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Nov 4 2019

Art and dance bring pipeline community and Native American Tribes together

Posted by TC Energy

With its maze of pipelines and storage facilities, the City of Cushing has earned the nickname, “The Pipeline Crossroads of the World.” It is a critical community in the energy industry that is home to many Native American Tribes – as well as a fall festival that brings together the pipeline community and the Tribes.

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Native Fest is an annual festival held in September that TC Energy has sponsored for several years. A highlight of the festival is an art show that showcases the work of community members such as Amber L. DuBoise-Shepherd.

Amber is an artist of Navajo, Prairie Band Potawatomi and Sac and Fox heritage, who competes every year in the art show competition and is the 2019 winner of the Best of Show art award.

“Native Fest is really neat because it’s not really a Tribal entity that’s putting this on, it’s this community that I feel sees Native people as a very important aspect of the Cushing community,” says Amber. “And it allows the people of Cushing to interact with Native people and to learn about the Pow Wow and the regalias, the dresses and everything.”

TC Energy was an inaugural sponsor of the first Native Fest held in 2015 and has supported the festival ever since. The company has pipeline operations in the area, including the Keystone pipeline, which transports crude oil from Hardisty, AB to Cushing, OK, and onward to refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast.


TC Energy’s sponsorship …brought together our energy companies and our Native families who live around here. I feel like them seeing TC Energy partnered with us for Native Fest, it brings everyone together to where we can celebrate our culture here in our town, our little community.”

Kellie Creekmore
Native Fest chairman


Celebrating Indigenous culture together

Kellie Creekmore, the Native Fest chairman, has helped organize the festival for the last three years.

“TC Energy’s sponsorship …brought together our energy companies and our Native families who live around here,” she says.

“I feel like them seeing TC Energy partnered with us for Native Fest, it brings everyone together to where we can celebrate our culture here in our town, our little community.”

In 2018 alone, TC Energy invested more than $3.5 million in 388 Indigenous partners and individuals across North America through the TC Energy Scholarships program and Build Strong community investment program.