Daryl and his wife, Sharon No Heart, both Hunkpapa Lakota, have worked together over the past seven years, collaborating within their separate artistic disciplines. Daryl is a self-taught artist whose fine oil, acrylic, watercolor, and pen and ink artwork focuses on documenting and interpreting the Lakota culture. Sharon is a computer graphic artist, certified by the Minneapolis School of Communication Art.

Daryl’s art work is a unique synthesis of traditional, interpretive expression combined with subtle, almost subliminal, images of traditional Lakota spiritual teaching. However, unlike Salvador Dali’s surrealistic paintings, each work by Daryl is a teaching that may literally take years to decipher, or even to discern all of the images and understand their symbolism. Daryl successfully blends the cultures of his Hunkpapa Lakota ancestors and modern America, bringing a new understanding to both. Daryl’s artwork is an effective tool in helping non-natives to understand the Lakota lifeway. He has illustrated several books, painted murals on public buildings, and his traditional paintings have been captured graphically by Sharon in digitally reproduced limited edition prints.

These reproductions expand the audience for Daryl’s work, making it available to a broad cross-section of the public. These reproductions have also made it possible for Daryl’s work to be used in seminars and lectures by authors Celinda Reynolds Kaelin and Ed McGaa (Eagle Man) as teaching tools. Daryl and Sharon hope to expand on this work, and share in seminars. To use their art and graphics in teaching the traditional lifeway.

It is a sad irony that American Indian art is receiving public acceptance at an unprecedented rate, and yet the profits from this demand flow only to non-Indian businesses and individuals. One of the most popular greeting card companies, is a case in point. Their best selling art work depicts American Indian culture. Unfortunately, however, all of these works are produced by non-Indian artists.

President John Kennedy said that we have "much to learn about the heritage of our American Indians." If the main tenets of this culture, this lifeway, are presented by non-Indians, however, then all of society will have suffered a profound loss. It is imperative that authentic, American Indian voices are heard. One hundred years ago, the United States Government sought to destroy the American Indian culture by making their spiritual practices illegal and schooling their children in our dominant society’s lifeways. Now these same tools need to be employed in rewording, retelling, and repainting the story of Native culture. Daryl and Sharon No Heart do appreciate the opportunity to inform the state, the nation and the world about the people, traditions, and ceremonies of the Lakota.

Daryl and Sharon No Heart can be reached at:

23698 Strato Rim Drive
Rapid City, South Dakota 57702
ph: 605-342-4949
email: sharon_ancestors@yahoo.com
dnoheart@yahoo.com
 

Recommended Reading

Young Readers' Edition of
THE AMERICAN HERITAGE BOOK OF INDIANS

adapted by
ANNE TERRY WHITE

A RANDOM HOUSE BOOK

For a subject worked and reworked so often in novels, motion pictures, and television, American Indians remain probably the least understood and most misunderstood Americans of us all.

American Indians defy any single description. They were and are far too individualistic. They shared no common language and few common customs. But collectively their history is our history and should be part of our shared and remembered heritage. 

Yet even their heroes are largely unknown to other Americans, particularly in the eastern states, except perhaps for such figures as Chief Joseph and his Nez Perce warriors of the 1870's Osceola and his magnificent, betrayed Seminoles of the 1830's, and possibly Sacagawea, the Shoshoni "bird woman" who guided the lost Lewis and Clark expedition through the mountain passes of Montana.

When we forget great contributors to our American history-when we neglect the heroic past of the American Indian-we thereby weaken our own heritage. We need to remember the contributions our forefathers found here and from which they borrowed liberally.

When the Indians controlled the balance of power, the settlers from Europe were forced to consider their views, and to deal with them by treaties and other instruments. The pioneers found that Indians in the Southeast had developed a high civilization with safeguards for ensuring the peace. A northern extension of that civilization, the League of the Iroquois, inspired Benjamin Franklin to copy it in planning the federation of States.

But when the American Indians lost their power, they were laced on reservations, frequently lands which were strange to them, and the rest of the nation turned its attention to other matters.

Our treatment of Indians during that period still affects the national conscience. We have been hampered by the history of our relationship with the Indians in our efforts to develop a fair national policy governing present and future treatment of Indians under their special relationship with the Federal government.

Before we can set out on the road to success, we have to know where we are going, and before we can know that we must determine where we have been in the past. It seems a basic requirement to study the history of our Indian people. America has much to learn about the heritage of our American Indians. Only through this study can we as a nation do what must be done if our treatment of the American Indian is not to be marked down for all time as a national disgrace.