Ardina Revard was born in December 1930 in Texas to an Osage and Quapaw family.
[1] [2] [3] Her father was James Osage "Jimmie" Revard, founder of the Oklahoma Playboys,
[2][4] and her mother was Martha Dora Griffin, who died when Revard was about seven years old.
[5] [6] Her maternal grandparents were Minnie and
Chief Victor Griffin, the last Quapaw chief before the tribe formed a business committee.
[2][7][8][9][10] Revard grew up speaking both English and Quapaw on the farm of Chief Griffin known as "Devil's Promenade" in northeastern Oklahoma.
[1] After finishing high school, Revard enrolled at
Northeastern State University, graduating in 1957.
[2]
She began her career as a teacher, first teaching high school health and physical education. Then she taught Indian history and genealogy at
Northeastern Oklahoma A&M College(NEO) in
Miami, Oklahoma. Between 1967 and 1978, she lived in Montana, but returned to Oklahoma with her family and discovered that the Quapaw language was endangered.
[1]She joined the Community Service Program, at NEO and began teaching evening language classes to preserve the Quapaw language,
[3] creating her own workbooks and tapes, as she had no dictionaries or textbooks on the language.
[11]
Moore, who had been making Native American fashions for her daughters to wear at
powwows, Indian dances or other functions,
[10] began commercially marketing Indian apparel in 1983. The company Buffalo Sun was located in Miami, Oklahoma, where Moore lives and designs the clothing. She also cuts the patterns which Native women then sew from their homes.
[12] The company makes inner and outer wear as well as accessories, with traditional and contemporary fashions. Some are simple designs and others feature intricate
beadwork and
ribbonwork elements.
[13] She has toured with her fashions throughout Oklahoma,
[10] Arkansas,
[1] Missouri,
[13] and to both coasts, participating in the
Powhatan Renape Nation fashion show in Pennsylvania
[12] and
Los Angeles where a fashion shows were held at the American Cultural Center and International Trade Center.
[10]
From her beginning evening classes Moore has now expanded her program to save the Quapaw language to two series of classes, which span over an eight-week period and are held annually at the Quapaw Tribal Museum.
[1] The tribe also holds an annual Youth Language Camp, as well as conferences with the Dhegiha Language Conference to preserve and teach the Quapaw language and its closely related tongues,
Osage and
Omaha.
[14] In addition to her efforts to save the Quapaw language, Moore has served as the tribe's
powwow committee secretary/treasurer,
[15] tribal historian,
[16] chair of the tribe's Cultural Committee,
[17] and as an elected member of the Tribal Business Committee.
[2]
