Starbucks highlights Coast Salish art with this five-piece holiday collection
.jpg "In a collection featuring the patterns, textures and stories of Coast Salish people, Native-owned art and lifestyle brand Eighth Generation has partnered with Starbucks for an exclusive five-item holiday line. Eighth Generation founder Louie Gong — who is Nooksack — collaborated with four other Native artists on the Coast Salish Pattern Demi Mug Set, a set of four tasting cups featuring traditional patterns found in Pacific Northwest Native American art.")
In a collection featuring the patterns, textures and stories of Coast Salish people, Native-owned art and lifestyle brand Eighth Generation has partnered with Starbucks for an exclusive five-item holiday line hitting shelves during Native American Heritage Month.
With the launch of the products, the company owned by the Snoqualmie Indian Tribe has become the first non-Starbucks store ever to carry products with the Starbucks Reserve logo.
“Starbucks represents the first global business to join us in a Decolonizing Partnership,” said Eighth Generation founder Louie Gong, who is Nooksack, in a statement sent via email. “Meeting these progressive standards required Starbucks to flex or change fundamental components of their processes for product development, sourcing, and distribution.”
As part of the partnership, Eighth Generation produced the products and sold them to Starbucks, flipping how big brands work with small businesses.
Gong and four artists collaborated on the Coast Salish Pattern Demi Mug Set, a set of four tasting cups in shades of soft mauve, coral, turquoise and sage, each with a design based on traditional patterns found in Pacific Northwest Native American art.
“We really paid attention to texture in this collection,” Gong said. “The patterns we used are found in traditional Coast Salish weaving and basketry, so we wanted to replicate that tactile experience on the mugs in particular.”
Gong’s cup, “Coast Salish,” features geometric shapes found on Coast Salish weavings. Muckleshoot artist Gail White Eagle’s cup “New Light” depicts spring growth. The “Gill Net” cup by renowned carver Andrea Wilbur-Sigo — a member of the Squaxin Island Tribe with heritage from the Skokomish Indian Tribe and other Washington Tribes — features the fishnet and star designs found on traditional Skokomish weavings. And the “Basket Weave” cup by Snoqualmie artists Jaime Martin and McKenna Dorman incorporates patterns traditional to their Tribe’s basket weavings.
The set, packaged in a black gift box with the Eighth Generation logo, is sold for $48 and is the only item in the collection available for purchase online. It will be sold on the Eighth Generation website and in-person at Eighth Generation’s Pike Place Market location or the Seattle Starbucks Reserve Roastery in Capitol Hill.
Gong also created a tumbler, jacket, throw blanket and mini print exclusively for the collection.
The Happy Hummingbird jacket and Coast Salish pattern double-wall ceramic tumbler are only available at Eighth Generation’s Pike Place Market store and Seattle Starbucks Reserve Roastery. Other items are sold exclusively at the roastery, including the Coast Salish pattern limited edition throw blanket and Happy Hummingbird limited edition mini print.
The collaboration launched during November, which is Native American Heritage Month.
In celebration, Starbucks highlighted a series of employees with American Indian and Alaska Native heritage and stated that the company continues to work with its Indigenous Partner Network, one of ten employee groups that collaborate to promote a culture of inclusion at the company.
The company also announced its fall dedication of a Community Store — one of 100 stores across the country aimed at providing economic opportunities in rural and urban communities by hiring local and diverse staff, artists and contractors — to the Navajo Nation. Starbucks also collaborated with Arizona State University to create curriculum challenging bias against Native Americans and with The Boys & Girls Club Native Services Program, the nation’s largest youth service provider aiding over 120,000 Native youth representing nearly 150 tribal communities.
BEHIND THE STORY
MOREPlease help support this reporting
Natasha Brennan covers Washington state tribes’ impact on our local communities, environment and politics, as well as traditions, culture and equity issues, for McClatchy media companies in Bellingham, Olympia, Tacoma and Tri-Cities.
She joins us in partnership with Report for America, which pays a portion of reporters’ salaries. You can help support this reporting at bellinghamherald.com/donate. Donations are tax-deductible through Journalism Funding Partners.
You can sign up for her weekly newsletter here.
Eighth Generation was founded by Gong in 2008 and purchased by the Snoqualmie Indian Tribe in 2019.
Now the first Native-owned company to ever produce wool blankets — with a flagship retail store in Pike Place Market — the company operates under an ethical alternative to “Native-inspired” art, addressing the economic impact of cultural appropriation. Its Inspired Natives Project — anchored by the tagline “Inspired Natives, not Native-inspired” — produces 100% Native-designed blankets, apparel, jewelry, home goods and other items.
This story was originally published November 12, 2021 at 3:28 PM with the headline "Starbucks highlights Coast Salish art with this five-piece holiday collection."
