The matriarch of the Oklahoma Indian Art Movement, Doris Littrell bought her first piece of Oklahoma Indian art for a dollar while still a teen, not realizing it was her first acquisition in what would become a life made with Native American artists and their art. This is her story—from a hard—scramble childhood on the plains of southwest Oklahoma that forced her out and on her own at the age of thirteen to the ownership of an Oklahoma City gallery that would become a mecca for collectors and the hub of Oklahoma Indian Art for decades. It is also the story of the artists she championed, and the art that they might otherwise not have made had it not been for this white woman with Indian ways.
Creek author Julie Pearson—Little Thunder is a Colorado native and was co—founder of Oklahoma's Tulsa Indian Actors' Workshop. A playwright, she has a doctorate in theatre studies from the University of Kansas and is now a visiting assistant professor with the Oklahoma Oral History Research Program at Oklahoma State University, where she is responsible for an interview series with Oklahoma's Native artists. She makes her home in Tulsa, with her husband Merlin Little Thunder.
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