Indigenous Peoples Market at Clark County Historical Museum offers handcrafted items, art and music

November is Native American Heritage Month and the Clark County Historical Museum is shining a light on Native American artisans at the Indigenous Peoples Market, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday. Admission to the market is free and museum admission is waived for the day.

The market is in line with the museum’s mission to give local communities a place to share their culture, said Sammuel Hawkins, outreach and public programs manager.

“We’re hoping that this might be the catalyst for us to explore partnerships with other cultural groups in the Vancouver area and give them the voice and agency to take over the space here and share their culture with the community,” Hawkins said.

The whole first floor of the museum will be given over to 14 local Native American artisan vendors, Hawkins said, selling handcrafted items ranging from beaded jewelry, fabric purses and paintings to worked leather objects and dream catchers. The market will also feature art for sale by the well-known painter Adrian Larvie of the Oglala Lakota tribe from South Dakota and flute music by award-winning Akademia Music Hall of Fame inductee Sherrie Davis Morningstar. For those who miss the market, Hawkins said that some items might continue to be available in the museum’s gift shop.

Vendors at the upcoming market are members of at least 10 different tribes whose ancestral lands span the country, said Christina Felix, a Clark County artisan who is working with the museum to organize the market. Felix is a member of the Opata Nations, whose lands were in what is now the Southwestern United States and northern Mexico. She sells under the name quiquilee’s Creations at Portland’s Indigenous Marketplace, which showcases the work of Native American artists at various events throughout the year, typically drawing about 30 vendors.

Felix has been doing beadwork and making fabric wallets and purses for about 15 years, she said. The handiwork is a way for her to connect with her culture as well as to share it. Felix said it’s exciting to see her designs “out there in the world,” a visual marker for the continuity of her cultural heritage.

“I try to make use of Indigenous types of fabrics like Pendleton wools or Eighth Generation wools (a Seattle company that sells Native American-designed blankets),” Felix said. “I use patterns that several different tribes are familiar with. I try to include tribes from all over the United States.”

Indigenous markets are important to the vendors’ livelihoods as well as a way to share their culture. For some of the vendors, their artisan wares are their only source of income, Felix said. Felix also suggested that shoppers should bring cash because not all vendors are set up to take cards.

Lorrie Adams, owner of Hallowenatchi Designs, is also participating in the Clark County Historical Museum market. Her current focus is beaded jewelry, though she has “always been artsy,” she said, and has also worked with fiber and paint. Initially, nothing she made was for sale. Instead, her pieces were presented as gifts during tribal ceremonies. Then Adams’ sister became a vendor at the Portland Indigenous Marketplace and encouraged Adams to sell her work there, too. Adams joined the Portland market in 2022, taking her business name from her Wenatchi heritage and her Oct. 31 birthday.

Adams, a member of the Confederated Colville Tribes with additional ties to Yakama Nation, is from Seattle but moved to Vancouver in 1985 when she was a teenager. She attended Mountain View High School and Clark College. During that time, she wasn’t aware of any local Indigenous cultural activities and said she “didn’t have people to talk to or events to go to.” That’s why it’s so important to “put a familiar face on the Indigenous presence in Clark County,” she said.

“My uncles — my mom’s brother specifically — drilled it into us that you have to talk about things and you have to teach, otherwise we disappear,” Adams said.

Adams said her pieces grow from shapes or ideas that stick in her mind. Then she “sees what kind of pieces I can put together to make that image in my brain.” She includes elements that might not mean anything to the purchaser or wearer but that are meaningful to her. For example, she’ll work in groups of 12 knots or beads to represent the 12 member tribes of Confederated Coville Tribes. She also likes to blend traditional and contemporary elements to give her work “a modern touch.”

When selling at markets where sellers and attendees are mostly Native American, Adams said she didn’t need to explain her materials or motifs. Now that she’s selling to a wider group of buyers, she tries to be “a little more conscious” and offer some historical or cultural context, such as noting that white dentalium shells were used as currency and also to decorate regalia (traditional or sacred clothing worn during tribal ceremonies).

Hawkins said that events like the upcoming market are an important way to attract new visitors to the museum.

“We can connect with the community and show what we do here while partnering with communities that should be telling their stories in their unique ways,” Hawkins said. “That’s really the goal of the museum: to share the stories of Clark County.”