Native American Earrings as Cultural Signifiers at Santa Fe Indian Market

At the Santa Fe Indian Market in New Mexico, over a thousand Native American artists from more than 200 tribal nations gather each August. The event serves as both a marketplace and a street style showcase, with earrings acting as powerful cultural markers. Kiowa jeweler Keri Ataumbi, based in Santa Fe, creates earrings that blend traditional materials like feathers and porcupine hairs with diamonds and gemstones, describing adornment as a communicative representation of beliefs. Despite the Code of Indian Offenses outlawing Indigenous cultural practices from 1883 to 1978, artists persist. Joe Big Mountain, a Mohawk, Cree, and Comanche artist from Wisconsin's Oneida Indian Reservation, practices quillwork earrings, passing teachings to younger generations. In Vogue's summer 2026 issue, Deb Haaland—a Laguna Pueblo member, former US interior secretary, and New Mexico gubernatorial candidate—wears titanium star earrings by Laguna and Chiricahua Apache artist Pat Pruitt, a nearly two-decade market regular. Pruitt calls his designs markers of navigation, protection, and ancestral presence. Jamie Okuma, a Luiseño, Shoshone-Bannock, Wailaki, and Okinawan artist from California's La Jolla Band of Mission Indians, creates shoulder-sweeping earrings from tiered dentalium shells paired with floral beadwork, honoring heritage and natural beauty. Okuma emphasizes the inherent connectivity of wearing natural elements.