First Peoples’

The First Peoples’ Market offers the work of fine Native American artists and craftspeople including both deeply traditional crafts and more contemporary artistic expressions rooted in Native American experience.

Some have been recognized nationally for their skill and talent in a variety of beautiful art forms. These have included painting, antler carving, parfleche works, hide paintings, ledger art, star quilting, doll making, jewelry, and many other forms of expression of traditional techniques.

This year again look for the participation of the Native Youth Art in Action (NYAA) a program of Indian People’s Action, generously sponsored by the SeaCast Corporation, that brings High School artists from Montana’s reservations to participate in the First People’s Market at the Montana Folk Festival.

Developed in collaboration with the Creative Indigenous Collective, NYAA selects young Native artists from Montana’s reservations to attend the Montana Folk Festival, participate in mentoring and arts programs with artists from Butte and some of the Great Plain’s leading Native artists, and develop and display their work. This five-day program exposes young artists to new techniques as well as sharing stories on the business of art from artists gaining regional and national recognition. The Imagine Butte Resource Center (IBRC) — www.ibrc.me — will provide the young artists with the experience of gallery operations and of a working community of artists’ studios.  The NYAA program will culminate with the young artists displaying their work at the First Peoples’ Market.