The printmaker Lynne Allen is descended from the Hunkpapa tribe of the Teton Lakota, also known as Dakota, and was raised as a white American. Around 1998, after reading the journals of her great-grandmother, Josephine Waggoner, she began working with Native American history, making objects such as purses, arrow slings and moccasins. These are crafted from paper, cut and stitched to shape and lacquered with shellac, or from recycled vellum printed with images copied from her great-grandmother’s journals.

The decoration on this pair of moccasins includes pulp painted images of running horses, as well as etchings of images from the original Winter Counts (pictorial calendars or histories of tribal records and events) found in Josephine Waggoner's journals, and printed text copied from the journals. The decoration also includes transfers from a rubber stamp found in a craft store. At first sight the stamp looks like handwriting but on closer inspection it turns out to be a meaningless scribble. To Allen this suggests lost history, the fate of so much Native American culture. The moccasins themselves also have significance: Allen associates the feet with ‘moving on, letting go and rising above horror and inequity’.