One Wyoming Goldback | Reverentia (Reverence)

Description

In her first appearance on a Goldback series, Reverentia, or Reverence/Respect, is featured on the Wyoming 1 Goldback Denomination. She is depicted in this design as a Shoshone Native American woman wearing a traditional buckskin dress and standing in Wyoming’s Northeastern plains region. Below her the caption reads “Revere what is Sacred”. Her hair has been left free to blow in the wind and lends to the overall feeling of freedom. This freedom is given deeper meaning when one understands that the bald eagle perched on her arm with falconry gear represents a messenger from the Creator, and that the freedom that the creations enjoy go hand in hand with the respect and reverence to the Creator for them. In this design, Reverentia is surrounded by sunflowers, a representation of life and beauty as a direct result from keeping our face toward the sun, absorbing the light and life that comes from it, and letting it shine through us.

The formation that we call Devil’s Tower, or Mato Tipila (meaning Bear Lodge or Bear Rock), is in the background. Mato Tipila is a sacred site to many Native Americans in the region. The origin story of its formation that is represented here involves seven girls, represented in this design by the seven ladybugs on the sunflowers, praying to the Great Spirit to save them from bears that were chasing them. In answer to their prayer, the Great Spirit made the formation raise them up toward heaven and out of the bears’ grasp. As the formation grew from the ground, the bears scratched its sides while trying to get to the girls, which gave it the markings that we see today. When the girls were raised up high enough, they were turned into the constellation of the Pleiades.

Behind Reverentia stands an American Bison, and in the foreground is a bison skull. The bison is a state specific symbol for Wyoming, but also nods to the Tribe Logos of both the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho. It is a very important animal for the region historically. In this design it represents the strength, abundance, and stability, found in freedom, consistency, and centeredness. The placement of the live bison and bison skull are purposefully placed to spark thoughts of the cyclical and symbiotic nature of the life and death that both come before us and follow after us. When one recognizes that Reverentia is placed in the middle of that representation, it further underscores the importance of having peace and respect for that ever present cycle in the now.