackfoot, Idaho, her mother called her
``chokecherry eyes.''
Her round dark eyes reminded her mother of the purplish-red berries growing
wild near the rivers and streams of the Fort Hall Reservation.
``You always know when she's in good spirits because her eyes get chokecherry
dark. They get all glistening,'' Bonnie Wuttunee-Wadsworth said of her
22-year-old daughter.
Those same eyes attracted Santa Fe, N.M., sculptor Glenna Goodacre to Teton
when she was looking for a model for her rendition of another young Shoshone
woman, Sacagawea, who with her baby accompanied explorers Meriwether Lewis and
William Clark to the Pacific Ocean in 1805.
By next year, millions of Americans will fall under their serene gaze when
Goodacre's version of the 15-year-old Sacagawea appears on the front of a new,
gold-colored dollar coin that will replace the Susan B. Anthony dollar.
``I was looking for authenticity, for someone from that particular tribe,''
Goodacre said. ``And from an artistic standpoint, she had interesting
features.''
Plus, in Shoshone legend, Sacagawea was described as having large, dark eyes,
she said.
The Sacagawea on the 50 million to 60 million coins produced each year won't
look exactly like Teton. Federal law prohibits depictions of living persons on
coins.
``The eyes and nose look like mine, and the eyebrows and mouth, but the cheeks
are fuller,'' she said.
Teton, who expects to graduate this year with a bachelor of fine arts degree
from the University of New Mexico, lives in Albuquerque, a little more than an
hour from Goodacre's studio in Santa Fe.
Goodacre, who is perhaps best known for her bronze sculpture of three military
women installed in 1993 at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, found Teton through
her mother, an employee of the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe.
After spotting Goodacre's ad seeking a model, Wuttunee-Wadsworth showed her a
picture of her four daughters.
``We were here. It was the luck of the draw, more or less,'' she said.
Treasury Department officials are considering three of Goodacre's designs and
expect to announce Secretary Robert Rubin's choice next month. One of them,
showing Sacagawea looking over her shoulder, her baby on her back, has been
recommended by the U.S. Commission on the Fine Arts and was the public's
overwhelming favorite in an Internet survey. It's Teton's favorite, too.
``I laughed when Glenna first put a doll on my shoulder. But when I looked at
the finished design, it spooked me out. It was just so realistic. It was like
my future baby,'' she said.
The design has generated some controversy among the Shoshone. Sacagawea is
portrayed carrying her baby, Jean-Baptiste, in a deerskin rather than a willow
cradle board. But Teton said Shoshone women sometimes used deerskin instead of
a cradle board when traveling in difficult places.
The unadorned deerskin dress from the late 1860s in which Teton posed is not
Shoshone. But Teton said Sacagawea, who at the age of 10 or 11 had been
captured by Hidatsa warriors, probably was not wearing an ornately beaded
Shoshone dress by the time she became part of Lewis and Clark's Corps of
Discovery.
Also, some have complained that Teton is Shoshone Bannock while Sacagawea was
Lemhi Shoshone, a band that lived farther north on the Montana-Idaho border
near present-day Salmon, Idaho.
``I'm not looking on it as me. To me, the coin represents my people, Native
Americans in general,'' Teton said. ``I think it's finally the time for Native
Americans to be portrayed realistically.''
After graduation, Teton, who is minoring in Native American studies,
eventually would like to go into museum work, helping with the repatriation of
Native American objects and relics. But for now, she's hoping for a semester
off in California, and graduate school. Like Sacagawea, she is a young woman
far from home.
``Whenever I look at the coin, I feel Sacagawea,'' Teton said. ``I'm far away
from home, all by myself, trying to get my education so I can go back and do
good for the people. Hopefully, that will happen some day.''
AP-NY-01-27-99 0213EST
Copyright 1998 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP
news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise
distributed without prior written authority of The Associated Press.
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Tsonkwadiyonrat (We are ONE Spirit)
Unenh onhwa' Awayaton
http://www.tdi.net/ishgooda/
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