My latest article: Manifesting Thunder Beings

Some historical Northern Plains Indigenous masks feature designs that display formal resemblances with those found on rock art and on objects made of shell that were traded over large parts of North America during the pre-Columbian period. This article argues that these similarities are unlikely to be coincidental. It examines evidence for the longevity of beliefs associated with pre-Columbian imagery by drawing on repertoires of oral tradition that continued to play a significant role in rites and ceremonies in which ethnographically recorded masks had a central function. Addressing the role of material culture in Native North American societies, the article draws attention to a typology of ritual objects that has not yet received adequate scholarly attention. It argues that these objects should be

understood as part of Indigenous North American practices of transformation, based on ideas of interspecies relationships and communication with other-than-human beings, rooted in past iconographies and religious ideologies.