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You

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For me, raised beadwork is a way to express myself.

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So you'll see pieces that are unique to me because these are the colors that I enjoy.

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These are the styles that I use in my everyday life.

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Raised beadwork keeps our culture alive.

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So golly.

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Yoonjaga Snolets, Nirongets, Oniote, Daia, Ganyi, Wokahehe Gita Loro.

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My English name is Eliza Skenendoor.

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And my own item name is Yoonjaga Snolets, which means she moves quickly.

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And I serve as both the library director for the Oniote Community Library, but also I consider myself an artist and a culture advocate for our community.

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So raised beadwork is a style that is done among the Haudenosaunee.

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In our language, we say Laudenosaunee.

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It's the people of the longhouse.

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So our homelands are in New York.

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Those six nations all do the raised beadwork style.

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It's very mathematical.

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And so it's like tension, the amount of spacing you put in each stitch to get that uniform look.

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You have to be so precise.

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When I first started, there wasn't really anyone teaching in this community.

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Occasionally there would be people from out east that would come teach in our community, but the classes were really expensive.

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And as a college student, I couldn't afford like those classes.

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When I was starting my associate's degree, the tribe has this program that is for student interns.

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And it just changed my entire life track.

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I was under the collection management supervisor and she needed help moving the collection from offsite to a new location.

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And I opened this drawer and it's this mini raised beaded collection.

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And they're all miniature of our like raised beadwork.

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And I just fell in love.

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And I'm just like, Sarah, can I take photos of this?

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And can I like, she's like, take the however much time you want.

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And so I'm like counting beads and I'm taking photos and I started recreating some of the pieces that were in the collection.

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I feel like as a library director, I'm making sure that our stories are protected.

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And our stories are shared.

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It's just completely full circle to find myself.

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Being the director and becoming a mentor for the youth.

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Growing up here in this community and being able to give back to the community that gave so much to me.

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In the library, we're not only just a place for books, we're a place for people.

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We're teaching culture values.

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We're teaching knowledge.

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We're taking the interests of our community and making sure that they have those opportunities to learn what they want to learn.

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I feel like the library is a place where our community can be heard and it's a place where they can feel welcome no matter what background they come from.

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Or where they are in their state of learning.

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My biggest mentor was my father.

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He instilled that our culture is important because he didn't find out that he was Native American until he was in fourth grade.

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From a kid bullying him that he was Indian.

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He didn't want that for us.

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He wanted to make sure that we knew who we are.

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I feel like with every generation our culture, our language, our stories get stronger and stronger.

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That's what keeps our culture alive is being able to pass it from person to person.

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Thank you.