Indigenous artist and designer Jamie Okuma created “Peep”—an intricately hand-beaded pair of boots honoring a California scrub jay that became part of her family when she was a child—on commission for the Hood Museum of Art. The boots will be part of a 2022 exhibit exploring American artists’ relationship with the natural world, but first they took a detour to Washington, D.C., to be photographed for an InStyle cover story featuring U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland.

Watch Jami Powell, the Hood’s associate curator for Native American art, discuss the boots and the significance of their inclusion in Haaland’s story.