The Heard Museum co-hosted an Indigenous Art and Fashion Show at The Churchill in downtown Phoenix on Saturday to celebrate Indigenous culture and engage the community through art, fashion and dance.
The event was held to honor the upcoming Indigenous People’s Day, which has become a new holiday celebrating and honoring Native Americans to commemorate their shared history and culture.
Indigenous People’s Day was created to replace the widely celebrated ‘Columbus Day’ when South Dakota made it an official holiday in 1990.
Now recognized by six states and over 30 cities, there has been a growing movement across the U.S. to make the holiday as a permanent replacement to Columbus Day.
In their own celebration of Indigenous People’s Day, the Heard Museum will be hosting a series of presentations and performances by Indigenous artists throughout the museum grounds on Oct. 12.
“We want to focus on getting outside the walls of the museum,” explained Marcus Monenerkit, Director of Community Engagement at Heard. “We are looking for more community partnerships.”
The afternoon began with Native American vendors selling jewelry, paintings and stationery, among them was artist Piersten Doctor, whose works explore Native American themes.
Doctor was unable to comment, as he was busy working on his paintings, but they appeared to be a hit at the show. His prints, canvases and stickers were in the hands of many attendees.
The event also included a fashion show featuring four Indigenous designers, representing their culture through a variety of styles and outfits, modeled on Native American models.
Randall Morin Jr., an ASU student and Native fashion designer was among those featured in the show. He represented his culture through a mix of casual and expressive styles.
His final design, a red dress with a war bonnet on the front, ended his show as a statement symbolizing strength and empowerment.
The piece gained a great amount of support and cheering from the audience as the model made her way down the runway, with the sounds of traditional tongue rattling filling the venue.
“When I heard the tongue rattling, which is the way our women show their appreciation and excitement,” Morin said. “That made all the coffee drinking and all the long nights worth it.”
Morin designed the dress by adding a red hand print across the model’s mouth and on her arm as well, to symbolize women as “warriors who bear life and keep traditional values alive.”
Like Morin’s, many of the pieces addressed serious topics facing Indigenous communities, including domestic violence, and the high numbers of missing Native American women both on and off reservations.
Morin said he created the piece to stand up for those women and show that they will no longer be silenced.
“For (the audience) to see the clothing and understand it and really get that power behind it,” said Morin. “It means a lot that they’re willing to learn. They’re willing to ask these questions.”
Jorge Gonzales-Zuniga Jr., a hoop dancer and member of the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community, modeled in the fashion show and made an appearance later on to perform a healing dance.
Gonzales-Zuniga explained the dance was often performed to heal those not only with physical ailments, but those in mental and emotional distress as well. The dance included the use of hoops in which Gonzales interlocked his arms and legs to create a variety of poses.
Other designers with work present were Michelle Silvers and Darylene Martin who included Native fashion with a more urban twist and a heavier focus on Native culture.
One of the models was Raquel Jackson, a Navajo student from ASU.
“I was first of all proud to be representing myself as a proud Navajo woman,” Jackson said, recalling her moments on the runway. “The whole experience was unreal and left me with butterflies in my stomach.”
The event drew a diverse group of people to experience Native fashion and art.
“I will always be nervous when these things come up because the fashion industry is still new for Indigenous clothing,” Jackson said. “You just never know what the audience is thinking and if the intention of the pieces were portrayed properly.”
Morin recalled his view on the audience and said, “It wasn’t just diversity ethnically. It was diversity in every aspect of life.”
Contact the reporter at jschamko@asu.edu.
