Brandy McDonnell
An abbreviated version of this story appears in the Sunday Life section of The Oklahoman.
O Christmas Tree: Red Earth Art Center celebrating American Indian culture with Treefest
From the bright yellow tree skirt adorned with galloping red and blue horses at the base to the feather fan ornamented with the hand-beaded medallion at the top, the history and heritage of the Comanche Nation are displayed in an unlikely fashion: as decorations for a Christmas tree.
“It’s good outreach for the Comanches because each one of these ornaments that we have on the tree is representative of the tribe. The tribal colors are the primary colors – red, yellow and blue – so we’ve incorporated that theme into this. All the ornaments on the tree are handmade,” said Candy Taylor, director of the Comanche National Museum in Lawton.
“We start working on this in the summertime. This is not something that we wait last minute to do. … “We look forward to this every year. This IS Christmas to us. We know the Christmas season is upon us when we have our tree decorated here.”
For the fourth year, the Comanche Nation is participating in the Red Earth Treefest. On view at through Jan. 4 at the Red Earth Art Center in downtown Oklahoma City, Red Earth Treefest is an exhibition featuring 20 holiday evergreens decorated with handmade ornaments and art objects created to spotlight the distinctive cultures of Oklahoma-based American Indian tribes.
Sharing heritage
“Oklahoma is home to more tribal headquarters than any other state, but only three of them are actually indigenous to the state. All of the rest of them were relocated to Oklahoma from someplace else, so because of that, the tribal cultures in Oklahoma are very diverse. The Seminoles come from the Florida Everglades, but the Potawatomis come from the Great Lakes. They have very different histories, very different cultures, but yet they live in the same state now and have for over 100 years,” Red Earth Inc. Co-director Eric Oesch.
“Red Earth Treefest gives Red Earth the opportunity to share tribal cultures with people who come into our event. We’re able to teach, through the ornaments on the trees, the diversity of cultures of the state.”
Thirty-nine Native American nations have their headquarters in Oklahoma, and all are invited to participate in Red Earth Treefest. Oesch said many smaller tribes don’t have the people or resources to do so, “but the door is always open.”
Each nation is given a tree to decorate, and additional trees display extra ornaments the tribes make and bring that are for sale to the public. Participating tribes this year include the Comanche, Absentee Shawnee, Caddo, Cherokee, Cheyenne & Arapaho, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Citizen Potawatomi, Delaware, Kaw, Osage, Sac & Fox, Seminole, Kiowa, Otoe Missouria, Ponca and Pawnee.
“We’re really fortunate, we have over half the tribes that are participating. But the thing that I really love is that we’ve got tribes from the northern part of the state, from the southern part of the state, from the eastern part of the state and from the western part,” he said. “They’re not all what you think you see on TV.”
Horse culture
The traditional Comanche culture is the basis for the Hollywood stereotype: They were plains nomads, living in teepees, riding horses and hunting buffalo.
“The Comanches call themselves Lords of the Plains, and it all goes back to their excellent horsemanship. So, this pays tribute to our horse culture,” Taylor said, pointing to the painted pony ornaments circling the tribe’s tree.
But there is more to Comanche culture, and the tree’s ornaments also include miniature cradleboards, cedar peyote boxes and, new this year, otter caps.
“If something happened … like a raid, then they would know the chief’s daughters and the wives. They were taken care of and made sure they were protected because they were the ones with the otter hats,” said Comanche National Museum assistant Michelle Timbo, who makes the tree ornaments. “Nowadays, the princesses wear them, and still the descendants of the chiefs. So not just everybody wears them.”
While some tribes task their museum or cultural staffers with making the decorations, others recruit tribal elders or children to create the ornaments.
“Each tribe decides what’s going to be on their tree. We just help them tell their story,” Oesch said.
Telling the story
This year, the Chickasaw Nation’s tree does that literally, providing a timeline from top to bottom of the tribe’s history.
“At the very beginning (of Treefest), it was just items that the Chickasaws used that would kind of tell people that we were Chickasaw, so that’s why you’ll see … cornhusk dolls, painted gourds, mini baskets, stomp dance belts and ribbon shirts. But we’ve progressed since then so now we can tell a story about our people, post- and pre-European contact and even now to contemporary times,” said Gwen Postoak, arts instructor for the tribe’s arts and humanities division.
The tree skirt is festooned with silhouettes of stomp dancers, and the evergreen even rotates in honor of that vital tradition.
“We go counter-clockwise when we stomp dance. … For the longest time, our songs, our language, all of that was actually illegal to do, so we would have to go out in the woods to do this. We still do it to this day. It’s just a whole part of everything of us. It was almost lost, but they managed to keep it,” said Krystal Bohanon, who works in visitor services for the Chickasaw Cultural Center in Sulphur.
“I love telling our story. This is something that is deep within us that our ancestors had to go through, and we’re able to tell it.”
GOING ON
Fourth Annual Red Earth Treefest
When: Through Jan. 4.
Where: Red Earth Art Center, 6 Santa Fe Plaza.
Admission: Suggested $1 donation.
Hours: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday.
Information: www.redearth.org or 427-5228.
-BAM
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