For Native Artists, Earrings Hold a Much Deeper Meaning

Every August, more than a thousand Native American artists from over 200 tribal nations gather at the Santa Fe Indian Market in New Mexico to sell their work. The weekend-long event doubles as a street style scene, with community members wearing their best Native-made pieces—particularly earrings, which have long served as a striking cultural signifier.

“Native people have always valued adornment, and all genders wear earrings in my community,” says Keri Ataumbi, a Kiowa jeweler based in Santa Fe known for her striking earrings combining traditional materials—including feathers and porcupine hairs—with precious elements such as diamonds or gemstones. “Adornment serves as a highly communicative representation of our beliefs, and relays information about ourselves to others.”

As the United States celebrates 250 years of independence this summer, stylish cultural pride is well-suited for the moment. Despite historic attempts at eradicating Native customs—from 1883 to 1978, the Code of Indian Offenses outlawed certain Indigenous cultural and religious practices in the US—Native artists continue to use the materials they have for centuries, including porcupine quills, various kinds of beads, caribou hides, and sealskins.

Pat Pruitt’s titanium star earrings, worn by Deb Haaland in Vogue’s summer 2026 issue.

“Native people have always practiced our art during hard times, even when it was illegal for us to do so,” says Joe Big Mountain, a Mohawk, Cree, and Comanche artist on Wisconsin’s Oneida Indian Reservation known for his quillwork earrings. “As young people, practicing those teachings is something that we grow up with, and we are able to pass those on—and that is what makes earrings so significant in the Native community.”

In Vogue’s summer 2026 issue, Deb Haaland, a member of the state’s Laguna Pueblo tribe and a former United States secretary of the interior who’s running to be governor of New Mexico, wears titanium star earrings by the Laguna and Chiricahua Apache artist Pat Pruitt, a regular at the market for almost two decades. The earrings represent more than just statement jewelry: Pruitt describes his designs as “markers of navigation, protection, and ancestral presence.”

Also embedded with meaning (and often seen at Indian Market), meanwhile, are the shoulder-​sweeping earrings made from tiered dentalium shells by the artist Jamie Okuma, a Luiseño, Shoshone-​Bannock, Wailaki, and Okinawan artist living among California’s La Jolla Band of Mission Indians.

The long tubular shells derive from deep-​sea mollusks and are paired with floral beadwork motifs—​an homage not just to her heritage, but also to the beauty of the natural world around us. “There’s an inherent connectivity you feel wearing natural elements on your body,” says Okuma. “It’s a traditional practice to keep moving forward.”

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