For the past 32 years, Native American artists have gathered at the Eiteljorg Indian Market and Festival to share their art—and something more. Despite their diverse backgrounds and mediums—pottery, quillwork, beading, painting, dancing and more—they share the need to express their identities and preserve their cultures. 

The event last weekend saw nearly 150 artists from across the United States and Canada exhibiting and selling their art. TheStatehouseFile.com gathered just a few of their stories.

DG House (Cherokee tribe NE Alabama), is known for her unconventional paintings of the wildlife of Yellowstone, such as her signature blue bear or her purple moose inspired by a moose’s reflection through a window.

“My entire life changed when I read a poster at the University of Dayton in 1981 that said, ‘Spend your summer in Yellowstone,’’’ she said.

House was initially apprehensive at the thought of navigating a new place on her own.

“I got a job someplace called Mammoth Hot Springs in Yellowstone National Park and got an old Pinto station wagon and an old duffel bag and some cassette tapes of John Denver and Jimmy Buffett, and I drove out to Yellowstone and I was terrified,” she said. 

In 1988, she became a wildlife photographer, and in 1995, she decided to follow her dreams of painting and “embrace Native culture.”

She now is in her 30th year as an artist in residence in Grand Teton and has been part of an organization called Inspired by Yellowstone for more than 12 years.

“The photos you see were taken there [Yellowstone],” she said. “And then every single painting is a real interaction.”

House’s main goal for her art is to create a voice for the voiceless and help people discover their place in nature.

“I think my job is to represent the people in the wildlife that don’t have the predominant voice but to also remind you of how you feel when you’re in your own natural world,” she said.

She started out painting realistic things, much like her photos, but then decided to take a more creative approach, even creating pieces using cardboard.

“Today I say the most fascinating thing to me is that I made up this paint-on-cardboard thing. I didn’t invent painting on cardboard; what I did is I just ripped up boxes. Then I decided what to paint based on the shape it happened to rip to.”

House believes that no matter the medium, art should tell a story that invites the audience in.

“And then of course you make up the story in your head. Who is this? Why do they have that on there? What does it represent? All the rest of that is up to you. That’s what makes good music, art and movies, is you are a part of it.”

Pahponee (Kickapoo tribe in Kansas/citizen band Potawatomi), a full-time artist, began her career in clay making in 1982.

“I started out originally working in clay, and then about 25 years ago, I was introduced to lost wax casting method in bronze making, so now I work in two mediums,” she said.

Pahponee’s pots were displayed on shelves, some with two white buffalo engraved on the front of them.

“For me, I’ve always done art, and back in the early ’80s, I was taken to see two white buffalo, which are sacred animals in our tradition,” she said. “And after seeing those two animals, I was very much inspired to create pottery and make my first white buffalo pot, and that really started my pottery career.”

The key things she wants her art to bring others is joy and appreciation for the work.

“I want them to feel good when they look at the art and enjoy it,” Pahponee said. “For me, I think the art tries to bring out the best in me, so I hope it does bring out the best in other people. I hope it helps them fall in love with it, if it’s a piece that they buy from me, that they truly fall in love and they realize that they are caretaking something that has a lot of history behind it.”

Outside on the Eiteljorg lawn among the vendors and tents, a family of artists displayed their bead and ledger work.

James Day (Bois Forte band of Chippewa), husband to Alexa Day (Anishinaabe, Lakota, Hochunk tribes) and father to their son Adrian Day, who is an award-winning artist, spoke for his family’s work.

“We do everything from ledger art, beadwork, sewing, you know, we kind of dabble in a lot of different aspects of art,” he said.

Ledger art stems from the use of old paper and is historically connected to past tribes.

“So the Plains tribes … they kind of, I guess, get more notoriety and are more known for it as a tribal nation or nations, but really, many or most tribes were privy to or, you know, exposed to ledger art early on because one of the reasons that came about is boarding school days,” he said.

“What they would do is they kind of give the kids junk books, what they deem junk books, because they were, you know, banking ledgers or rolls and they were already there. Then they would bring those home. … And so to us, it was really readily available.”

With traditional ways of making art, such as on buffalo hide, becoming more difficult as more buffalo were eradicated, Native Americans of that area and time adapted to their changing environment to preserve their culture and to continue telling their stories through this new medium. Now artists like the Days continue that tradition.

“Many many ledger artists now just utilize that as a medium to tell a story or show a beautiful piece of art,” Day said.

Lisa Smith and her students at Indy Hula took the stage accompanied by Hoapili, a Native Hawaiian quartet, representing Native Hawaiian dance and music for the first time at the festival. 

Starting in Hawaii, Smith started dancing when she was 4. In high school, she began teaching and made her way to many places, ending up in Indiana.

Smith sees the similarities in the Native cultures from the mainland to her own and always tries to support when she can.

“For us, anytime there’s something that involves Indigenous people, we are there because we are Indigenous people,” she said. “So oftentimes we get asked to dance at a powwow, and we always go because we feel that connection. These are our people; we think about the same kinds of things, we love the earth, we talk about the earth, and we take care of the earth. We care about family, so a lot of values for Native Americans are very similar to our … values. “

For Smith, it is important for her students to know that what they do is not just dancing, it’s culture. 

“They have to understand what they are dancing about, what some of these words mean,” she said. “So it’s not just to get up there and do motions, it has a meaning to it. And they have to know that meaning and not just get up there and do the dance.”

Smith hopes that people in the audience will understand the differences in the Polynesian cultures they represent outside of Hawaii. 

“A lot of people think that we wear grass skirts, and we have to understand that Tahitians actually wear a kind of a grass skirt. Hawaiians wear leaf skirts,” Smith said. “They’re different cultures with different languages, so I’m hoping that they understands it’s not just for this commercialized luau stuff that you see in Party City, it has a traditional background. So again, we’re not wearing costumes, this is actually what they would wear.”

Smith says that when at luaus in the past, she would use that space to educate the audience on the culture and tradition behind what they did. 

“It’s not just entertainment, it’s education,” she said. 

Each bead sewn onto the rocking chair titled “Singing for Their Dead” represents something, each intertwined into a memorial piece for three important people in bead and quillwork artist Karen Hoffman’s (Oneida Nation of Wisconsin) life—a teacher, mentor and her husband. 

“Beading work, as you know, can really bring out those really long-held cultural beliefs,” Hoffman said to fellow bead and quillwork artist Ann Naibi Quis Quis (San Pasqual/Comanche). “And not to put words in your mouth … It can bring you closer to your culture … To me, that’s exactly what this did, reminding me of all those ways that we traditionally think about death and dying.”

She continued: “My old people helped me to understand that there’s no difference between the past, the present and the future, it’s all connected. When I am sewing, I’m thinking about the husband … I am in the past, as real as it ever was.”

Hoffman hopes that people attending events like the Eiteljorg Indian Market and Festival will learn from the experience. 

“I hope they learn respect for indigenous ways of expression, and how we are still here,” she said.

“We’re not just here living in a teepee on the river and we run around in breechcloths and loincloths,” said Quis Quis. “We’re here to accomplish great things just like anybody else.”

Hoffman has been a beading artist for over 20 years, while Quis Quis has been an artist for five years.

“I didn’t grow up in my culture. I didn’t grow up around my culture at all. So it’s very, very new to me,” Quis Quis said. “I’m self-taught, so a lot of trial and error, a lot of doing it and taking it apart.”

Ann Naibi Quis Quis’ grandmother came from the boarding school era, when between 1869 and the 1960’s, “hundreds of thousands of Native American children were removed from their homes and families and placed in boarding schools operated by the federal government and the churches.”

Inside these boarding schools, Native children were stripped of their culture, forced to cut their hair, change their names, give up their traditional clothing and practice Christianity. They were banned from doing anything representing their culture or traditions, even from speaking their Native languages, and physical, sexual and other forms of abuse were common, according to the National Museum of the American Indian.

“My mother is one of eight children. So because of what my grandmother went through in boarding school, she refused to teach any of my mother’s generation about their culture, their history or their language,” said Quis Quis. 

In turn, Quis Quis, as one of four children, could learn nothing from her mother about their culture. 

“If you know nothing previous, you have nothing to teach. So we grew up also knowing nothing of our traditions and our cultures,” she said.

Even with her late start, however, Quis has wasted no time, scoring an award for her work last year, her first time at the festival, as well as passing down her skills to her daughter. 

“I have friends who can dance with your grandmother’s dresses. And if you come from nothing of your culture and you have nothing, I can never say that. I can never dance in my grandmother’s dress,” she said. “Or I can never dance in my mother’s dress. But my grandkids will be able to say, I’m dancing with my mama’s staff that my grandma made—that my Huutsi made her.”

“Sorry, this just makes me so emotional,” she said, wiping a tear from her eye. 

“[Huutsi is] how we say ‘grandma’ in my language. My grandkids call me Huutsi, and they someday will be able to say, ‘I’m using these things that my Huutsi made for me and taught me.’ And that’s powerful to me, it’s very powerful.”