Generation Next
The Santa Fean
Young native artists are exploring their own creativity while carrying on age-old tribal traditions
Some people are born into going to Indian Market—literally. Take Jessica Growing Thunder: the Market has been a longtime tradition for her grandmother, Joyce Growing Thunder Fogarty, and her mom, Juanita Growing Thunder Fogarty. Twenty years ago, the two women first traveled to Santa Fe from Montana to sell their beaded bags and necklaces, and they’ve been coming back consistently since. When Jessica was born a week before the 1989 Indian Market, it only made sense that her family bring her along, too.
This year, the young beader will participate in her 16th Indian Market. For 12 of those years, Jessica has designed and crafted her own bags and necklaces and sold them in her family’s booth. Although Jessica now lives in northern California, near Lake Tahoe, the reservation of her people, the Assiniboin, is in the northeastern corner of Montana, and remains a source of influence for her. She draws on her own experiences for her art, and last year won a Standards award for a ceremonial dance bag featuring a horse. “I spent the summer in Montana on the reservation learning to ride horses and got inspired,” she says. This year, in addition to pieces she’s been working on by herself, Jessica and her mom and grandmother are collaborating on a beaded bag. “I’ve done beading since I was three years old,” she says. “I always used to watch my mother and grandmother, and finally I was old enough to bead my own necklaces.”
Jessica says the extra money she earns at Market is great. She’s put most of it back into her education, with her early choices for college mirroring her tribal geography and her family’s displacement; she hopes to study Native American history at either the University of California at Davis or the University of Montana, in Missoula.
Over the years, Jessica has also developed a love for the annual festival as well as a desire to perpetuate her family’s artistic tradition. “The Market is a huge part of my family’s experience,” she says. “Every year, my mom, grandmother, and I become a closer family. We’re closer in every way because of the Market. We meet new people every year, and we also see people we haven’t seen all year. Without my culture, where would I be?”
Santa Fe’s Indian Market is regarded as one of the best and biggest sales of Native American art in the U.S., and although it happens only once a year, its effect on Native Americans across the country is palpable—especially for kids. But not every budding artist comes from generations of Market participants.
Take Daniel Sam, 16, of Picuris Pueblo, some 20 miles southeast of Taos. “I’m self-taught,” says the young painter, a freshman in high school who started sketching six years ago. “I’m actually the first person really to come with this artistic feel in the family.” This year will be Daniel’s fourth at Market; last year, he won a SWAIA Youth Fellowship Award (which includes a stipend and a free booth at Youth Indian Market, which is separate from but runs concurrent to the “adult” Market).
