NATIVE AND NATURAL: Boujee Christmas Market kicks off, despite rainy weather

Dec. 15—The first Boujee Christmas Market opened its doors to rainy weather Dec. 15, but it did not dampen the spirit of the first day of the event happening over the weekend at The Venue.

The organizer of the event, Sheila Bird, owns a fry bread company but is also a vendor at shows.

"We had some vendor friends who didn't have a place to go this weekend, so I said, 'Let me go to my hometown, which is Tahlequah, to find us a venue,' and we found The Venue," Bird said, smiling at the coincidence.

The market was scheduled to go through Saturday, Dec. 16, from 8 a.m.-5 p.m. and is at 109 W. Willis Road.

Bird created a Facebook page so people could see where the market is and hopefully can find them, because the event is a little off the main road. The first road into The Venue is really rough, but if attendees go to the second entrance, it is a smoother ride.

"We've got people from Arizona, Owasso, Tahlequah, Ponca City, Jay, Salina, so we have a lot of Cherokee vendors, but we have a lot of other tribes here, too," Bird said.

Bill McCulley paints images on black slate rock and works with the natural contours of the stone. He breaks off pieces of slate by looking for the lines in the slate and splits it at those lines. Whatever form the slate splits into he uses for the paintings, with some adjustment to allow it to stand up. McCulley is a Creek and Seminole Native.

"I paint it and then add four or five layers of varnish, and that draws the black out and holds it out," McCulley said. "If you scratch [the slate], sometimes it'll turn out brown, blue or gray."

McCulley pointed out how the natural form of the slate formed two fingers that held a red ribbon on one of his pieces.

"That's an actual image," McCulley said, pointing to the fingers. "That's what I find in these rocks; that's why I do this, because I find these natural images."

Brittany Whelchel started doing beadwork during the pandemic to fill the time.

"I taught myself; I didn't have anything else to do," Whelchel said.

Alice Wilder sat behind a table spread out with her baskets and corn bead bracelets made by her granddaughter.

"Corn bead is not like you would think how the corn grows. It grows in a bush, and on the ends of the tips of the leaves, the corn beads grow. They fall off or you can harvest them, and they are all beautiful shapes and are ready to use as soon as they come off, and they aren't edible," Wilder said.

Wilder is a member of the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians and has been weaving baskets for 25 years.

A Muskogee and Seminole Native, Jasmine Buckley, creates digital designs for T-shirts and then sends them off to a third-party company to have printed. People can order online and Buckley orders them in bulk for shows.

As a child, Kelly Meeks attended powwows with her parents, who made their own outfits. Meeks is a Kiowa tribe member.

"My dad and brother and me danced in the powwows and I would watch mom make his aprons, and I would sit and watch. I just kind of picked it up watching them. That's how I learned to do my beadwork and all my sewing," Meeks said.

Meeks and her husband, Michael Meeks, are from Caddo County, and they set up at shows almost every weekend.

"We are somewhere every weekend, and Michael works a full-time job and helps me on the weekends. I quit my job to do this full-time. I do better doing this than I did working," Meeks said. "Most of the time we are at powwows in Oklahoma, Kansas and Louisiana."

A rack of fully-stacked ribbon skirts, handmade by Tiya Rosario, drew the attention of the attendees.

"The more ribbons you have on them, the pricier they are — or the more wealth you have, is basically what that means," Rosario said. "Usually you only see three to five bands along the bottom of a skirt."

A Kiowa Native, Rosario has been making the skirts for five years and drove from five hours away in Lawton in a heavy rainstorm to attend the show.

"[In] the southern tribes, the younger generation has really picked up on wearing the ribbon skirts, and this allows them to wear traditional stuff without having to have powwow regalia on, which is expensive. They can throw on a nice shirt and a ribbon skirt to dance," Rosario said.