Published: June 30, 2009 01:06 am      

Red Earth introduces world to Native America

The arrival of spring in London is said to be heralded by the singing of nightingales in Berkley Square in the Mayfair section of the British capital. And one of the signs of the arrival of the summer season in Oklahoma’s capital is the parade of Native Americans that marches through downtown Oklahoma City in early June to inaugurate the three-day Red Earth Native American Cultural Festival.

On June 5, Native Americans in tribal dress representing more than 100 tribes made their way through several thoroughfares in downtown Oklahoma City before they entered the Cox Convention Center to the sound of the rhythmic pounding of drums.

Eric Oesch, the director of communications for Red Earth Inc., said the parade drew a total of 5,000 participants and spectators this year, and the Native American dancing competitions on the first day of the festival included slightly more than 600 participants from throughout North America.

The Red Earth Art Market, which featured a variety of traditional and contemporary Native American art such as jewelry, pottery, sculpture, beadwork and painting, also was located in the Convention Center.

Collectors and gallery owners from throughout the Southwest were in attendance at the market talking to artists and making purchases. Several prominent Native American artists first displayed their work at the festival in previous years.

Every year the festival honors an individual Native American artist, and previous honorees have included Allan Houser, Archie Blackowl, Mildred Cleghorn, Doc Tate Nevequaya, Mike Larsen and Mavis Doering.

This year Jereldine Redcorn was selected for the top honor. She is a member of the Caddo tribe of Oklahoma, and she is a master in the art of making Caddo pottery. Until relatively recently, Redcorn, who resides in Norman, was one of the few people who still knew how to make Caddo pottery, but she has worked diligently to teach young people how to practice that art.

Her work has been displayed in the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C., and in the Chicago Art Institute. And her pottery has been exhibited in the White House and in President Barack Obama’s Oval Office. She has been an artist in residence at the Art Institute of Chicago, and a Rockefeller Fellow at the Newberry Library in Chicago. Redcorn is currently working on two Caddo pots that have been commissioned for the Smithsonian’s collection.

Attendance at the Red Earth festival has grown every year since it began in 1986. Oesch reports that this year the event experienced a 15 percent increase above 2008, and that a total of 140 journalists were accredited to report on it this year.

They included reporters from London, England; Edinburgh, Scotland; Toronto, Canada; and one from the Republic of Yemen. The public television station in Dallas had a film crew present that filmed several of the scheduled events for a documentary that is being made about the festival.

The festival came into being when Oklahoma Supreme Court Justice Yvonne Kauger, who previously had been adopted by the Cheyenne Arapaho Tribe of Oklahoma, and had founded a Native American art gallery in Colony, convinced several other civic leaders of the need for an event that would showcase Native American art in Oklahoma City. Future historians may conclude that the Oklahoma City Red Earth Festival was one of the events that served to introduce Native American culture to the world.



WILLIAM F. O’BRIEN is an Oklahoma City attorney.