In Ponca tradition, deer are considered sacred. In this print, however, a red string has been tied around the animal’s neck—like a leash—while a prairie dog plays with its removed antlers. A member of the deer clan of the Ponca tribe, artist Julie Buffalohead uses this animal to represent herself. She grew up between the two cultures of her Ponca father and Caucasian mother and has said that, for her, the deer’s separation from its antlers “reflects missing a part of oneself, and the ambiguity of being biracial.” Throughout Buffalohead’s work, shadow puppets allude to conflicts between cultures. Here, the prairie dog waves a silhouette of the trickster coyote in a Western-style dress alongside an exoticized representation of a woman in a headdress, the latter critiquing stereotypes of Native culture.