A greenback coin featuring famend Osage ballerina Maria Tallchief among the many “Five Moons” has entered circulation, introducing one of the famous Oklahomans in state historical past to a good wider viewers, federal officers introduced Monday.
The “heads side” of the coin depicts Sacagawea, a Shoshone lady who accompanied the Lewis and Clark expedition in 1804-06, carrying her toddler son, Jean Baptiste.
The new coin’s “tail side” depicts Tallchief within the foreground whereas dancing with the 4 different distinguished Native American ballerinas from Oklahoma. The girls, identified collectively because the “Five Moons,” gained worldwide recognition through the mid-Twentieth century.
Osage Nation Principal Chief Geoffrey Standing Bear commented that “Maria Tallchief paved a path against great odds and sometimes great resistance to become the first Native American prima ballerina to star on the world stage. She diversified ballet with her very presence as an Osage woman, forever opening the doors for future dancers of color.”
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The final surviving member of the Five Moons, Maria’s sister Marjorie Tallchief, died in 2021, clearing the way in which for the federal authorities to start engaged on the coin. A federal regulation relationship again to 1866 forbids depicting a residing particular person on U.S. cash.
Maria Tallchief died in 2013 at age 88.
“My mother would have been so moved by being included on the dollar coin,” mentioned Tallchief’s daughter, Elise Paschen, a poet and professor on the Art Institute of Chicago, who issued a press release by means of the U.S. Mint.
“I worked with the U.S. Mint on the design of the silver dollar,” Paschen mentioned, “and am pleased that the Five Moons were incorporated.”
Later this 12 months, “The Maria Tallchief Quarter” will probably be launched, changing into the tenth coin within the American Women Quarters Program. The quarter will depict Tallchief in one in every of her break-out roles, “The Firebird,” and her Osage title will probably be etched on the coin.
Born in Fairfax in 1925, Tallchief turned the primary American to bop with the Paris Opera Ballet and was the prima ballerina on the New York City Ballet for 13 years.
In addition to the Tallchief sisters, the Five Moons included Yvonne Chouteau, who was Cherokee, Rosella Hightower, who was Choctaw, and Moscelyne Larkin, who was Shawnee.
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The Five Moons statues depict famend American Indian ballerinas. All Oklahomans, they carried out on worldwide levels and stood as a logo of Native American tradition in dance.
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