Timberland partnered with the Oklahoma Cowboys to help bring awareness to the Western way of life — and the Black cowboys who have always been part of it.
There have been countless Western collaborations with mainstream brands lately, but there is one in particular that caught our attention — Timberland x Oklahoma Cowboys. Just in time for Black History Month, the footwear giant launched a campaign titled “Black Pioneers,” which “pays homage to the Black pioneers that have built and relied on community to journey through the outdoors.”
Oklahoma Cowboys’ founder Jakian Parks played an instrumental part in the campaign's creative — from choosing the cast and location to spearheading the direction and photography. C&I recently sat down with Parks to talk about the community-based organization Oklahoma Cowboys, the big collaboration, and what inspires him.
C&I: How did the Oklahoma Cowboys get started?
Jakian Parks: Growing up as a young child, I would tag along with my Aunt Shay... I would go to rodeos with her all the time throughout the summer. That’s all I was doing, everything I was doing. She got very sick in 2017, and in 2018 she went to the hospital for an entire year. She died of a short battle with cancer in 2019.
As a young adult in late 2021, I did a photography project called the Rodeo Record. As I was doing that project, I was hanging out with some of the cowboys and they remembered me as a young child [with my aunt].
I thought, This is more than just a photo project, this is a community. And at that time, there was no highlight of the cowboys here in Oklahoma. So, I put an Instagram together called the Oklahoma Cowboys.
Recently, it's changed into a nonprofit, and the nonprofit [provides] more ways for the Oklahoma Cowboys to give back to the community — like providing summer camps.
C&I: How do you hope to give back to the community?
Parks: The bigger picture is an Oklahoma Cowboys campus. There’s really nowhere [for the cowboys in our community] to go rope steers for the day or get practice in before the rodeo weekend.
If you’re a basketball player and you have a game on Friday, you can get some dribbles in on Wednesday. There’s nowhere for [the cowboys] to do that. My vision is a recreational center that is geared all around rodeo, agriculture, and anything outdoors.
C&I: You’ve got a lot of big dreams, and it seems like many have been coming true lately.
Parks: Yeah, the Timberland thing was a big dream.
C&I: How did that come about?
Parks: They figured out that I was a photographer and artist. So, they asked me if I wanted to be the photographer on the project... I got to basically direct the project from the ground up — from location, choosing everybody, the times, the catering, everything. That was all me.
C&I: That’s impressive. I loved the launch video with the “Oklahoma!” remix.
Parks: So, we were at breakfast on the second day [of the shoot] and one of the people from the Timberland team was like, “It would be so dope if we could have someone sing ‘Oklahoma!’”
So, I made a call. That was a church choir in Oklahoma that did that. I'm all about community... so I tried to involve everybody that I felt was in the community in the project.
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C&I: Are there any special items in the collaboration?
Parks: It was a campaign with special items included. There is a hiker boot and the regular six-inch Timberland boots... They're built for any type of condition that you would need to wear your boots in. Hopefully one day you see a rodeo with all the cowboys wearing Timberland boots.
C&I: Is there a cowboy — past or present — that inspires you?
Parks: I would say Nat Love. And some of my favorite people from Oklahoma are Clarence LeBlanc and Tory Johnson.
Shop the Black Pioneers collection here.
