By Shaun Scott, Puyallup Tribal News
The third and final week of the Culture Night Christmas Stockings series saw its largest crowd converge on Winner’s Gym on Dec. 19 in Tacoma.
When attendees gathered for the blessing and prayer before dinner, conducted by Victor Rodriguez, multiple individuals commented the prayer circle was significantly larger than it was during the previous two sessions.
The Puyallup Tribe’s Culture Department was thrilled to see close to 60 individuals in attendance for the finale. The previous sessions had around 30 to 50 participants. Cultural Coordinator Victoria Horrell, one of the individuals running the series, said participants not only put together stockings but also created headbands, regalia, cedar reindeer, cedar stars, cedar roses and rattles that can be covered with cedar. The creativity, imaginativeness and innovation displayed by each of the artists impressed Horrell throughout the event.
“To me, anything cultural is healing. It is keeping our hands busy in a good way,” Horrell said. “We try to keep it Native-based in everything that we do, which means to me there is a spiritual underlying to it.”
Lifting up each other during the holiday season is a mantra the Puyallup Tribe’s Culture Department believes in wholeheartedly, Horrell said.
“We’re grounded in culture when we come here. The projects are things you can either make for yourself or give to somebody else. It is a lonely time (holidays) of year for a lot of people,” Horrell said. “To be able to have that feeling you’re not forgotten, there is people that care about you enough to give you something even so small as a cedar reindeer that you can put on your tree or keep all year long, it’s very heartwarming.”
Horrell spoke about the importance and significance of cedar to the Tribe.
“It is near and dear to our hearts. It’s ancestral and we’re grounded in it. We’re weavers whether we know it or not,” she said.
Dan Hook, who lives in Federal Way, made the 12-mile drive to Tacoma with his wife and 22-year-old son to attend the Culture Night Christmas Stockings series. His wife is a member of the Nooksack Tribe, which is about a 30-minute drive from Bellingham.
“I think it’s fantastic to see. The (prayer) circle had grown a lot from what it was last week,” Hook said of the event. “It’s fantastic to see people learning new skills and getting together. These kinds of things are important.”
