Written over the span of a decade, What Does It Mean To Mend? by author Stella Nall moves through moments of joy and sorrow, tenderness and loss, humor and quiet reflection. Informed by the history of her ancestors and her own experiences navigating the world as a queer mixed-race Apsáalooke (Crow) woman, Nall’s illustrated poems trace a journey of processing personal, cultural, and creative experiences, working towards a sense of self-understood wholeness. The poems are rooted in memory, family, and the rhythms of everyday life. Her work also engages intergenerational trauma inflicted by assimilative boarding schools, their impact on her people, family, and life. A direct outcome for Nall and her brother was that they were not raised as fluent speakers of the Apsáalooke language, which motivated her to continue speaking, learning, and weaving it into her creations. 

The book’s handmade paper cover is letterpress printed and beaded using baaluxapíihkuua: one of the first beadwork styles that Nall learned as a child. In Apsáalooke beadwork, the color black is not generally used. Nall’s decision to include it within the pattern carries layered meaning—a nod to the western connotation of mourning associated with the color, and a reflection on what it means to be connected to her identity who has been marked as ‘not Crow enough’ by the tribe’s current enrollment policy which utilizes blood quantum. The illustrations are printed with colors inspired by the palette used in traditional Crow beadwork, and the cover and end pages depict the customary red wool and elk teeth aligned in the pattern used for dúusshile, a style of Apsáalooke women’s regalia. The handmade paper used for the edition’s covers is itself a form of visible mending. It was created from an earlier misprint of the book—shredded, wetted, and reformed anew—its original flaws still present, though now unrecognizable.

Nall notes, “Under the tribe’s current enrollment policy, my brother and I are the first generation in our family denied enrollment and instead classified as descendants. Some of the work in this book speaks to the pain this has caused me, including the fact that we are barred from voting on tribal matters. Unable to vote, I use my work to share my ideas and advocate for change within my community. For much of my life, I felt alone in these struggles, but I am not alone. So many Indigenous people are experiencing similar realities, grappling with the same consequences from our communities continuing to impose colonial standards of enrollment. It would have been helpful to me as a child to see some of these things talked about more openly, and I use my artwork as a way to facilitate dialogue going forward.”

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