Hands-on entrepreneur promotes cultural learning through ACE program

(MUSCOGEE NATION) Leather work, woodwork, and weaving have been part of Native culture for countless years. Today, teaching of the Southeastern variations is expanded through the work of Britteny Cuevas, a citizen of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and Quapaw descendant.

Cuevas founded Four Locv in 2021 to pass down the traditions of Native American and Southeastern Indigenous culture. She told VNN she takes pride in sharing the beauty of her Native heritage with future generations, especially those who have been cut off from their culture through forced assimilation. 

“You want to make your elders proud from what they taught you, and even if you don't think you're doing very [well], we're still planting seeds, and they're still getting to experience it,” Cuevas said. “They get to see something that nobody gets to see in the whole world.”

Cuevas said while cultural art teachers are a rare find, she was recruited by elders who noticed she had talent for the arts and teaching.

“You have to teach [these skills] because they are life skills,” Cuevas said. “Our Native American arts are survival. And you have to learn skills and basic building blocks before you make a moccasin look nice. You have to learn how to sew before you even go to the leather work. So, it's building blocks, and just sitting down with the kids and letting them learn those blocks.”

Cuevas spends most of her time working with Tribal youth who live within the boundaries of the Muscogee Creek Nation (MCN) through a grant from the MCN Accessing Choices in Education (ACE) Program.

The program is “trying to get kids in school to have access to cultural activities,” Cuevas said. 

Including children who otherwise would have no access to them. 

During the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, European Americans deployed numerous tactics such as land allotment, Indian boarding schools, and ceremony bans to destroy Native culture and replace it with their own. Many tribal towns and ceremonial grounds, including those of the Muscogee, succumbed to genocide. 

The descendents of those who survived live on, separated from the culture that is traditionally taught within those towns and grounds.

Cuevas is now looking for more opportunities to fund teaching of cultural skills to Native people living off reservation, with the goal of reconnecting as many people as possible. 

Quite a ways off from her origins as a solitary maker. 

“Definitely a journey,” Cuevas said. “But it was needed.” 

Learn more about Four Locv and their upcoming classes on Facebook here.