The ShellWoman shawl’s image was described to me in a vision.

The Our Lady of Guadalupe shawl represents the first apparition of Juan Diego, an Aztec man living in 1531, 10 years after the seizure of La Ciudad de Mexico. “On Saturday just before dawn…sorrows…”

The Skywoman shawl represents the Tslagi (Cherokee) creation story. The sky people live in a world like ours, only on a plane up in the sky. One day Skywoman was breaking a taboo by poking around a tree which no one was supposed to bother. All of the sudden a hole opened up in the ground & she fell through…to our universe. Her father couldn’t save or bring her back, so he told Turtle & the other animals below to take care of her. There was no land, only water, so Turtle sent Muskrat down to the bottom of the ocean to bring back some soil. Muskrat brought up some soil and exhausted, placed it on Turtle’s back, whereupon it began to grow until it became what we know as Turtle Island so Skywoman had a soft place to land.Skywoman brought us all the bounty of the earth from her body…

Each shawl was manifest as a tool of transformation…