Native American Designs

A gift from a friend is always special. But when I peered into the little flowered bag, and pulled the single item up to the light and held it in my hand, I was transformed. Going back decades to the event held each May, the Gilcrease Rendezvous. Each year for maybe twenty years, I would load many of Miami’s Indian Club dancers and all of our regalia into a school bus and head out of Tulsa straight to The Gilcrease Museum. With our dresses, shawls, bustles and suitcases, we walked gently in our moccasins with only the sound the bells and deer toes made while entering the front doors of one of the most prestigious museums in the country.

The events outside, which allowed people to see and experience “mountain man” activities were not what we had come to take part in. We were invited guests and came each year to be part of the Native Fashion Show held in the great room with the expansive view of the Osage Hills. 

Our responsibility in the annual Native Fashion Show was to demonstrate traditional dress, both men and women’s attire and to simply explain what we were wearing, how it was constructed and from what types of materials most commonly used. The role of our elders was to model the beautiful and stylish Native American Designs created by Virginia Romick. One after another passed through the crowds of people who had come to experience our intergenerational fashion show. It was rather a reverse of what you might have believed would have occurred. Our young people wearing the clothing from the past and our elders wearing the Virginia Romick designs influenced from the traditional garments. Years passed, our clothing returned each year, the same garments worn by a new set of dancers. 

I still see those fashions and the special flare those students carried themselves as they felt the crowd admire and respect the origin garments they wore while better understanding the connection to the past in the designs Romick had made and were worn by her elder models.

At the end of our experience, and the garments all packed and hung, we had a chance to see the many types of art the museum held. But just before we left, I would head into their gift shop and try to find an item to take home that might be in my price range.

Each year a treasure of some sort did come home with me. All now in a small display box in the front room. Small baskets, one the size of a thimble constructed from sweet grass with a lid, another a Cherokee double weave basket, several animal fetishes and many different small Pueblo pots. Each represented a bus load of memories filled with young people who were such an important part of my life for so many years. Just as Virginia Romick had been. 

So, when I reached into that little sack that my friend Lois Lively had given me and found the little Jemez Pueblo pot and held it in my hands, a whole rush of memories joined me. And in that moment remembered only the day before I had been told Virginia had passed away at age 95.

There is a completeness to connections. And a magic sometimes when those flashes from the past bring those, we have had such precious times with us back for a moment. For me it came suddenly when I found that little pot in a small gift bag.

Respectfully Submitted ~ Rebecca Jim