The Art of Belonging: Aliyah Myers
Stories from Indigenous Creatives
Presented by Culture Hub Collective
This week in our Art of Belonging series, we are honored to spotlight Aliyah Myers — a Choctaw artist whose hands carry generations of tradition and whose vision redefines what it means to preserve culture in the present.
Weaving Her Way Into Legacy
A citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, with Mvskoke and Cherokee ancestry, Aliyah Myers is reclaiming and revitalizing southeastern tribal basketry — one strand at a time.
Each basket she weaves is more than a finished piece. It’s a living thread in a centuries-old story. Through form, function, and intention, her work continues the knowledge passed down through five distinct southeastern nations. It is history. It is resistance. It is love.
A Practice Older Than Memory
The basket traditions Aliyah draws from are ancient — predating Oklahoma statehood, removal, even written record. These practices were held in hands long before they were held in history books.
Baskets once served as tools, yes — but also as vessels of ceremony, identity, and encoded wisdom. Through her work, Aliyah brings that memory forward. Each stitch, each coil, is a quiet act of remembrance.
The Power of Teaching
Aliyah sees basket weaving not only as art or tradition, but as transmission. She offers workshops, leads conversations, and shares openly with her community — ensuring these practices remain alive, not frozen in time or behind museum glass.
“What I create today,” she says,
“will live on in the hands of those I’ve taught — and those they’ll teach after me.”
From Foundations to Experimentation
Aliyah’s journey began with the foundational forms of Choctaw basketry — learning structure, symmetry, and the meanings behind them. But tradition, she believes, isn’t meant to confine. It’s meant to grow.
Her work has since expanded into bold experimentation: satchels dyed in vibrant colors, basketry earrings with geometric flair, even woven corsets incorporating Choctaw design motifs. Every piece becomes a dialogue between the old and the new.
Color, Material, Meaning
Some of the colors Aliyah uses today were unavailable to her ancestors. And yet, by incorporating them, she tells a broader story — one of Indigenous futurism, cultural adaptation, and creative sovereignty.
She reminds us that tradition is not static. It moves. It stretches. It becomes.
Art as Education
Aliyah’s creations are layered with intention. Every design offers cultural context and invites deeper reflection. She encourages viewers not only to admire her work — but to learn from it.
“I hope people leave with new cultural awareness,” she says.
“And that they hold space for appreciation, not appropriation.”
A Legacy Still Unfolding
More than anything, Aliyah hopes her art inspires a lasting respect for Indigenous knowledge systems — and for the labor, meaning, and memory woven into each piece.
This is more than art.
It’s medicine.
It’s ancestral continuity.
And it’s a story still unfolding — in every twist and turn of her work.
Support Aliyah Myers
🌿 Follow her work:
@Crafty.Chula.Creations
@Cedar_Sapling_