Norman residents learned to appreciate Oklahoma’s Native American culture at the 6th annual Native American Festival on Sunday afternoon in the Norman Public Library.

The festival included a Native American marketplace, children’s crafts, Indian tacos and musical performances from Oklahoma tribe members.

The committee decided to focus the festival on the Montana-based “The Bison: American Icon” exhibit when they heard last year it would be coming to Norman, said Julie Moring, festival organizer and librarian.

Moring, a Cherokee Nation member, said The festival changes themes every year to honor members of Oklahoma’s Native American community, said moring, a Cherokee Nation member. There are 39 Native American tribes now residing in Oklahoma, Moring said.

“I think this is probably one of our biggest [festivals at the library], as far as numbers of people coming in,” she said.

The Norman Public Library is the only library in the country to show the exhibit which features the American bison, about which co-curator Anne Morand came to speak at the library.

Also known as the “American buffalo,” the bison was once the core of the Great Plains tribes such as the Kiowa and Lakota, which they honored in hunting ceremonies, according to the exhibit. The species later teetered on the brink of extinction . Today nearly 500,000 bison live in federally and tribally managed herds throughout the U.S. and Canada.

Festival emcee Patrick Redbird, a Kiowa storyteller and tribal consultant, led the ceremony events including performances by the Rough Arrow Drum Group and the Oklahoma Fancy Dancers.

Sunday’s events all stem from the Native American story culture of senior members passing on cultural traditions and lessons to younger members, Redbird said.

“Some of the elders will tell it with hands, they’ll just tell it with their mind and talk, and that’s how we learn these things,” Redbird said. “What they want to do is keep you interested … and that’s what all that was today.”

The word “bison” in Kiowa is ‘haw-gaw-penh,’ which means ‘our food,’ Redbird said.

“That’s what the buffalo was known to us, was our food. By our people, that’s what I remember being told,” he said.

The American bison exhibit will be featured at the library and Norman’s City Hall until May 15.