Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated the Made In Montana Tradeshow will be held Friday and Saturday. The tradeshow will only be helf Friday for wholesalers. YPR regrets the error.
The annual Made in Montana tradeshow featuring products from Big Sky Country vendors is still scheduled today for wholesale buyers but not open to the general public. One vendor, who can’t make it to the show this year, has built her business telling stories with greeting cards.
When Debbie Desjarlais moved back to her hometown, she saw a need.
"You can't find any Native American cards here in Billings or Montana," she says in her home workshop. "We need cards for everything from birthdays to funerals to whatever."
So the graphic designer, enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians and Assiniboine descendent made a set of four.
150 vendors are set to showcase Made in Montana products this weekend at the annual tradeshow in Helena Mar. 13 and 14.
Products bearing the Made in Montana signature sticker raked in an estimated $94 million in non-resident spending in 2018, according to the University of Montana’s Institute for Tourism and Recreation Research.
Made In Montana vendors span a vast and varied gamut of wares, from agricultural and ranch supplies to computer software to maps and local foods and fibers.
Desjarlais’ Native American Made in Montana branded greeting cards feature colorful eight-pointed morning stars based on hand-stitched quilts handed down generations until they reached Desjarlais’s mom, Cookie.
"One was given to my dad when he was in World War II, in war," she says.
Another was given to Cookie's mom by a cousin.
"And this star quilt was made in a log house down on the bottom they called it," she says, holding one of her daughter's die cut cards. "We called it Wyola. It's not a town, just a community."
Desjarlais’ cards tell not only the story of the patterns on Cookie’s blankets but how those patterns were rendered before white settler colonization.
"When we ran out of buffalo, then there was nothing," Cookie says. "Our food and everything was gone. Indian women drew and painted on the buffalo hides. That art was gone along with the buffalo."
She says Native women learned to quilt from missionaries and at boarding schools.
"Then we just got very artistic with it. Went to town!" She laughs.
Desjarlais says receiving a star quilt is one of the highest honors in her tribes’ tradition. She says she and her mom tried to capture a slice of culture and history in explanations printed on the back of the cards.
"I feel like they're teaching cards. I feel like everything I do is a little bit of teaching to help people understand," she says. "That's my goal is to teach people a little bit something about us in a non-threatening way. Get a card and learn something. That’s all."
Desjarlais’ Made in Montana product is still a side hustle that she pairs with other projects like her and her brother’s magazine, Native Wellness Life, and other work. But she says the cards are gaining steam. Last year they were part of the market at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC. She says local sales are going well, too.
"They sold out pretty fast too on the first run."
