The 13th annual “Nez Perce Art in the Wallowa” celebrating Nez Perce and Columbia Plateau tribal art and artists, will be held at the historic Wallowa Lake Lodge with a dinner theater at the Joseph Community Center Saturday, September 12. “Nez Perce Art in the Wallowa” showcases traditional and contemporary art forms,and a salmon and buffalo dinner with Native American entertainment.

The art show, reception, silent and oral auction will be held from noon to 4 p.m. at Wallowa Lake Lodge, 60060 Wallowa Lake Highway and is free to the public. In the past years, traditional beading and rawhide work has been exhibited alongside bronze sculptures, high tech photography, and paintings.

Saturday evening’s dinner begins at 6 p.m. at the Joseph Community Center, 102 East First Street, catered by Backyard Gardens featuring: barbeque salmon, local grown buffalo, local grown fresh garden favorites, and New York cheese cake dripping with huckleberry sauce and a no-host bar featuring Terminal Gravity micro brews and regional wine.

Saturday evening’s honored guest, Pat Courtney Gold, a Wasco native enrolled in the Confederate Tribes of Warm Springs, Oregon, devotes her time creating art and lecturing on Plateau Cultural Art. She specializes in the Wasco traditional art of full-turn twined baskets with geometric human figures and motif unique to the Columbia River area. Pat revived this dying art form, and her goal is to preserve the technique and record the traditional designs for future generations.

Gold’s program will show how like today’s hot topics of international commerce, diplomatic relations, cultural exchanges, and tourism are important to the northwest; it was just as important nearly twelve thousand years ago among the indigenous people who lived along the Columbia River. These civilized and prosperous nations developed a marketplace that, by the 1700’s included trade with Russia, Spain, England, China, and America, yet their story is often untold in histories of the region. She will discuss the rich heritage of cultural and financial commerce conducted up and down the Columbia River. Just as questions of sustainability affect modern commerce, Gold will show how native people’s relationship to the land provided our first environmentally friendly model of commerce. Tickets for the evening event are $30 in advance or $35 at the door. Advance tickets are available at the Bookloft and Fishtrap in Enterprise, Lamb Trading Co. in Joseph, and Wallowa Band Nez Perce Trail Interpretive Center. For questions or reservation call: (541) 886-3101 or e-mail: (tamkaliks@gmail.com) or visit our website at (www.wallowanezperce.org).

The event is presented by the Wallowa Band Nez Perce Trail Interpretive Center, the non-profit organization working to provide a permanent site in the Wallowa Valley for Nez Perce cultural and interpretive activities, including the Tamkaliks Celebration.