On the evening of October 12, 2026, the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman will do something it has never done before. After a day of programming marking Indigenous Peoples' Day, the museum will stage its first-ever Indigenous Peoples' Day Fashion Show, putting contemporary Native design on a runway in a building better known for its dinosaur halls and its long-running research on the Northern Rockies.
The show features two designers whose work has traveled far beyond Montana. Angela Howe, who designs under the label Choke Cherry Creek, is an alumna of Montana State University and a member of the Apsáalooke (Crow) and Pikuni (Blackfeet) nations. Her brand describes itself as an Indigenous-owned business built around contemporary Apsáalooke designs, with a stated aim of elevating and inspiring all generations through fashion, design, and culture. Rebekah Jarvey, a member of the Chippewa Cree tribe who also has Blackfeet heritage, is an international designer, artisan, and model whose work has appeared on runways at Santa Fe Fashion Week, Paris Fashion Week, and New York Fashion Week, and who presented during the Cannes Film Festival.
Jarvey grew up in Rocky Boy, Montana, in a household filled with the sound of sewing machines and the rhythm of beadwork. She is the fourth generation of a family of sewists and beadists, a legacy she has continued by teaching her son. In a profile for First Peoples Fund, she described it plainly: "I was raised with a needle and thread in my hand. My grandmother and mother were famous in my tribal community for their beadwork." Her modern take on Indigenous fashion draws on thread stitch and a range of beadwork styles, including beaded ropes and beaded medallions, and she has become known for cloth masks finished with beadwork. Her NEO Collection pays homage to the Cree geometric beadwork she grew up around, organized around two color palettes: vibrant neons and classic traditional hues. She presents three lines — ready-to-wear, upcycled one-of-a-kind pieces, and Indigenous luxury — and her collaboration with Nike N7 as a cultural consultant helped produce the SB Nike N7 Dunks, now held in the collections of the National Museums of World Culture in Göteborg, Sweden. Most recently, she showed her Survival to Fashion collection during Super Bowl LIX week in New Orleans. Her Survival to Fashion line is built, in her own description, to carry a person from pow wows to basketball games without changing who they are.
Howe's path to the runway has been steep and recent. In 2025, she showed work at the Indigifest Fashion Show at the Billings Hotel and Convention Center, where her designs were described as blending traditional Indigenous artistry with modern designs. She has since taken her work to Paris Indigenous Fashion Week. Her husband is Christian Parrish Takes the Gun, the Crow rapper known widely as Supaman.
The Bozeman show is the capstone of a full day of Indigenous Peoples' Day programming at the museum. The morning begins with a youth celebration from 10 a.m. to noon, where families can hear the creation story of the Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians, make turtle rocks, and take part in beading crafts and sensory activities exploring the significance of color in Little Shell-Métis and Northern Cheyenne beadwork. That portion of the day is included with museum admission or membership, and registration is suggested.
The fashion show itself is a ticketed evening event. Doors open at 7 p.m., and general admission tickets run $15. Registration is required in advance, which is worth noting for anyone planning to attend — this is not a walk-up event. The listing circulated by the Bozeman-area events calendar gives the show's window as 6 to 9 p.m., while the university's own announcement of the program places the runway show at 7:30 p.m. with doors at 7; prospective attendees should confirm the start time with the museum when they register.
After the runway, guests are invited to a reception featuring local Indigenous vendors. The evening closes with the unveiling of a new exhibition in Paugh History Hall, "Getting Dressed: What Women Wear to Meet the World." Curated by the Museum of the Rockies, the exhibit traces how clothing reflects culture, identity, and personal expression across the Northern Rockies, spanning roughly a century of garments — from a 1930s snowsuit to a 2022 couture gown. It is a fitting pairing with the fashion show that precedes it: one room looking at how women in this region have dressed to meet the world, and another where two Indigenous designers are doing exactly that, on their own terms.
Paugh History Hall, where the reception and unveiling take place, is the museum's year-round home for the stories of the Northern Rocky Mountains, a space built to connect visitors to the past and to the lives of those who came before. On this particular Monday, it will also be a place to see where that story is heading.
Indigenous Peoples' Day, observed on the second Monday of October, has spread across the United States as a counter-observance to Columbus Day, and in recent years museums and cultural institutions have increasingly used it not just for reflection but for programming that centers living Indigenous artists and communities. In Bozeman, that means a morning of beadwork and creation stories for children, an evening of couture, and a new exhibit about the clothes women have worn to move through the world — all in a single day at the same address on West Kagy Boulevard.