Lydia Wallace-Chavez

Lydia Wallace-Chavez is a First Peoples artisan of the Unkechaug Nation and Kainai Nation. A New Yorker raised in the Poospatuck Reservation as the daughter of the chief of the Unkechaug people, she earned degrees in the arts while pursuing her interest in sculpture. With her father's assistance, she learned the art of making wampum beadwork and established the company Wampum Magic to produce culturally relevant crafts important to native peoples. Her work has been featured in multiple museums and exhibits, while also being commissioned by multiple other tribes and organizations.

Childhood and education

Born in Mastic, New York and raised in the Poospatuck Reservation as the daughter of the chief of the Unkechaug Nation, Wallace-Chavez also spent much of her childhood in the downtown area of Brooklyn. She attended the Institute of American Indian Arts, where she obtained an Associate's of Fine Arts degree in 2000 before obtaining a Bachelor's of Arts in 2002 from Alfred University.

Career

After graduation, Wallace-Chavez moved to Denver, Colorado where she began practicing various types of crafts, including the traditional water-focused shell and bead work of the Unkechaug. At the same time, she combined this tradition with her interest in three dimensional sculptures. This focus led her father to have a friend teach her how to create wampum. She also created the company Wampum Magic with her husband and her father to feature her work, which has also been shown in the New York Historical Society. The Society put her Two Row wampum belt on display in March 2023, with the design representing the existence of two separate cultures working alongside one another. The belt is a reference to the original alliance between the Haudenosaunee and Dutch traders made in 1613.

Her other crafts have been featured in multiple museum exhibits, including the long-term Native New Yorker exhibit at the National Museum of the American Indian as a fictionalized comic about her work involving wampum and her tribe, the New York State Museum, and the Long Island Wertheim Center. A wampum necklace named Heart Protector that Wallace-Chavez made in 2019 was also featured at the Queens Museum as a part of the Artist-In-Residence Tecumseh Ceaser exhibit. Several of her wampum belts have also been commissioned by the Seneca Nation and other private collectors, including for the Dakota Access Pipeline protests.

Personal life

Wallace-Chavez is married to Christopher Chavez, an Eastern Shoshone member, and they have a son.