BUTTE — A donation from a local artist is helping the folks at the Butte Native Wellness Center develop a youth program that brings Native American art and storytelling to kids in Butte.
Before a classroom of about 60 students, Terryn Williamson of the Butte Native Wellness Center introduces herself in her native language before telling them in English that her Indian name is Red Crow Woman and she comes from the Blackfeet Nation and the Two Medicine River.
“The reason why I like to say that I come from the river is because I am very connected to the land, just like our tipis,” says Williamson as she explains that tipis are made from buffalo hides.
During the year-long youth outreach program, Williamson is taking the role of storyteller while her colleague Rylee Mitchell teaches the children how to make miniature paper tipis, instructing them to draw their dreams or something that inspires them. One young boy proudly holds up his tipi that is covered in celestial images.
“As you can tell, I love space,” says the boy.
“We want to provide schools resources for arts and crafts for Native American heritage and culture in having a greater impact with the community,” says Rylee Mitchell.
She is a Montana Tech student and a member of the Little Shell Tribe. She is working with the Butte Native Wellness Center to develop the youth outreach program that brings storytelling, complete with tales of a trickster that imparts lessons through vivid imagery, humor, and wisdom.
“I’m taking my lived experience and my teachings from growing up on the reservation—taking those and incorporating it into the schools now that may lack that type of cultural exposure,” says Williamson.
Recently the youth project received a donation of over $2,500 from the sale of a local priest’s artwork.
“I can’t believe this happened to me to start with, that anybody would be interested in anything I ever did in terms of art,” says Father Robert Porter of the Butte Catholic Parishes. “But if it was going to be used, it was going to have to be used for something really, really important. It had to be something about how to assist the youngsters.”
As the workshop at Emerson Elementary School wraps up, the 3rd-grade class proudly shows off their miniature tipis.
“This is my tipi based off my grandpa,” says Bridger Tillo. He says he and his granfather go shed hunting, and the tipi is covered with an image of a bird hovering over a blue figure. “So, me and him go shed hunting together. So this is how I basically made it.”