First American Art Magazine No. 48, Fall 2025

ANCESTRAL, HISTORICAL & LIVING ARTS by INDIGENOUS PEOPLES of the AMERICAS

FırstAmericanArt MAGAZINE

NO. 48, FALL 2025

OLMEC COLOSSAL HEADS WILD WEST IN VENICE MURALS OF CAUCA, COLOMBIA BANDOLIER BAGS TODAY DISPLAY UNTIL JAN. 8, 2026

KEANU JONES BRENDA MALLORY MARTY TWO BULLS JR. NICO WILLIAMS

On view through March 28, 2026 ALSO ON VIEW

Visualizing K’é presents fifteen drawings and prints by master printmaker and professor Marwin Begaye (Navajo Nation),

Memo to the Mother: Bob Haozous’s Messages to Mother Earth

which visualize the Diné philosophy and

Through January 10, 2026

practice of maintaining kinship (k’é).

Gestural in Form: Virgil Ortiz x Family Through March 14, 2026 505.982.4636 wheelwright.org

PO Box 5153, Santa Fe, NM 87502 704 Camino Lejo, Santa Fe, NM 87505

OCTOBER 5, 2025– FEBRUARY 16, 2026 Andrea Carlson (Grand Portage Ojibwe and European descent, b. 1979), Truthiness, 2007. Oil, acrylic, ink, color pencil, and graphite on paper; 22 x 30 in. Collection Bockley Gallery. © Andrea Carlson, courtesy of the artist and Bockley Gallery, Minneapolis Andrea Carlson: A Constant Sky is organized by the Denver Art Museum. It is presented with generous support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, The Christensen Fund, the donors to the Annual Fund Leadership Campaign, and the residents who support the Scientific and Cultural Facilities District (SCFD). Promotional support is provided by 5280 Magazine and CBS Colorado.

Water’s Edge: The Art of Truman Lowe Opening October 24 | National Mall

Plan your visit to see the first major retrospective of acclaimed artist Truman Lowe. Featuring nearly 50 sculptures and drawings, the exhibition reflects on Lowe’s Hoocąk (Ho-Chunk) cultural traditions, memory, and relationships with water and place.

Leading support provided by Bank of America.

Major support provided by the Henry Luce Foundation.

Generous support provided by the Terra Foundation for American Art and Ameriprise Financial.

Additional support provided by John and Meryl Lavine and Leslie A. Wheelock.

AmericanIndian.si.edu Truman Lowe (Hoocąk, 1944–2019), Feather Canoe (detail), ca. 1993. National Museum of the American Indian 27/607

emoceB .erutnevd The Choctaw Cultural Center is more than a museum, it’s an adventure. Become evisremmi ruo h an intrepid explorer on a scavenger hunt that takes you through our immersive ruoour hguorht stfar exhibits; learn how to prepare traditional Choctaw foods and crafts through srelletyrots ruo hands-on workshops; or just take a quiet moment to listen to our storytellers in the Luksi Activity Center. Whether you’re young or young at heart, the eht ,traeh ta g possibilities for fun and learning are endless! !yl

A unique one-day getaway for the whole family!

• Interactive Exhibits • Hands-On Workshops • Living Village • Luksi Activity Center • Hvshi Gift Store • Champuli Cafe

edScan oc nacode cS .erto om n r a e l ot learn more.

1919 Hina Hanta Way | Calera, OK 74730

.tisiv ruoy n Visit ChoctawCulturalCenter.com to plan your visit.

SPECIALIZING IN THE SALE OF ESTATE AND PRIVATE COLLECTIONS

Killer Whale Totem— Limited Edition Bronze by Preston Singletary, Tlingit Nation

Contact director@quintanagalleries.com

Q UINTANA G ALLERIES

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quintanagalleries.com 503-810-7525

issue no. 48, fall 2025

DEPARTMENTS

FEATURES

Recent Developments

By Staci Golar and America Meredith (Cherokee Nation)

11

Seven Directions

By Scott Manning Stevens, PhD (Akwesasne Mohawk)

18

Venues | Deep Memories: Art and Architecture at the Chumash Museum and Cultural Center

By Reilly Clark

80

Art+Lit | Angela Sterritt: Gitxsan Author, Journalist, and Educator

By Matthew Ryan Smith, PhD Calendar

Rising to the Surface with Storywork: Edgar Heap of Birds, Erin Shaw, Arthur Amiotte, and Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Performers in Venice

By Emily C. Burns, PhD

24

Olmec Colossal Heads: The Surviving Faces of Mesoamerica’s First Civilization

By Florence Wanjiru

32

40

100

The Art of Resistance: How Nasa Murals Reclaim Colombia’s Wounded Lands

By Clara Jaeger

46

109

Carrying Culture: Bandolier Bags Today

By Sheila Regan

56

REVIEWS Exhibition Reviews

83

Book Review

98

ARTIST PROFILES 62

MEMORIALS Mary Aitson (Cherokee 104 Nation, 1931–2025)

By Jay Hannah (Cherokee Nation) Patricia Deadman (Grand River 105 Tuscarora/Mohawk, 1961–2024)

By Alex Jacobs-Blum (Cayuga), Heather George (Mohawk), and Jake Jamieson (Mohawk)

68

Ramona Lossie (Eastern 106 Band Cherokee, 1964–2025)

By Monā Lossie and Precise’ Lossie (both Eastern Band Cherokee) Ted Moore (Otoe-Missouria/ Osage/Pawnee/Sac & Fox/ Potawatomi, 1953–2025)

By Matt Jarvis (Osage)

107

Thompson Williams (Caddo, 1956–2025)

By Robin Williams (Wichita/ Caddo/Comanche)

108 74

Keanu Jones: Navajo Filmmaker, Photographer, and Digital Artist

By RoseMary Diaz (Santa Clara Pueblo)

56

Brenda Mallory: Cherokee Nation Sculptor and Installation Artist

By Mandy Yeahpau (Comanche/ Cherokee/Tarahumara descent)

62

Marty Two Bulls Jr.: Oglala Lakota Printmaker, Sculptor, and Mixed-Media Artist

By Dan Ninham, PhD (Oneida Nation)

68

Nico Williams: Aamjiwnaang Ojibway Beadwork, and Installation Artist

By Matthew Ryan Smith, PhD

74

cover Olmec artists once known, La Venta Monument 1, 800–400 BCE, basalt, 94 × 82 × 763/4 in., installed at Parque Museo La Venta, Villahermosa, Tabasco. Photo: John Mitchell, Alamy.

FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE NO. 48, FALL 2025 | 7

issue no. 48, fall 2025 ISSN 2333-5548 (Print) • ISSN 2333-5556 (Digital) Publishing Editor: America Meredith (Cherokee Nation) Literary Editor: Matthew Ryan Smith, PhD (Euro-Canadian) Contributing Editor: Stacy Pratt, PhD (Mvskoke) Advertising Representatives: Barbara Harjo Circulation Manager: Amy D. Bergseth, PhD Copy Editors: Rosa Cays (Chicana) and Christy Hanson (Diné) Proofreaders: Travis D. Day, Staci Golar, Christy Hanson (Diné), and Angela C. Villa (Chicana) Layout and Design: America Meredith (Cherokee Nation) and Neebinnaukzhik Southall (Rama Chippewa) Social Media: Staci Golar, America Meredith (Cherokee Nation), and Jackie Sevier (Northern Arapaho)

Regional Representatives Great Basin: Melissa Melero-Moose (Northern Paiute/Modoc) Great Plains: Jackie Sevier (Northern Arapaho) Northeast: Kelly Church (Gun Lake Pottawatomi/Ottawa/Ojibwe) Northwest: Nadia Jackinsky-Sethi, PhD (Alutiiq) Southeast: Michole Eldred (Catawba/Eastern Cherokee descent) Southwest: Holly Coonsis (Zuni) and RoseMary Diaz (Santa Clara Pueblo)

Advisory Council

Miranda Belarde-Lewis, PhD (Zuni/Tlingit) Roy Boney Jr. (Cherokee Nation) Emily Haozous, PhD, RN (Chiricahua Fort Sill Apache) Linda Lomahaftewa, Hon. DHum (Hopi/Choctaw) Tatiana Lomahaftewa-Singer (Hopi/Choctaw) Leah Mata Fragua (yak tityu tityu yak tiłhini Chumash) Anya Montiel, PhD (Mestiza/Tohono O'odham descent) Denise Neil, PhD (Delaware Tribe/Cherokee Nation) Neebinnaukzhik Southall (Rama Chippewa) Mary Jo Watson, PhD (Seminole Nation) India Rael Young, PhD

Advertising Representative

Barbara Harjo, barbara@firstamerican.art Internationally distributed by Disticor Magazine Distribution Services.

First American Art Magazine, LLC, is not responsible for the content of any article or for the statements of any advertiser. First American Art Magazine welcomes queries about editorial submissions.

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EDITOR’S GREETING

W

HEN OUR WORLD starts to seem small and flat (as mine often does after too much doomscrolling), visual, performing, literary, and media arts can all help expand our perceptions and, most importantly, allow us glimpses into the internal thoughts and feelings of our fellow human beings. Artists and makers physically manifest their memories, beliefs, fantasies, and queries.

Perspective taking is much like empathy, but instead of feeling what the other person is also feeling, one imagines seeing from the other person’s perspective. This cognitive process can be imagining what the other person literally sees in visual perspective taking or imagining the other’s perception in conceptual perspective taking. First, we become aware that we have our own perspective that colors all information we take in. Then, we understand that everyone else has their own equally unique perspectives. As American-French neuroscientist Jean Decety writes, perspective taking “involves setting aside one’s own current perspective, attributing a mental state of the other person, and then inferring the likely content of the mental state of that person.”1 This voluntary, often conscious, process can increase our mental flexibility.

In our fall issue of First American Art Magazine, Emily C. Burns explores in “Rising to the Surface with Storywork” how three artists today consciously respond to both how early 20th-century Italians saw the Lakota performers in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show and what the performers themselves saw in Venice.

Florence Wanjiru delves into the 17 known Olmec colossal heads from Southern Mexico. These elegant portraits pose so many questions; it’s difficult but fascinating to envision what their Olmec makers may have seen and thought in one of the earliest Mesoamerican societies from 1200 to 400 BCE. As these monumental portraits stare out through centuries, who were the models seen by the sculptors? Were they ballplayers, political rulers, or both? What were their primary concerns?

In “The Art of Resistance,” Clara Jaeger takes us to Indigenous rural

ab ove A m e r i c a M e re d i t h (Cherokee Nation), ᎠᏙᎸᎯᏐᏗᏱ Adodhlvhisodiyi (To Remake Oneself), 2002, acrylic on panel, 26½ × 20⅛ in., private collection.

Image courtesy of the artist.

communities in the Cauca department of Colombia that had been repeatedly rocked by political violence of the FARC rebels and paramilitary groups. When a ceasefire accord ended this violence, these Nasa communities wanted the outside world to see beyond the headlines that there was so much more to their communities. Local Nasa and international mural artists transformed their small towns through colorful, sometimes fantastical, public street art. While the Nasa still face struggles, the murals allow them and others to see their joys as well.

Finally, in “Carrying Culture,” Sheila Regan visits with bandolier bag makers from Canada down to the Southern Plains. Usually we only see these prestigious art forms in books or behind museum glass; however, these artists take the form and aesthetics of bandolier bags into the present day with new stories.

By sewing stitches so similar to those of their ancestors, these artists can imagine what their relatives were seeing and thinking. Like so many Native artists today, making customary artworks allows them to take on the perspectives of early generations whose voices were often silenced far too early.

While so many external forces wish us to assimilate or reduce us to predictable courses of thought, we can strengthen our humanity and expand our perceptions by imagining how others see the world. The world is vast and filled with thoughtful, creative people striving for truth and beauty every day. Meet some of them in the following pages.

—America Meredith (Cherokee Nation)

1. Jean Decety, “Perspective Taking as the Royal Avenue to Empathy,” in Other Minds: How Humans Bridge the Divide between Self and Others, ed. Bertram F. Malle and Sara D. Hodges (New York: Guilford Press, 2007), 153.

FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE NO. 48, FALL 2025 | 9

KAY WALKINGSTICK / HUDSON RIVER The Heard Museum’s new Grand Gallery Exhibition, Open Jan 23, 2026

Experience the beauty of the American landscape through two powerful perspectives. Kay WalkingStick / Hudson River School brings together breathtaking works by contemporary Cherokee artist Kay WalkingStick and iconic 19th-century paintings from the Hudson River School. Side by side, these works invite you to see the land through different lenses, exploring both deep reverence and the complex histories it holds. Organized by the New-York Historical Society, Kay WalkingStick / Hudson River School invites you to reflect on beauty, history, and the stories that landscapes hold.

Kay WalkingStick (b. 1935) Our Land Variation II, 2008.

Oil stick on paper. Miller Meigs Collections.

Photo by JSP Art Photography © Kay WalkingStick

h e a r d .org

RECENT DEVELOPMENTS MUSEUMS The DE YOUNG MUSEUM opened its newly renovated Native American art suite. Joseph Aguilar, PhD (San Ildefonso Pueblo), Meyo Marrufo (Robinson Rancheria/Eastern Pomo), Hillary C. Olcott, Will Riding In (Pawnee/Santa Ana Pueblo) and Sherrie Smith-Ferri, PhD (Dry Creek Pomo/Bodega Miwok) helped to reenvision the gallery space.

The WO ODL AND CULTURAL CENTRE in Brantford, Ontario, transformed the Mohawk Institute Residential School into a museum. It opened on September 30, 2025, the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, also known as Orange Shirt Day.

above Mohawk Institute Residential School, now a museum managed by the Woodland Cultural Centre in Brantford, Ontario. Image courtesy of the Woodland Cultural Centre.

below Best of Show winner at the 2025 Wyandotte Native Artisan Showcase: Caleb Garcia (Wyandotte), Tweety Bird, 2025, beadwork, quillwork.

The PICURIS PUEBLO MUSEUM in Peñasco, New Mexico, reopened in August on San Lorenzo’s Feast Day. First opened in 1969, the museum had been closed since the 1990s.

The City of Wichita hired Candy Taylor (Kiowa/Cherokee) as the new executive director of the MID-AMERICA ALL-INDIAN MUSEUM. Taylor most recently led the Comanche Nation Museum and Cultural Center in Lawton, Oklahoma.

The SHELBURNE MUSEUM in Shelburne, Vermont, kicked off construction on the new 11,000-square-foot Perry Center for Native American Art, which will be devoted to the exhibition and care of the museum’s collection of more than 500 items from 389 tribal communities.

The $14 million project is scheduled to conclude in 2027.

The ABENAKI COUNCIL OF ODANAK and the ABENAKI COUNCIL OF WÔLINAK, two First Nations in Quebec, have urged the Shelburne Museum to end its collaboration with state-recognized tribes that identify as being Abenaki.

The NATIONAL MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN is among the Smithsonian Institution museums that the Trump/Vance administration has

requested to undergo a “comprehensive internal review” to align it with the current administration’s ideologies and whitewash interpretive materials of historical events.

Stephen Borys, the 17-year director and CEO of WINNIPEG ART GALLERY-QAUMAJUQ, has resigned to start a consulting firm. Borys oversaw the completion of Qaumajuq’s 40,000-square-foot building, which holds the largest public collection of contemporary Inuit art in the world.

The GICHIGAMIIN INDIGENOUS NATIONS MUSEUM in Evanston, Illinois, temporarily closed after it fired muralist Jamie John (Grand Traverse Odawa-Ojibwe/Korean-American) for his pro-Palestinian messages in the underpainting of his commissioned mural on the museum’s exterior.

ART SHOWS Caleb Garcia (Wyandotte) won Best in Show at the 2025 WYANDOTTE NATION ARTISAN SHOWCASE at the Wyandotte Nation Cultural Center and Museum in Wyandotte, Oklahoma. Classification winners were Malinda Walker, basketry; Caleb Garcia, beadwork; Marie Bellefleur Gros-Louis, clothing; Caleb Garcia, diverse art forms; Caleb Garcia, jewelry and accessories; Brenda Lamb, leatherwork; Nathan McAlister, painting, drawing, and printmaking; Josh Garcia, photography; Collin Gray, pottery; Caleb Garcia, quillwork; Julia Morgan, textiles; Keith Gray, woodworking. All artists are citizens of the Wyandotte Nation.

The Cherokee Nation hosted its 30th annual CHEROKEE HOMECOMING ART SHOW in Tahlequah, Oklahoma.

Troy Jackson (Cherokee) won Best of Show. Ron Mitchell (Cherokee) won the

FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE NO. 48, FALL 2025 | 11

James Pepper Henry (Kaw), In’zhúje’waxóbe & Stars, 2024

RETURN OF THE SACRED RED ROCK SEP 9, 2025—JAN 25, 2026 SPENCER MUSEUM OF ART UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS SPENCERART.KU.EDU 1301 MISSISSIPPI STREET, LAWRENCE, KS 66045

Mary Ellen Meredith Award for Humor, sponsored by FAAM. Classification winners were Hattie Lee Mendoza, basketry; Vivian Cottrell, basketry–traditional; Carolyn Pallett, beadwork and quillwork; Roy Boney Jr., drawing, graphics, and mixed media; Tyran Cartledge, jewelry; Ron Mitchell, painting; Z Long, Ꮟ ᎦᏅᎯᏓ, photography and digital art; Karla Blackfish, pottery–contemporary; Richard Graham, pottery–traditional and figurative; Ernie Poindexter, sculpture; Cindy Evans, textiles; and Ryan Sanders, traditional arts. Jennifer Saenz and Vicky Watson won the Emerging Artist Award, Jerry Sutton won the Betty Scraper-Garner Elder Award, and Carolyn Pallett won the Bill Rabbit Legacy Award. All artists are citizens of the Cherokee Nation.

James Martin (Choctaw Nation) won the Best of Show at the 20th annual CHOCTAW ART SHOW hosted by the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma at the Choctaw Cultural Center. Michael

Smith won the Himmak Pila “Future” Award, Cheyenne Sparks won Okla’s (People’s) Choice, and Edmon Perkins won the Choctaw Heritage Award. Classification winners were Colton James, basketry; Deana Ward, beadwork; Paul King, drawing/painting; Tatiana Stephens, graphics/photography; Clifford Wilson, jewelry; Margaret Riley Santhanam, textile art; Ross Ridge, pottery/ sculptures; Edmon Perkins, diversified art; and Sinte-ska Roberts, youth. All artists are citizens of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma.

ART FAIRS The 2025 BIENAL DE SÃO PAULO announced their lineup of 120 artists, including painter Aislan Pankararu (Pankararu), sound artist Raven Chacon (Diné), and other Indigenous artists.

The second edition of the AMAZON BIENNIAL: VERDE-DISTANCIA is on view through November 30, 2025, in Belém, Pará, Brazil. Curated by Manuela

12 | FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE NO. 48, FALL 2025

Moscoso in collaboration with Sara Garzón and Jean da Silva, the biennial includes Indigenous artists such as Joseca Yanomami (Yanomami) and Julia Chambi López (Quechua, 1891–1973).

Anna Tsouhlarakis (Diné/Muscogee) headlined the BRECKENRIDGE INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL OF THE ARTS with her three installations, The Native Guide Project, Edges of the Ephemeral, and Rocketship and one exhibition, Irrational Indigenous Insights.

ART MARKETS Regina Free (Chickasaw) won Best of Show at the 103rd SWAIA SANTA FE INDIAN MARKET. Classification winners were Janalee Reano Valencia (San Felipe Pueblo), jewelry; Chris Youngblood (Santa Clara Pueblo) and Jennifer Tafoya (Santa Clara Pueblo), pottery; Santiago Romero (Cochiti/ Taos/Santa Ana Pueblos), painting/ drawings/graphics/photography; Robert Stephen Albert (Hopi), wooden Pueblo

figurative carvings and sculpture; Regina Free (Chickasaw), sculpture; Lola Cody (Diné), textiles; Virgil Ortiz (Cochiti), diverse arts; Jackie Larson Bread (Blackfeet), beadwork/quillwork; Naats Tla’a (Tlingit), youth; and Theresa Secord (Penobscot), basketry. Emmett Navakuku (Hopi) won the IAIA Distinguished Alumni Award.

Sculptor Karhatiron Perkins (Akwesasne Mohawk) won Best in Show at the AKWESASNE ART MARKET in Akwesasne, New York.

Textile artist Charlene Laughing (Diné) won Best of Show at the 8th annual BERNALILLO INDIAN ARTS FESTIVAL in Albuquerque.

SCHOOLS The RALPH T. COE CENTER FOR THE ARTS will donate its campus to the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA)

above, left Best of Show winner at the Cherokee Homecoming Art Show: Troy Jackson (Cherokee Nation), Battle of a Nation, 2025, ceramic sculpture.

in Santa Fe. Along with the Coe Center campus, IAIA will receive a substantial grant to support building upgrades, ongoing maintenance, and property care, as well as items from the Coe collection.

The INSTITUTE OF AMERICAN INDIAN ARTS selected Shelly C. Lowe (Diné) as its new president, effective August 1, 2025. She most recently served as chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities and succeeded longtime IAIA President Dr. Robert Martin (Cherokee Nation), who retired on July 31.

ORGANIZATIONS The new president and CEO of FIRST PEOPLES FUND is Tina Kuckkahn (Lac du Flambeau Ojibwe). She recently served as the managing director for NDN Collective. Previously she directed the s’gʷigʷiʔaltxʷ: House of Welcome Cultural Arts Center at The Evergreen

State College, and became Evergreen’s first vice president of Indigenous arts, education, and tribal relations.

Artist, educator, and filmmaker Lindsay Aksarniq McIntyre (Inuk) is the new executive director of the INUIT ART FOUNDATION. She is the first Inuk to serve in the role. She previously taught at Emily Carr University of Art + Design.

AWARDS & HONORS Installation and textile artist Marie Watt (Seneca) is one of six recipients of this year’s HEINZ AWARDS. Her recognition comes with a $250,000 award and the Heinz Awards medallion.

Sculptor Brian Jungen (Dane-zaa) won this year’s AUDAIN PRIZE FOR THE VISUAL ARTS, which is among Canada’s most prestigious honors. Jungen, who is known for his transformation of

above, right Best of Show winner at SWAIA’s Santa Fe Indian Market: Regina Free (Chickasaw), Windswept, 2025, mixed-media sculpture. Photo: FAAM.

FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE NO. 48, FALL 2025 | 13

everyday objects into visceral art installations, will receive Can$100,000.

The NATIONAL DANCE EDUC AT ION ORG A N I Z AT ION , a Maryland-based nonprofit, gave a posthumous LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD to Nakotah LaRance (Inupiaq, 1989–2020). LaRance was a nine-time world champion hoop dancer who performed with the Cirque du Soleil and taught New Mexican youth how to hoop dance. His father Steve LaRance (Hopi/ Assiniboine) is forming the NAKOTAH LARANCE FOUNDATION to continue promoting youth hoop dancing.

The ROYAL CANADIAN MINT issued a $2 commemorative circulation coin to honor the art and life of painter Daphne Odjig (Odawa/Potawatomi, 1919–2016), adapting Odjig’s 1977 lithograph The Folk Singer to fit on the reverse.

First American Art Magazine’s publishing editor, America Meredith (Cherokee Nation) and Paul Chaat Smith

(Comanche/Choctaw) are among eight winners of the 2025 RABKIN PRIZE. This annual prize celebrates art writers and includes a $50,000 award. Meredith invested these funds into FAAM. Heidi K. Brandow (Diné/Native Hawaiian), Cara Romero (Chemehuevi), and Theresa Secord (Penobscot) are among the recipients of the ANONYMOUS WAS A WOMAN ENVIRONMENTAL ART GRANTS. These one-time awards of up to $20,000 support environmental art projects led by women-identifying artists from the U.S. and its territories.

Grace Rosario Perkins (Diné/Akimel O’odham) received the second WALKER YOUNGBIRD FELLOWSHIP to be given in 2025, the $15,000 EMERGING NATIVE ARTS GRANT. The 2025 SPRING WARHOL FOUNDATION FOR THE VISUAL ARTS grant recipients include IndigenousAF of Nevada and Racing Magpie of South Dakota.

14 | FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE NO. 48, FALL 2025

The TRELLIS ART FUND announced its 2025 Milestone Grant cohort which includes painter Julie Buffalohead (Ponca) of St. Paul, Minnesota. Buffalohead and eleven other recipients will receive unrestricted grants of $100,000 disbursed over a two-year period.

The CARLOS III FOUNDATION gave its IBERO-AMERICAN AWARD OF NATIVE ART to Elvira Espejo Ayca (Aymara/Quechua), weaver, poet, and former director of Bolivia’s National Museum of Ethnography and Folklore in La Paz. The BC ACHIEVEMENT FOUNDATION gave its 2025 POLYGON AWARD IN FIRST NATIONS ART to Rebecca Baker-Grenier (Kwakiutł/Dzawada'enuxw/Skwxwú7mesh) and Gordon Dick (Tseshaht). Kari Morgan (Nisga'a) won the MCLENNAN EMERGING ARTIST AWARD, and Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun (Cowichan/Syilx) won the AWARD OF DISTINCTION.

PODCAST

Samantha Jacobs (Seneca) is one of 30 mid-career artists to be named in the 2025 CENTER FOR CRAFT TEACHING ARTIST cohort. Each artist receives a $10,000 grant and a six-month program.

The 2025 JOAN MITCHELL FOUNDATION FELLOWS include Gerald Clarke (Cahuilla Band of Indians), Brenda Mallory (Cherokee Nation), and Eric Paul-Riege (Diné). Each artist will receive $60,000 in direct funding, distributed over five years, alongside professional development, peer engagement, and network-building programs.

EVITCELLOCCOLLECTIVE

T I R I P SS P I R I T T S A C D O P PODCAST

The NATIVE ARTS AND CULTURE FOUNDATION awarded its 2025 LIFT GRANTS of $15,000 to Aaron Baumgardner (Catawba), potter and basket maker; Jesse Kahoonei (Native Hawaiian), woodcarver and farmer; Beth Bush (Pokagon Potawatomi/Odawa), quillwork and beadwork artist; Rhiannon Skye Tafoya (Eastern Band Cherokee/Santa Clara Pueblo), printmaker and paper artist; Sáandlaanaay Kimberly Fulton Orozco (Central Tlingit-Haida), visual artist; Delia Touché (Spirit Lake Dakota/Assiniboine), visual artist; Danielle Olana Jagelski (Red Cliff Ojibwe/Oneida Nation), musician; Jared Tso (Diné), ceramic and installation artist; Gregory Juan (Native Hawaiian), musician; and Anangookwe Wolf (Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe/Fort Peck Assiniboine/ Dakota), poet. Awardees will also receive professional development, mentorship, project evaluation, documentation, and communications/marketing support.

The SCHOOL FOR ADVANCED RESEARCH (SAR) selected its 2025–2026 NATIVE ARTIST FELLOWS. Keith Edaakie (Zuni) is the 2025 Ronald and Susan Dubin Native Artist Fellow, Akilah Martinez (Diné) is the 2025 Rollin and Mary Ella King Native Artist Fellow, and Karen Ann Hoffman (Oneida Nation) is the 2026 Eric and Barbara Dobkin Native Artist Fellow.

MUSIC The Catawba Nation’s Nųti Yαpę (Morning Sun) Tribal Home Visiting program published WĮ́TII’: (ROOT): CATAWBA SONGS TO CARRY HOME, the first album of songs in the Catawba language. Children and adults sing the songs, with lyrics and translations provided on Media Catawba’s YouTube channel. Hilary Harris (Catawba), manager of the Nųti Yαpę (Morning Sun) Tribal Home Visiting program, led this revitalization project.

PRECONTACT SITES The Culture Ministry of Peru reduced half of the reserve surrounding the NASCA LINES. The Nasca Lines are a group of monumental geoglyphs made 2,000 years ago across some 600 square miles of desert floor outside Lima. Archaeologists warn this decision could invite exploitation of the UNESCO World Heritage Site from the mining industry.

DISCOVER THE COLLECTIVE SPIRIT® PODCAST INTO THE WORLD T—YOUR SAC DISCOVER DOP ®WINDOW TIRITHE PS ECOLLECTIVE VIT CELLO C ESPIRIT® HVIBRANT T REVOPODCAST CSID ARTISTS CULTURE BEARERS. DLROF —YOUR OWNATIVE TNAWINDOW RBIV EHT INTO OTN&I THE W ODVIBRANT NIW RU OWORLD Y— JOIN THEY STORIES .SREOF RAUS ENATIVE B AS ERU TARTISTS LUC SHARE & ST&SICULTURE TPOWERFUL RA EVITABEARERS. N FO SEIABOUT RJOIN OTS LUS UTHE FAS REW THEY OP ESHARE RAHS YPOWERFUL EHT SA SIMPACT UN STORIES IOJ OF TRANSFORMATIVE FO TABOUT CAPINDIGENOUS MI THE EVITTRANSFORMATIVE AMROFS NAR& TE HT IMPACT TUOBA OF ART CULTURE. . ERUINDIGENOUS TLUC & TRA SART UON&ECULTURE. GIDNI

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(Kiowa/Seminole/Mvskoki), Native art curator of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, says that the feather cape at the Minneapolis Institute of Art on page 38 is most likely from Oceania and not from Meskwaki territory.

above Rendering of the three cities studied by the Proyecto Arqueológico Regional Uaxactún (PARU), Guatemala. Image courtesy of the Ministry of Culture and Sports.

A 3,000-year-old Maya complex that includes three cities, LOS ABUELOS, PETNAL, and CAMBRAYAL has been rediscovered in Guatemala. Sanctuaries, a pyramid, a unique canal system, and two sculptures of an ancestral couple date between 500 to 300 BCE. The team of Guatemalan and Slovak researchers were part of the Uaxactún Regional Archaeological Project (PARU).

CRIME & LEGAL ISSUES David Paul Bremner of Barrie, Ontario, was sentenced to two years minus a day, including eight months of house arrest, for his role in the fraud ring that forged art in the style of Norval Morrisseau (Bingwi Neyaashi Ojibwa, 1932–2007).

James White of Essa, Ontario, pleaded guilty to producing forged documents and possessing and trafficking over 500 forgeries of Morrisseau artwork. He was convicted of fraud and sentenced to house arrest but faces five more fraud counts for over Can$5,000. White testified against former co-conspirator Jeff Cowan. Eight people in total are facing charges in the Morrisseau fraud case.

Kristy Loree Gordon, of Quitman, Arkansas, has been sentenced to four years’ probation for removing human remains and artifacts from a known Native American archaeological site.

Gordon agreed to pay $16,135.32 to restore and repair the site.

Santa Ana Pueblo is working to recover the nearly 150 culturally significant items

stolen from their ceremonial village in a series of burglaries since 1984. They recovered a dough bowl and have leads on a war shield thought to be in Canada.

The City of Vail, Colorado, settled out of court with muralist Danielle SeeWalker (Standing Rock Lakota). The ACLU of Colorado sued Vail on behalf of SeeWalker, alleging her free speech rights were violated under state and federal constitutions when Vail revoked her 2024 residency over a painting that compared Palestinians in war-torn Gaza to the genocide of Indigenous people in the United States.

A federal grand jury charged 61-yearold Jose Skywolf Martinez with selling goods falsely advertised as authentic Native American-made, which is illegal under the 1990 Indian Arts and Crafts Act. His jury trial began this September.

If convicted, Martinez faces a maximum sentence of up to five years in prison, a $250,000 fine, or both.

ERRATA In “To Carry the Wind: The Revitalization of Feather Mantles, Capes, and Cultural Memory” in FAAM No. 47, Matthew Ryan Smith mistakenly wrote that the mother-in-law of Rebecca Haff Lowry (Delaware Tribe), who collaborated with her to create a feather cape for the Brooklyn Public Library, was Susan Burdick (Yurok). Rebecca’s mother-inlaw is Sandra Lowry (Yurok). Susan Burdick (Yurok) was Rebecca’s twining teacher 30 years ago. Tahnee Ahtone

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Lindsay Bosch, associate director of communications, marketing, and digital strategy at the Block Museum of Art, wrote, regarding the review of Woven Being: Art for Zhegagoynak/Chicagoland

by Noelle Garcia (Klamath/Northern Paiute) in FAAM No. 46, Spring 2025, that Nora Moore Lloyd (Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe) “is a long-time resident of Chicago.”

NOTE Lindsay Bosch of the Block Museum of Art, also wrote that in addition to the four collaborating artists Andrea Carlson (Grand Portage Ojibwe descent), Kelly Church (Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish Tribe Potawatomi/Ottawa/Ojibwe), Nora Moore Lloyd (Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe), and Jason Wesaw (Pokagon Potawatomi): The curatorial team consisted of: Kathleen Bickford Berzock, Associate Director of Curatorial Affairs, Block Museum of Art; Jordan Poorman Cocker (Kiowa), Terra Foundation Guest Co-Curator, Block Museum of Art, and Curator of Indigenous Art, Crystal Bridges Museum; and Janet Dees, former Steven and Lisa Munster Tananbaum Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Block Museum of Art. The curatorial team also included Terra Foundation Curatorial Fellow Marisa Cruz Branco (Isleta Pueblo) and Terra Foundation Curatorial Fellow Teagan Harris (Cherokee Nation). Lois Taylor Biggs (Cherokee Nation/White Earth Ojibwe) was the project’s Terra Foundation Curatorial Fellow from 2021–2023.

Together, this extended group of predominantly Indigenous artists, curators, and scholars planned the installation and wrote the exhibition labels. All labels were reviewed by the artists, and in some instances were written by them.

SEVEN DIRECTIONS

SCOTT MANNING STEVENS, PhD An Akwesasne Mohawk professor, director, art historian, and curator shares his top seven list

S

COTT MANNING STEVENS is a citizen of the Akwesasne Mohawk Nation and the son of an Akwesasne Mohawk mother and a father of Welsh-American descent.

He grew up in Western New York near the Tuscarora Reservation, where his maternal grandparents lived. Currently he is the director of the Native American and Indigenous Studies program and the founding director of the Center for Global Indigenous Cultures and Environmental Justice at Syracuse University. He teaches art history, music history, and religion. He has just returned from a summer appointment as a visiting scholar in Aotearoa (Māori for New Zealand),

where he delivered lectures and workshops at universities in Auckland, Victoria, and Otago. In 2023 he co-curated a retrospective exhibition of an Onondaga/ Seneca ceramic artist titled Continuity, Innovation, and Resistance: The Art of Peter B. Jones at the Syracuse University Art Museum. In 2024 he curated Native Prospects: Indigeneity and Landscape at the Thomas Cole National Historic Site in New York, which traveled to the Florence Griswold Museum in Connecticut and then to the Farnsworth Museum of Art in Maine where it ran through this past July.

Much of his academic work focuses on the relationship between Native America and museums.

CENTER Some artists I have chosen for this piece correspond to a cardinal direction via the locations of their Indigenous homelands, while other selections are based on the location of a current exhibition of their works. In each case, they are artists who appeal to me by engaging with my abiding interest in the language of place in the visual arts. From where I stand in the heart of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, it can feel pretty central. Still, I’m keenly aware of the wide range of Indigenous artists spread across the globe and feel fortunate to be able to view their work in museums and galleries on my travel in the U.S. and abroad.

Starting here in Syracuse, I’m drawn to the work of Colombian-American artist NANCY FRIEDEMANN-SÁNCHEZ on view at the Everson Museum of Art. Her work explores the complicated intersections of her Colombian identity with indigeneity, class, and gender, using visual cues from ancestral arts, casta paintings, and popular quotidian imagery. Her exhibition is on view through October 19, 2025. nancyfriedemann.com

above Scott Manning Stevens. All images, unless otherwise specified, courtesy of the author. left Nancy Friedemann-Sánchez (Colombian-American), Dream Map and Cornucopia with Helicopters, 2022, ink on Tyvek, 90 × 135 in. Image courtesy of the artist and the Everson Museum of Art.

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SEVEN DIRECTIONS

EAST One of the continuing challenges for Lenape (Delaware) peoples of the Northeast is that their legacy in their original homelands has too long been ignored by settler institutions. Lenape Hoking, their name for their territories, stretched along the lower Hudson River Valley southward through New Jersey and Philadelphia into coastal Delaware. But after a variety of displacements and forced removals, the majority of Lenape live in Oklahoma, Wisconsin, or Southern Ontario. The megalopolis that now occupies so much of their homelands rarely acknowledges them beyond place names.

But this fall the PENN MUSEUM in Philadelphia will open a permanent gallery dedicated to the Lenape people’s experiences. This is not the first time that an exhibition will focus on the Lenape at this museum, but this is the first permanent exhibition devoted to them in the museum’s recently reimagined North American section (other sections will focus on the Eastern Band Cherokee and Muscogee representing the Southeast, the Pueblo nations of the Southwest, and the Tlingit and Alutiiq peoples of the Northwest). The emphasis will be on perspectives of these respective groups on their past and present circumstances— both challenges and successes. Delaware Tribe of Indians educator Jeremy Johnson, one of the eight Indigenous curators of the larger reinstallation, helped develop the section titled Northeast: Longevity of Lënapehòkink (Delaware/Lenape). The North American galleries will open November 22, 2025. penn.museum

above Rendering of the new Native North America Gallery at the Penn Museum, which opens on November 22, 2025. Image courtesy of the Penn Museum Exhibitions Department.

above Andrea Carlson (Grand Portage Ojibwe descent), Exit, 2018, screenprint on white Coventry rag paper; 34½ × 47¾ in., edition of 20, published by Highpoint Editions, Minneapolis, private collection. © 2018 Andrea Carlson, courtesy of the artist and Highpoint Editions.

NORTH I have relished coming to know the work of an artist of Ojibwe descent, ANDREA CARLSON, who has lived and worked in her Northern Minnesota community at Grand Portage and in Chicago. We actually met in London at a Courtauld symposium a few years ago, and I have followed her work ever since. Last year her single-artist exhibition at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art was a

revelation, with its multimedia collection and monumental canvases reminiscent of James Rosenquist in scale but in a style uniquely her own. The work stares down the legacies of colonialism, environmental degradation, and cultural appropriation while celebrating the vital and enduring aspects of Anishinaabe culture in the 21st century.

One of her sculptural pieces was placed in conversation with a Morrison

driftwood collage at a recent exhibition at the Hudson River Museum curated

by Sháńdíín Brown (Diné). Carlson acknowledges Morrison as an influence, along with her father, whose own style as a hyperrealist artist influenced her meticulous draftsmanship. I hope to see her solo exhibition at the Denver Art Museum that opens October 5, 2025. mikinaak.com

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SEVEN DIRECTIONS

WEST I have only recently been introduced to the work of Diné artist MATTHEW KIRK. Born in Ganado, Arizona, and raised in Wisconsin, Kirk has gained recognition as a mixed-media artist with works in the collections of the Forge Project and Eiteljorg Museum, where he was an Eiteljorg Fellow. His current exhibition at de boer gallery in Los Angeles offers an excellent overview of his recent works. It was through de boer galleries in Los Angeles and Antwerp that I was introduced to the work of Teresa Baker (Mandan/Hidatsa), so when they feature an up-and-coming Indigenous artist, I always take note. Kirk’s earlier works were highly abstract canvases of swirling lines punctuated with occasional symbols.

The effect is sometimes described as topographical. His current work marks a turn toward a brighter palette and hard-edged shapes that resonate with the iconography of “Indianness”—a playful balance of critique and introspection.

For many mixed-race Native Americans raised remotely from their Native culture and homelands, their identity as Indigenous may seem abstract, leaving them to confront the generic and stereotypical assumptions that the majority culture makes about their identity. I see a desire to engage this reality in Kirk’s recent works, which I find compelling. mtthwkrk.org 20 | FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE NO. 48, FALL 2025

left Matthew Kirk: In a Time of Darkness, This is Wonderful News installation view at de boer gallery, Los Angeles, CA. above Dyani White Hawk (Sičáŋǧu Lakota), They Gifted (Day), 2024, screen prints on Lanaquarelle paper, 58 × 28½ in., edition of 24, printed by Tandem Press, collection of the Ringling Museum of Art, Drs. George and Sarah Pappas Art Acquisition Fund, 2025. Image courtesy of the artist and Tandem Press, Madison, WI. © Dyani White Hawk.

SEVEN DIRECTIONS

SOUTH I first heard of the RINGLING MUSEUM back in high school when a friend who had vacationed in Sarasota brought back a guide to the art collection. Back then, before its governance had been turned over to Florida State University, the museum was a sleepy collection of Old Masters along with buildings dedicated to circus history and the Ringling Mansion itself. Happily, things have changed dramatically over the intervening decades, and the Ringling, as it’s now known, hosts major exhibitions of classic and contemporary art. This fall they will mount an exhibition titled Ancestral Edge: Abstraction and Symbolism in the Works of Nine Native American Women Artists. Three of those artists, Marie Watt (Seneca Nation), Teresa Baker (Mandan/ Hidatsa), and Dyani White Hawk (Sičáŋǧu Lakota), I have followed closely over the past few years and am delighted they are being featured in this group exhibition. The others I am less familiar with but am sure I will find interesting as the exhibition explores the connections between contemporary abstract art and ancestral designs and symbolism across a range of Indigenous cultures.

Also featured are Natalie Ball (Klamath/ Modoc), Kiana Bell (Florida Seminole), Elisa Harkins (Muscogee/Cherokee), Erica Lord (Iñupiaq/Athabascan), Sarah Sense (Chitimacha/Choctaw), and Sara Siestreem (Hanis Coos). ringling.org

left Dyani White Hawk (Sičáŋǧu Lakota), They Gifted (Night), 2024, screen prints on Lanaquarelle paper, 58 × 28½ in., edition of 24, printed by Tandem Press, collection of the Ringling Museum of Art, Drs. George and Sarah Pappas Art Acquisition Fund, 2025.27.1.

Image courtesy of the artist and Tandem Press, Madison, Wisconsin. © Dyani White Hawk. Both on view in Ancestral Edge: Abstraction and Symbolism in the Works of Nine Native American Women Artists at the Ringling.

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SEVEN DIRECTIONS

ABOVE In the summer of 2024, I had the opportunity to attend the Venice Biennale in a year where one of the chosen themes was Indigenous art. Among the many inspiring exhibitions I visited, few impressed me more than Greenlandic Kalaaleq photographer INUUTEQ STORCH. He was given the run of the Danish Pavilion, renamed the Kalaallit Nunat Pavilion, in which he curated an exhibition of his own work alongside historic photographs of his homeland.

The interconnected galleries in the pavilion were either dark black with backlit photographs or glaringly white exhibition spaces seeming to mimic the stark contrasts everywhere evident in the photographs on display. From modest interiors of family homes to gorgeous images of the land and sea, to stiff colonial depictions of Greenlanders over the last two centuries, the exhibition revealed a complex portrait of a place and its people. I found it difficult to leave the exhibition for fear I had missed a detail.

So I was delighted to learn that Storch’s work will be the focus of an exhibition this fall mounted by MoMA’s PS1, titled Soon Will Summer Be Over. inuuteqstorch.com

BELOW During a trip this past summer to Aotearoa, I was able to immerse myself in contemporary Māori art from north to south as I traveled from Auckland to Dunedin. When not visiting university campuses and meeting Indigenous scholars and students, I was to be found at a local museum of art. One particularly powerful exhibition I visited was at the DUNEDIN PUBLIC ART GALLERY, where I encountered a photography exhibition titled Unutai e! Unutai e!, which derives from a Māori imperative to “let the waters go to the sea.” The exhibition is a collaboration between members of the Kāi Tahu community of the South Island and Anne Noble, a celebrated Pakeha (non-Maori) photographer. Community members wished to express the urgency around the pollution of their local

waterways. This environmental degradation is a result of extractive industries, agrobusinesses, and ranching and has affected some of the remotest parts of the island. Noble let community members choose what they wanted photographed and how they wished to tell their story.

The result is a collection of portraits of community members in proximity to the waterways they seek to protect along with visible signs of contamination, plus a powerful assemblage of photos of the various public warning placards that currently appear along streams and rivers.

This activist art made concrete something one might hear as a news item but really need to see to understand.

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dunedin.art.museum/news/ unutai-e-unutai-e above, top Inuuteq Storch (Kalaalleq), photograph of Sisimiut, Greenland, from Keepers of the Ocean, (2019). Image courtesy of the artist and Wilson Saplana Gallery, Copenhagen. © Inuuteq Storch. above, bottom Unutai e! Unutai e!, 2025, installation view, Dunedin Public Art Gallery. Image courtesy of Dunedin Public Art Gallery.

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Tessa Robledo, Comanche, beadwork, Southern Plains Song Purse, ©2022

RISING TO THE SURFACE WITH STORYWORK Edgar Heap of Birds, Erin Shaw, Arthur Amiotte & Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Performers in Venice

By Emily C. Burns, PhD

I

N 1890 the spectacle of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West traveled to Venice with dozens of Native American performers who were mainly Lakȟótas from Pine Ridge Reservation.1 A photograph famously rendered a group of four Wild West performers wearing regalia in a gondola with William F. Cody, stilled against the iconic backdrop of the Piazza San Marco and Doge’s Palace (figure 1).

Taken by Italian commercial photographer Paolo Salviati, the photograph has circulated widely and is in multiple archives. It was also reprinted in halftone in Wild West programs in multiple languages over many years.

In one print in the Cody papers at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Wyoming, the photograph is hand colored with red and blue touches. Notably, the war bonnets worn by Íŋyaŋ Matȟó (Rocky Bear) and Čhaŋté Sápa (Black Heart) are rendered with the colors of the U.S. flag.

The sky has a bright blue wash, and the inscription at the top proclaims, “Only Indians ever in Venice.” The calmness of the water, the uneven lighting, the scale of the figures, and location in space suggest that this is a composite photograph,

combining an image of the group in a gondola on a quiet canal with the instantly recognizable iconic heart of Venice. The layering produces a push and pull between surface and depth as the gondola and the Venetian skyline toggle in our visual attention with the flatness of the waterway between them. Another photograph from the same visit situates the same group of Lakȟóta performers on the corner balcony of the Doge’s Palace waving to a curious crowd of onlookers below (figure 2). These scenes suggest the calculated presentation of indigeneity for European audiences while also pointing to the ways performers themselves became tourists.

Many scholars have written about Native American performers in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West and its occasional tours abroad between 1887 and 1906. Some focus on the ways Europeans perceived and built stereotypes about U.S. identity through contact with Native American performers. Others have focused on the danger of the show’s stereotypes, the continued performance of triumphant U.S. Western settlement and Native American defeat, as well as critiquing the show’s labor practices, mortality during

the show, and the lack of agency the performers had in scripting their roles. Still others have shown how performers agentically used the show’s itinerary to access resources in an increasingly cash-based economy; escaped repressive surveillance and the limiting-imposed ration system on the reservation; continued to assert Lakȟóta presence and cultural authority through beadwork and regalia that traveled with the show; and critiqued U.S. settler colonialism in subtle ways as they moved. The performers recognized themselves as such, articulating a knowing theatricality that they leveraged during a fraught era of repression for personal and cultural opportunities. Historian Sam Maddra explores such contradictions when Lakȟótas imprisoned at Fort Sheridan for participating in the Ghost Dance joined Buffalo Bill’s Wild West in 1891 to escape incarceration but also used performance as a strategy to resist assimilation efforts.2 These perspectives point to an ambivalent and contradictory practice: the show simultaneously exported stereotypes and performers participated with agency, seeing resources, travel, and opportunities for critique.3 How does art

1. On the Wild West in Italy, see Lorenzo Barruscotto, “Buffalo Bill Delighted Italian Fans…” HistoryNet, March 8, 2024, web; Rita G. Napier, “Across the Big Water: American Indians’ Perceptions of Europe and Europeans, 1887–1906,” in Indians and Europe: An Interdisciplinary Collection of Essays, ed. Christian F. Feest (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999), 383–401.

2. Sam A. Maddra, Hostiles? The Lakota Ghost Dance and Buffalo Bill’s Wild West (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2006), 26.

3. L.G. Moses, Wild West Shows and the Images of American Indians, 1883–1933 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996); Steve Friesen with François Chladiuk, Lakota Performers in Europe: Their Culture and the Artifacts They Left Behind (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2017); Linda Scarangella McNenly, Native Performers in Wild West Shows: From Buffalo Bill to Euro Disney (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2012); McNenly, “Foe, Friend, or Critic: Native Performers with Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show and Discourses of Conquest and Friendship in Newspaper Reports,” American Indian Quarterly 38, no. 2 (Spring 2014): 143–76; Emily C. Burns, Transnational Frontiers: The American West in France (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2018); Burns, “Circulating Regalia and Lakȟóta Survivance, c. 1900,” Arts 8, no. 146 (2019), web.

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shape our memory of these conflicted, ambivalent histories?

This article focuses on the work of three contemporary Native American artists who have responded to histories of Lakȟóta performers in Venice in their art: Edgar Heap of Birds (Southern Cheyenne), Erin Shaw (Chickasaw/Choctaw), and Arthur Amiotte (Oglala Lakȟóta). All three artists take up the legacy of Wild West performance as storytellers, turning a kaleidoscope to frame that history in different terms.4 Heap of Birds and Shaw critique the history of Wild West travelers dying abroad or being circumscribed by the spectacle’s limited narratives of Western conquest. Both challenge how the Wild West show foregrounds and constructs settler imaginaries of indigeneity.

Amiotte retraces the Wild West shows as a family tourist history, following the footsteps of his great-grandfather Matȟó Nážiŋ (Miniconju Lakȟóta), who was a Wild West performer abroad in 1887 and 1889–90. Building on and narrating oral histories from within his community, Amiotte articulates Lakȟóta stories about Wild West performance and travel. In glass, watercolor, and collage, respectively, Heap of Birds, Shaw, and Amiotte probe literal and metaphorical surface and depth and mingle the visible and immaterial as they guide us to grapple with these histories. Between the constructed nature of Salviati’s photograph and their own storying of Wild West histories in Venice, these artists remind us that the telling of Lakȟóta histories abroad is fungible and fluid, and as complex as the dynamic and colorful but murky waterways of Venice.

BELATED HONORING AS AN INTERRUPTION at the 2007 Venice Biennale, Heap of Birds posted signs across the city. In an installation sponsored by the Smithsonian’s National

above, figure 1 Paolo Salviati, Buffalo Bill and Native American Wild West performers in Venice, April 1890, hand-colored photograph, 10½ × 13½ in., archives of the McCracken Research Library, Buffalo Bill Center of the West, Cody, WY, MS 6 William F. Cody Collection, P.69.0822.

Museum of the American Indian, travelers at Marco Polo International Airport were greeted by a billboard that welcomed them to the “spectacle,” pairing the famous exhibition with the 1890 tour of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West (figure 4).5 An initially festive broadside turns sobering as viewers read on to the names of 16 known deceased Native performers in Europe, many of whose remains have never been returned to their communities.

With this project, Heap of Birds offers “a belated honoring of those Native spirits who died in Europe as part of the Wild West spectacles” and a “memorial song.”6 As curator Kathleen Ash-Milby (Diné) sums up, “For Edgar Heap of Birds, the gondola image is a grim reminder of the plight of these warriors, stripped of their dignity and livelihood

… [and] symbolic of their captivity and denigration.”7 The artist did research in Paris in the morgue archives and in the Société de Géographie library, looking for photographs of Wild West performers, and sought restitution through deeper knowledge about the performers, representations, and stories. 8 His work operates to give a voice to performers who were “viewed as silent.”9 Individual signs placed along the Viale Giuseppe Garibaldi near the public garden where the national pavilions are pair the terms honor and rammentare (to remember) with the names of the lost performers and the relational Cheyenne terms of nastona and numshim for daughters and grandfathers. In Heap of Bird’s terms, the signs were meant “to acknowledge all these warriors who died, putting up signs around Venice with their names and

4. On the power of storywork, see Jo-ann Archibald, Indigenous Storywork: Educating the Heart, Mind, Body and Spirit (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2008).

5. Bill Anthes, Edgar Heap of Birds (Durham: Duke University Press, 2015), 150–61; Jessica L. Horton, Art for an Undivided Earth: The American Indian Movement Generation (Durham: Duke University Press, 2017), 92–93.

6. Brochure from Most Serene Republics (2007); Edgar Heap of Birds quoted in William S. Smith, “In the Studio: Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds,” Art in America (October 2017): 117.

7. Kathleen Ash-Milby, “Most Serene Republics: Remembering and Reconsidering Histories,” in Most Serene Republics: Edgar Heap of Birds, ed. Kathleen Ash-Milby and Truman T. Lowe (Washington, DC: National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, 2009), 57.

8. On these deaths, see B. Byron Price, “Perilous Production: Dying to Work for Buffalo Bill’s Wild West,” Points West (Winter 2022): 12–15, web; Ash-Milby, “Most Serene Republics,” 67–69.

9. Cited in Ash-Milby, “Most Serene Republics,” 59.

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opposite, Figure 2 Paolo Salviati, Buffalo Bill and Native American Wild West performers on balcony of Doge’s Palace in Venice, April 1890, hand-colored photograph, 13¾ × 105/8 in., archives of the McCracken Research Library, Buffalo Bill Center of the West, Cody, WY, MS 6 William F. Cody Collection, P.69.0823.

saying NATIVE SPIRITS PERISHED.”10 The artist pairs the memorial with signs in the Giardini Reali across the city that point to the violence of Venetian history.

As postcolonial theorist Homi K. Bhabha puts it (following philosopher and historian Ernest Renan), this invokes “the violence involved in establishing the nation's writ … that constitutes the beginning of the nation’s narrative.”11 These are the losses incurred by both transnational power dynamics in the Venetian Republic and in U.S. settler colonialism, and as art historian Bill Anthes shows, in the undercutting of Venetian sovereignty by the Napoleonic empire.12

Heap of Birds notes the erasure of Indigenous populations engendered by the modern nation state and also stated in an interview how he observed among Murano glass-blowing guilds a kind of “tribal community” with deep material knowledge and “how they talk to the glass.”13 As described in an earlier interview how “the Biennale is a big spectacle of horrible ‘solo genius’ contemporary art,” Heap of Birds notes that this group of collective makers is often sidelined from the dominant contemporary art scene featured at the Biennale.14 Through artistic collaboration with glass maestri, including Simone Cenedese, Heap of Birds returned to his question of how to

10. Smith, “In the Studio,” 117.

11. Homi K. Bhabha, “DissemiNation: time, narrative and the margins of the modern nation,” in Nation and Narration, ed. Homi K. Bhabha (London: Routledge, 1990), 310.

12. Anthes, Edgar Heap of Birds, 158.

13. Edgar Heap of Birds in discussion with the author, July 22, 2025. On the glass, see Ash-Milby, “Most Serene Republics,” 78–80.

14. Smith, “In the Studio,” 117.

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memorialize the Lakȟóta performers lost abroad. While he intended to produce the leaf shapes of his Neuf series in blown glass, the material pressures resulted in turtle-like and then humanoid forms with outstretched limbs in the finished vessels (figure 3). In one example, fluid navy and white form the 16 amorphous entities that hover within a luminous sea-green field. The vibrant, deep blue and white floating on the aqua concocts an otherworldly realm. Heap of Birds described in conversation with me, as the “spirit bodies … orbit the vessel,” they enact a material floating presence, suspended in the ether created by the shared breath moving through the viscous glass. The material calls the performers’ spirits into dynamic presence, brings them together, and invites us to reckon with the loss.

Through community with glassblowers and with historic Lakȟóta performers, Heap of Birds produces a new collective.

His memorialization of loss refuses the spectacle and stereotyping associated with Wild West imagery.

ONLY INDIANS EVER IN VENICE IN 2024 Chickasaw artist Erin Shaw bought a Buffalo Bill’s Wild West program where Salviati’s gondola photograph (figure 1) was reproduced at a thrift store in Oklahoma City. In Only Indians Ever in Venice, a drawing and watercolor commissioned for the 2024–25 Drawing on Narratives exhibition at Mainsite Gallery in Norman, Oklahoma, Shaw fastidiously redrew a section of the gondola photograph—cropped more closely on the figures and gondola—in larger scale with graphite (figure 5). With generative revision, she then effaced parts of the forms and replaced them with a dynamic blue, green, and yellow watercolor wash that floats around and above them. At times the curls of the wash seem to swallow the scene beneath, revising the handcolored effects of the period photograph to produce new stories. Almost all of the Lakȟóta performers’ forms are obscured; we see only their regalia in partial view or their faces peek around the wash; the

only fully visible figure is the unidentified white man in a bowler hat at the back of the gondola. The visual tension between the graphite and the color and between the realism of the photographic replication and the abstraction of the painting toggles between stories, probing and revising Salviati’s photograph. The graphite seems fixed and immutable, while the wash is amorphous and visually complex. The layered structure of the scene reveals myths and stories, simultaneously bringing them into focus and pushing them into the distance.

Shaw omits the inscription from the drawing; instead it becomes the satirical and questioning title of the artwork. By taking up Only Indians Ever in Venice as the title, Shaw points to the cultural conversations lying under the surface of Salviati’s photograph, with false assumptions about the immobilities of Native Americans and presumptions of future demise. Shaw explores and critiques stereotypes of Indianness and narratives of

above, Figure 3 Edgar Heap of Birds (Southern Cheyenne), Untitled, 2007, Murano glass, 16 × 14 × 14 in. © Edgar Heap of Birds. Artwork made for Most Serene Republics (2007), exhibition on the occasion of the 52nd Venice Biennial in collaboration with the National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. © Edgar Heap of Birds.

Image courtesy of the artist.

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discovery circulated and reinforced by Wild West shows, which distilled indigeneity into a single, false narrative that all Native Americans were Northern Plains warriors in war bonnets. Shaw reframes the trope of the “Indian” that Buffalo Bill’s Wild West produced. The artist expresses in an interview how intuitively she was drawn to this particular photograph in the program and explains how Wild West history has tremendous power to produce cultural expectations of indigeneity that do not and cannot accommodate the complexities of Native American cultures, communities, nations, and lives.

Shaw points out the role of these stories in “creating [and] perpetuating thoughts” that persist. Refusing the static nature of the Wild West story, Shaw critiques how these narratives “keep … us stuck in this old way of being and of seeing.” This commentary fits into her larger artistic practice, which often focuses on how “narratives are not neutrals” and “how stories form us … in a collective way.” Her work often draws attention to the “stories guiding the collective ship … the narratives under the surface that have formed systems and structures we live in.” She undertakes to “appropriate old imagery and … recontextualize it.” In this example from her larger practice, Shaw says, “This story of the Wild West show has shaped the collective imagination, whether people are conscious of it or not, and that is terrifying to me.”15

Shaw also spoke to the photograph’s expression of the immutable narrative built by the Wild West show that told singular stories. In this vein, Shaw points to the problematic power of photography, which “wields all this authority … it insists that it is true.” By reworking the photograph as a drawing and painting over it with watercolor, Shaw draws our attention to the scene’s constructed nature, and its story becomes simultaneously present and erased. The wash effect sets the story in motion, as though the watery surface beneath the gondola rises up, and the viewer is simultaneously looking across at the performers and down into the fluid and transient surface of the water. While Shaw points out that the Salviati photograph produces a “juxtaposition as if the Native American figures didn’t belong”—akin to Phil Deloria’s observations about “Indians in Unexpected Places,” her reframing of the photograph naturalizes their presence.16 Shaw discusses the need for “fluidity, that stories have to bend and move and evolve.” By selectively revealing and concealing with an aesthetic of watercolor that similarly expresses fluidity and dynamism, her intervention reintroduces and insists upon that complexity, unraveling the settler story forwarded by Buffalo Bill’s Wild West. Shaw concludes by asking, Is there a “narrative that’s going to serve us better collectively?”

15. All Erin Shaw quotations in discussion with the author, February 24, 2025.

16. Philip J. Deloria, Indians in Unexpected Places (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004).

17. Arthur Amiotte in discussion with the author, August 21, 2025.

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EXERCISING AGENCY LIKE HEAP OF BIRDS AND SHAW, Oglala Lakȟóta artist Arthur Amiotte points to Wild West shows’ promotion of stereotypes. In a 2009 collage, Venezia 1890, Amiotte uses broadsides at the top that announce the “Real Wild West” and “First Real American,” labels from a poster of the “Big Chief of the Sioux” and “the Mightiest Warrior of them All” floating on horseback over the waterway (figure 6). However, Amiotte is more interested in telling other stories that relate to his ancestry and forebearers: while he gently chides about the stereotypes, he naturalizes, celebrates, and nuances the experiences of Lakȟóta performers in Venice. In the process, he foregrounds how the performers “exercised agency” as they traveled; rejected the confines of the reservation system; sought access to funds and materials not otherwise available in the 1880s and 1890s; and affirmed longstanding Lakȟóta mobilities.17 Descendant of Wild West performer Matȟó Nážiŋ (Miniconju Lakȟóta, 1859–1933), Amiotte undertook a 1999 summer fellowship residency at Claude Monet’s house and garden in Giverny, France, and took with him photographs of his great-grandfather and other Lakȟóta performers in a variety of contexts. For the next 20 years, Amiotte produced collages imagining the perspectives of the Lakȟóta performers as they toured

Europe as spectacles and spectators. He often includes handwritten notes on ledger paper to give voice to the performers’ perspectives.18 He notes that a term in Lakȟóta describes those who “play” or “perform,” oškáta wičháša, which highlights performers’ awareness of playing a role and draws attention to their selfaware and professional participation in the spectacle and its tours.19 To the left, Amiotte incorporates Salviati’s photographs, including the group at the Doge’s Palace (figure 2) with the adoring population staring up from below (figure 7) and the gondola scene below that (figure 1), and omits the inscription “Only Indians ever in Venice.”

This inscription is replaced with one on ledger paper: “We went in those boats too. We really liked those boats” (figure 8). He also expands those scenes to show the other side of the Doge’s Palace with the column holding the Lion of Venice, a distant view of San Giorgio Maggiore, the Rialto Bridge, and St. Mark’s Basilica, with groups of Lakȟóta performers from posed photographs, including another by Salviati, placed as tourists at these sites.

Along the full width of the base of the collage, Amiotte includes an additional gondola that counters the one in Salviati’s photograph. It is placed on top of a photograph from his own travels in Venice that captures the subtle transitions between dark and light and complex shades of blue in the Venetian waters. Amiotte adapts a group of loving couples from a ledger drawing by 19th-century Kiowa artist Koba to be his Lakȟóta performers on the gondola decorated with a Wild West poster. Wryly, he stages William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody as the gondolier guiding the performers on their tour. “This is a part of the fiction,” Amiotte recalls, “because he didn’t always tell the truth.”20 But Amiotte is more focused on the Lakȟótas’ experiences and agentic

mobility. He tracks the movements he imagines them to have made around the city. He notes that many relatives plied performers with lists of European goods to bring home, with particular emphasis on the Spanish shawls.21 With a nod to longstanding indigenization of Venetian glass beads in Lakȟóta beadwork, the ledger drawing notes, “We bought lots of beads and shawls with flowers on them.

We sure like those flowers on shawls.” The farthest left figure in the gondola sports one of the flowered shawls (figure 8).

Amiotte emphasizes the trade network enabled by the Wild West mobility.

Presiding over the layers is a photograph of Matȟó Nážiŋ at top center, flanked by ledger notes and the iconic striped poles found throughout the city.

The left ledger includes the inscription, “They sure liked to see us. We went to every place, and they looked at us.” The commentary notes the intensive gaze of Europeans looking at the performers and also highlights the performers’ own mobilities in what Amiotte described to me as “postcards from the past” or

18. Arthur Amiotte, Louis S. Warren, and Janet Catherine Berlo, Transformation and Continuity in Lakota Culture: the Collages of Arthur Amiotte, 1988–2014 (Pierre: South Dakota State Historical Society Press, 2014); and Janet Berlo, Arthur Amiotte: Collages 1988–2006 (Santa Fe: Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian, 2006).

19. Arthur Amiotte in discussion with the author, August 21, 2025. See Burns, Transnational Frontiers, 40–41; and Friesen with Chladiuk, Lakota Performers, 20.

20. Arthur Amiotte in discussion with the author, September 2018.

21. Arthur Amiotte in discussion with the author, September 10, 2023.

Shaw discusses the need for “fluidity, that stories have to bend and move and evolve.”

opposite, Figure 4 Edgar Heap of Birds (Southern Cheyenne), Most Serene Republics, 2007, banner installed at Marco Polo International Airport, Venice, 72 × 216 in., private collection. Artwork made for Most Serene Republics (2007), exhibition on the occasion of the 52nd Venice Biennial in collaboration with the National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. © Edgar Heap of Birds. Image courtesy of the artist. above, Figure 5 Erin Shaw (Chickasaw/Choctaw), Only Indians Ever in Venice, 2024, watercolor and graphite on paper, 20 × 30 in. Image courtesy of the artist.

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stand with Cody in the clipped photograph from another venue that Amiotte restages in Venice by the column with the lion sculpture.23 Amiotte’s cohesion of these individuals and stories speaks to Lakȟóta epistemologies that cohere multiple memories, times, and experiences into a holistic story. In the process, he produces a relational archive and shows the Wild West story as a part of Lakȟóta knowledge, history, and experience.

CONCLUSION

The right ledger reads, “That whole town must have flooded.

They still live there.

They go around in boats.”

above, Figure 6 Arthur Amiotte (Oglala Lakȟóta), Venezia 1890, 2009, collage. Image courtesy of the artist. opposite, left, Figure 7 Detail of Venezia 1890 (2009) by Arthur Amiotte (Oglala Lakȟóta). opposite, right, Figure 8 Detail of Venezia 1890 (2009)

by Arthur Amiotte (Oglala Lakȟóta).

“travel albums from the past” as if sent by “someone on a Grand Tour.”22 Matȟó Nážiŋ’s ledger note also imagines the performers’ perspectives about the history of Venice and describes the site as if the city had existed before the waterways. The right ledger reads, “That whole town must have flooded. They still live there. They go around in boats.” With its spatial ambiguity and elements melded together, the structure of the collage mirrors the labyrinthian maze of the city itself, but here that space aligns with the weblike community memory of travel for Lakȟóta and stories that Amiotte recalled hearing in his family home. For Amiotte, the performers’ mobilities operate as tourist experiences of accessing culture and history abroad.

Amiotte takes productive liberties in his storytelling. The photograph of Matȟó Nážiŋ is from a 1920s postcard.

Additional views of Lakȟóta performers come from other places and times. For instance, later performers Sam Matȟó Išnála (Sam Lone Bear, c. 1878–c. 1945) and Siŋté Máza (Iron Tail, c. 1840s–1916)

IN A TED TALK IN 2009, Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie spoke about “the Dangers of a Single Story.” She notes a societal tendency to produce singular stories, which, as tied to power dynamics, shape social conversations and “create stereotypes” that are “incomplete … they make one story become the only story.” She expands on the pattern and states, “To create a single story: show a people as one thing, as only one thing over and over again, and that is what they become.”24 In its distillation of frontier narratives, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West might be thought of as a single story, standing in for and erasing the complexities of Native American cultures, histories, and experiences of duress under settler colonialism. Salviati’s photograph echoes that very flattening and onedimensionality with its constructed and exoticizing composite view that markets four Lakȟótas in Venice as a stand-in for all Native Americans and “the only Indians ever in Venice.”

Heap of Birds, Shaw, and Amiotte each turn a kaleidoscope on that single story and use their art to produce new, more complex, and layered stories about Wild West histories in Venice. While Heap of Birds and Amiotte both center memory in their artwork related to Lakȟóta performers in Venice, they bring to the foreground different aspects of Wild West histories in Venice, from the mourning of loss and critique of performance produced in duress to the remembrance of

22. Amiotte, September 2018.

23. On these performers, see Emily C. Burns, “Siŋté Máza (Iron Tail)’s Photographic Opportunities: The Transit of Lakȟóta Performance and Arts,” Panorama 6, no. 2 (Fall 2020), web.

24. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, “The Dangers of a Single Story,” TED, October 7, 2009, YouTube video, 19:16, web.

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relatives and travel experiences while celebrating performance made with agency.

Meanwhile, Shaw focuses on critiquing the very nature of that single story, how it was reproduced, and how it continues to circulate. Shaw and Heap of Birds position themselves to analyze the role of the Wild West in the reproduction of settler stereotypes and disregard for Native American lives. Amiotte’s Oglala Lakȟóta perspective underlies his collage’s articulation of the Wild West as a Lakȟóta history tied to culture, community, mobility, and memory.

The proclamation “Only Indians ever in Venice” presumes the incompatibility between Native Americans and European travel and is patently false. As Jessica L. Horton has traced, Pueblo paintings and pottery alongside Diné weavings graced the walls of the U.S. Pavilion in the Biennale in 1932. 25 As Nancy Marie Mithlo (Chiricahua Apache) has

facilitated with extensive curation since 1999, many Native American artists have disrupted the Biennale. The 2024 Venice Biennale, which featured Choctaw artist Jeffrey Gibson’s design of the U.S. Pavilion and artworks by other Native American artists, also countered such assumptions. Many Native American communities visited Venice on the occasion. All three of the artists discussed here have also visited Venice, and Heap of Birds produced his glasswork there (figure 3). Heap of Birds, Shaw, and Amiotte join this group of artists and artworks engaging with Venice as a tourist space, a contemporary art space, and an opportunity to tell new

and more fluid, multi-dimensional stories about the complexities of Wild West travel, its possibilities, and its pitfalls, and to encourage cultural conversation about Lakȟótas in Venice.

With thanks to Edgar Heap of Birds, Erin Shaw, and Arthur Amiotte for discussing their work with me. This research was supported by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission project at the National Archives, “Wičhóoyake kiη aglí—They Bring the Stories Back: Connecting Lakota Wild West Performers to Pine Ridge Community Histories” at Clemson University and Oglala Lakota College (2022–24), and the University of Oklahoma.

Emily C. Burns is the Charles Marion Russell Memorial Chair and director of the Russell Center for the Study of Art of the American West at the University of Oklahoma.

She researches dialogues between Native American and settler artists in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

25. Horton, Art for an Undivided Earth, 94–122.

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OLMEC COLOSSAL HEADS The Surviving Faces of Mesoamerica’s First Civilization

By Florence Wanjiru

L

ONG BEFORE THE RISE of the Maya or Aztecs, a powerful civilization flourished along Mexico’s Gulf Coast, only to vanish, leaving questions in the form of silent faces buried in the earth.

In the 1850s at Hacienda de Hueyapan, on the site that would become Tres Zapotes in southern Veracruz, Mexico, a farm laborer uncovered a partially buried, smooth, rounded surface. He thought it was the bottom of an iron cauldron. Upon retrieving it, he was struck by the glare of a colossal head sculpted from dark volcanic stone.1 The sculpture attracted visitors for nearly a century, until 1938, when Matthew Stirling brought it to global attention during a National Geographic Society expedition. This marked the first Western study of what are now known as the Olmec colossal heads. Initially named Cabeza Colosal de Hueyapan, the sculpture was later classified by archaeologists as Tres Zapotes Monument A. Around the same period, Stirling discovered a second head at Tres Zapotes, and subsequent excavations at the nearby site of San Lorenzo unearthed two more heads. Ten colossal heads were eventually discovered at San Lorenzo, and later excavations in the 20th century uncovered four more heads at La Venta and another at La Cobata, raising the overall count to 17.

These discoveries sparked research into an art style and archaeological culture that emerged in the tropical rainforests, swamps, and savannahs of the Mexican states of Veracruz and

Tabasco between 1200 BCE and 400 BCE. Archaeologists named the region Olman, the Nahuatl word for “land of rubber,” a key resource in the region. Since Olmec hieroglyphics have not yet been deciphered, one of the greatest mysteries is what name these people used for themselves. The Aztecs referred to them as the Olmeca, and modern scholars later adopted the term Olmec to describe the people, their artistic accomplishments, and the archaeological culture.2 The Olmecs were the earliest known Mesoamerican society to produce stone monuments, with the colossal heads standing out as key features that set them apart from neighboring cultures. Ranging from 4.8 to 11 feet tall and weighing between 6 and 50 tons, questions about their purpose, who they represent, their symbolic roles, and how they were made continue to intrigue researchers. What is certain, however, is that many Mesoamerican societies, past and present, see the head and face as lasting markers of identity, ones that go beyond appearance to reflect personality or status.

THE OLMEC CIVILIZATION is recognized as the earliest in Mesoamerica and one of only six in human history to arise independently of other civilizations. Its origins have intrigued scholars since the discovery of Tres Zapotes Monument A, a sculpture with features that some initially described as vaguely African. However, the Olmecs were Indigenous people of the Americas who, during Mesoamerica’s Formative period, developed a unique culture along Mexico’s Gulf Coast in southern Veracruz and western Tabasco.

In the absence of credible evidence for significant external contact, archaeologists now trace Olmec roots to pre-Olmec societies within the region.3 Linguistic evidence suggests that the Olmecs spoke Mixe-Zoquean languages, which are similar to the Popoluca languages spoken in the area today.

Although highly debatable, the Olmecs are often called the Mother Culture of Mesoamerica because many traits seen in later civilizations, such as the Maya, Zapotec, Totonac, and Aztec, first appeared with them.4 They were the first Mesoamericans to construct extensive architectural structures; create a refined art style rendered in stone and other imperishable media; live in centralized cities; and conceptualize gods and sacred symbols. These cultural achievements were rooted in a structured religious system, which included deities believed to control the universe, a cosmology that organized their world, rituals that conveyed this order, spiritual leaders such as priests and healers, and natural and

1. Christopher A. Pool, Olmec Archaeology and Early Mesoamerica (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 1.

2. Richard A. Diehl, The Olmecs: America’s First Civilization (London: Thames & Hudson, 2006), 14.

3. Diehl, The Olmecs, 13.

4. Diehl, The Olmecs, 127.

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above Two women admire La Venta Monument 1 (800–400 BCE, basalt, 94 × 82 × 763/4 in.), installed at Parque Museo La Venta, Villahermosa, Tabasco. Photo: John Mitchell, Alamy. opposite Map of Olmec heartlands, created by Craig Fisher (CC BY 3.0).

manmade sacred sites where these beliefs were enacted.

The Olmecs developed a distinctive and easily recognizable artistic style, seen in their monumental stone sculptures, jade carvings, figurines, and ceramic vessels. Some of these artifacts have been found across Mesoamerica, evidence of wide-reaching trade networks. Trade would have supported the growth of major centers such as San Lorenzo Tenochtitlán, La Venta, and Tres Zapotes, which were used as ceremonial hubs dominated by elite activity. Meanwhile, most people lived in small, rural communities where they cultivated sweet potatoes, maize, cotton, manioc, beans, and squash, and supplemented their diets through hunting and gathering.

Although the names of Olmec rulers and dynasties remain unknown, damaged and recarved monuments found at the

three major centers demonstrate shifts in leadership and evolving authority.

According to archaeologist Michael Coe, Olmec political control was rooted in elite family groups who managed fertile agricultural lands. He viewed the colossal heads as a form of public propaganda meant to legitimize dynastic rule and ancestral legacy. Earlier scholars like Ignacio Bernal and Robert Heizer, however, believed the Olmecs were governed by a priest-led theocracy, emphasizing the religious and ceremonial aspects of their society. Coe and others later contested this, and pointed out that the largest Olmec sculptures, such as the colossal heads, honored rulers rather than gods. This suggests a political structure based on the authority of individual mortals instead of spiritual beings.5 The Olmec population experienced a sharp decline between 400 BCE and 350 BCE, though the exact cause remains

unknown. Some archaeologists believe environmental factors played a role, particularly river silting, which may have disrupted the water supply. Another possibility is that the population did not vanish entirely but instead relocated due to increased volcanic activity, which could have covered the region in ash, prompting communities to abandon their settlements and move elsewhere.

THE OLMEC CENTERS did not appear simultaneously; rather, social rank and power gradually shifted from one center to another over time. San Lorenzo, about 35 miles inland from the Gulf of Mexico in Veracruz, is the oldest site in the Olmec civilization. Reaching its peak between 1150 BCE and 900 BCE, it was the largest settlement in Mesoamerica with an estimated 10,000 people.6 San Lorenzo occupies a huge plateau surrounded by a floodplain. At this site, archaeologists

5. Susan D. Gillespie, “Olmec Thrones as Ancestral Altars: The Two Sides of Power,” in Function and Meaning in Classic Maya Architecture, ed. Stephen D. Houston (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1998), 229.

6. “Monumental Mexico: The Art and Culture of the Olmecs,” Minerva, November 9, 2020, web.

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found ten of the colossal heads in the central area of the site, positioned in two loosely parallel lines stretching north to south like a procession. The San Lorenzo heads are the oldest and most exquisitely sculpted, with two of these heads, San Lorenzo Colossal Head 7 and San Lorenzo Colossal Head 2, recarved from older thrones. This could have been a way to reinforce the legitimacy and right to govern by one or more of the site’s last rulers, who, faced with the collapse of their power, resorted to modifying preexisting sculptures.

Around 900 BCE, San Lorenzo lost its status as the main center of power, prompting the population to relocate.

By approximately 950 BCE, some monuments had been deliberately destroyed while others were buried in what seems to have been a ritual distancing from the past. Environmental factors may have contributed to this transition, which explains why several San Lorenzo heads were recovered in barrancas (steep arroyos) after falling during the post-Olmec erosion that sliced into the plateau.7

Following San Lorenzo’s decline, La Venta dominated as the primary Olmec center and peaked during the Middle Formative period between 900 BCE and 400 BCE. The site of La Venta, situated east of San Lorenzo in the Mexican state of Tabasco, is marked by a pyramid-shaped earthen mound designed to portray a holy mountain. Another four colossal heads were discovered at this site, partially exposed on the ground surface.

The heads were initially placed to serve as guardians of the city’s holy area. Three were located at the northern edge of the complex and one at the southern edge, all oriented outward, as if standing watch over the site. While they closely resemble the San Lorenzo heads, they show a regional difference, which is characterized by a wider and more squat appearance.

After the Olmecs abandoned the area in 400 BCE, the city gradually disappeared beneath tropical vegetation before being found by researchers in 1925.

The third most significant Olmec site after the decline of San Lorenzo and La Venta was Tres Zapotes. Situated on the slope of a swampy region near the

Papaloapan and San Juan rivers in southern Veracruz, the site gained attention in 1938 when the rediscovery of one of its colossal heads led Matthew Stirling to conduct the first archaeological investigations into Olmec culture. The site’s two colossal heads, Monuments A and Q, were rediscovered in the residential outskirts rather than in the central zone. These heads differ stylistically from other examples, and art historian Beatriz de la Fuente regarded them as late remnants of an older civilization.8 As the Olmec culture began to decline around 400 BCE, Tres Zapotes remained a significant regional center until it was abandoned in the Early Postclassic period about 1200 CE. Although not a major archaeological site, another location yielded the largest of the 17 known colossal heads.

La Cobata head lies within the Tuxtlas Mountains, the region where the basalt used to sculpt these monumental heads was quarried. Approximately 11 feet tall and at a weight of more than 40 tons, the head was discovered in 1970, buried in a mountain pass at one of the prominent peaks in the range. It is considered

7. David C. Grove, “Olmec archaeology: A half century of research and its accomplishments,” Journal of World Prehistory 11 (March 1997): 98, web.

8. Diehl, The Olmecs, 46.

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unfinished and might have been left behind at the source or while being transported to its final location.

STANDING BESIDE the tallest head, which is about 11 feet tall, an average adult’s eye might meet the chin or lower lip. With the smallest at 4.8 feet tall, these sculptures would have been very imposing in their original settings.

Although none of the 17 heads are identical, all of them have a lot in common.

Most of the heads are spheroid, except for two from San Lorenzo that were recarved from thrones, as evidenced by the remaining traces of throne niches.

Their backs are flat, sometimes undecorated, and other times lightly carved near the top, suggesting they were designed to be placed against a wall. Traces of white plaster and red paint on one San Lorenzo head suggest that these sculptures were previously brightly decorated.

Each head has a unique expression, yet all follow the idealized norms and flawless execution of Olmec art. The area between the eyes is shaped like an anvil while the eyes themselves are large, almond-shaped, slightly drooping, and framed by heavy lids. Most are wide open

above San Lorenzo Colossal Heads Nos. 9, 3, and 4, left to right, collection of the Museo de Antropología de Xalapa, Veracruz. Photo: Sailingstone Travel, Alamy. opposite A class visits San Lorenzo Colossal Head 2 (before 900 BCE, basalt, 106 × 72 × 411/3 in.) at the Museo Nacional de Antropología, Mexico City. Photo: Jeffrey Isaac Greenberg, Alamy.

except La Cobata head, whose eyes appear closed. The pupils are depicted as small carved depressions, leading some scholars to interpret the expression as a squint.

The nose starts broad at the bridge and becomes flat toward the tip, with nostrils marked by circular depressions.

San Lorenzo Colossal Head 9 is notable for featuring a nose ring. The cheeks and chins tend to be full, with some showing sagging skin and creases beneath the eyes, features that hint at an individual of mature age. The lips are full and, in some cases, slightly opened to reveal the teeth.

At the sides of the heads, most wear ear ornaments, such as large plugs inserted into the earlobes.

A secondary area of detail is the hemispherical headdress, perhaps protective headgear. It covers about a third of the sculpture’s height and rests right above the eyes. The headdress often features a crown made of interwoven bands, creating a braid-like design, along with a headband that holds it firmly in place.

The headdresses vary in design and

pattern and often feature insignia on the front. Some of these insignia include parrot heads, large talons, a pair of human hands, or jaguar paws, likely a reference to a pelt worn to convey power in both political and religious contexts across Mesoamerica. The stone headdress likely represented one made of fabric or animal skin, with a few of the Olmec heads showing what looks like a tied knot at the back.

Part of a chinstrap can sometimes be seen along the sides of the head.

Several of the heads feature uneven, sloping bottoms angling upward from the chin toward the back. Archaeologist Sara Ladrón de Guevara suggests that the heads were intended to be viewed at an upward angle, not facing directly forward as displayed in modern museum settings.9 THE MANUFACTURE of Olmec heads alludes to a well-structured society in which elites directed labor by controlling food supplies, transportation, and ritual leadership. Archaeological evidence shows that ruling families managed river systems to transport both materials

9. Diehl, The Olmecs, 72.

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and people, while small, efficient camps provided abundant food, allowing laborers to focus on monumental projects. The location of basalt workshops near elite buildings further suggests that the ruling class oversaw access to basalt and its production.10 These basalt boulders were sourced from different areas within the Tuxtlas Mountains. The heads from Tres Zapotes were made from basalt quarried from the peak of Cerro el Vigía on the range’s western end. In contrast, the San Lorenzo and La Venta heads were likely made from basalt found on the southeastern slopes of Cerro Cintepec, possibly shaped at the Llano del Jícaro workshop more than 30 to 50 miles away.11 At the time, there were no horses, mules, or carts to transport these heavy materials to the workshops. Instead, the Olmecs used raw

manpower, sledges, and also engineered a rafting system that allowed them to move the material through waterways.

The whole process of making the heads would have involved a wide range of workers, including miners, boatmen, sculptors, woodworkers, supervisors, and other artisans responsible for producing tools. The skill and effort required to carve these colossal heads is the clearest evidence of Olmec craft specialization, as the sculptors would have needed years of training to master their trade. Their use of a hard stone like basalt is particularly interesting, considering they lacked metal tools. Instead, they relied on stone hammers, picks, and slightly harder abrasive materials to shape the basalt. Excavations at San Lorenzo and Tres Zapotes have uncovered more than eight tons of discarded iron ore beads in large waste pits

near elite structures. These were plausibly used as bearings or sockets in bow drills, a rotary tool system essential for precision work on the hard basalt.12 The creation of an Olmec colossal head began with selecting a spherical basalt boulder. The boulders were then shaped by removing large chunks and gradually chipping away smaller fragments using direct percussion. The finer shaping and detailing of the carvings were achieved by pecking the surface with hammerstones. Lastly, bow drills equipped with reed shafts and packed with wet sand as an abrasive were used to drill facial elements into the stone, giving actual depth to important features like the mouth, nose, and eyes.

Given the size and complexity of the heads, making a single head could have taken many months or years of dedicated work.13 After completion, the heads were moved into position. In some cases, they were relocated to help stage scenes with other Olmec monuments and to declare political authority over different areas.

Unfortunately it is difficult to assign exact dates to when the colossal heads were carved. The San Lorenzo heads were probably carved before 900 BCE, as the center’s decline began around that period. It is even more challenging to date the others, as some were relocated before their original archaeological context could be recorded.

OVER THE YEARS, various theories have been proposed about the identities of the Olmec colossal heads. In the early stages of excavation, it was widely believed that the heads represented Olmec gods—a view that arose from limited knowledge of the Olmec culture.

Other interpretations suggest that the heads depict prisoners, as certain headgear and ear ornaments resemble the iconography of bound captives in later Maya art. In particular, the thin and flat ear ornaments on some heads are thought to resemble the paper ribbons worn by Maya captives.14 An alternate interpretation of the Olmec colossal heads sees them as Mesoamerican ballgame heroes. The ballgame

10. Grove, “Olmec Archaeology,” 80.

11. Emilie Le Beau Lucchesi, “The 3,400-Year-Old Olmec Colossal Heads Origins,” Discover, September 14, 2022, web.

12. Grove, “Olmec Archaeology,” 80.

13. Ancient Artefacts, “The Olmec Colossal Heads: Mexico’s Monumental Mysteries,” Medium, July 23, 2023, web.

14. Claude-François Baudez, “Beauty and Ugliness in Olmec Monumental Sculpture,” Journal de la Société des Américanistes 98, no. 1 (2012): 7–31, web.

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held great religious and political significance in Mesoamerican societies and elevated participants to a status worthy of monumental tribute.15 The headdresses resemble protective gear used in the game, leading some researchers to speculate that the heads may represent players or champions. According to this theory, the colossal heads served as unifying emblems, replacing flags, by reinforcing a shared collective memory across Olmec society.

The most widely accepted theory today is that the Olmec colossal heads are portraits of individual rulers, who also held religious roles and participated in ballgame rituals. The effort required to produce these stone sculptures would only have been justified for a king or leader, given the time, manpower, engineering, and wealth needed to transport basalt boulders from the Tuxtla Mountains and carve them with such precision.

Moreover, elites are thought to have maintained control over key aspects of production, including access to specialized drilling technology and strictly regulated tools. This concentration of power is also reflected in the sculptures themselves. Two of the San Lorenzo heads were recarved from preexisting stone monuments, specifically large thrones believed to be seats of elite authority. Repurposing thrones into colossal heads may have been a deliberate act to associate the current ruler with the power and legacy of his predecessor. By transforming a former ruler’s throne into his portrait, the new ruler could visually link himself to an ancestral lineage of power and legitimacy.

ON JANUARY 12, 2009, three individuals entered La Venta Museum Park in Villahermosa, Tabasco, and vandalized 23 archaeological artifacts, among them La Venta colossal heads. The act was purportedly a ritual that involved the pouring of salt water, grape juice, and oil onto the sculptures. Fortunately quick action made it possible to achieve “betterthan-expected results” to completely remove the oil that had been spilled on the heads.16 Incidents like this, along with natural threats such as erosion and biological

above Complex A at the Olmec site of La Venta, Villahermosa, Tabasco, showing the basalt columns and La Venta Monuments 2 and 3. Photo: Mario E. Fuente Cid (CC BY 4.0). opposite San Lorenzo Colossal Head 6, collection of the Museo Nacional de Antropología, Mexico City. Photo: Roberto Carlos Román Don (CC BY-SA 4.0).

growth, have led to the implementation of preventive conservation measures.

Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) oversees the conservation and protection of archaeological sites across Veracruz and Tabasco.

INAH’s role includes safeguarding these monumental sculptures both in situ and within museum settings. In certain cases, heads have been moved indoors or to climate-controlled environments to minimize exposure to harmful elements.

Today, the colossal heads are recognized as a symbol of Mesoamerican heritage and a source of pride for Mexico. They are featured in museums and exhibitions worldwide and draw attention to the cultural achievements of the Olmec civilization. All 17 authentic heads are preserved in Mexico. San Lorenzo Colossal Heads 2 and 6 are exhibited at the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City, while Colossal Head 10 is kept at the Community Museum of San Lorenzo Tenochtitlán near Texistepec.

The Xalapa Museum of Anthropology holds the remaining seven from San Lorenzo. Three La Venta heads are in La Venta Museum Park, and one is in the Tabasco State Museum. Tres Zapotes Monument A is displayed at the Tres Zapotes Community Museum, while Tres Zapotes Monument Q stands alongside

the massive La Cobata head in Santiago Tuxtla’s central square, Parque Juárez.

Residents walk past the two sculptures daily, emphasizing how they remain a cultural landmark.

Replicas of the heads have been exhibited in museums, universities, and public spaces both within Mexico and internationally. They enable audiences around the world to appreciate the monumental scale and craftsmanship of the original works while helping to protect the authentic sculptures by minimizing the risks associated with transport and exposure to the elements.

For Indigenous people and others invested in this history, protecting these monuments affirms the importance of acknowledging what was built and passed down. These heads have survived more than two thousand years of change, being carved, reworked, moved, and sometimes damaged. They are an impressive example of ancient skills and important evidence of how the Olmec society changed over time. Their meaning may not be fully understood, but their presence continues to speak to the choices and cultural values of the people who created them. Preserving them today ensures that this chapter of Indigenous history in the Americas remains part of ongoing conversations about cultural heritage.

Florence Wanjiru is an art writer and curator with a background in fine arts. Her work focuses on visual art and material culture across various historical periods and cultural settings.

15. Ancient Artefacts, “Mexico’s Monumental Mysteries.”

16. Stanley Guenter, “Vandalism to Olmec Monuments in Villahermosa,” Mesoweb, n.d., web.

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EXPERIENCE NATIVE CULTURES AMERICAN INDIAN—the National Museum of the American Indian’s member magazine—tells insightful stories about contemporary Native issues and takes you behind the scenes of the only national collection dedicated to the art, history and living cultures of Indigenous peoples across the Western Hemisphere.

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Visit AmericanIndian.si.edu/support or scan the QR code to join today!

Cover image by Diné (Navajo) photographer Eugene Tapahe.

SIGHT OF RESISTANCE

JULY 12, 2025 to JANUARY 10, 2026 America Meredith | Andrea Carlson | Bobby Dues Chris Pappan | Cynthia Harding | Debra Yepa-Pappan Erin Lee Antonak | Erin Genia | George Alexander Henry Payer | Jonathan Thunder | Julie Buffalohead June Carpenter | Micah Wesley | Monica Rickert-Bolter Selena Kearney

56 W. Adams St. Chicago, IL 60603 Artwork: Prayer Gatherer, 2025 by Erin Lee Antonak

THE ART OF RESISTANCE How Nasa Murals Reclaim Colombia’s Wounded Lands

By Clara Jaeger

I

N THE MOUNTAINOUS LANDSCAPE of northern Cauca, where bullet holes scar the walls of houses, and the echoes of conflict still reverberate through the valleys, a different kind of warfare has emerged. Armed with brushes instead of bullets, the Nasa people of Colombia have transformed their war-torn territories into canvases of resistance, memory, and cultural affirmation through Minga Muralista, a collective mural-painting initiative that has redefined how communities can reclaim their narratives in the face of violence.

The Minga Muralista del Pueblo Nasa is a process of memory, peace, and resistance led by the Center for Education, Training, and Research for the Integral Development of the Community (CECIDIC) and the Nasa Project, which represents the Indigenous reserves of Toribío, San Francisco, and Tacueyó in northern Cauca. Through muralism and graffiti, the initiative offers a way to confront war by revitalizing culture and reclaiming the territory.

The concept of “minga” itself carries deep cultural significance within Indigenous communities, referring to collective work undertaken for the benefit of the

the territory, which was often associated with armed conflict.”1 This initiative emerged from a concrete need to counter the dominant narrative about the Nasa people’s territories. Toribío, the epicenter of the mural movement, is the town in Cauca that has recorded the second-most guerrilla takeovers in the last 30 years. More than one hundred times, the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC), or Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, entered these territories to attack state security forces, which, despite objections from Indigenous authorities asserting their right to self-governance, operated within the communities.2 community. In this context, the Minga Muralista represents a communal effort to literally repaint the narrative of territories that have been marked by violence and stigmatization.

Luis David Chocué (Nasa), one of the leaders of the initiative, explains the genesis of this artistic movement: “In 2013, as part of the Cultural Commemoration Encounter ‘Nasa Pal Álvaro Ulcué Chocué,’ the Minga of Muralism was born. The goal was to change the image of

ORGANIZATIONAL FRAMEWORK: BUILDING COLLECTIVE RESISTANCE THE MINGA MURALISTA did not emerge in isolation but was built upon decades of Indigenous organizational work. In 1970 the Nasa people created the Regional Indigenous Council of Cauca (CRIC), which has had great influence at regional and national levels and has

1. Luis David Chocué, in discussion with the author, July 6, 2025.

2. “La Minga Muralista del Pueblo Nasa: Los colores de la memoria y la resistencia,” Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica, web.

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led recognition processes for Indigenous peoples throughout the country. Later, the Association of Indigenous Councils of Northern Cauca (ACIN) was created during one of the most critical moments of violence in Colombia, and strengthened the articulation of the Nasa Project, an initiative for political autonomy and sustainable land management.3 The institutional foundation for the mural movement traces back to the vision of Father Álvaro Ulcué Chocué (Nasa), the first Indigenous priest in the region.

When he arrived in the 1970s, he found a culturally uprooted community, and his vision was to create an Indigenous-led institution to strengthen rights, education, and spirituality. This dream became reality with the creation of the CECIDIC, which pioneered many initiatives, including training in trades like tailoring, shoemaking, locksmithing, and carpentry.

The creation process followed a “laboratory methodology” developed by the National Center for Historical Memory (CNMH) that emphasized collective participation and knowledge exchange between Indigenous authorities and local, national, and international artists.

This methodology integrated work from other CNMH teams, such as Gender Focus, Children and Adolescents, Commemorative Agenda, Communications and Memory Initiatives, and allowed for a higher level of impact in terms of generating regional networks, social sustainability, and national projection.4

Before any brush touches the wall, participating artists undergo important cultural preparation.

THE ARTISTIC PROCESS: FROM CONCEPTION TO CREATION THE PLANNING AND EXECUTION of each Minga Muralista project follows a carefully structured process that honors both artistic integrity and cultural authenticity. Chocué describes the meticulous preparation of the first edition: “Planning took about five months. The mural painting itself lasted about two weeks, plus three additional weeks of mural work around the municipality. Over 100 murals were created.”

Before any brush touches the wall, participating artists undergo important cultural preparation. “Before painting, the artists participated in workshops

above Mural in Toribío. Photo: Yampol. Image courtesy of Minga de Muralistas de los Pueblos (CC BY-SA 2.0). opposite, top La Tolda Educational Center in La Tolda Village, Tacueyo Indigenous Reserve, Cauca, 2013. Photo: Geya García (CC BY 2.0). opposite, bottom Area of Tacueyó, Toribío, and San Francisco marked with gold triangle. Cauca Department marked red in western Colombia. Original graphic by TUBS (CC BY-SA 3.0).

3. “Proyecto Nasa (Nasa Project),” Equator Initiative, web.

4. “La Minga Muralista del Pueblo Nasa: Sobre el Proyecto,” web.

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on Indigenous worldview and context, so that their work would be meaningful and connected to the territory,” explains Chocué. This process ensures that the murals are not merely decorative but carry deep cultural and spiritual significance rooted in Nasa cosmovision.

The theme selection process is equally deliberate and community-driven. “The sketches were developed during the workshops. For example, in the Tacueyó Reserve, a mural was dedicated to the leader Manuel Quintín Lame.

In other villages, they honored elders, teachers, and community figures.… Mexican artists painted the myth of ‘La Siska,’ a legendary figure associated with maize cultivation.”

The first Minga attracted more than 40 artists from Ecuador, Chile, Mexico, Bolivia, Italy, and Colombian cities like Medellín, Bogotá, Popayán, and Cali, alongside local artists.5 This international participation brought diverse artistic techniques and perspectives while it maintained the centrality of Nasa cultural themes and narratives.

VISUAL LANGUAGE & SYMBOLIC REPRESENTATION THE MURALS CREATED through Minga Muralista employ a rich visual language that draws from both ancestral Nasa symbolism and contemporary artistic techniques. The artwork serves multiple functions: it documents historical memory, celebrates cultural identity, and asserts territorial sovereignty through visual means.

The contrast between the violence-marked landscape and the vibrant murals creates a powerful visual dialogue.

As documented by the National Center for Historical Memory, “Being in Toribío evokes a mixture of feelings produced by seeing the contrast between some houses full of rifle holes next to beautiful murals overflowing with color that show the beauty of the people who inhabit them 5. Edinson Arley Bolaños, “‘Toribío no es como lo pintan, es como lo pintamos’: Minga de muralismo,” El Espectador, August 11, 2016, web.

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and the incredible strength of a people who did not let themselves be defeated by stigmas and violence.”

The murals strategically reclaim public space that had been marked by armed actors. The territory had become a stronghold for various groups, who marked it in ways to represent the power they sought to display there. In response, the Nasa communities decided to demonstrate through art that Toribío is not as the armed groups paint it.

The artistic evolution across different editions shows a deepening of thematic complexity. In the first edition, held while violence was still part of daily life, artist Ana Maria Cuesta (Colombian, 1986–2025) recalled: When we went there, the armed conflict was very present. In Toribío, a bus bomb exploded that the FARC had sent, and the idea was to go paint those houses, but next to it, there’s a police station that looks like a battalion. I remember gunshots started to be heard from mountain to mountain— the Army and the FARC shooting at

each other with Toribío in the middle, a reality that happens in many places, where towns end up being in the middle, even though it’s an Indigenous reservation.6 Ana María was part of the Dexpierte artistic collective and later became director of the Center for Memory, Peace, and Reconciliation in Bogotá before her recent death at age 39.

EVOLUTION ACROSS FIVE EDITIONS MINGA MURALISTA has evolved significantly across its five editions, with each iteration responding to specific historical moments and community needs. Chocué explains the thematic evolution: “The themes change depending on the moment. In 2013, Toribío suffered many attacks and assaults. No one wanted to even mention the name of the village.

So we painted to show another face.”

The second edition focused on the colors of the territory—its mountains, waters, and natural abundance—and

above Mazatl, a prominent Mexican muralist, paints a Guinea pig. The mural on the right was led by Bastardilla, an internationally renowned street artist born in Medellín, Colombia. All photos: Yampol.

All images courtesy of Minga de Muralistas de los Pueblos (CC BY-SA 2.0). opposite, top Portrait of Aida Quilcué Vivas (Nasa) by Chita Yarumo.

An Indigenous rights activist and environmentalist, Quilcué organized the Cauca Regional Indigenous Council and was elected to the Colombian senate. The text, Mujeres Nasa no olviden los tejidos!, translates to “Nasa women, don’t forget about weaving!” opposite, bottom A young boy paints the background of a jaguar mural.

6. Rossih Amira M.S., “Indígenas y afros no-hacen-arte,” Colombia Plural, October 22, 2016, web.

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wove in the theme of resistance, highlighting how our communities have endured for more than 500 years. This edition involved more than 60 walls transformed by 50 artists from across the country and some from other countries.7 The third edition centered on memory, as Chocué says, “honoring the leaders who gave their lives for the community, who died in the struggle and were never recognized. Through the murals, we paid tribute to them and said, ‘We continue on the path they started.” Among the Nasa leaders honored were Álvaro Ulcué, Gabriel Paví, and Manuel Quintín Lame.

The spatial strategy has also evolved. Initially, murals were painted wherever space was available, but in more recent editions, the focus shifted to more representative locations—council buildings, schools, municipal offices, and sports centers—ensuring the artwork would last longer and be more visible.

COMMUNITY IMPACT & SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION MINGA MURALISTA has generated significant social impact beyond the aesthetic transformation of public spaces.

The initiative has created a documented route of murals by local and international artists that crosses three rural zones: Tacueyó, Toribío’s municipal center, and San Francisco, from the village of La Playa to the hamlet of La Primicia.

The project has also fostered intergenerational dialogue and cultural transmission. As one student from the Center for Education, Training, and Research for the Integral Development of the Community expressed, “They say in the news that in Toribío we are guerrillas, and no, we are not guerrillas, we are good people, organized and capable of making something beautiful out of something ugly.”8

8. “La Minga Muralista del Pueblo Nasa: Reporteros Comunitarios,” web.

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The murals serve as a form of collective memory preservation, to document not only the violence experienced but also the resilience and cultural richness of the Nasa people. They function as open-air museums that educate both community members and visitors about Indigenous history, cosmovision, and resistance.

CHALLENGES & CONTINUITY DESPITE ITS SUCCESS, Minga Muralista faces ongoing challenges related to resource management and institutional continuity. Chocué notes, “Resource management has been challenging, especially due to changes in leadership, which often interrupt previous agreements.” The organizers are currently discussing future editions, with plans for “something smaller, more local, involving workshops and murals led by artists from the territory,” says Chocué.

The current territorial context continues to present challenges. Chocué explains, “Right now there’s a territorial struggle between armed groups. Toribío is a strategic corridor connecting the Pacific region and the interior of the country, which makes it attractive for illegal economies like coca and marijuana. This has placed the community in the crossfire.”

However, the Nasa communities maintain their commitment to alternative approaches. “As an Indigenous territory, we promote alternative approaches: using coca for customary or medicinal purposes or cultivating medicinal marijuana. We try to shift the narrative, little by little, through transformation,” says Chocué. The community has maintained food autonomy through diverse cultivation, including beans, corn, coffee, livestock, lettuce, carrots, peas, and other vegetables.

A MODEL FOR CULTURAL RESISTANCE MINGA MURALISTA DEL PUEBLO NASA represents a paradigmatic example of how Indigenous communities can reclaim narrative control over their territories through artistic expression. By transforming walls marked by violence into canvases of cultural affirmation, the Nasa people have demonstrated that art can serve as both shield and sword in the struggle for territorial sovereignty and cultural preservation.

The initiative’s success lies not only in its aesthetic achievements but in its ability to generate collective processes that strengthen community identity and solidarity. Through the act of painting together, the Nasa communities have created new forms of resistance that transcend the binary of violence and peace, offering a third path grounded in cultural creativity and collective memory.

Minga Muralista continues to evolve, adapting to changing circumstances while it maintains its core commitment to cultural resistance and territorial reclamation. As the Nasa

people continue to paint their own narrative on the walls of their territories, they offer a powerful example of how art can transform spaces of conflict into spaces of hope, memory, and cultural affirmation.

The painted walls of Toribío, San Francisco, and Tacueyó now tell a different story—one written not by bullets but by brushes, led by the communities themselves. In this transformation, the Minga Muralista has proven that indeed, the territory is not how it’s been painted; it’s how the community paints it.

above, top A house in Toribío covered in murals.

All photos: Yampol. Images courtesy of Minga de Muralistas de los Pueblos (CC BY-SA 2.0). above, bottom Detail of Lluvia de maíz (Rain of Corn). opposite Jaguar resistiza mural at right in Toribío, Cauca.

Clara Jaeger is a French writer based in Bogotá, Colombia, who, for the past ten years, has been working in the cultural field in both France and Colombia.

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CARRYING CULTURE Bandolier Bags Today

By Sheila Regan

T

O MAKE A BANDOLIER BAG is no small undertaking.

With often elaborate designs, painstaking detail, complex craftwork, and many, many hours of labor going into making them, bandolier bags—known for their wide strap that goes over the shoulder and large pouch— are a venerated cultural object.

Jaymie Campbell (Curve Lake Mississauga), an Anishinaabe artist based in interior British Columbia, says she’s talked to many in the bead community about underestimating the size of the project when making their first bandolier bags. “It’s kind of a rite of passage,” she says. “Historically in our communities, it was a symbol of prestige and respect and wealth in the way that we understood wealth. And so I think for me, it was a really important thing for me to make in my artist journey.”

Campbell made her first bandolier bag after she got accepted into an artist residency in 2022. She thought it would take a month. “It did not take a month,” she says. “It took me about a year, I think, eventually, to finish it.”

Campbell wanted to honor her great-great-grandfather, George Henry Taylor, who had signed the Williams Treaty for her community and the 46 | FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE NO. 48, FALL 2025

Canadian government. “I’ve always understood bandolier bags as being made for people out of respect for their accomplishments or their contributions and were really significant for us to show gratitude and respect,” Campbell says.

Campbell is a single-stitch beadwork artist, meaning she stitches each individual bead down because that’s how she was taught. Around 2016 she was working in the Aseniwuche Winewak Nation, a Cree community in Northern Alberta, and spent time with elders doing appliqué beadwork. “It was something that our community practiced too, but we just didn’t have a lot of practitioners anymore,” she says.

According to Campbell, singlestitch beadwork is something that takes longer but gives her a sense of pride. “It kind of makes this bulletproof beadwork that will last forever.” She started out doing single-stitch on her bandolier bag and then began trying to do every second or third bead to save time. “But I just couldn’t do it,” she says, thinking of her ancestors and wanting to honor the pride of the single-stitch method. “That single-stitch was partially what took so much time. It was just such a large area to bead.”

She worked with smoked, braintanned moose hide as well as velvet for

the bag, created a floral design partially based on historical patterns, and then added her own spin to them. “Often patterns come to me in dreams,” she says.

“The bag was really like a combination of some of those historical patterns and then some of my own patterns that really spoke to bridging that gap with my grandfather.”

Bandolier bags grew in popularity in the 19th century. In her book, A Bag Worth a Pony, curator Marcia G. Anderson writes that in the 19th century, bandolier bags were so prized that Ojibwe people made bags and traded them with the Dakota and other Plains nations for horses. They were that valuable. “While the bags no longer served this particular form of exchange by the early twentieth century, their symbolic embodiment of status, gratitude, respect, and leadership remained,” Anderson wrote.1 The book features a design by Delina White (Leech Lake Ojibwe) worn by her son, Ningozis White (Leech Lake Ojibwe), a Woodland-style dancer. “I wanted my son to be able to represent our tribal nations, so I made him a bandolier bag,” she says, “and just have made bandolier bags ever since.”

When White was a little girl growing up on the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe Reservation, she remembers seeing bandolier bags when she’d go to powwows with her grandma. She also remembers seeing photographs at her grandmother’s house. “My grandma could look at those photographs and name the people,” she recalls, “and there were photographs of Native women sitting together on the ground doing beadwork.”

White’s grandmother taught her to do a flat stitch, in which the beader sews down four beads and then goes back through the last two before adhering four again. White’s grandmother also practiced the two-needle stitch, where a beader loads up their needle and strings up to 40 beads at a time, holding it in place with their thumb and tacking it down. “You use a separate needle to kind of go around and string it over and over again until it’s all tapped down,” she says.

But she didn’t learn the latter method. “I wish I would have learned it because I think it’s a lot neater.”

White’s son Ningozis used the first bandolier bag White made for a while, and eventually the family sold it. Later she made a bandolier bag for a fashion show she organized in 2015 and sold that one as well. She’s also made smaller versions of bandolier bags for her son. One she characterizes as a cross-body bag, as opposed to a true bandolier bag because of its smaller size. She used the symbol of a thunderbird as the central image. White had sourced the image from a book by Frances Densmore, an ethnographer specializing in Indigenous material culture

above and opposite Jaymie Campbell (Curve Lake Mississauga), Shomis, 2023, cut glass beads, vintage glass seed beads, 24-karat gold-plated seed beads, mother-of-pearl beads, brass tacks, velvet, velveteen, smoked braintanned moose hide. Photo: Zoya Lynch Photography. Image courtesy of the artist.

1. Marcia G. Anderson, A Bag Worth a Pony: The Art of the Ojibwe Bandolier Bag (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2017), 13.

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active in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. White’s bag was featured in Hearts of Our People: Native Women Artists (2019– 2021), an exhibition of Native women artists organized by the Minneapolis Institute of Art. She then made a similar bag with the same design, made of hand-tanned smoke hide. Ningozis wears the second bag along with another bag White made out of deer hooves as his two cross-body bags while dancing. When he dances, White says, her son will sometimes put tobacco or some other small item in the bags.

Ningozis, who is in his late 20s, has been wearing the same outfit for about ten years, and she intends to make him a new outfit soon. She’s been saving up on all the material she needs, like a cream-colored velvet with a short nap. “I love vintage,” she says. “Whatever I can pull together to make him like a real old-style, traditional outfit, I will.”

Bandolier bags, as well as Native textile art and fashion, are rooted in family for White. Not only are family members often the recipients of her creations, but she also has passed down the knowledge to the next generations. Her daughter Lavender Hunt (Leech Lake Ojibwe) whose brand is Lavender Doris, has a clothing line that was recently featured in a fashion show White organized in the Twin Cities. Her work is very popular among the powwow dancers.

Her other daughter Sage Davis (Leech Lake Ojibwe) has a PhD in fashion design and focuses on fashion sustainability.

Like White, family is central to Shannon Gustafson (Whitesand Ojibwa) as well.

Based in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Gustafson made her first two bandolier bags collaboratively with her family members. “I actually raised a family of beaders, including my husband,” she says. “I taught him how to bead.”

The first two bandolier bags were made for her husband. Then for her third effort, Gustafson decided she wanted to make one for herself. “I started to realize that I needed to learn about identity as an Ojibwa woman,” she says. Gustafson’s practice became oriented with historical models and learning about the styles of beadwork and regalia and the motifs that were worn in past generations.

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“I feel like I’ve lived in a time where we didn’t always embrace those florals or even the geometrics of the Anishinaabe, especially in my area,” she says. “I feel like we kind of were disconnected from that for some reason.”

Gustafson grew up in Serpent River First Nation, along the shores of Lake Huron. “There was nothing cultural about our community,” she says. “It was just a really Christian community.”

Then when she was ten, she attended her first powwow, and she loved it. Her mother began taking her to powwows in other communities so she could have that experience. “Then it kind of just led to other things,” she says.

Over the last 15 years, Gustafson has deliberately done work around what it means to be Anishinaabe. She’s applied and received numerous grants, like one to create Woodland-style regalia for her husband. “That was sort of a shift in my beading career,” she says, “because I changed the way I created flowers.”

Before the grant, Gustafson always made beautiful floral designs that featured lots of colors, sometimes 16 or more. Through research, she discovered that older examples of beadwork featured fewer colors, so she wanted to emulate that older style. “I started to think about my legacy and what I want to be remembered for,” she says. “I actually reinvented myself as a bead worker and I removed all of the supplies, all the types of beads, all the little finishing stuff that I use to create beadwork, and I just went back to the basics.”

Bandolier bags were at the beginning of a new era for Gustafson. Around that time, she read Anderson’s A Bag Worth a Pony and often references it. “I just love the photos of the bags in there,” she says. Anderson’s book focuses mostly on Ojibwe bandolier bags and mentions the Ho-Chunk also had a practice. The Milwaukee Public Museum’s bandolier bag web page lists Potawatomi, Menominee, Muscogee, and Sauk tribes among bandolier practitioners. Other bandolier bag makers lived throughout the Southeast and Northeastern Woodlands and through the Subarctic.

right and below Shannon Gustafson and Ryan Gustafson (both Whitesand Ojibwa), Gashkibidaagan and detail, 2019, glass seed beads, brass beads, buttons, brass sequins, velveteen, cotton, yarn tassels, satin ribbons, 45 × 14 in. Both images courtesy of the artist. opposite, top Delina White (Leech Lake Ojibwe), Blue Bandolier Bag, 2015, glass seeds beads, smoked hide, Pendleton wool, cotton, tassels, mirrors.

Photo: Lacey Criswell. Both images courtesy of the artist. opposite, bottom Delina White (Leech Lake Ojibwe), Floral Bandolier Bag and detail of straps, glass seed beads, cut crystal beads, wool, nickels, metal brads, wool, ribbons, rickrack, tassels.

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above Shannon Gustafson (Whitesand Ojibwa), Gashkibidaagan, glass seed beads, brass beads, brass hawkbells, velveteen, cotton, yarn tassels. Image courtesy of the artist.

Yonavea Hawkins, who is enrolled in the Caddo Nation and is a descendant of the Delaware Nation and Kickapoo Tribe of Oklahoma, decided she wanted to make a bandolier bag after coming

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across a black-and-white photograph of a Caddo man wearing one. “That was my inspiration, seeing that image,” she says.

When Hawkins was young, her mother sewed Caddo and Delaware dresses but usually paid someone else to make accessories. When Hawkins had children of her own, she taught herself to make regalia items and entered her first art market competition with a pair of Delaware moccasins. “That’s what got me started, doing the art markets and being challenged by the competition side of it,” she says. “I like that challenge.” Hawkins’ résumé is full of awards for her loomed and stitched beadwork, as she’s shown her skill in a variety of forms including pipe bags, belts, and moccasins.

Hawkins’ is largely self-taught. “We are a very small tribe, and so I had to use trial and error,” she says. “I had to figure out how to make the pattern and get it to fit right.” She also studied bandolier patterns from Martha Berry (Cherokee Nation), which at least gave her the correct dimensions. Still, Hawkins struggled to find historical images of bandolier bags from Southeastern tribes, so she decided she’d make her first bandolier bag in Delaware style, despite wanting to make a Caddo one. She created a Delaware design on the front with two-needle appliqué stitch, with her own original design for the strap beaded on a loom.

Then, for her second bag, she drew on designs exclusively from images from the Spiro Mounds, a burial site built by Caddoan-speaking people. The site was looted in the 1930s, with much of the contents spread out to collectors everywhere. Many items are held in museum collections across the country, and Hawkins has had opportunities to study some.

“That’s my reference,” she says.

“There were conch shells that were carved with the design elements.” The designs are from items that had once been disturbed from places of burial. “I have mixed feelings about that,” she says.

If these collections weren’t available, she wouldn’t have access to the knowledge because of American removal policy that intentionally disconnected Native peoples from their cultures.

Her first Caddo bag, Hasinay Wind Talkers, has won numerous awards,

including first place at the Southeastern Art Show and Market and the Innovator Award at Cherokee Art Market. This bag was inspired by Hawkins’ experience in a tornado that devastated Caddo people at a gathering in April 2019. Hawkins had been working on a pair of moccasins for the Caddo Mounds State Historic Site when she was severely injured by the tornado. When they pulled her from the rubble, she was still holding the moccasins, so in her bandolier bag, she employs hand motifs (taken from Southeastern designs) as well as eagle and wind images.

Hawkins’ third bandolier bag, CooHoo (Alligator) Dance, also uses Caddo elements. The bag’s construction is based on Southeastern bag designs, including

two forks made of ribbons. “If you look at the motifs they do, those forked eyes are on the Southeastern mound builder culture,” Hawkins says. She used grey broadcloth with a lot of green yarn and beads and white as a background color.

She’s reviving a hidden legacy while putting her own mark on the lineage.

Summer Yahbay (Saginaw Chippewa) of Michigan likes to reference old patterns in her work. “But when I do it, it’s in my way,” she says. She always puts her own spin on her work, and for her first bandolier bag, she took on a topic that is personally meaningful to her.

Nmamiikwendis: I am Proud of Myself is a bandolier bag inspired by Brian Michael Firkus, who performs as

above, top left Yonavea Hawkins (Caddo/Delaware/Kickapoo), Coo-Hoo (Alligator) Dance, 2025, glass seed beads, wool, yarn, ribbon, metal cones. above, top, right Yonavea Hawkins (Caddo/Delaware/Kickapoo), Hasinay Wind Talkers, 2021, glass seed beads, wool, yarn, ribbon, metal cones. All images courtesy of the artist. above Yonavea Hawkins (Caddo/Delaware/Kickapoo), Delaware Rose, 2018, glass seed beads, wool, yarn, ribbon, metal cones.

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drag queen Trixie Mattel. Yahbay watched a reality TV show starring Mat t e l , w h o s e mother is Ojibwe, and felt inspired by the star’s backstory. “When he was a teenager and he wasn’t out yet, he would wear pink, and his mom’s boyfriend would tease him and terrorize him and beat him up and call him a Trixie,” Yahbay says. Now Firkus uses Trixie as his stage name and openly embraces the color pink. “Now he can reclaim it and be proud of who he is,” she says.

Firkus’ story resonated for Yahbay; she had a gay cousin who never came out as gay. “I call him my little brother,” she says of her relative. “He passed away at 32.

He just drank himself to death because he was tortured.”

Yahbay wanted to create a bag about being proud of who you are no matter what, even if you like pink. The bag also makes an expansive statement about gender roles. Bandolier bags were historically made by women for their husbands, but today, female jingle dress dancers also don bandolier bags in their dancing. Yahbay’s bag reflects that changing dynamic and also carves out a place for two-spirit identities within the discourse.

It took Yahbay three years to make the bag, in part because gathering that above Summer Yahbay (Sagninaw Chippewa), Nmamiikwendis: I am Proud of Myself and details, 2024, glass seed beads, rabbit fur, wool.

Photos: FAAM.

many pink beads took quite a bit of time.

“Pink beads are notoriously known for fading and discoloring,” she says. “It was kind of one of those projects where I’m like, I’ve taken a big chance here. But it’s telling the story of so many people.”

For Yahbay, bandolier bags speak to the ways Native people acclimated after colonization. “It shows how we adapted to the new people who came into our land, and how we traded with them, and how we made our resilience work for us,” she says. “It’s a bag that’s so special—that shows your stature, but also, in today’s terms, it shows your pride in who you are as an Ojibwe person.”

Just as bandolier bags emerged nearly 200 years ago as a form that drew on both Indigenous knowledge and practices and European influences, the object continues to evolve and reflect on a resilient culture. For contemporary artists taking on bandolier bags, it’s a project that not only gives an opportunity to show off expert skill and artistry, but it’s also a way to meaningfully continue a celebrated lineage.

Sheila Regan is a Minneapolis-based writer. Besides past contributions to First American Art Magazine, she has recently contributed to Craft Magazine, Bomb, and The Art Newspaper. She’s an arts columnist for MinnPost, regularly writes for The Star Tribune and The Pioneer Press, and contributes radio pieces for KFAI’s Minneculture program.

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JACK SABON Ahtna Athabascan Handmade Drums

www.sabonart.com Nerak194@gmail.com

OWENS VALLEY PAIUTE

KARMA HENRY

SWAIA Winter Indian Market Nov. 29–30 | Santa Fe, NM

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KarmaHenry.com Tabedua tomohia-wei doha tongobi (The sun will peek under the clouds), 2025, acrylic on canvas, 30 × 40 in.

PROFILE

Navajo Filmmaker, Photographer & Digital Artist

KEANU JONES

By RoseMary Diaz (Santa Clara Pueblo)

My community is my identity. It’s part of who I am.

—Keanu Jones

B

ACK IN THE 1980s, one of my professors at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) often included an art history challenge to her students at the first class of each semester. “There’s no such thing as original art,” she would say. “Show me any piece of contemporary art, give me two weeks, and I’ll show you that it’s already been done somewhere at some time in history.”

Coming from a family of artists, and at the time just newly enrolled in art school and surrounded by even more creatives, I found this perplexing. I had

always considered hand-created art to be original. The historical arts, the arts of our ancestors from which the customary Native arts as we know them today have evolved, were even embellished with something of their makers’ individual identity, allowing for some creative license while still adhering to the conservative template.

Surely staying north of this challenge indefinitely would eventually prove unsustainable for the professor, I thought.

No such thing as original art? How could this be possible? But after bearing witness to her “proving” her argument on more

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than one occasion, I came to accept the idea, and through the years considered it a litmus test of sorts for assessing art.

Until I discovered the work of photographer and filmmaker Keanu Jones that is, and knew I had finally come across something that would meet the professor’s years-old challenge. It was a defiance four decades in the making.

Keanu Jones (Navajo) is Mexican People clan and born for Big Water clan. Originally from Ádah'íílíní (Grand Falls, Arizona), he grew up in Tsiizizii (Leupp), a community on the Little Colorado River, near Kinłání Dook'o'o'oosłííd Biyaagi (Flagstaff ), where the surrounding landscape unfolds in colors that exist only there.

Jones studied creative writing and new media at Navajo Technical University (NTU), a tribal college in Crownpoint, New Mexico, in the eastern region of the Navajo Nation. There he explored writing formats like poetry and screenwriting and earned his bachelor of fine arts degree.

While at university in 2018, Jones produced three short films: Hitchhiker, The Navajo Deer Story, and Vision. The latter took first place at the 2019 Navajo Film Festival. Earlier work includes the powerful narrative Giving Back the Navajo Way, which won the artist a trip to the White House in 2015, where it was screened for the White House Student Film Festival. Made with friends when Jones was still an 18-year-old high school student at Flagstaff Arts and Leadership Academy, the film highlights the issue of water rights in the Leupp area and the taking of other natural resources from tribal lands. By expressing Navajo values, the film stresses the urgency of preserving Native ways of life and the need to give back to one’s elders and the larger community.

KEANU JONES

But despite his natural inclination for filmmaking, says Jones, “writing was at the start of my creative journey before venturing into a visual medium.

I remember handwriting short stories in notebooks at laundromats, imagining characters [as] animals having their own lives; or a ghost story written over my first email account.”

Like many writers, Jones second-guessed his skill in putting words to the page and relied on his innate ability to create narrative through images.

“I struggled with reading throughout my schooling, and it made me feel like I wasn’t a good writer,” he says. “But my internal imagery allows me to visually interpret conversations and exchange stories, and this has enabled me to pictorially explore concepts and ideas.”

Jones’ exploration has inspired him to produce emotionally evocative works that are at once grounded in the historical cultural legacy of the Navajo people and informed by non-Navajo, 21st-century concepts and technologies, including the digital collage science that comprises much of his signature work.

“My body of work mixes photographs, textures, and time to examine the themes of merging time and time travel,” Jones states in the artist statement for his 2024 exhibition Intersecting Lifetimes at the Strata Gallery in Santa Fe. “Creating my art is a healing way to express my own pain and complexity as a human.” He says his artwork “is an attempt to open portals, using shapes and geometric designs, into the past and future.” He uses his art to expand the public perception of Native identity: “My art is a fusion of worlds that explores Indigenous peoples’ representation in contemporary life.”

Some of Jones’ work depicts historical scenes of Navajo daily life and place. Women weave on vertical looms; a curious child rests in a cradleboard nearby; a herd of goats and sheep, soon to be sheared for their wool, obediently await the completion of the day’s weaving, with juniper-covered cliffs in the distance.

These scenes are superimposed with

elements imagined into existence. Case in point, the artist’s 2023 digital collage, Weaving Universe, wherein a sparkling tourmaline obelisk rises from one of the loom’s weavings into a never-quitereachable sky.

above Weaving Universe, 2023, digital collage, 1920 × 1080 px. opposite Keanu Jones. All images courtesy of the artist.

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PROFILE

Corn Prism (2023) plays with scale as a lone, Thumbelina-size figure stands on one of the plant’s oversized leaves. Light dances through the piece in all directions. The collage highlights the varying value systems among the world’s societies; something as unassuming as a stalk of corn and its shining tassel is imbued with cultural value as an invocation of the sacred.

In works like HOME and is this death? (both 2022), Jones confronts weighted subjects like land reclamation, cultural misappropriation, death, and the afterlife, in palettes as stark as their respective themes. In Cosmic Gem and Live my Love, his gift for inventing color schemes is on full display, an eidetic carryover, perhaps, from the hues of his childhood in Tsiizizii.

Whether the subjects of his compositions are surrounded by looming skyscrapers, illuminated by sabers of light, or sprinkled with constellations of stars, Jones’ work is a celebration of Indigenous identity—an exclamation that we Native people are right where we belong: everywhere.

RMD: What are some words you would use to describe your work?

KJ: I’d describe my work in words like mirror reflection, teleportation, cosmic, collision, death, hope, sadness, grief, existential, timeless, massive.

RMD: How has writing inspired your visual art and vice versa?

KJ: Shortly after finishing college, I was selected as a Sundance Institute’s Native 58 | FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE NO. 48, FALL 2025

KEANU JONES

Lab fellow and was able to write and direct my first short film, Liberty of Jewels.1 A story about a father who works in a trading post in Gallup, New Mexico, the film gives audiences a slice of life as [the protagonist] Gilbert struggles to remain in his job. My filmmaker’s perspective has greatly influenced my eyes. As I work between both the writing and the visual, I find myself truly exploring aspects of my life.

RMD: Who or what were some of your early influences?

KJ: I’d [attribute] most of my influences [to] music and films I watched growing up. I could not live without either medium, perhaps music more than anything. Music allows my creativity to wander, explore ideas, and most importantly to play.2 RMD: Do you have a particular approach to your creative process or does it change with each project?

KJ: This is a challenging question because every spark comes unplanned. As a multidisciplinary artist, I switch between roles as a filmmaker, poet, screenwriter, graphic designer, and photographer. There’s a spark that’s ignited from either a story being told, music playing, architecture, or watching a film. When that spark is made, an image comes to mind, and I start to deconstruct it to see what other elements I might need. Perhaps I see a piece of architecture that’s composed a certain way that could be a design asset. Then I’ll make sure to capture a few images to build off of. The ignition of a composition in my mind is the most important thing when I tap into my creative process.

RMD: How does your work expand the parameters of what is considered to be Native art?

KJ: As a Native artist, it’s been interesting working with historical portraits or images of Native lifeways. In my first Emerging Artist Program solo exhibition with Strata Gallery, I was able to get the experience to curate my first exhibition, Intersecting Lifetimes. A thread of the

evolution of Indigeneity [runs] through different mediums, and an evolution

1. Liberty of Jewels, a twelve-minute film starring Timothy Blomquist, Elizabeth Bergert, Ernest David Tsosie III (Navajo), and Earl Tulley (Navajo), premiered at the Phoenix Film Festival in 2022.

2. Jones counts Kid Cudi, Machine Head, Preoccupations, Protomartyr, Trivium, and Hans Zimmer among the musical artists who influence him most. His favorite filmmakers include Darren Aronofsky, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Stanley Kubrick, and David Lynch.

above Corn Prism, 2023, digital collage on super heavyweight matte paper, 36 × 24 in. opposite Beauty in the Sky, 2023, digital collage, 1920 × 1080 px.

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PROFILE

of identity runs through the medium of photography.

RMD: Do you think there’s a spiritual component to creating art? How can the act of creating connect us to a sense of spirituality?

KJ: There’s a personal, spiritual, and mental connection to creating art. There have been creations where I’ve let myself choose anger or sadness because there are deeper emotions that we can express by letting those emotions guide the process. My artwork includes a lot of cosmic imagery. In Navajo belief, there’s a connection between Mother Earth and Father Sky—the universe. There’s a spiritual connection when I include images of the cosmos because that’s where our deities reside.

There was a connection, perhaps it is spirituality, that I felt when I worked with the [historic] images. It felt as if I was creating an immersive experience with them. Questions flooded my mind: Do you know the true history of what happened in their future? Did they know there would be a dramatic change in their life? What’s their story before and after the image was taken?

My curiosity guided me in exploring designs. It felt as if I were providing them a new life because the person who captured their image was not all of the subject’s experience.

Creating art for myself was another notebook entry. There were many creations that came from pure emotion.

RMD: If you could collaborate with any artist from any time in history, who would you choose and why?

KJ: I’d probably say Ansel Adams. He was a profound landscape photographer, and I have always admired his composition and his capturing of landscapes that are balanced.

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KEANU JONES

I feel like it would influence [my work] to capture the landscape from his perspective. And we’d have a conversation where we’d talk about the deeper connection that Native peoples have to their lands through their stories, songs, ceremonies, and other lifeways.

RMD: When a particular piece didn’t work out as you envisioned it, what did you learn? How do you work through any challenges that may arise without losing the vision and momentum of bringing your idea to fruition?

KJ: There’s an emotional response at times because I’m trying to communicate through colors, composition, and subjects. I have an idea of a composition, and through the process, I can tell it. If I have internal hesitations, the moment I start to feel those restraints, I’ll wipe it clean and start from a completely different direction and maybe be a little more daring. I’ve learned to always let my intuition guide the creative process.

RMD: How do you think your work will inspire future generations of Native artists?

KJ: I hope my artwork evokes feelings of resiliency. Our identity is truly beautiful, and I want young Native folks to see that beauty through the designs and to be inspired to embrace their natural beauty.

In Navajo belief, we seek to establish a balance—spiritually, mentally, and physically—with our world through hózhǫ́, which could be translated to “beauty.”

Through beauty, we find our true connection to who we are. I hope my body of work enables folks to tap into [that] place of feeling.

Jones is currently based in Albuquerque, where he works for a nonprofit focused on Native STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) and multimedia programs. “I’m still creating designs and capturing architecture when I travel,” the artist says of his constant acquiring of creative inspiration.

KEANUJONES.COM

above Cosmic Gem, 2022, digital collage on super heavyweight matte paper, 24 × 18 in.

RoseMary Diaz is a freelance writer based in Santa Fe. She studied literature and its respective arts at the Institute of American Indian Arts, Naropa University, and the University of California–Santa Cruz.

opposite is this death?, 2022, digital collage on super heavyweight matte paper, 36 × 24 in.

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PROFILE

Cherokee Nation Sculptor & Installation Artist

BRENDA MALLORY

By Mandy Yeahpau (Comanche/Cherokee/Tarahumara descent)

above Brenda Mallory with Adaptive Connections (ᎠᎵᎪᏍᏒ ᎦᏁᏟᏴᏍᎬ). opposite Adaptive Connections (ᎠᎵᎪᏍᏒ ᎦᏁᏟᏴᏍᎬ), 2024, waxed cloth, waxed felt, nuts, bolts, 120 × 240 × 6 in. All images courtesy of the artist.

I

N AN INDUSTRIAL AREA of Portland’s Eastside, artist Brenda Mallory’s studio is a seed bank of potential. Large bins overflow with threaded bobbin spools alongside yards of fire hose, stacks of honeycombed cardboard, and tubs of textile scraps, felt, and waxed cloth. These stand among large tables and electric skillets used to warm beeswax. Everything has been salvaged, saved, or scavenged, waiting to be transformed.

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Brenda Mallory is a mixed-media and installation artist and a citizen of the Cherokee Nation. Her work spans from intimate wall pieces to large-scale installations, often incorporating materials like handmade paper, cloth, wax, and reclaimed objects.

To the casual observer, it may be difficult to see the connection or even potential of these disparate bulk items, but to Mallory, these materials are an invitation—a spark of creativity and a challenge. How she decides to form and connect these materials is not only the result of compositions of patterns and symmetry but also layers of what she has to say and how this is expressed through what she makes with her hands.

“When I am working with my hands, I have more confidence that something is just going to come out of me,” Mallory says. “I feel more confident with the words that come out of my hands than the words that come out of my mouth.”

She recently moved her art practice from home to a spacious studio filled with natural light, where she adjusts a box fan to ease the warmth of the upstairs loft. The thick, wavy glass of the single-paned windows tells its own story, shifting slowly over decades, a quiet reminder of changing times. The summer heat is becoming common in the Pacific Northwest, a region that, before climate change, rarely needed air conditioning.

On this very topic, much of Mallory’s work centers on sustainable practices, the use of reclaimed materials, and sounding an urgent call about environmental issues. Her art is a response to the shifting world around us—a hands-on dialogue between creativity and care for the planet.

NAME

INHERITANCE, MEMORY & INGENUITY MALLORY GREW UP on a farm in rural Oklahoma not far from Claremore near the Verdigris River, where her family made do with what they had. “We’re really hard-scrabble people, nuts-and-bolts kind of people,” she says, “and everybody was some kind of maker, so I think that’s what I was meant to be.” Mallory recalls her dad’s ability to mend almost anything on the farm with baling wire.

“I didn’t grow up with a whole lot of cultural knowledge. Our traditions were making sure we had enough food on the table,” she recalls.

Mallory doesn’t feel bound to make work that fits within conventional outsiders’ expectations of “Native art.” She embraces the freedom to explore a wide range of subjects and often does. Many of her pieces engage with environmental concerns, issues deeply connected to Indigenous experiences but that ultimately affect everyone.

She likes to join materials together in unconventional ways, such as sewing

with wire or hog rings, weaving with industrial scraps, and repurposing them beyond their intended use. This inventive approach echoes her upbringing as a rural farm kid, where making do with what was on hand wasn’t just practical but necessary. This resourceful spirit runs throughout her sculptures and installations.

HOME, MOTHERHOOD, AND BECOMING AN ARTIST MALLORY AT TENDED a tiny one-room schoolhouse in Sageeyah, Oklahoma, about five miles outside of Claremore, and then graduated from Oologah High School before getting married in Tulsa. From there she moved to Los Angeles with her husband who worked in the film industry, and when they had their daughter, Emma, they moved to Portland, Oregon, to raise her in a quieter place.

“Sometimes I feel like the Pacific Northwest is a geographical environment

[similar] to where our original homelands were in Georgia and North Carolina … with the hills and the trees instead of the plains area,” she says.

Mallory was the first in her family to make a home in Portland. Over time, her mother, sister, niece, and daughter joined her, creating a close-knit family community in the Pacific Northwest.

Now a matriarch to the next generation, she finds joy in spending time with her loved ones, especially her grandchildren.

Turns out, Oregon has more than 6,500 Cherokee Nation citizens. “I love that our chief comes out here to meet with the at-large community every year,” she says, reflecting on the unexpected sense of belonging she found in the Pacific Northwest.

Not long after settling in Portland, Mallory cofounded GladRags in 1993.

This women-owned company produces reusable cloth menstrual pads inspired by the logic of cloth diapers. Built on principles of sustainability and self-sufficiency, the company’s products are made from soft cotton and designed to be washed and reused.

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PROFILE

art school, piecing together a life that made room for creativity.

“I had a business until 2011,” she explains. “When I sold it, I finally had the space to focus on art full time. I set up my life in a way that gave me autonomy to go to school and make time for art.”

That act of assembling a creative life from limited resources, she says, mirrors the artistic process itself. “That’s a creative thing you learn in art school: how to be a problem solver. And that’s what we need, more of that, more open-minded thinkers. I think at this time in the world, things are so crazy, it’s that kind of thinking that maybe will help save us.”

THE LANGUAGE OF MATERIALS

above, top Demeter Does the Math (and Cries) ᏗᏎᏍᏗ ᎤᎬᏩᎵ ᎾᏛᏁᎲ “ᏗᎻᏔ” (ᏃᏊᎴ ᎠᎶᏱᎲᎢ), 2000, waxed cloth, shell casings, thread, wood, 80 × 66 × 3 1/2 in.

Photo: Dan Kvitka. above, bottom Detail of Demeter Does the Math (and Cries) ᏗᏎᏍᏗ ᎤᎬᏩᎵ ᎾᏛᏁᎲ “ᏗᎻᏔ” (ᏃᏊᎴ ᎠᎶᏱᎲᎢ). opposite Old Homeplace, 2024, rice paper, cloth, encaustic and hog rings on panels, 135 × 180 × 21/4 in., 12 panels, 45 × 45 in. each. Photo: Mario Gallucci.

“For the longest time I had access to all these fabric scraps from GladRags,” she says. “Even if I weren’t an artist, I’m one of those people who never likes to throw anything away: food, fabric, anything.

That comes from growing up poor. We didn’t waste; we figured out how to reuse.

And now, in a broader way, I think that mindset is what could help us live more sustainably on this planet.”

To run a business, raise a child, and pursue an art practice required constant balancing. For Mallory, those years were defined by negotiation of time, space, energy, and identity. “It’s hard, that whole thing of trying to be present in both places,” she says. “But for me it’s just an enriching thing. I don’t think I’d be doing what I’m doing if it weren’t for my family.

They have been so supportive.”

When her daughter Emma was young, Mallory worked from a home studio, often creating at night after bedtime or during school hours. All the while, she ran GladRags and eventually returned to

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MALLORY MAJORED IN LINGUISTICS in college, and that background continues to influence the way she approaches her art making today. “This work is my language now, and it has a system that develops over time, like nature,” she explains. Just as languages evolve, so too does her process. She lights up as she describes her excitement over new materials, like the threaded bobbins she recently found at SCRAP PDX, a creative reuse store in Portland.

“I’m dreaming about what is going to become from these new materials,” she says. Her enthusiasm for creative reuse echoes back to her 2015 residency with Glean, a local program that invites five artists each year to source their materials directly from Portland’s waste stream. “I got to go to the dump for five months and choose anything I wanted,” she recalls, her eyes bright. The resulting exhibition required each artist to create work with at least 90 percent reclaimed material, a challenge that felt practically made for Mallory.

“For me that was so fun, at that point I branched out from some of the cloth I had been using, although I was still really interested in fibers. Some of the best things I found were fire hoses, honeycomb cardboard, and all kinds of ‘fiber-ish’-based materials.”

Mallory finds meaning and inspiration in discarded materials. When she happened upon the fire hoses, it brought to mind images of the wildfires that continually threaten the West.

BRENDA MALLORY

“Our world is practically burning down with forest fires of our own making,” she says. “These fire hoses that I cut apart are a metaphor that we can’t control what we thought we could control. So I like it when the material can add another dimension to the work.”

While Mallory’s art isn’t always explicitly Native themed, Indigenous people have always made things from found materials. “I always like some kind of parameter because if I think about all the materials I could work with, I can get paralyzed by that,” she says. “I know I’ll figure out something, and that is the challenge of seeing: what can I do with this thing? And then can I do something with it that has some meaning, that fits in somehow with the visual language that I like to use?”

For example, her 2000 piece, Demeter Does the Math (and Cries) ᏗᏎᏍᏗ ᎤᎬᏩᎵ ᎾᏛᏁᎲ “ᏗᎻᏔ” (ᏃᏊᎴ ᎠᎶᏱᎲᎢ), which she recently sold and will eventually be shown at the Portland

Art Museum, is composed of waxed cloth strips and brass bullet shell casings.

Mallory used the bullet shell casings to represent spent, unfertile seed pods. She was entering menopause at the time while observing her teenage daughter, Emma, enter puberty. But as is the case with Mallory’s work, there are layers upon layers and almost always an environmental element to her creations.

“I was thinking a lot about how we interfere with nature with genetic modifications and the fertility of seeds,” she says. This particular work also includes a numerical code: 13 strands of waxed cloth strips represent a lunar year, and each strand has 28 spent brass shell casings to represent a lunar month, weaving time, nature, fertility, and family into the installation.

Perhaps one of the most dynamic aspects of Mallory’s art is that she creates it knowing and inviting ideas from those who view it. She understands that meaning extends beyond her original

intent and welcomes additional insight and interpretation.

This openness is palpable in Warnings (ᏗᏓᏕᏯᏙᏗᏍᎩ) (2022–24), a haunting installation that consists of 14 cloth-and-wax forms suspended from metal chains. These pelt-like shapes vary in size; the largest is more than six feet long. Soft, fuzzy edges contrast with deep black voids, creating an unsettling presence that invites viewers to move around and between the sculptures.

Drawing from a vivid childhood memory of coyote pelts hanging on fences in Oklahoma, Mallory reflects on the power dynamics embedded in these images. The work evokes the violent imprint of private property and displacement. While Warnings (ᏗᏓᏕᏯᏙᏗᏍᎩ) confronts disruption and power with stark urgency, another piece by Mallory explores the possibility of healing and reconnection, both of which were on view over the summer at daphne, a nonprofit, Indigenous, artist-run center in Montreal,

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above Near the Hive, 2002, mixed-media installation, dimensions variable. opposite To Touch a Wide Span, 2025, encaustic, cloth, felt, oil paint, hog rings, welded steel, and detail image. Photo: Mario Gallucci.

Quebec. Adaptive Connections (ᎠᎵᎪᏍᏒ ᎦᏁᏟᏴᏍᎬ), draws inspiration from the brain’s remarkable plasticity and its ability to regrow neural pathways after injury.

This work embodies the idea that what is broken can come back together to form something whole, much like sewing torn fabric or quilting. Mallory extends this concept to culture and the resilience of Native peoples who survive displacement and fragmentation.

Crafted from waxed flannel, the seven clusters of Adapted Connections are cinched at their centers with black felt, nuts, and bolts. These connection points suggest either industrial constraint or creative convergence. The tendrils weave together from crown to root, trailing down to the floor in a tangled, uncontainable system, and provide a striking metaphor for survival, repair, and interconnection.

Beeswax and the geometric forms of beehives are recurring elements in Mallory’s work. Her grandfather was a beekeeper, and some of her earliest memories involve watching him tend to the hives, dressed in his suit surrounded by bees. That vivid childhood memory— combined with the ancient intelligence

of bees and the physical material of their wax—has found its way into Mallory’s practice in both form and meaning. It’s one of the clearest examples of how she blends heritage and reverence for nature’s architecture into her art.

Two major works embody this connection. Near the Hive, her thesis project at Pacific Northwest College of Art, was a tribute to her grandfather, who passed away when she was around five years old.

The installation is made up of canoeshaped forms, each one representing a day they were both alive. She grouped them into strands of 91 to represent the days in a season, five years of seasons in total, honoring the rhythm of a beekeeper’s life and the natural cycles he lived by.

The piece has spent years in storage, but Mallory could never bring herself to discard it. True to her process, she’s now dismantling and remaking it, this time with greater stability and intention. The act of revision, of returning, and rebuilding reflects her philosophy as an artist: always evolve, always adapt, always honor the past while reshaping it for what’s to come.

This instinct to revisit, reshape, and infuse materials with personal and ancestral meaning continues in Mallory’s

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more recent work. For To Touch a Wide Span (ᎠᏟᎢᎵᏙᎲ ᎠᏍᏒᏂᏍᏗᎢ), a commissioned piece for Jacob’s Pillow, a dance organization in Western Massachusetts, she turned again to beeswax, not just for its material properties but for its capacity to hold memory and bridge place.

The piece will go in the Doris Duke Theatre located on the original homelands of the Mohican people, who were forcibly displaced through nine removals to Wisconsin, where they are now recognized as the Stockbridge-Munsee Community. With that history in mind, Mallory felt a responsibility to acknowledge and honor the land and its people.

Her installation, placed in the theater’s lobby, includes beeswax sourced from two significant locations: one from the garden at Jacob’s Pillow, and the other a gift from the Stockbridge-Munsee tribal farm in Wisconsin. She melted the two together, symbolically uniting the two geographies and histories into one sculptural form.

“It’s in various shades of red,” she explains, “addressing ideas of blood quantum and the concept of seven generations: how what we do now will affect the next seven generations in the future.”

BRENDA MALLORY

Mallory often returns to a specific color palette: red, an earthy off-white, and black. The combination recalls the medicine wheel, though for her it also reflects something more instinctual. “I like it because it’s an earthen aesthetic,” she says.

Whether she’s reconstructing a formative piece tied to early memories or blending materials that honor layered Indigenous histories, Mallory is always composing. Her sculptures speak through form, texture, and material, but also through a deeper language, one she’s spent years refining. It’s in the way she connects land and memory, past and future, heritage and renewal. As viewers come to understand the visual vocabulary she builds, the art becomes legible, the language fluent.

REPAIR & RECONNECTION WHAT DOES Mallory’s language communicate? Themes of repair and connection, which are two values we urgently need if we hope to build a future for the next seven generations. Her work invites us to push back against colonial ideals of rugged individualism and the culture of selfishness that dominates so much of our society today. In a polarized world, Mallory offers a vision grounded in collective healing and care: the power of reconnection to land, to history, and to one another; the possibility of repair, both personal and planetary. This is the message she weaves through the visual language of her art.

“This idea of something that has been broken or disrupted—you know, rarely do things get completely destroyed.

There’s some way they reform or come back together in a new form,” she says, speaking from a place of both wisdom and hope.

HOLDING THE FUTURE IN THE WARM SOLITUDE of her Portland, Oregon, studio, Mallory continues to shape her message through her hands, trusting both her materials and her intuition. She challenges herself to work with what others have discarded,

transforming overlooked remnants into something meaningful.

She’s begun experimenting with the spools, threaded bobbins glued together in emerging forms. “I could glue them all together to make them look like flowers or something,” she says, “but that wouldn’t be my way. It has to fit in with something I want to say.”

Mallory encourages the artists she mentors to trust that same internal compass. “Get out of your head. Quit thinking and planning so hard and let the power of your body’s mind come through and do some of this work for you,” she advises.

“Just … step out and make a wrong decision. At least then you can respond to that.”

She also offers a kind of gentle persistence: to follow a thread long enough to let it become something meaningful.

“Be true to your own thoughts and work.

Let yourself explore something for a long time. Don’t just flip from one thing to another. Try not to be bound by tradition.

Sometimes it takes years for something to develop into something that’s yours.”

And for viewers of her work, especially those from outside Indigenous communities, Mallory hopes there’s a willingness to look closer, to learn more. “I would hope that non-Indigenous viewers

of my work would take the time to learn some history and story, and also to realize that Native people are not one thing.

[Being] a Cherokee is one thing; [being] a Navajo is another. We’re just not all the same kind of people, and also, everybody doesn’t make the same kind of art.”

She continues: “Art can take many forms. And I’m a person who lives in this contemporary world, so I’m going to respond to the things that make my world.”

As she dreams about what will emerge from these new materials, her hands are already busy. The spools are being shaped, arranged, transformed. In Mallory’s world, nothing is wasted, and everything speaks—if you know how to listen.

BRENDAMALLORY.COM Mandy Yeahpau, of Comanche, Cherokee, and Tarahumara descent, is an award-winning journalist, filmmaker, and marketing strategist with expertise in Indigenous storytelling and communications. She serves on the Roundhouse Indigenous Advisory Committee and the board of the Indigenous Creative Stage Workers Alliance.

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PROFILE

Oglala Lakota Printmaker, Sculptor & Mixed-Media Artist

MARTY TWO BULLS JR.

By Dan Ninham, PhD (Oneida Nation)

a graphic design program. He eventually became a 2022 United States Artist Fellow and was named a 2023–2024 artist laureate for the Oglala Sioux Tribe. Two Bulls’ work has been featured in exhibitions and museum collections around the world.

INFLUENCED & INFLUENCING

“I allow the ideas to guide the medium rather than the other way around”.

—Marty Two Bulls Jr.

A

CROSS A WIDE BODY of work that includes painting, c e r am i c s , pr i nt m a k i ng , sculpture, and mixed-media assemblages, Marty Two Bulls Jr. is an Oglala Lakota artist, educator, and leader based in South Dakota. He uses an interdisciplinary approach to create art-making opportunities for himself and others as a commitment to shared culture and community.

As a young boy, Two Bulls spent a lot of time in his father’s studio and learned the fundamentals of sculpture,

illustration, and graphic design. He eventually studied printmaking and ceramics at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) in Santa Fe. He earned a BFA from IAIA and an MFA from Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York.

Following his 2011 graduation from IAIA, Two Bulls spent several years in Santa Fe developing his art practice and working in art galleries alongside artists from around the world. After returning home to South Dakota in 2017, Two Bulls became a full-time faculty member at Oglala Lakota College, where he started

TWO BULLS CONTINUES to be professionally influenced even as he influences others. His parents encouraged him to be an artist and also an educator to teach others to be artists. As the leader of the graphic arts program at Oglala Lakota College, he inspires the next generation of artists from his community to pursue their goals in thought and practice.

As he shares his knowledge, he makes more and more connections through free-access video and social media. In his February 2025 YouTube video, “Native American Art and Accessibility: A Chat with Marty Two Bulls,” he discusses his installation Dominion, which was on view at the Academy Art Museum in Easton, Maryland, through August 2025. The Spy Newspapers of Maryland wrote: “As an educator, Two Bulls approaches teaching with a focus on nurturing his students’ creativity and individuality. Rather than imposing predetermined notions of aesthetics, he encourages students to explore their unique perspectives and cultural backgrounds, empowering them to express themselves authentically through their art.”1 Creating accessibility to his art is central to his artistic path. His approach to art invites his learners to engage with heritage on a new level and in a space to open up curiosity and dialogue. Recently

1. Marty Two Bulls Jr., “Native American Art and Accessibility: A Chat with Marty Two Bulls,” The Spy Newspapers of Maryland, February 12, 2024, YouTube video, 7:39, web.

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MARTY TWO BULLS JR.

appointed as the interim executive director of the Rapid City Arts Council in April of 2025, Two Bulls is helping to support regional artists, provide engaging programming, and help manage the council’s Dahl Arts Center.

His father, Marty Two Bulls Sr. (Oglala Lakota), is a renowned political cartoonist. A freelance artist, teacher, and graphic designer, he has been drawing cartoons for the Lakota Times since December 2001. When he recently won the Herblock Prize for editorial cartooning, Marty Two Bulls Jr. accepted the prize on behalf of his father in a ceremony held at the Library of Congress. There, Dolores Huerta, a civil rights and labor activist who cofounded the United Farm Workers, delivered the annual Herblock Lecture. Two Bulls wrote on Instagram: “It was extremely uplifting getting to listen to Delores Huerta talk about her work with the National Farm Workers Association. These days, it feels as if times have never been so dark, and hope seems far off. Then I’m reminded of the work of those before me who’ve moved mountains against worse odds, and I’m humbled, and grateful, and inspired.”2

Two Bulls discusses his artwork in great detail online. Other artists have analyzed his work as well. Sarah Elisabeth Sawyer (Choctaw Nation) interpreted his ceramic sculptures, Geechee Mon (2019), as “crying, laughing, a blank stare, and winking … buffalos in cartoon form.…”3 Two Bulls recently completed an art residency at the Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF). There, he led a land art engagement based on the Lakota practice of azilya, a ceremonial act of burning sacred plants such as sage to cleanse space and invite healing.

His work bridges Indigenous knowledge, artistic practice, and scientific exploration. During his time at SURF, Two Bulls immersed himself in both the surface and underground spaces, forging connections with scientists and delving into the innovative research happening there. He also took part in the Center for Theoretical Underground Physics conference (CETUP), where he engaged with physicists from around the world. The experience inspired a powerful artistic vision—one that brings SURF’s history to life and honors the people shaping its legacy through Two Bulls’ compelling exhibition, Inyan Wakan (Holy Rock) at

“…I’m reminded of the work of those before me who’ve moved mountains against worse odds…”

above Geechee Mon, 2019, glazed ceramic sculptures, installation: 15 × 40 × 8 in. opposite Marty Two Bulls Jr. performing Azilya (2025), in which he smudges the Homestake Mine in Lead, South Dakota. All images courtesy of the artist.

2. Marty Two Bulls Jr. (mtwobullsjr), Instagram, June 24, 2025.

3. Sarah Elizabeth Sawyer, “Ceramic Buffaloes, Milk Jugs, and Old Medicine Cabinets,” First Peoples Fund, October 23, 2019, web.

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above Star Knowledge, 2023, steel, wood, cement, paint, installed at the Oglala Lakota Artspace, Kyle, South Dakota, alongside other artists’ public works. opposite Anpo Wicahpi Win, 2024, charcoal, UV print, waxed thread on paper, 24 × 18 in.

A work from Inyan Wakan, a 2024 solo exhibition at Black Hills State University. “The work in this exhibition explores ideas around extraction, dark matter, neutrinos, and gold mining in the Black Hills as well as the impacts of those events and histories today.”

—Marty Two Bulls Jr.

the South Dakota Mines Apex Gallery in Rapid City.

Inyan Wakan features mixed-media works on paper with framed photographs, lithographs, charcoal drawings, and other media. He drew inspiration from Lakota cosmology and Western science and mathematics.

Building upon the work of British astronomer Dominic Ford, who created an open-source constellation map, Two Bulls added Lakota names with English translations of the constellations and the subsequent months of the year. He offers a downloadable rotating star map available on his website for free to carry on the knowledge that he gains from his work with installing the Lakota Star Knowledge Planisphere (2022).

DN: How did you get started in your art career?

MTBJ: My father, Marty Two Bulls Sr., was my first art teacher. He taught me the

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fundamentals of art making. He and my mother, Linda Bad Yellow Eyes, fostered creativity in our household. My father helped me build my earliest relationships with first gift shops and then galleries.

I’ve been making and sharing my art my entire life.

DN: After earning your bachelor of fine arts at IAIA, you remained in Santa Fe for several years. Who were the artists who influenced you at that time?

MTBJ: After I graduated from IAIA, I began working in contemporary art galleries in Santa Fe. This was like a second education in what the art world was actually like. I learned a lot about the commercial side of the art world and was privileged to meet some great artists, curators, and critics. Some of the biggest influences on my work from that period were the African-American artists Lonnie Holley and Thornton Dial. They are

MARTY TWO BULLS JR.

self-taught artists who make contemporary work that is rooted in their traditions and experiences as Black Americans.

Their work really connected with me because they represented something different than the Western art traditions from Europe that I’d learned about in art school. Mr. Dial and Mr. Holley carried visual vernacular that traveled with their ancestors from Africa and evolved in the Deep South to become something truly American, much like jazz music. I have found a lot of parallels between my own Lakota art traditions and those of Mr. Dial and Mr. Holley who are major influences on my own artwork.

DN: What is your art style, and how has it evolved over time?

MTBJ: If I had to choose a word to describe my art style, I would say it was contemporary. I’ve always tried to remain free from tying myself to a specific media or genre. The connecting thread between all of my work is the goal to create work that represents who I am today and not who people think I should be.

DN: What is your art vision statement?

MTBJ: My practice is motivated by my experience as a contemporary Lakota person. I make artwork that challenges repressive aesthetic values and narratives forced upon me and my culture by outside influences. My work examines personal issues such as death, oppression, love, and hope. I also take on ideas related to the U.S. historical narrative, politics, and religion. My art sometimes speaks to a broader audience, and sometimes it is intended only for Lakota people. I am an interdisciplinary artist. I am a passionate student of the arts and am continually studying and exploring new ideas and processes. I let my ideas guide my media.

My artwork is a continuation of the Lakota tradition of adaptation and innovation. Since my people first came into contact with Western civilization, we’ve adapted and innovated new materials and art practices. Lakota artists used Italian glass beads to adorn our regalia and ledger paper to illustrate our histories. These art forms are now considered traditional in Western museums, but the materials

were originally Western trade goods adapted to suit Lakota cultural aesthetics and values. I keep this tradition alive with my artwork and strive to push the boundaries of how Lakota art is labeled and categorized by outside voyeurs.

DN: How are your Indigenous core values embodied in your art?

MTBJ: The core Lakota values that have guided and are embodied in my art are Wówaȟwala (humility), Wacanteognaka (generosity), and Wóohitika (bravery). I was raised to be humble, and it’s something that I strive for, especially when my career is going well. I strive to be generous with my time and resources. The better I do, the more I try to give back to my community. In my art practice, I often strive for bravery in the ideas that I choose to represent or the new media that I work in. I know I’m on the right

“The core Lakota values that have guided and are embodied in my art are Wówaȟwala (humility), Wacanteognaka (generosity), and Wóohitika (bravery).”

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PROFILE

juxtapose traditional and pop imagery because the truth of contemporary Lakota life is that it is a mixture of both cultural experiences.

My subject matter is often deeply personal yet irreverent. I use humor as a tool to touch the pain that I carry, which allows me to examine it. I believe that this is where the universality of my work lies. Regardless of a person’s cultural background or first language, we all know heartbreak and sorrow; we all like a good laugh.

DN: What is a recent project that stands out to you?

MTBJ: I recently completed a large-scale, site-specific, land engagement artwork titled Azilya. Azilya is the Lakota word for smudging. For this work, I smudged the defunct Homestake gold mine in the Black Hills, South Dakota. The Black Hills are sacred to my people, but when gold was discovered there in 1874, they were stolen and desecrated by Americans. The Homestake gold mine operated for 125 years. For this project, I invited people from my community to contribute bundles of sage for the azilya.

With that sage, I used the mine’s air ventilation system to smudge 300 miles of mine shafts 5,000 feet underground.

This artwork created a moment of healing and resilience for me and my community.

track when making an artwork when I’m feeling unsure about what I’m doing. That is how a new path is broken.

above Geechee Centipede, 2022, ceramic, 19 × 4 × 4 in. opposite Lakota Quarantine Bandana, 2020, print on cotton cloth with the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie, 22 × 22 in.

DN: What role does storytelling play in your art?

MTBJ: My storytelling deals with memories and emotion. I often use found objects in my assemblages. I believe there is a spirit to all things, and I’m especially interested in those objects that have had a storied life. My work taps the collective consciousness through the use of pop culture imagery and forms. I also engage with imagery and forms that are exclusively from Lakota culture and require a deeper understanding to engage with. I

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DN: Do you mentor others? What advice would you give to aspiring artists who follow your lead?

MTBJ: Yes, I taught art at Oglala Lakota College on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation for eight years. I also do my best to be a mentor to other artists in my community. The advice I always give to my tribal students is more of an affirmation: “Your voices are important, your art is important, your creativity is vital for the survival of your people and your culture.”

DN: What are your current and future art exhibitions and residencies?

MTBJ: I’m currently finishing up a residency at the Kent Cultural Alliance in Chestertown, Maryland. This residency culminated in an exhibition titled Climate and addressed issues related to climate change. I have an exhibition coming up

MARTY TWO BULLS JR.

in the fall at the Washington Pavilion in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, called Inyan Wakan. That body of work explores the history of the mineral extraction in the Black Hills of South Dakota, the impact that it had on my people, and the current scientific research that is happening there.

I will be curating an exhibition at the Journey Museum in Rapid City this fall

titled Lakota Art, which will be an intergenerational art exhibition showcasing contemporary Lakota art.

DN: In closing, what do you want your readers to know about you that may

not have been in the media already?

MTBJ: I want to see an end to the genocide that is happening in Gaza against the Palestinian people.

I want to see an end to the unjust persecution of immigrants in our country.

MARTYTWOBULLSJR.COM

Dan Ninham, PhD (Oneida Nation, Wolf clan), is a freelance writer who earned his doctoral degree in physical education with an emphasis in sport pedagogy from the University of Northern Colorado. He and his wife Susan Ninham (Red Lake Ojibwe) founded the North American Indigenous Athletics Hall of Fame, which recognizes elite Indigenous individuals in five categories including teams throughout North America.

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PROFILE

Aamjiwnaang Ojibway Beadwork & Installation Artist

NICO WILLIAMS

By Matthew Ryan Smith, PhD award for contemporary artists. His work is featured in major museum collections in Canada, such as the Musée des beaux-arts de Montreal, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Ojibwe Cultural Foundation, and the Royal Bank of Canada Art Collection.

N

ICO WILLIAMS ᐅᑌᒥᐣ is a visual artist currently based in Tiohtià:ke (Montreal) and is a member of the Aamjiwnaang First Nation, located on the St. Clair River just outside Sarnia, Ontario. He is well known in Canada and internationally for his singular and meticulous approach to contemporary beadwork, and often utilizes collaboration and community to produce sculptural objects. These objects frequently reference popular culture items like the iconic blue IKEA bag or common lottery scratch tickets, as well as political subject matter such as government-issued status cards and DNA testing kits.

In 2020 he was awarded his first major public art commission by the SickKids Foundation in Toronto. Composed of 250,000 individual beads, Monument to the Brave honors the strength and determination of children who face suffering through illness. In 2021 he graduated from Concordia University in Montreal with an MFA in studio art. That same year he was awarded the Claudine and Stephen

Bronfman Fellowship in Contemporary Art, one of Canada’s most prestigious awards for emerging artists.

Before and after graduating, his work was featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Canada and the United States, including La machine qui enseignait des airs aux oiseaux at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montreal in 2021; Biskaabiiyang | Returning to Ourselves at the Judith and Norman Alix Art Gallery in 2023; Radical Stitch at the National Gallery of Canada in 2024; and a major solo exhibition, Nico Williams: Bingo, at the PHI Foundation for Contemporary Art, which closed in September 2025.

He is active in Montreal's urban Indigenous arts community and is a core member of the Contemporary Geometric Beadwork research team. His work has also been featured in publications including National Geographic, Studio Magazine, and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. In 2024 he was awarded the Sobey Art Award, Canada’s highest

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MRS: I’m curious about your early life. Did you grow up in Aamjiwnaang (Sarnia)?

NW: My mom’s Irish, and my dad’s Anishinaabe from Aamjiwnaang. They met at an arcade in Sarnia, Ontario. I grew up between Aamjiwnaang and a place called Froomfield. It was named after an Indian agent who dealt with Aamjiwnaang. So I grew up between the settlement and the reserve. I decided to move in with my grandparents at a very young age. I grew up with my Grandma Sadie, my Grandma Joyce, and my Grandpa Mac. The interesting part about my Irish side is that my Grandpa Mac had actually opened a pilot house museum in the ’70s down there, and it was torn down and turned into a Shell oil facility.

It’s interesting how these extractions just continue—not only from Indigenous people but also from settlers—always looking out for the colony’s best interests.

I left there when I was 16 and moved to London, Ontario.

MRS: Were you an artsy kid?

NW: Absolutely! My grandma, Girt Bressette, was a very famous basket maker. She was part of a basket-making guild. They were phenomenal. I wanted to make 3D baskets when I was young.

The Anishinaabe community is very good with detail-oriented work.

MRS: Was there an early pull to beadwork?

NICO WILLIAMS

above Wallet (NdN status Sobeys portrait–Visa), 2025, 11° Japanese glass cylinder beads, Gucci GG Supreme Kingsnake print bifold wallet, 3½ × 8½ in. Photo: Paul Litherland. opposite Nico Williams. All images courtesy of the artist.

NW: I started beading in 2014. My life path brought me to Montreal. It was like, “Go there, go there!” I fell in love with the fries and the gravy. That was the first reason I stayed. The food is amazing! The people and the culture. When I actually started to study and started trying to bead, it led to paths that I didn’t even know would be possible to unfold. I ended up going down to Massachusetts.

They called me up there, and they’re like, “You’ve been invited to MIT,” and I thought they meant “Met,” like the Met. “I have a show at the Met?” They’re like, “No, you’re going back to school because what you’re doing is geometric beadwork. You’re making hyperbolic paraboloids with your weaving.”1 I can’t even understand how I do it; it just naturally comes. I always like to think of that connection coming back from the lineage

of my family, and how those baskets have been lost because they go into the tourist market. It’s really now about tracing back what our ancestors had created. I’m going down to Indianapolis, looking at collections and vibing with them.

MRS: What does beadwork do that other media like painting or drawing cannot?

NW: It’s the shining, glistening material that is working with glass beads. I fell in love with beads in 2014. I didn’t know how to use them, but when I saw how to use them, I don’t know if it was blood memory, but I just started to grab all these beads. I loaded up my basket. I ended up making a piece called Silence No More (2015); it’s a beaded ball gag, which is on show right now. I was really looking at how the collectors of our art at the

time weren’t really listening to the voices behind the work because of the market.

You think of [Norval] Morrisseau paintings getting flipped and the Inuit works; people are just collecting for value. There are a lot of voices happening behind the works. Artists like Rebecca Belmore, for instance—you see the contemporary conversations that are happening with Indigenous making right now; there are messages there that we’re able to transfer with that material.

I’m just so overly in love with beads that I just started to go deep with it. I ended up in a boat at the last Venice Biennial, going out to Murano, and finding these white-heart beads, and I started to search for the beads that would have been used during colonization. Now we’re beading bandanas with them, using Anishinaabe patterns from

1. “A hyperbolic paraboloid is a doubly curved surface,” writes architect Lucas Schlüter. “This means that the shape is defined through the combination of both a concave and convex surface.” Examples include horse saddles and Pringles potato chips. Lucas Schlüter, “Bamboo Structural Systems You Should Know: Hyperbolic Paraboloids,” Bamboo U, November 12, 2022, web.

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[a woman was] saying how her family members were stringers—the women that would be stringing all the beads in Venice—and she thought that it was really interesting, the history of her family, sitting in the hot alleys of Venice, stringing them, and then these colonists coming and taking the beads. The stringers didn’t necessarily know where the beads were going, but to see the First Nations beadwork that had come from them hundreds of years later—her, as a resident of Venice, seeing the beautiful creations that Indigenous people used that material for.

It’s amazing because when you start to look into the research of land trades and negotiations before the country was Canada, there would be canoes coming down the Great Lakes to have access into these territories. And I think Montreal would send 79 canoes filled with trade goods and beads to come into the lands, because it was Quebec at one point too.

It’s interesting to think about how those nations have changed and how histories have been forgotten—the traders claiming, “You have access because you bring these beautiful goods to the land.” Canada becomes this country where it forgets the early origins of those histories. Beads!

Beads forever!

“Beads!

Beads forever!”

above Feast, 2024, 10° Delica beads, 11° seed beads, 49 wooden spoons, 175/8 × 175/8 × 7 in. Photo: Paul Litherland. opposite Bang on Man!!!, 2022, glass beads, oil paint, 23½ × 133/8 in. Photo: Paul Litherland.

museum archives and trying to get those patterns out of the drawers and back into the hands of the community, or back into the circuit—the arts circuit. As long as people are coming to see the shows, talking about the issues that are happening, it’s really beautiful. The culture of the Anishinaabe is such a beautiful and rich story that I just want to share it with as many people as possible.

MRS: Can we talk about the specific beads you use? How significant is the surface of your works? What meanings can be derived from the patina, the glossy reflection? Is it sumptuousness, grandeur, bling?

NW: I go to the families that make them.

They’re no longer being made like they used to. The production is done. When I was giving a talk a couple of years ago,

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MRS: I remember seeing your work at Art Toronto last year. It was Feast (2024), a beadwork shaped in the popular blue IKEA bag with 49 wooden spoons inside. From afar I didn’t know what it was—something like Warhol’s Brillo Boxes, some Pop Art throwback—but suddenly it sparkled in the light. There was this special moment because I was ready to walk past this thing, but instead I was transformed into pure, utter befuddlement. It doesn’t happen very often that I’m totally disarmed and ask myself, “What am I looking at?” So I thank you for that. I don’t actually have a question [laughs].

NW: I love that moment! That’s what I really try to strive for. You know when you’re really mesmerized by that shine?

That’s what I try to do. People have compared the practice to trompe l’oeil.

That’s what I do with beads. I want people to see that material and see it glisten.

NICO WILLIAMS

MRS: Totally. And your work is often described as “sculptural beadwork,” meaning that beads are the vehicle to construct a sculpture, like the IKEA and Amazon bags and status cards and rolling paper packages. What’s the philosophy behind your selection of subject matter in these bags, in these plastics?

NW: Aamjiwnaang has a benzene crisis.

When you think about plastics and the materials [used]—I’m thinking about oil coming out of the ground, and oil being transferred into many different products.

When it comes to the bags, I’m thinking about how we use these resources, how we forget where they come from—thinking about the vessel, thinking about the bag in particular. When you think about the size of an IKEA bag, when you go inside [the store], “Do you need all this stuff, or do you not need it?”

The shimmering pattern behind that blue surface of the IKEA bag was an

Anishinaabe traveler’s bag. I had sort of hidden the patterns that would have been woven by an ancestor into it. It would have been a much smaller bag because we would have been portaging around … to think about how those bags they would have used on those canoes would have been transferred down to families.

We have those reusable bags everywhere.

Some of them are made of cloth, some of plastic—and to connect back to that.

I filled up Feast with 49 wooden spoons. I was thinking about the ceremony of feast, how we would have had ladles with our totems carved onto the back handles of them. When it was illegal to be Indian for 75 years or so, we lost those teachings. So that’s why, when we’re able to visit these ancestors, as I like to call them—I don’t like to refer to them in museum collections as “objects,” because they connect back to the culture.

MRS: Where do humor and irony fit in? Some of your works are plain funny. I think of the blue rag of Bang On Man!!! (2022) or the lottery scratch ticket series, which are nostalgic to me since we used to buy them from the corner store as kids (though they shouldn’t have sold them to us).

NW: All the time! It’s supposed to make you laugh. I love how everybody is saying the lottery tickets are nostalgic because I just started beading them because of Christmas—you know when people are giving you lottery tickets for Christmas?

I save the actual lottery tickets I get. It’s like “It’s Christmas time, life’s a gamble, you know what I mean?” I donate beads to the [Native] Friendship Centre here in Montreal, where my studio is, because I want to give back. I had two colors sitting there. I saw the two bags and was hanging a J Cloth at the time on a door handle, and I was like, “Oh my gosh.” I started to bead a J Cloth because it just reminded

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“I find that there is always a conversation to be had. There’s always a joke there too.”

above Friendship in Trade (Red), 2025, vintage Venetian seed beads on thermally fused/braided polyethylene thread, 22½ × 25¾ in. Photo: Paul Litherland. opposite Reconnecting, 2024, 11° Japanese glass cylinder beads, 10° Czech glass beads, blue stabilizing fluid, cardboard box, leaflet, sealed plastic DNA testing kit, saliva collection tube, thermally fused/braided polyethylene thread, unused response paid sticker to Ireland, 6 × 4 × 1 in.; box: 41/2 × 61/4 × 1 in.; bag: 61/8 × 3¾ in.; DNA kit: 33/8 × 55/8 × ¾ in. Photo: Paul Litherland.

me of being back home. Growing up in Froomfield and growing up on the rez, both grannies would have had that J Cloth. When I actually beaded the thing, many Canadians were like, “Oh my gosh! You’ve gone there with me!” When I showed the J Cloth for the Sobey Art exhibition in Los Angeles earlier this year, the Americans didn’t know what it was because the J Cloth is actually very uniquely Canadian.

MRS: I didn’t know that!

NW: When the director of the National Gallery of Canada was announcing, she said, “The J Cloth is a reusable cloth that is very nostalgic to Canadians. It’s like a washcloth in America.”

MRS: So there’s a lot of nostalgia in those pieces, eh?

NW: Always nostalgia!

MRS: But then other works are fiercely political, like the rebukes of consumer capitalism and its aftermaths of environmental destruction, as in Amazon Bag (2022). There’s also a critique of colonialism and blood

quantum in the DNA testing kit Reconnecting (2025), to name just two.

What’s the sweet spot, the balance, between humor and politics?

NW: It always starts with an encounter.

I’m on the road right now, and I’m getting inspired by many things.… I go out to reserves. I go to community. I’ll have conversations with people in community. I like to cruise around and go to powwows or visit other places. I find that there is always a conversation to be had. There’s always a joke there too.

There’s always a funny moment. It’s the lightheartedness that really brings people together. We’re able to laugh about it, then hopefully address it later in the future.

Even the Hudson’s Bay Company going out of business. I was working on this beaded dog collar for this bronze French dog in front of Notre-Dame Cathedral in Montreal. That dog was bred to hunt NDNs. When you read the history of that dog, they write about it giving birth to more little dogs that would hunt NDNs. So I started to bead this Hudson’s Bay collar and I thought I needed a dog leash for this dog collar. It turns out Giant Tiger2 has partners from North West Company—that’s a company as old as the Bay. It’s interesting to think of how old companies are still thriving, and that the history is still there. Giant Tiger! It’s about the relationship, and loving the land, and the cool people you meet on the reserve too. Natives are a funny group of people, and that’s what I love about us.

There’s always something very serious and something very lighthearted, too. There’s a laugh there—a laugh that can shake your neighbor’s windows so loud.

MRS: Many of your works almost necessitate collaboration and community assistance to craft because they’re so elaborate, so time consuming. Can you talk about the impact of collaboration on your work, and why it matters today?

NW: Extremely important. I do a lot of group projects. As long as I was able to make sure that members were able to learn the techniques, I’d come on in and

2. Giant Tiger is a chain of discount stores across Eastern Canada and the Prairies.

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NICO WILLIAMS

do it. In my studio, I started working collectively with people around 2017 when I went out for tacos, and this person who worked at a hat shop at the time, Sam Guertin, was complaining that he wasn’t able to find work. I was like, “You’re so talented, and I’m not sure how I’m going to do this, but I’m going to bring you into my studio.” Now we’re around eight people working in the studio. When you come to see the Bingo show, there are around 19 or 20 people in the show who have now worked in the studio. I always ask them what they want to do, and I make sure that they continue on that path—if they want to get a residency, or go work for an artist, or go start carving.

I’m always trying to look out for the group as much as I can. It’s funny because I’ll be invited to an opening, and I ask, “Can I bring my team?” They’re like, “Sure, how many?” and it’s like bringing a hockey team sometimes. I’m there, and I’m like, “I’m the artist, but these people are just as important.” And they are. That’s what I fully believe. I just want them to be happy.

I wouldn’t be anywhere without them.

MRS: Has winning the Sobey changed your practice? What is easier, and perhaps what is more difficult now?

NW: It is international attention. You get views globally. It’s been supported by the National Gallery of Canada. Getting beadwork taken extremely seriously as a practice. I was just in that Radical Stitch exhibition that was the largest of its kind.

So, to receive that award, it was winning not only for myself, but it was winning for Aamjiwnaang; it was winning for beaders in the bush, people who are working very hard. Also for crafters. I had craft associations from across the country reach out to me. So to see a win for that medium was extremely wonderful. Also, one of my closest friends [and former winner] Nadia Myre from Quebec hasn’t won [the award] for ten years, so it was very interesting to follow my hero a decade after.

MRS: Whose work are you most interested in these days? Who are you following closely?

NW: I am following so many people. If you come to the Bingo show, you will see my heroes. I’m meeting makers, bringing attention to them. One that is particularly close to my heart: Bev Koski. When I saw her show, she didn’t even know she inspired me. I’m always saying, “Bev, you’ve got to be in this show with me!

Collaborate with me!” She’s a wonderful Anishinaabe woman out there in British Columbia. She’s beading up a tremendous storm.

My other favorite close kin is Audie Murray, who’s been there through thick and thin. I think every Indigenous artist working with this material has a unique voice that they’re representing from their individual communities and experiences.

That is so exciting and rich.

MRS: Thank you for speaking with me, Nico. It was great to chat with you.

NW: Talk to you later!

NICOWILLIAMS.COM

Matthew Ryan Smith, PhD, is the curator and head of collections at Glenhyrst Art Gallery in Brantford, Ontario.

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VENUES

DEEP MEMORIES Art & Architecture at the Chumash Museum & Cultural Center

By Reilly Clark

I

F ONE WORD can capture the sense that the Chumash Museum and Cultural Center engenders, it is “anchored.” The museum is anchored in the landscape, nested in the rolling hills of 'alaxulapu: the Santa Ynez Valley in California’s Santa Barbara County. The space runs from east to west along the reservation of the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians. The reservation itself is situated within a larger Chumash landscape that runs from Los Angeles to the south, Morro Bay to the north, Bakersfield to the east, and the Channel Islands to the west. The museum grounds are seeded with more than ten thousand plants including nearly one hundred native species. Its pathways are dotted with memorials, etched with the names of Chumash ancestors. The museum

is anchored in time as well as space, weave Chumash baskets. It was also used and its architecture reflects the long to make 'aps, customary rush-thatched history of Chumash building, basketry, round houses. One such 'ap, half-conand seafaring. Its collections celebrate structed in rush and rebar, stands in the Chumash life: past, present, and future. middle of the museum grounds. Nearby, The Chumash Museum and Cul- two domes assume the form of 'aps in tural Center opened in May 2025 after steel, concrete, and other industrial mateyears of construction, planning, and rials. The familiar form and color palette community organizing. The Santa Ynez help them blend into the landscape. The tribal government hired the architectural domes self-consciously echo the customfirm of Jeanpaul Jones, lead design con- ary roundhouse. Visitors enter through sultant for the National Museum of the one of these 'aps, pass through the main American Indian in Washington, DC. exhibition hall, and exit through another Known for his environmentally sensitive 'ap onto the grounds. The museum and designs, Jones attended to the particular the land, the industrial and natural relationship between plants, art, and materials, and the history of Chumash architecture in Chumash country. Jones craftsmanship and its contemporary planted mexmey̓ , or basket rush (Jun- expressions are all woven tightly together.

At the opposite end of the site, the cus textilis), throughout the site. As the name suggests, this native plant is used to museum is anchored by a boathouse and

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a tomol. An oceangoing plank-built canoe, the tomol draws visitors west toward the coast and the Channel Islands. Since time immemorial, tomols have connected Chumash communities on the California coast with outposts in the Channel Islands. The canoes allowed fishing parties to bring swordfish and abalone home to families on both sides of the channel.

Tomols blurred the line between tools and status symbols. They enabled chiefs to exchange fish and fruits de mer for increased social standing. With success at sea, tomols became works of art in and of themselves. Chiefs inlaid the bows and sterns of tomols with abalone shells from their voyages. Sometimes they created abstract designs with the iridescent shells or arranged the shells into images of powerful swordfish. Tomols embodied tools and status symbols—technology and art, respectively.

At the Chumash Museum and Cultural Center, the tomol is called Muptami or “Deep Memories.” The name is doubly appropriate. It honors the technical abilities of the tomol as the oldest known oceangoing craft in North America. It also honors a long-established history of Chumash innovation and voyaging.

Conversely, its existence promises that

new memories will continue to be made far into the future. The boat’s prow is decorated with iridescent abalone shells inlaid into black tar. They take the form of stars in the night sky, pathfinding constellations against darkness.

Muptami is visible from every angle through the open slits of the boathouse.

So too is the Chumash museum and the Chumash community beyond it at Santa Ynez. The borders between object,

above, top Native plant landscaping featuring mexmey̓, or basket rush.

Image courtesy of the Santa Ynez Chumash Museum and Cultural Center. above, bottom Detail of the prow of the tomol, or plank canoe, Muptami with abalone constellations embedded in tar. Photo: Reilly Clark. opposite Museum campus. Two buildings resemble 'aps, or the customary Chumash thatched homes. Image courtesy of the Santa Ynez Chumash Museum and Cultural Center.

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landscape, and community are interwoven. The membrane between past, present, and future is permeable.

Another deep memory reconstructed and reimagined for the museum is the so-called “swordfish dancer headdress,” a ceremonial object that was ignobly excavated from a Chumash grave, repatriated to Santa Ynez almost a century later, and reinterpreted in a replica

above, top Swordfish headdress,

by Pita Romero (Santa Ynez Chumash, 1955–2025) and Dan Chen. Both photos: Reilly Clark. above, bottom Mural of a Chumash swordfish dancer by Christopher Leith Evans, Swordfish Dancer at the Coastal Village of Qasil.

for the opening of the tribal museum. In 1926 Santa Barbara archaeologist David Banks Rogers exhumed the headdress from a Chumash grave site. Rogers noted that it combined the long bill of a swordfish with hundreds of individually knapped, iridescent abalone shells. Both animals, the swordfish and the abalone, would have been painstakingly acquired in tomols like the Muptami. Abalone shells were then inlaid around the eyes of the swordfish and laced around the neck, interlocked like chain mail. Rogers spirited the headdress away to the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, where he founded the anthropology department. The “swordfish dancer headdress” remained at the natural history museum for nearly a century until it was returned under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). The Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians is one of many communities that claim descent from the early Chumash, but one of only two recognized by the federal government. The other, the Tejon Indian Tribe, includes descendants of Kitanemuk, Yokut, Owens Valley Paiute, and Chumash ancestors.

Other communities claim descent from coastal Chumash ancestors including the Coastal Band of the Chumash Nation and the yak titʸu titʸu yak tiłhini

Northern Chumash. However, none of these coastal communities have been recognized by the federal government.

Therefore, none are eligible for the return of ancestral remains, funerary objects, sacred objects, or items of cultural patrimony under NAGPRA. This federal law requires that objects like the headdress be returned to federally recognized tribes.

And so, the swordfish-and-abalone headdress was returned to the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians. The actual headdress was removed from public view, but the tribal government at Santa Ynez commissioned several reproductions for its new museum.

Dollmaker Pita Romero (Santa Ynez Chumash, 1955–2025) and wildlife artist Dan Chen created a 3D facsimile of the headdress now on display at the Chumash Museum and Cultural Center. The reproduction conveys the sense of the complexity, sound, and shimmer of the headdress with its abalone cape.

Artist Christopher Leith Evans created a 2D representation of the swordfish dancer in action. Evans is known for his matte paintings created for feature films (E.T., Return of the Jedi, Star Trek II, and others). The artist drew from his collaborative experience with directors such as George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, and Martin Scorsese to create immersive, dramatic paintings for Santa Ynez. Evans’ scenes greet visitors to the museum in the first 'ap, a cinematic vision of the swordfish dancer with his interspecies regalia at the coastal village of Qasil.

The Chumash Museum and Cultural Center is an anchor for the community, both in its ability to claim deep memories as the official cultural center of a federally recognized tribe and how it stages those memories. The museum serves as a tool for exercising sovereignty, a means of advocating for the return of funerary, sacred, and cultural objects under NAGPRA. But critically, it does more than simply reclaim objects.

It contextualizes them within Chumash space and time.

Reilly Clark is a PhD student in the history of art and architecture department at the University of California–Santa Barbara in Chumash country. Reilly studies repatriation, restitution, and museum practice. He conducts NAGPRA-related repatriation work at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History as well as private repatriation work.

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REVIEWS

EXHIBITIONS

above Eddy Cobiness (Buffalo Point Ojibwa, 1933–1996), Coyote and Young, 1990, watercolor on paper. Image courtesy of the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies.

BANFF, AB

The Ancestors Are Talking: Paintings by the Indigenous Seven Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies

T

HE SURVEY EXHIBITION The Ancestors Are Talking, on view at the Whyte Museum through October 19, 2025, spotlights the transformative artist collective Indigenous Seven, whose membership includes Daphne Odjig (Wikwemikong Potawatomi/Odawa), Norval Morrisseau (Bingwi Neyaashi Ojibwa), Alex Janvier (Cold Lake Denesuline/Saulteaux), Eddy Cobiness (Buffalo Point Ojibwa), Jackson Beardy (Garden Hill Anisininew), Carl Ray (Sandy Lake Cree), and Joseph M. Sánchez (Mestizo). Co-curated by Sánchez—the only surviving member of the

collective—alongside Whyte Museum curators Dawn Saunders Dahl and Christina Cuthbertson, the exhibition gathers together an electric selection of works that pursue overarching themes of kinship, land, and ceremony.

Although the exhibition title references an exclusive focus on painting, the show includes several drawings produced by the collective as well. The Ancestors Are Talking constitutes one of the most comprehensive presentations of the Indigenous Seven’s work since the landmark touring exhibition, 7: Professional Native Indian Artists Inc., organized by

the MacKenzie Art Gallery that toured Canada from 2013 to 2016.

Galvanized by the events surrounding the 1967 International and Universal Exposition in Montreal (Expo 67), which harmfully misrepresented Canada’s Indigenous peoples while promulgating the apparatus of colonialism, these seven artists began to meet, organize, and exhibit together in the early 1970s. One of the first Indigenous-led artistic collectives in the country’s history, the seven officially incorporated as the Professional Native Indian Artists Inc. (PNIAI) in 1974. High on their list of objectives was disrupting the persistent ethnographic stereotyping of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples so that their artwork and making would be considered as relevant, innovative, and experimental as their non-Indigenous peers. In other words, they intended to throw off the yoke of unfair or misleading categorizations such as artifact, handicraft, or object and instead be regarded as contributing meaningfully to the unfolding canon of contemporary art discourse.

“We acknowledged and supported each other as artists when the world of fine art refused us entry…,” Odjig said, “Together we broke down barriers that would have been so much more difficult faced alone.”1 For these efforts, the Indigenous Seven eventually succeeded—and spectacularly so—having not only legitimized First Nations, Métis, and Inuit contemporary art, but also reconstructed how the history of visual culture is interpreted and understood in Canada. Their impact continues to reverberate today.

Many of the works on display in The Ancestors Are Talking are plucked from the Whyte’s impressive collections vault.

Founded in 1968 by collectors and philanthropists Peter and Catharine Whyte, the museum is dedicated to promoting art and visual culture from the region with a special emphasis on Indigenous nations.

Holding one of the largest collections in the province, it features over 10,000 works that span nearly two centuries. In 2024 a successful exhibition featuring the Group

1. Daphne Odjig quoted in “‘Together We Broke Down Barriers’: Norval Morrisseau and the Rise of the Professional Native Indian Artists Incorporated,” Art Canada Institute, August 26, 2022, web.

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of Seven (Canada’s perennially popular, early 20th-century collective of modernist landscape painters who played a role in shaping the country’s identity) motivated Dahl to organize a companion exhibition for the Indigenous Seven.

The paintings and drawings, each with their magnetic colors, patterns, and forms, are gradually revealed to the viewer with each step in the crescent-shaped galleries of the Whyte.

Under soft light, the brilliancy of Morrisseau’s fantastically contrasting palette flickers and oscillates in works such as Grand Wabini Shaman (1985) and Woman and Child Looking at the Mountains (1985). Beyond mere aesthetics, Morrisseau’s spiritual transcendence to the astral plane through his exploration of shamanism and Eckankar accounts for the divine presence of light, energy, and the supernatural in much of his work since the 1970s. Unfortunately Morrisseau’s light has been dimmed slightly by an extensive forgery network in recent years, though exhibitions such as The Ancestors Are Talking offer hope that public trust in his work is being restored.

Carl Ray completed Morrisseau’s large-scale mural for Expo 67 while developing his singular interpretation of the Woodlands School, a visionary artistic movement that Morrisseau invented years earlier by representing oral histories and the sacred legends of the Midewiwin spiritual society. Few artists in Canada use blue like Ray; several paintings hang on the wall that

above Norval Morrisseau (Bingwi Neyaashi Ojibwa, 1932– 2007), Woman and Child Looking at the Mountains, 1985, acrylic on canvas, 48 × 36 in. Photo: EA Studios.

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typify his acumen. These blues commonly encircle or visualize different beings—be it bear, serpent, or human—and similar to Morrisseau, connect them to the astral plane, which alludes to the power of animal kinship. Audiences also encounter works that feature a vibrating human body positioned inside a shaking tent, a conduit employed to seek counsel or guidance from the spiritual realm. One of Ray’s signature motifs, the shaking tent may be metaphorical in intent, a reflection of the artist’s own pull toward betterment and healing in the short years leading up to his passing at age 35.

Similar to Ray, Cobiness and Beardy are underrepresented in their accomplishments, in part because Morrisseau, Odjig, and Janvier each received a major solo exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada (NGC). Morrisseau was not only the first of the group to do so, but also the first Indigenous artist ever to have a solo exhibition at the NGC, which opened in 2006.

Cobiness’ style experienced several noteworthy changes during his lifetime, such as a variation of painterly realism to what he is most recognized for today: sweeping, curvilinear lines and delicate blocks of color that are more restrained, more muted, and genteel compared to much of the conventional Woodlands movement. A poignant example of this is perhaps his most memorable work in the exhibition, Coyote and Young (1990), which features a young pup enveloped by its mother’s paws, torso, and tail, while its sibling stands in the background on alert. The mother endearingly leans her head slightly down to meet the pup’s nose while her eyes, like those of her other pup, remain fixated on whatever grabs their attention off the surface of the paper. Cobiness’ abiding strength lies in his remarkable proclivity to relate such an engaging narrative, animating an everyday moment into something monumental.

Sánchez’s contributions to the exhibition span five decades of his artistic practice and culminate in one of his most recent paintings, The Ancestors Are Talking (2024). The eponymous painting depicts bodies and faces in concert, rendered in Sánchez’s hallmark undulating lines and a soft spectrum of blues, pinks, and yellows. It stands as both a moving tribute to his relations and a gesture of gratitude toward the other six artists comprising the Seven. Yet his work continues beyond the canvas and the exhibition itself. Together with Dahl, Sánchez has helped establish the museum’s new Indigenous mentorship program, which facilitates emerging local Indigenous artists in their research of the Whyte’s collection and invites them to create artwork that responds to this exhibition. These new works are slated for a group exhibition at the Whyte in 2026.

For more than 50 years, the Indigenous Seven have shaped both the trajectory of Indigenous art in Canada and the evolving, often contested narratives of national identity that we are only now starting to grapple with. In life and in legacy, spurred by the enduring vision of Sánchez, they continue to make their voices heard and be a force for good—one that invites future generations to listen, learn, and carry the story forward.

—Matthew Ryan Smith, PhD

REVIEWS

DENVER

Kent Monkman: History is Painted by the Victors Denver Art Museum

I

N EUROPEAN ACADEMIC PAINTING, monumental depictions of biblical, historical, and mythological narratives were considered the most significant works an artist could create.

Epitomized by painters from Raphael and Peter Paul Rubens to Jacques-Louis David, these scenes dwarf viewers for maximum emotional impact. Their hyperrealistic style convinces one they are glimpsing into a verified event, almost like a documentary photograph. The scale and illusion trick the mind because the compositions are fantasies.

Fisher River Cree artist Kent Monkman engages with and upends the genre of history painting to correct romanticized notions of the past and imagine alternative historical outcomes. The artist is well known in his native Canada and is finally gaining more recognition in the United States with his first retrospective, History is Painted by the Victors, which premiered at the Denver Art Museum. The exhibition features more than 40 paintings that force his audience to critically examine

above Kent Monkman (Fisher River Cree Nation), mistikôsiwak (Wooden Boat People): Resurgence of the People, 2019, acrylic on canvas, 132 × 264 in., collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art: Purchase, Donald R. Sobey Foundation CAF Canada Project Gift, 2020.216b. © Kent Monkman.

their own understanding of the past and its relationship to our present moment.

The Scream (2017) depicts Canadian mounted police alongside Catholic priests and nuns forcibly abducting children from their families. The painting challenges beliefs that the residential school system for Indigenous children was a benevolent, Christ-centered means to provide education and healthcare for generations of displaced nations. The horrifying, violent truth continues to be unearthed with every graveyard excavation. Monkman’s figures wear jeans and T-shirts; in full color, the image parallels those in the news of brown families separated at U.S. borders under the current regime.

The chaos and implied sounds of terrorized women and children relate The Scream to many portrayals of the biblical Massacre of the Innocents. Every one of Monkman’s paintings is positioned in an entangled web of connections to past and present, providing art history aficionados a game of visual trivia with a sobering reminder that terror persists.

The two largest works were commissioned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and debuted in that museum’s Great Hall in 2019. mistikôsiwak (Wooden Boat People) is a diptych: Welcoming the Newcomers and Resurgence

of the People. Rooted in the approach of European Old Masters, one can spend hours uncovering minutiae at turns poignant and ironic.

Welcoming the Newcomers shows Indigenous people from many nations crowded onto a small rocky island.

Foreigners from different eras and geographic regions—a white missionary, a shackled Black man, and a Spanish conquistador—struggle onto the land, clearly having survived a shipwreck. Some of the tattooed Natives help the strange immigrants, including the painter’s alter ego, Miss Chief Eagle Testickle.

Many of the same individuals reappear in Resurgence of the People with different roles. In this scene, Miss Chief bravely leads her people in a boat across polluted water and past a rock island with angry neo-Nazis wearing police and military garb. References abound, especially to crises on water: John Singleton Copley’s Watson and the Shark (1778), Théodore Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa (1818–19), Emanuel Leutze’s Washington Crossing the Delaware (1851), and more. mistikôsiwak (Wooden Boat People) anchors the first part of this exhibition alongside other paintings imagining Indigenous people victorious over bungling settler-colonists. In some cases, this

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is a role reversal; more often the power dynamics are expressed through wry sexual domination. In Wild Flowers of North America and Saturnalia, Anglo men and gender-fluid people defy conventional binary dress codes in joyous outdoor parties. Miss Chief runs from extreme weather alongside her Mountie boyfriend in The Storm. Even with their historical references, these paintings serve as visions of a future in which trans and queer folk live openly in safety.

Monkman’s paintings for his 2023 Being Legendary exhibition, commissioned by the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), are included in this retrospective. Several of these (described in FAAM No. 39) depict mimikwisiwak (little people) and respond to fossils and items in the ROM collection.

Yet another series, including Three Women in a Courtyard (2018), Female Figures in a Prison (2019), and The Madhouse (2020), speaks to the disproportionately high percentage of incarcerated Indigenous people and the for-profit systems that exploit them. For these, Monkman lifted compositions and figures from religious paintings and works by Francisco Goya.

In a short documentary for the exhibition, Monkman explains his elaborate studio processes. Like the European artists he appropriates, he runs an atelier with numerous assistants, which streamlines and speeds production. He also hires live models but meticulously documents his tableaux so his team can work from photographs. Notably, Monkman prefers acrylics to oil.

History is Painted by the Victors is a visually and emotionally exhausting exhibition. Any one of Monkman’s series confronts viewers with extremely difficult truths. The current social and political climate adds further pressure to anyone with empathy. As I write this review, colonial and patriarchal violence recurs around the world. Monkman’s work underscores the cycle. It is hard to be optimistic. In these times, it is helpful to reflect on the resilience of colonized people, embodied in the unwavering strength of Miss Chief.

History is Painted by the Victors was on view at the Denver Art Museum from April 20 to August 17 and will be at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts from September 27, 2025, to March 8, 2026. A fully illustrated catalogue is available.

—Andrea L. Ferber, PhD

MONTERREY, NUEVO LEÓN, MX

Convergences— Divergences: Two Aesthetics, One Sensibility Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey

W

HAT CAN creations from the Ye'kwana communities in Amazonian Venezuela and Brazil and geometric abstract artworks by non-Native artists tell each other, and what do they reveal about us? This is the central question that the exhibition Convergences—Divergences: Two Aesthetics, One Sensibility at Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey (MARCO) explores by alternating Ye'kwana ritual baskets and objects with geometric abstract compositions by non-Native modern and contemporary artists, both part of Venezuelan entrepreneur Juan Carlos Maldonado’s art collection. While disparate in expressions, functions, and underlying worldviews, which the exhibition acknowledges, the pairing of these works while respecting their specificities and functions, reveals something more profound: the spiritual quest that is part of the human condition.

The exhibition, now at its final venue,1 relates directly to Maldonado’s collecting practice and features 130 paintings, sculptures, mixed-media works, drawings, baskets, wooden stools, baked clay pots, and other Ye'kwana ritual items. Maldonado began collecting in 2005, expanding from Latin American geometric abstraction to global modern and contemporary art. In 2018 he acquired more than 200 Ye'kwana creations previously owned by Venezuelan naturalist Charles Brewer-Carías, who gathered them mostly in the 1960s and ’70s during travels through Cariban-speaking Ye'kwana communities,

mainly in southern Venezuela near the Orinoco River and a few communities in northern Brazil.2 Brewer-Carías also authored Ye'kwana Basketry Symbology: Portal to a Parallel World (2019), evidencing Maldonado’s interest in understanding his holdings; baskets are a focus evident in MARCO’s exhibition.

Venezuelan curator Ariel Jiménez brings to the exhibition his expertise in modern and contemporary art and his firsthand familiarity with the Ye'kwana, gained through earlier work with the Kanarakuni community in Venezuela for a photography exhibition in Caracas.

“I traveled to this community and have shared impressions and ideas with them since 2011 for other projects, next to devoting decades to studying geometric abstraction,” Jiménez said in an online interview.3 For the Monterrey presentation, the museum’s director, Taiyana Pimentel, requested an introductory gallery to heighten recognition of the Ye'kwana people. This introduction presents their lifeways and cosmology to a Mexican audience largely unfamiliar with Amazonian cultures.

Jiménez’s curatorial approach is structured in three thematic sections: Technical Functionality and Symbolic Value, Generative Models, and Purity and Economy of Media. In all of them, the line, in its geometric forms and seemingly endless variations, is the protagonist. Many mainstream modern and contemporary artworks in the exhibition by Latin American and other international artists range from

1. This exhibition was first displayed in Miami at the Juan Carlos Maldonado Art Collection (2019) and later at Casa de América in Madrid (2024).

2. Nalúa Rosa Silva Monterrey, “Identidad, frontera y oportunidades: Los Ye'kwana de Venezuela en la frontera con Brasil.” Dossiê: Estados e etnias nas fronteiras amazônicas – Fronteira Venezuela-Brasil 43, no.

2 (2018): 27–54. The Ye'kwana are a Cariban-speaking people who live on both sides of the Venezuela– Brazil border in the basins of the Orinoco, Ventuari, Padamo, Caura, Paragua, Cuntinamo, and Uraricoera rivers. In Venezuela, they live in the states of Amazonas and Bolívar. Out of the 7,997 Ye'kwana who live in 20 settlements in Venezuela, about 3,280 live in the Caura River basin. In Brazil, they live in four communities totaling 593 people (População Indígena no Brasil, 2017, 2018).

3. Jiménez, email messages to author, August 8, 2025.

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the 1930s to 2024 and are two-dimensional. Still, tridimensionality is also present with works by American Sol LeWitt, German-Venezuelan Gego, and Lithuanian-Venezuelan Gerd Leufert, and makes a powerful statement in dialogue with the Ye'kwana basketry, formed mainly by strips of a long knot of several hand-harvested plants, including arrowroot (Marantaceae or kána), long-leafed Eduróa cane, arumã, and minñato, all of which undergo a complex and laborious preparation process.

However, the line not only formally connects the works but also reveals symbols and rituals beyond the realm of the visible. For the Ye'kwana, this means re-creating patterns in their basketry and other objects that manifest their understanding of the world. On the other hand, non-Native abstract artists, inspired by Western worldviews but also by other cultures they encountered such as those from Africa or Oceania—often through processes involving misappropriation— also sought in the line a pathway for their introspective journeys. “Though the Ye'kwana and these artists have no direct contact, I intended to open a conversation between their works, acknowledging both similarities and fundamental differences while respecting each,” Jiménez said in the online interview.

These profound connections emerge in works like Constructif avec poisson (ca. 1932) by Uruguayan artist Joaquín Torres-García, which features schematic, line-based drawings within a loosely traced grid. Each symbol, whether a house, a ship, or a fish, tells an interconnected story, recognizable only to those familiar with their culture. Similar symbolic intent is seen in Mathias Goeritz’s compositions, which point toward the intangible and almost metaphysical, described by the artist as “golden messages.” Ye'kwana symbols also appear throughout their basketry patterns, such as in Shiríri ahísha-háde (The Titi Monkey and Herons)4 (acquired in 1980), formed by a rhomboid-shaped grid filled with repeated motifs linked to mythical creatures surrounded by diagonal lines. In more complex examples like Awídi, amohadóto-yekumédi (acquired

in 2010), signs are woven together, often suggesting movement related to the cyclic view of time, with the creation of these objects often beginning as a circular form. Though fundamentally different from abstract artworks, they also convey narratives accessible only to community members.

All these aspects are not exclusive to these works but point to how cultural practices and knowledge are transmitted, along with beliefs and adaptations, across time and space. In a way this also adds an introspective layer to the exhibition, where each object and artwork is equally paired in a minimalist arrangement, leaving space open for interpretation.

Importantly, rather than reducing both expressions or forcing connections, the exhibition weaves subtle formal associations. At the same time, it recognizes that each group of works—those that in the West are classified as “fine art” and those of the Ye'kwana described as artistic production and symbolic practices—once labeled mainly by modern Western non-Native artists as “primitive art”—arises from contrasting worldviews.

The term primitive, however, is problematic, as it bears a Eurocentric ideology, something Jiménez acknowledges. “It is challenging to find a correct term to

above Ye'kwana artist once known, Wanádi tonóro mótai (The Back of the God Bird), acquired 1961, wája tomennáto (dyed round serving tray for cassava cakes), Eduróa (long-leafed guadua) splints, natural dye. opposite Ye'kwana artist once known, Awídi amohadóto-yekumédi (Remolí de 10 vueltas), ca. 20th c., wája tomennáto, Eduróa splints, natural dye. Photo: Rafael Guillen.

refer to these communities. Several have been used, like ‘primitive,’ ‘ancestral,’ or ‘first,” but all are problematic or can even be disrespectful, especially since many of the works are recent,” Jiménez said in the interview. He added: “We need to learn to acknowledge and respect the differences without diluting them, because these are specific cultures.”

Furthermore, for the Ye'kwana, these symbolic creations, featured in the exhibition labels in the Ye'kwana language (including Spanish and English translations), are also functional in daily activities, embedded within their cosmology and way of life. Variations exist between communities that here are specified through regions, mainly Jiuwihtiña in Bolivar and Cacurí in Amazonas, with artists labeled as “Anonymous Ye'kwana.”

Yet despite this diversity, the Ye'kwana share a unifying body of timeless stories, known as the Watunna, a corpus of spiritual narratives that recount their origins, values, territory, and boundaries, and are reflected in their artworks. “The artist, among the Ye'kwana, is thus not a creator of forms but an individual, one among many, capable of keeping alive the suprahuman presence and action that has governed the universe since the origins,” Jiménez states in the exhibition text.5 Something else is tangentially at play, as this group of items was mostly produced in the 1960s and 1970s.

Younger generations of the Ye'kwana are losing this knowledge likely due to migration, challenges, and globalization.

“Members of the Venezuelan Ye'kwana community I am in touch with, Kanarakuni, are familiar with the exhibition’s three iterations and take interest in them, as their work is respected and shown in renowned museums,” explained Jiménez.

Overall the exhibition, on view until October 11, 2025, opens a dialogue between the works but also invites the viewer to acknowledge and question preconceptions and paradigms. Lines, grids, squares, and intricate patterns act as meditative threads that, while coming from different latitudes and worldviews, also subtly point to the shared quest for meaning and purpose.

—Constanza Ontiveros Valdés, PhD

4. Charles Brewer-Carías gave the piece this name.

5. Ariel Jiménez, exhibition text, Convergences–Divergences: Two Aesthetics, One Sensibility, exhibition at Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey, June 13 to October 11, 2025. Translation from Spanish by author.

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SANTA FE

Kite and Wíhaŋble S’a Center: Dreaming with AI IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts

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HE EXHIBITION Kite and Wíhaŋble S’a Center: Dreaming with AI at the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (MoCNA) in Santa Fe features new works by artist Kite (Oglála Lakȟóta).

Kite, who also goes by Dr. Suzanne Kite, places the viewer at the center of two axes: between human and machine and art and technology. Combining various media, including video, sound, lights, interactive computers, stones, and beadwork, Kite explores the ethics and possibilities of artificial intelligence when approached through Lakȟóta ontologies.

Kite, who holds a BFA in music composition from the California Institute of the Arts, an MFA from Bard College, and a PhD in Fine Arts from Concordia University, is known in academia for her pioneering research into Indigenous artificial intelligence. Her work stems from ideas in Lakȟóta ontology, especially the understanding that both animate

above Installation view of Kite and Wíhaŋble S’a Center: Dreaming with AI at IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts. Photo: Jason S. Ordaz and Sallie Wesaw Sloan (Eastern Shoshone).

and inanimate beings possess spirit and volition. Dreaming with AI brings those theories into form by weaving sound, installation, video, and machine learning into a constellation of works that embody Indigenous Futurisms without severing ties to ancestral knowledge.

Dreaming with AI can be seen as part of the Indigenous Futurisms movement, which describes a wide-ranging cultural practice across literature, visual art, music, and film. Grounded in survivance and self-determination rather than erasure, Kite was part of the Initiative for Indigenous Futures (IIF) at Concordia University. Working with Professor Jason Edward Lewis (Native Hawaiian/Samoan) and a team of artists and scholars, IIF has provided a crucial platform for exploring how Indigenous peoples envision futures where technology and community are intertwined. Kite’s approach to AI is not an isolated endeavor but part of a larger collective imagining that situates Indigenous knowledge systems as vital to global discourses about technology and ethics.

IIF has produced projects ranging from storytelling workshops to virtual reality (VR) experiences, all grounded in Indigenous epistemologies.

Kite’s work resists the binary of historical arts versus innovation. Instead,

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she demonstrates how beadwork, textiles, sound, and video are all Indigenous technologies, all different media for expressing and transmitting knowledge. By situating AI within this continuum, she challenges the view of artificial intelligence as a purely Western, technocratic invention and instead offers a vision of AI as kin, as a potential ally, and as a medium through which dreams can continue to speak.

Devin Ronneberg (Native Hawaiian descent) and Kite’s interactive installation Ínyan Iyé (Telling Rock) was previously exhibited at the MoCNA in Indigenous Futurisms: Transcending Past/Present/ Future (2020), which hinted at many of the ideas expanded in Dreaming with AI. The ideas in the works follow her award-winning article, “Making Kin with the Machines,” co-authored with Jason Edward Lewis, Noelani Arista (Native Hawaiian), and Archer Pechawis (Mistawasis Cree). The Journal of Design and Science article considers how “Indigenous communities worldwide have retained the languages and protocols that enable us to engage in dialogue with our non-human kin,” positing a relationship between people and machines, particularly AI. In Lakȟóta worldview, objects such as stones and machines are alive and

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self-aware. Kite foregrounds this understanding by insisting that the artificial world of computers is never separate from the natural world but composed of it, such as the rare earth elements used in many components.

The museum added to the intensity and intimacy of the works by painting the walls a deep charcoal color and using dramatic spotlighting. In this setting, her large-scale installations, Wičháȟpi Wóihaŋbleya (Dreamlike Star) and Wičhíŋčala Šakówiŋ (Seven Little Girls), exemplify this approach. Stones and minerals are arranged in sacred geometric patterns, interwoven with experimental soundscapes and shifting projections of light.

The effect is immersive: visitors are suspended between the microscopic and the macrocosmic, between crystalline lattice and stellar constellation. The works blur distinctions between the human-made and the naturally occurring, insisting instead on an interdependence that feels at once ancient and forward-looking.

Another highlight of the exhibition is Oíhaŋke Waníča (Infinity), a digital embroidery machine stitching months of the artist’s dreams onto a long velvet scroll. Using a Lakȟóta visual language Kite developed with the Center for Art, Research, and Alliances in New York, the result is beautiful and enigmatic. Watching the machine embroider, one senses the patient unfolding of time, transforming dreams into material forms within a shared knowledge system.

Most of the works in the show were the product of collaborations with other artists, theorists, and programmers, which follows the ethos of kinship. Dreams, long understood within Lakȟóta culture as vital forms of communication and guidance, become in her work the basis for engaging with AI. Rather than treating dreams as irrational or merely personal, Kite and her collaborators elevate them into communal archives of possibility. This emphasis expands the scope of Indigenous Futurisms, which often dwell on interstellar or planetary futures, by grounding futurity in the intimate rhythms of sleep, rest, and the imagination.

The importance of dreams to Lakȟóta culture served as an inspiration for Cosmologyscape, one of the most interactive pieces in the exhibition. Visitors are invited to scan a QR code and enter details of a recent dream. An AI program processes the dream’s emotional content and narrative structure and translates it into abstract textile patterns drawn from Indigenous arts projected as animations within the gallery, a luminous dance of woven geometries. The piece evolved through collaboration with Afrofuturist artist Alisha B. Wormsley and poet Tricia Hersey, founder of the Nap Ministry, which famously declares, “Rest is resistance.” Together the work insists that sleep and dreams are not only private experiences but also sites of communal resilience and political resistance. In sharing dreams, participants stitch themselves into a broader fabric of belonging.

Cosmologyscape mirrors IIF’s commitment to communal storytelling by transforming private dreams into shared visual and sensory experiences. Similarly, Kite’s use of rare earth minerals and stones aligns with IIF’s insistence on grounding speculative futures in material realities, the recognition that our technologies are composed of the earth itself. Her art resonates with the works of other Concordia-affiliated artists, like Skawennati (Kahnawà:ke Mohawk), whose machinima reimagine Indigenous presence in virtual worlds. These artists suggest that Indigenous Futurisms are not about escaping into science fiction but about returning to Indigenous philosophies as guides for technological futures.

The exhibition further underscores its pedagogical mission by including a small bank of computers where visitors can learn more about artificial intelligence, as well as a selection of books that contextualize Kite’s practice within broader fields of Indigenous philosophy, ethics, and technology. This didactic element reinforces Kite’s role as both artist and teacher, one who understands art not as separate from knowledge production but as its necessary companion.

Dreaming with AI demonstrates how Kite is both the result of and a

pioneer into Indigenous Futurisms and highlights how an individual artist’s vision testifies to the power of Indigenous collectives to reframe global conversations about technology and ethics.

Dreaming with AI offers a new perspective on what an art exhibition can be, expanding the notion of life, cognition, and beauty. Asking visitors to reconsider their relationships with the stones beneath their feet, the machines in their pockets, and the dreams they carry each night, Kite suggests that AI need not be feared nor exploited but approached as kin with respect and care. In doing so, Kite offers not only a Lakȟóta-informed reimagining of artificial intelligence but also an ethics needed in our increasingly entangled world.

—Suzanne Newman Fricke, PhD

SANTA FE

Makowa: The Worlds Above Us Museum of Indian Arts and Culture

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HE SKY IS OURS TO WATCH and take note of. Above us are patterns and movements affecting the moment we are looking up and all the time we are not.

The Museum of Indian Arts and Culture’s newest exhibition, Makowa: The Worlds Above Us, co-curated by Marlon Magdalena (Jemez) and MIAC’s Deputy Director Elisabeth A. Stone, brings together Southwest-based Indigenous artists and researchers, who interpret the practice of looking up and observing what they see there. MIAC is dedicated to representing Pueblo, Diné, Apache, and other Indigenous cultures of the Southwest.1 Star and sky photography from New Mexico dominates the backdrops of the exhibition. Works placed in the foreground of these skyscapes possess a sense of timelessness. With stars behind or near them, traveling through space and time 1. “Museum of Indian Arts & Culture: Santa Fe, New Mexico,” Museum of Indian Arts & Culture, Santa Fe, New Mexico, accessed August 18, 2025, web.

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is not only normal but to be expected for these objects. There are solid backdrops, too, such as the ultramarine blue woven sky in Moon Landing Pictorial Rug by Melissa Benaly (Diné), in handspun wool and aniline dye. Here, two suited figures face each other with the American flag between them; one has just slotted it into the moon’s surface while the earth recedes far into the distance. Benaly’s woven wall hanging honors her children’s high school graduations, one of whom was particularly excited about a New Mexican woman going to space.2 Looking at the rug gives the viewer a sense of being able to retrieve what feels worlds away but is our reality: people have found a way to get to the moon. The weaving also demonstrates timelessness because it is nearly impossible to gauge when Benaly wove this (2001) or how long it took. The labor and time required for handweaving a Diné textile on a vertical loom would be daunting to many. Still, Benaly thought of her children while making it, and being inspired to “look up” helped propel her to

complete this work that ultimately makes the sky and her surroundings personal.

Time seems to spread even further, as it is under the same sky Benaly’s children graduated from high school, and people navigated to the moon. The same sky would have watched over Benaly as she wove this rendering. It is easy to lose track of time when considering this work and others in the exhibition.

Walking through Makowa is a unique experience from the rest of MIAC for its use of dimmer lighting. The lighting provides an even starker contrast to the spotlit objects or text and creates an atmosphere that lends itself to a more immersive experience. Darker lighting also replicates the exact worlds and scenes Makowa exists to acknowledge. Maybe there is no better work to encapsulate the process of looking up than Meteor Shower Over Tsoh Dzih by Waya Gary Keene (Acoma/Diné). Keene stylizes the night sky into a repeating geometric pattern as four onlookers take in the view before them in this painting. In a

above Melissa Benaly (Diné), Moon Landing Pictorial Rug, 2001, handspun wool and aniline dye, collection of the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture. Photo: Anna Smist (Sac & Fox).

meteor shower, the falling rocks look like “shooting stars” as they get closer to the earth,3 and in Keene’s work, the monochrome stars give the illusion of falling behind the earth’s surface, mimicking how they appear in real life. Keene’s painting reinforces the idea that there are always reasons to observe the sky and see what sight it offers. Still, it requires the right conditions as the four figures distance themselves from any bright lights or other sources of light pollution that could obscure their view. Together, the four gazers stare, entranced, at Keene’s sky, guiding the viewer to look where they are looking and be similarly mesmerized by the kaleidoscopic shapes there. Meteor Shower Over Tsoh Dzih has the effect of bringing the sky much closer to the viewer.

Stories, art, and research support each other in Makowa as the text permeating the exhibition relies on all of those combined. Testimonials featured in the exhibition range from tribal elder Elmer Torres (Powohgeh Owingeh) and ceramic artist Kathleen Wall (Jemez) to educator Jon Ghahate (Laguna Pueblo/Zuni) and many others who each lent their own perspectives to the field of astronomy.

The diversity of perspectives represented throughout Makowa relays how Southwest Indigenous observations of the sky since time immemorial, creation stories, and science are all related.

While the exhibition explores the night sky, it also emphasizes the importance of the sun. Wall text reads: One star, our sun, anchors the solar system with its gravitational pull, warms the planet, and provides daylight. Western astronomy tells us that a rotating earth causes our days and that a tilted earth orbiting the sun causes the seasons of the year. This knowledge is embedded and invisible in modern clocks and calendars, so some of us have stopped directly observing the motions of the sun and stars in the sky for timing and scheduling.

2. Object label for Rug or Wall Hanging by Melissa Benaly (Diné), 2001, in Makowa: The Worlds Above Us at the Museum of Indian Arts & Culture, Santa Fe, NM, seen on July 29, 2025.

3. “What Is a Meteor Shower?,” NASA, July 28, 2025, web.

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In other words, the sun and its impact on our daily lives are easily concealed by what we use to check the time.

By describing seasons as they relate to farming, art made from materials that can only be harvested at certain times, and more, Makowa emphasizes the relationship of the Native Southwest to watching the sky. Indigenous communities throughout time map the sun’s movements to determine farming practices, ceremonies, and other lifeways today.

Makowa left an impression on me, more than any exhibition I have seen in a long time, for its extensive collaboration and research. While not expressly stated, it is obvious to any viewer who steps into Makowa the lengths that the exhibition team went to make this show what it is.

Take, for example, the sheer volume of acknowledgments from more than one hundred names, including members of MIAC security staff, to observatories, planetariums, and individuals who contributed to Makowa in some way or another, that make up a slideshow located toward the middle of the exhibition. Making the effort to recognize and represent those involved in bringing the exhibition to life stood out to me as especially meaningful. The acknowledgments make clear how this exhibition is bigger than any one person, team, or site, as Makowa demonstrates how working with communities and bringing in seemingly disparate people or places together is possible, all while centering Indigenous worldviews and rooting those worldviews in various sciences, including astronomy. The exhibition team and their partners at MIAC and beyond should take pride in what Makowa accomplishes.

The exhibition does not end at MIAC or even when it closes to the public on August 17, 2026. Makowa follows viewers home when the sun sets on that day and asks them to look up and see the movements of our day—a time for thought and observation. Makowa allows us to absorb the world around us much more closely and realize Indigenous observers in the Southwest have always been looking up and observing what is there.

—Anna Smist (Sac & Fox)

above Jeremy Dennis (Shinnecock), Modern New Construction, For All Who Came Before, Witness, from the Sacredness of Hills series, 2020, dye-sublimation print on aluminum, 211/2 × 311/2 in., edition of 10.

SANTA FE

New Mythos Cara Romero Gallery

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N VIEW from August 14 to September 19, 2025, New Mythos expresses a multiverse of stories through artworks in the media of photography, printmaking, collage, and ceramics. Curated by Cara Romero (Chemehuevi) and Jaime Herrell (Cherokee Nation), the exhibition takes viewers down a winding road of upending sights that both question and reassert the function of memories. The participating Indigenous artists include Shelley Niro (Bay of Quinte Mohawk), Kent Monkman (Fisher River Cree), Diego Romero (Cochiti Pueblo), Cara Romero, Jeremy Dennis (Shinnecock), Robert King (Choctaw Nation), and Leah Mata Fragua (yak titʸu titʸu yak tiłhini Chumash). These artists present their visual narratives to viewers within a maze of psychological angles. Their artworks lead audiences through twists and turns during the looking process. These compositions challenge our understandings of what we see at first glance—and what this imagery becomes once it settles in a little further.

Shelley Niro’s Flying Woman series (1994/2023) of black-and-white

photographs weave the mind’s eye through community gathering, floral beadwork patterns, and textures of the land. These images offer a fragmented approach to creating snapshots of cultural memory, akin to how memory operates.

The “Flying Woman” narrator and witness of this series harkens to the Haudenosaunee creation story of Sky Woman’s descent towards a turtle’s back, which becomes Turtle Island. The repetition of imagery in these photographs suggests a circularity of remembering through overlapping experiences across generations.

Kent Monkman’s Fate is a Cruel Mistress (2017) series of prints reimagines the artist’s alter ego, Miss Chief Eagle Testickle, as a protagonist in biblical narratives. Created in collaboration with photographer Chris Chapman, this imagery places emphasis on the time immemorial history of two-spirit Indigenous people. Claiming presence across time, this series recreates two-spirit representation in the past, where Miss Chief Eagle Testickle engages new interventions with these historic characters.

Diego Romero’s ceramics and printmaking challenge conceptions of the visual style in which to tell Indigenous stories. Odyssey (2025), a clay polychrome bowl, merges Pueblo pottery with Greek mythology. The outer bands of wild spinach and checkerboard, or cornfield, designs found in Pueblo

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above Cara Romero (Chemehuevi), When Animals Were People (A Study), 2025, cyanotypes on archival paper, archival ink on silk organza, clothlines, clothespins, 6 APs, ed. of 1.

pottery since time immemorial, suggest that Pueblo cultures could predate the history of the Greeks. The circularity of the bowl and these patterned bands set up a parallel between the nonlinear storytelling of Pueblo communities and that of Greek poems such as The Odyssey.

In the center of the bowl, Romero portrays an encounter between a female protagonist, with a piercing stare and a glass of wine, and a vulnerable male companion who lies nude in front of her with closed eyes. This shifts this story’s focus to the woman’s perspective. The image emphasizes feminine strength, a recurring theme in Romero’s work, like Cara (2018), a lithograph on view where he envisions his wife, Cara, as the 20th-century pop hero, Wonder Woman.

Cara Romero’s new body of cyanotype photography provides a layered sensibility to memory with a double print of each image—one on paper and one on a silk organza sheet overlaid on top. This series, When Animals Were People (A Study) (2025), calls to mind the self-determination of four-legged beings. It considers animals’ own empowerment and stories of connection. At once, it conveys a perspective of the interdependence of animals and humans. Romero’s use of cyanotypes honors the power of sunlight, with the blue making visual connections

to the sky, horizon, and water. These images present animals as community.

Jeremy Dennis’ photographs on aluminum in his series The Sacredness of Hills (2018–ongoing) make a deep connection with the concept of land as body.

His frames feature a female protagonist, both lying and sitting on piles of stones and dirt that were unearthed and moved by tractors at Indigenous burial sites.

These lands are near his home community in New York.

This sequence of images highlights the pain of industrial force and destruction on Indigenous communities and ancestors. It calls attention to the permanent effects of real estate development that render Indigenous places of memory unrecognizable. In turn, people will find new ways to remember Indigenous stories out of necessity, so these stories can live on into the future.

Robert King’s ceramics call our attention to Native lands in terms of pattern. His body of stoneware vessels asks viewers to slow our pace and take note of the nuances in each part of the clay. generations and generations (2025) is an oblong jar with a column of pebble-like forms. This dark-toned vessel, fired in a reduction process, facilitates a portal to consider our memories of this rock-like shape. Do we see it in the dry riverbeds?

Do we find it at the edge of the ocean tide?

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A rounded jar, fragility (2025), evokes a feeling of looking through clouded layers. It presents us with moments of unresolvedness. Its dark tonality under a light surface suggests silt or smoke. fragility gives visitors an open moment to find memories.

King’s oblong jar, vein (2025), focuses our attention on vitality and direction. It highlights veins as a source, particularly of clay. In this way, this vessel tells its own creation stories to viewers.

Deep Time (2025), with a wide shoulder and V-shaped body, visualizes a glimpse of layers of land. It hints at the striated mesas and mountains of the Southwest and recognizes the embedded knowledge within the earth and clay.

Emphasizing the handmade, Leah Mata Fragua’s large-scale collages offer Indigenous narratives created with paper she crafted, imbued with dyes that embed place into her imagery. The Sky Took Them (2025) bridges the use of indigo and the dependency of this plant on the earth and sky. This narrative honors the masculine family and community members who leave during people’s lifetimes, depicted as geese in this teaching. For the artist, this mixed-media work remembers the loss of her own brother. In this composition, Fragua nurtures her understanding of a Chumash story of the Pleiades. The mica gives the collage a starlight twinkle.

In Dog Girl (2025), Fragua reclaims the strength and pride of Chumash women. With the “dog girl” held by a large set of hands, the artist conveys love and care for this story to uphold its original purpose of centering feminine existence.

With handmade paper dyed with chamisa and cochineal, the sky suggests a sunrise or sunset, both moments of transition.

Overall, this exhibition serves as a retelling of Indigenous stories through the artists’ own intentions, journeys, and media. They draw us into these artworks to consider another truth, another perspective, another possibility. They upend the idea of a single protagonist or storyteller. These artists honor Indigenous presence. They share knowledge of the shapeshifting of land, animals, and people and the ways that these beings alter our realities. Through our mind’s eyes, these artists hold our hands to their hearts.

—Michelle J. Lanteri, PhD

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SANTA FE

Once Within a Time 12th SITE SANTA FE International

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UNCTUATED BY A FOCUS on artists with connections to New Mexico, the 12th SITE SANTA FE International, Once Within a Time, highlights known and unknown artists on the contemporary stage. Open June 27, 2025, to January 12, 2026, and taking place at 14 locations—including a cannabis shop and the window of a toy store—as well as the roving Axle Contemporary, it is a sometimes harried and other times tranquil display.

The first stop is the main venue, the meandering hallways of SITE SANTA FE’s Railyard location, which was home to the old guard, including the late Pablita Velarde (Santa Clara Pueblo, 1918–2006), Pop Chalee (Taos Pueblo, 1906–1993), and N. Scott Momaday (Kiowa, 1934– 2024). Established artists such as Will Wilson (Diné), Terran Last Gun (Piikani), and Autumn Chacon (Diné/Xicana) are represented, as are early career artists Maureen Gruben (Inuvialuk) and Diego Medina (Piro/Manso/Tiwa1). International in scope, this exhibition centers Native artists within the larger gallery space and narrative.

The first piece one encounters is Autumn Chacon’s Between our Mother’s Voice and Our Father’s Ear (2016–ongoing), a recording that reverberates throughout the room of sounds of storytelling by artists and elders such as Mary Jiron (Ohkay Owingeh) and Daisy Quezada Ureña (Mexican-American), the new academic dean of the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA). In the same room are three weavings by Marilou Schultz (Diné), echoing the technology forming a link to Chacon’s aural piece.

The standouts of Schultz’s weavings are the microchip-inspired Integrated Circuit Chip & AI Diné Weaving (2024), Stock Market Digital Image (2022), and Popular Chip (2025), which frame the wall opposite Chacon’s. On the adjoining wall in the

same gallery is the story of Chester Nez (Diné), with historical objects connected to his fellow 28 Navajo Code Talkers.

Included at the leading site are non-Native artists such as the American sculptor Simone Leigh, whose work recontextualizes the Black diaspora with a focus on women. Mound (2025) is particularly stunning with its stoneware cowrie shells, a shell culturally significant to many peoples around the world. Mound complements Untitled (2025), a stoneware female form with raffia skirt. Untitled is almost living with natural materials and a female form, while Mound is exaggerated and static but captivating. Also in the gallery are lithographs of Kiowa shields by the late N. Scott Momaday punctuated by the poetry of his daughter, Jill Scott Momaday (Kiowa), and the storyteller figures of the historically significant potter Helen Cordero (Cochiti, 1915–1994).

Further into the exhibition are paintings by Pop Chalee, including pieces that typify her style: Mythical Horse, Blue Deer (c. 1945), and Mystical Forest (c. 1970). These contrast with a contemporary sculpture and video installation. On the adjoining wall are the works of Maureen Gruben’s Nakataq series (2022–present), etchings on aerial surveys that show ice flows of the Northwest Territories.

The next few rooms explore themes of surrealism and abstraction with works by painter Awa Tsireh (San Ildefonso Pueblo, 1898–1955), photographer Will Wilson, Peruvian installation artist and sculptor Ximena Garrido-Lecca, ledger artist Terran Last Gun, and Diego Medina, whose surrealistic clouds are banded

and touched by an almost neon haze.

German-born painter Agnes Lawrence Pelton (1881–1961) and English-born painter Rebecca Salsbury James (1891– 1968) represent 20th-century Symbolism and Surrealism. To add to the dizzying array and to lead to the next room are works by Pablita Velarde, many on loan from the Heard Museum. Velarde’s paintings portray Pueblo people with a focus on female figures.

Another gallery features works focused on the body, including a series

by South African painter Penny Siopis; the traveling trunk of early 19th-century Hispano gambler Dona Tules; and the late painter and sculptor Norman Zammitt (Kahnawà:ke Mohawk, 1931– 2007). Zammitt taught at the University of New Mexico but was censored by the university in 1962; his box paintings returned to New Mexico after over half a century. This room presents a striking view of the body and one to experience.

The near-transparent yet heavy ombre red mesh dividers recall a medical office, which turns back to the galleries, showing Momaday’s and Leigh’s work, completing the circuit.

The central Santa Fe location is dizzying with artists from near and far.

The next of the twelve sites I visited was Finquita in Tesuque. This old sculpture fabrication studio will be home to Finquita Project, an art collective, and the furthest away, as Finquita is the only site not technically in Santa Fe. It is home to artworks that require more space, including the fabulous work of Thai artist Korakrit Arunanondchai, whose two pieces, Nostalgia for Unity (2025) and

below Marilou Schultz (Diné), Stock Market Digital Image, 2022, wool, aniline dye.

1. The Piro/Manso/Tiwa Indian Tribe of the Pueblo of San Juan Guadalupe are unrecognized but have an active petition seeking federal recognition as a Native American tribe. —Ed.

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Unity for Nostalgia (2025), captivated the audience with amber fog and ash, a mustsee for an experimental art connoisseur.

Moving on to the only site devoted entirely to Native American art is the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian on Museum Hill. Outside on the Wheelwright’s plaza are two statues

by Raven Halfmoon (Caddo/Choctaw/ Delaware): Neesh+Soku (2022) and the 9-foot-tall Sinti Pokni / Snake Grandmother (2022) that faces the mountain ridge and contains Sun and Moon mountains. Halfmoon describes her sculptures as a reflection of her being, ancestry, femininity, and place as a woman in the wider world. The color palette features dark bronze, deep glossy black, glossy white, and red, modern elements on the plaza that once housed the bronzes of Allan Houser. Entering the museum through the portal to the historic Klah Gallery, Once Within a Time showcases the work of four contemporary artists: abstract painter Emmi Whitehorse (Diné), Peruvian multidisciplinary artist Cristina Flores Pescorán, filmmaker and visual artist Sky Hopinka (Ho-Chunk/Pechanga), and the sculptor Nora Naranjo Morse (Santa Clara Pueblo). Naranjo Morse created her burlap-and-wire sculpture on site to encompass the entire gallery, growing out from the center like a tree. Whitehorse’s paintings, four from the WMAI’s collection and one large work procured specially for the exhibition, contrast with

Flores Pescoran’s diaphanous weavings and hypnotizing coral-like drawings on the opposite wall. Videos from Flores Pescorán and Hopinka provide sound and light that bounces throughout the gallery, giving life to the space that dates back to 1937. This addition to the coziness created by the warm tones of the logs in the hogan-inspired roof contrasts with the shocking blue carpeting. Flores Pescoran’s piece also features a performance aspect, presented twice on June 29, 2025, in which the artist interacted with the installed works. The performance was conducted in Spanish and will eventually be made available online.

Another venue that houses Native-focused art in the international biennial includes the Palace of the Governors in the New Mexico History Museum, where the work of Mexican-American ceramicist Daisy Quezada Ureña can be seen. The work of Canadian sculptor Gabrielle L’Hirondelle Hill (Métis) is featured in a structure behind Las Palomas Hotel.

The show is a success in both scope and interest from collectors, blending the contemporary mainstream art world with the contemporary Native art world, which at times seems to contrast. Overall, the sights encompass aspects of the landscape, the body, and the mind that meld into an array of tangible experiences.

—Kateri Smith (Blackfoot/ Métis descent)

below Maureen Gruben (Inuvialuk), Nakataq IV, 2022, hand etchings on photographic aerial survey print, unique, 32 × 521/8 × 2 in.

SANTA FE

Visualizing K’é: New Works by Marwin Begaye Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian

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N DISPLAY THROUGH March 28, 2026, Visualizing K’é: New Works by Marwin Begaye is a gem of a show, located in the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian’s modest Schultz Gallery. Fifteen large-scale, mixed-media works by printmaker, painter, and drawer Marwin Begaye (Diné) fill the room, accompanied by a short video by filmmaker Kaela Waldstein, in which Begaye talks about his inspirations and shares his process, pulling marker and pencil across paper.

Organized by Hadley Welch Jensen, the museum’s curator of collections and research, Visualizing K’é is both rich and digestible. Limited signage includes vinyl quotes, text about the exhibition, an artist statement, acknowledgments, and a panel titled “The Wheelwright Museum and the Legacy of Hastíín Klah.” Hastíín Klah (Diné, 1867–1937) was a medicine person, cofounder of the museum, and ceremonial singer. Begaye’s engagement with restricted recordings of Diné cultural songs stewarded by the museum provides the foundation for the show.

While protecting culturally sensitive information, Begaye distills his thoughts into art.

The Diné word k’é relates to kinship, 1 setting the tone for Begaye’s creative intentions. In his artist statement, he shares: Visualizing K’é examines relationships through Navajo aesthetics. Within our cultural stories that begin with the epic Creation story that brings our people to the present fifth world (the Glittering World), there are relationships between shapes and characters rooted 1. “Used as both a noun and a verb in Diné bizaad (the Navajo language), k’é is an active organizing principle that refers to the process of maintaining kinship,” Visualizing K’é: New Works by Marwin Begaye intro panel, Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian.

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in our philosophy. These shapes are regularly found within our many forms of creativity, such as rugs, jewelry, and adornment—even how we tie our hair.

Navajo philosophy has different ways of learning and expression, including oral history, songs, stories, art, and language.… The drawings produced for this exhibition are based on a lifetime of cultural training and recent research, including listening to recorded Navajo songs and reading all that I could locate in the published record.

The viewer first sees abstract and symbolic linework. Sky (2024), which combines drawing with screen print and woodblock in ink and acrylic on dyed paper, rests against a central yellow pillar grounded at the bottom by a white border motif seen in Diné weavings. Past the pillar is a series of black-and-white works wrapping from the back wall to adjacent

walls, which present curving, swirling heavy black lines intersecting and overlaying geometric shapes and abstracted Diné cultural forms like crosses, stars, and stepped clouds. Intricate hatched and cross-hatched lines build texture and tone. Above the works is a quote by Begaye: “This series expresses my love for line and how it creates movement—color is just an interruption.” That said, several works in the exhibition demonstrate a joyful layering of color and form. Sky has the same structured and flowing lines as the series on the back wall, though punctuated with splashes of blue and floral and star shapes in yellow.

A complex interplay of colorful components can be observed in the gorgeous Egrets Protection (2024), depicted in woodblock, ink, and acrylic on dyed paper. Casually displayed on the side of the central pillar, Egrets Protection

“This series expresses my love for line and how it creates movement— color is just an interruption.”

above Installation view of Visualizing K’é: New Works by Marwin Begaye with Egrets Protection (2024), collection of the Walker Youngbird Foundation, in foreground. Photo: Hadley Welch Jensen.

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demonstrates the artistic chops Begaye has developed over the years. Begaye has realistically depicted an egret in black ink, with yellow and blue accents for the bill and eye details. Black, yellow, orange, red, pink, light blue, navy, and green shapes, patterns, and textures, rendered with ink and paint, intersect and layer across the paper. Another work in a similar style is Morning Greeting (Meadowlark) (2024), created with screen print, woodblock, ink, and acrylic on dyed paper, adjacent to the entrance. While these works are positioned in such a way as not to be the immediate focus of the show, they do underscore Begaye’s proficiency and inform the viewer of his capabilities. His works that focus on strict linework and abstraction are a choice that has nothing to do with limitations in ability.

Additionally, Begaye’s inclusion of specific birds in his body of work points to their significance in Diné cultural stories.

Figuring prominently in Diné worldviews and cultural practices, these beautiful beings of earth and sky are no accident.2 Honored birds such as a bluebird, crane, and more appear in Spirit of the Horse (2024), a lithograph; Spring Time Visitor (2024), a lithograph, relief, and monoprint; Gift of Fire (2024), a lithograph; and Taa Altso Hozho naa hasdlii (Beauty is Restored) (2023), woodblock on paper.

Taa Altso Hozho naa hasdlii (Beauty is Restored) depicts a golden eagle centered over four-pointed star patterns, shaded geometric Diné cloud designs, and a Diné wedding basket. Begaye writes that the work “references that everything has been restored back to order at the end of every prayer. The eagle is considered the messenger, the one who watches all and flies the highest. The eagle was created with woven beams of light from the sky—dawn, day, sunset, and night—in a white shell basket surrounded by sunlight and the rainbow.”3 The work is predominantly black and white, accented by red on the basket and yellow on the eagle’s beak and eye.

Between these two poles of black linework and colorful mixed-media pieces with realistic depictions of birds,

other works demonstrate different degrees of inclusion of color and realism.

Spirit of the Horse is a looser work, where the bluebird merges with the background.

Water Flow (2024), a screen print, woodblock, ink, and acrylic work, is all line and pattern, with a delicate interplay of a rainbow of colors and white paint. The works in Visualizing K’é demonstrate a balance between chaos and structure, looseness and control. Black-and-white works are framed in black, while works with color are framed in unpainted, natural wood.

Visualizing K’é is accompanied by an attractive 32-page catalogue, with copies available for reading in the exhibition space and for purchase in the museum’s Case Trading Post. The catalogue provides attendees with a deeper dive into Begaye’s works through his thoughtful, philosophical descriptions, joined by director Henrietta Lidchi’s foreword, Jensen’s curatorial statement, and Begaye’s artist statement. The catalogue was designed by Kevin Coochwytewa (Isleta Pueblo/Hopi), who also designed the signage for the show.

Though Begaye is an accomplished, internationally exhibiting artist, moving within academic settings, markets, and the printmaking world, he has not typically received fanfare in the Native art world commensurate with his work.

Visualizing K’é gives Begaye his due. The show is tightly presented, with the more exploratory works still tied to the main themes and motifs. The works are easily appreciated on a formal level and offer a window into the techniques of the printmaker’s world while potentially inviting viewers into a broader understanding of the complex worldviews of the Diné. They link worldview, heart, respectable skill, and a consistent artistic practice. Begaye is an artist’s artist. Considering the context of Santa Fe, Visualizing K’é offers a compelling example to Native art students and developing artists of how tribal perspectives, cultural forms and symbols, realism, and varied artistic techniques can be gracefully integrated.

—Neebinnaukzhik Southall (Chippewas of Rama First Nation)

2. Neebinnaukzhik Southall, “Wild Things,” 2025 Indian Market Artist Directory and Booth Guide, SWAIA Santa Fe Indian Market and Hutton Broadcasting, 106–07.

3. Marwin Begaye, Visualizing K’é: New Works by Marwin Begaye (Santa Fe: Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian, 2025), 16.

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TOPEKA, KS

DoPiKa: Reinstate Mulvane Art Museum

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HE MULVANE ART MUSEUM, located on the edge of the Washburn University campus, has welcomed a new exhibition to its main level galleries. DoPiKa: Reinstate, organized by 785 Arts, strives to restore and amplify Native voices in both the history and art world here in Kansas, specifically Topeka and Shawnee County.

They also focus on contemporary Indigenous artists who use their art to speak on concerns in relation to the struggles faced by their communities. These concerns stem from the violent history of the U.S. government’s treatment of Indigenous nations, specifically those that have either been removed from or forced into Kansas. The organization and the exhibition recognize the importance of these historic events and their impact on how Native voices are treated in mainstream conversations.

One half of the exhibition, located in the study gallery on the first floor, contains panels sharing the history of some of the tribes who either used to or still reside in Shawnee County. These panels offer educational background to museumgoers and give basic information about the history of Kansas and its land.

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While the panels don’t delve too deeply into this history, they provide a good start for those who want to look further into the topics discussed.

Many Native artists have fought to be recognized in the mainstream art world. The mixing of political, social, and environmental damage witnessed by the artists in this exhibition can be seen in the works of art on display in the form of prints, paintings, quilts, and interactive displays that make up the second half of the exhibition.

One of the featured artworks, Rainbow Star Quilt Wearable, by Sydney Jane Brooke Campbell Maybrier Pursel (Iowa) is presented on a mannequin, arms spread open in a welcoming stance. This work carries deep meaning for both the pains of the community and the personal identity of the artist. While it shows off a beautiful array of vibrant colors, the piece serves as a reminder of the survival of symbolism and Native culture through sewing and quilting, skills taught to Native children at Indian boarding schools in an effort to assimilate them.

Rainbow Star Quilt Wearable also played an important part in Pursel’s other piece, Revitalize or the Opposite of an Apple, a symbolic performance video done entirely by Pursel in which she expresses her struggle with being forced to hide her Native identity. At the end of the video she breaks free from her “cocoon” and turns into her true self, wearing the quilt as she flies like a butterfly. The theme of these two pieces encapsulates an important part of the exhibition: the feeling of pride in one’s identity and the hardship it takes to sustain it.

Like Pursel, Norman Akers (Osage/ Pawnee) also tackles personal and cultural identity in his works, as well as environmental concerns and contemporary society. This can be seen in his unique approach to these topics: image prints that consist of maps of modern-day borders overlaid with different imagery of elk calling for their destroyed homes; the heads of American founding fathers and presidents placed inside of alien UFOs; or

above Sydney Jane Brooke Campbell Maybrier Pursel (Iowa), Rainbow Star Quilt Wearable, 2015, cotton, spandex, polyester, chainette fringe, buckles, snaps, ties. opposite Reuben IronHorse-Kent (Iowa/Otoe/Kickapoo), Prime, early 21st century, acrylic on canvas board, collection of the Mulvane Art Museum. Both photos: Viryriana Flores.

of man-made waste covering the body of nature. Akers’ approach to environmental matters is especially fascinating, as he incorporates Osage mythos with these art pieces by including the elk, an important figure in their creation story. He shares a piece of himself using the Osage stories and combines them with current issues, which makes his artworks feel more vulnerable and much more impactful.

Akers isn’t the only one who finds importance in sharing oral stories.

Reuben IronHorse-Kent (Iowa/Otoe/ Kickapoo) works to show a fresh style of visualization for these teachings. In his painting, Prime, IronHorse-Kent wants to “upgrade the physicality of stories as contemporary expression of persistence” to prove to others that, despite everything, these oral stories and storytellers are still here.

Other pieces tell us the importance of remembering and preserving the memories of those who suffered great loss at

the hands of an invading government.

Some of these pieces direct their attention to the historic and present-day robbery of Native culture and place; some tell us about the creation of new history and the changing of Native language; and some stress the importance of paying attention to the present and future generations of Native peoples.

Overall, the galleries were educational and flowed gracefully. This exhibition did a beautiful job in supporting the DoPiKa Project’s mission.

The importance of amplifying Native art cannot be understated, which is why it is essential for the general public to support organizations that help bring Indigenous causes to light.

DoPiKa: Reinstate will be on display at the Mulvane Art Museum until November 15, 2025, while its sister location at the NOTO Art Center will continue to show DoPiKa Project exhibits here in Topeka.

—Viryriana Flores

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BOOK REVIEW The Buffalo Hunter Hunter Stephen Graham Jones Saga Press, 2025

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BIRD’S-EYE DESCRIPTION of the latest book by Stephen Graham Jones (Blackfeet) is easy: Native American Gothic horror novel. Like its ultimate forebears, Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s Frankenstein, and maybe even Beowulf, on one level it is about things that go bump in the night (reading it late in a dark, empty house is recommended) but on a deeper level it’s about sinister forces that can be unleashed upon any of us.

As a professor of English and a novelist with a deep catalogue, Jones draws from a myriad of literary influences, from American stalwarts like Louis L’Amour and Stephen King to 19th-century penny dreadfuls and contemporary graphic novels.

Things even get downright Kafkaesque for one character. But The Buffalo Hunter Hunter also dives deeply into the culture and terminology of the Blackfeet, especially the Pikuni band, and draws on knowledge that no doubt survived cultural assimilation 98 | FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE NO. 48, FALL 2025

via oral lore. The concept of the Algonquian windigo, both corporeal and metaphorical, is at the book’s core.

Another polestar is The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse (2001) by Louise Erdrich (Turtle Mountain Ojibwe).

These novels share a host of themes and details, and it was not surprising to read in Jones’ “Acknowledgments” that Erdrich’s novel “was and is vital for The Buffalo Hunter Hunter.”

In both, the primary tale begins in 1912, with a harried, contemporary character whose possession of written records brings to light long-held secrets in a separate timeline. Both books include men of the cloth who think about food quite a lot, often instead of the task at hand. Christian concepts resonate, especially sin and the relationship between those confessing it and their confessor. Spirit journeys are taken; spirit animals make visitations. And a profound individual transformation is at the heart of each, with a primary character becoming something “other” and thereafter required to take great care of how they appear.

Both novels are set in the Northern Plains as Native peoples (Ojibwe in the case of Last Report) are still in collective shock after the industrialized slaughter of the buffalo and the collapse of their way of life. Its European immigrants, napikwan to the Blackfeet, have carried their own less-profound psychic wounds to the “new world” as they try to establish themselves in a place they don’t understand and still fear. The congregants of the Lutheran pastor Arthur Beaucarne, one of three primary characters in The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, are so fresh off the boat that he conducts Sunday service in German. Trauma wanders the plains in place of the buffalo.

Beaucarne is the medium through which the protagonist’s story unfolds. Good Stab, one of several names he has carried, slides into Beaucarne’s church and methodically becomes an enigma. To avoid spoilers, let’s just say Good Stab is playing a long game while Beaucarne is out of his element. It is Beaucarne’s journal found a century later that comprises most of the novel. The rest tells the unfortunate adventures of its modern protagonist and third primary character, Etsy Beaucarne, a jaded academic who ends up with her forebear’s journal—and far more than she bargained for.

In the main narrative, Good Stab carries his individual and collective trauma with quiet though sinister dignity. He drops into Miles City, Montana, a raw town full of human tumbleweeds. These include prostitutes who lose their brothel cat, drunk sources of information, and a Pinkerton on a mission.

Think Deadwood, South Dakota, in HBO’s Deadwood.

The Pinkerton agent is not the only person in town on a mission. Good Stab is a man with a plan. The first is to tell Beaucarne his story, which is not just his but that of his band, the Small Robes, and the broader suffering of the Blackfeet, including the 1870 Marias Massacre and the Starvation Winter of 1883–84.

But telling his story is just step one. Explaining the breadth of what unfolds thereafter would be giving too much away. Suffice it to say, things get weird and spooky, and then … weirder. Pastor Beaucarne very much comes to wish Good Stab had wandered into someone else’s church, though there is a reason his was chosen.

Last Report traverses the lineage-sagas that are such a part of Erdrich’s oeuvre, telling the tales of multiple characters around

Art all year-round.

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the central passion of its centerpiece, Father Damien Modeste.

Jones’ novel, in contrast, is taut, built around its three principal characters. The main action is Good Stab recounting his life and how and why he’s ended up confessing to Pastor Beaucarne in the back pew of a German Lutheran outpost while … well, things start going bump in the night.

Both novels bring the wild forces unleashed by the march of European-wrought economics across the North American continent into focus. For Natives, the ordeal is obvious, as their cultural economies have been obliterated and the now rampant Gilded Age capitalism has no use for them. But the local napikwan didn’t come to the “new world” because they were the economic winners in their “old” one. They mostly ended up somewhere they don’t understand, or even like, to serve the needs of the robber barons’ transcontinental railroads.

This is the setting for Good Stab’s transformation. None too subtly, he is infected by something from the European old world that unleashes in him an insatiable hunger. To borrow the Hopi word koyaanisqatsi, he is cursed to live a “life out of balance.” Most of the characters in The Buffalo Hunter Hunter are forlorn, trapped in lives that don’t feel quite right: lacking a sense of belonging, at the mercy of forces beyond their control; especially Etsy Beaucarne, the contemporary character who has been chewed up and spit out by American higher education and is simply adrift when her ancestor’s journal ends up in her hands.

One of the most profound aspects of both novels is their deep intertwining of Christian doctrine—gospels both light and dark—and Indigenous spirituality. Pastor Beaucarne, via long sessions listening to Good Stab, gets a crash course on Blackfeet cosmology and ethics. In Last Report, Father Damien dedicates a life to listening to what is considered, in Catholic nomenclature, his flock, though in reality the people of the Little No Horse reservation care for him as deeply as he does them. Father Damien is a recorder of Indigenous history as well.

Ultimately the fates of these two “Bible people,” as characterized by a minor player in The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, provide the most profound contrast between these tales. Pastor Beaucarne does not find the grace that Father Damien experiences, in large part because he’s never seen Native Americans as anything but the “other,” including Good Stab, who really brings his “otherness” to bear. Beaucarne is not a wise man, nor even a good one.

In contrast, for Father Damien, redemption flows from his deep acceptance of his Ojibwe companions as peers, his recognition of their culture as one as powerful as that from which he sprang, the Western culture that produced the music of Chopin that is such a fierce force throughout the priest’s long, varied life.

Both novels end with the final scenes of these men of the cloth, each at the mercy of women who have served as their secret-keepers. Father Damien’s culmination is full of grace; Pastor Beaucarne’s, not so much.

—Peter Letzelter-Smith

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Gitxsan Author, Journalist & Educator

ANGELA STERRITT

By Matthew Ryan Smith, PhD

L above Angela Sterritt hosts the CBC podcast, Land Back. opposite Angela Sterritt. Photo: George Lawson. Both images courtesy of the author.

UU ALGAXIM TS'IM XBIIST, Angela Sterritt, is of the Wilps 'Wii K'aax of the Gitanmaax community within the Gitxsan Nation on her father’s side and from Bell Island, Newfoundland, on her mother’s side. She spent nearly two decades at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) as a journalist and host across television, radio, and digital platforms and became known for her uncompromising reporting on Indigenous issues. She also hosted the award-winning CBC original podcast Land Back.

Sterritt’s first book is Unbroken: My Fight for Survival, Hope, and Justice for Indigenous Women and Girls (Greystone Books, 2023). Part memoir and part investigation into the murders and

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disappearances of Indigenous women and girls, it became a national bestseller in May 2023. Unbroken was also nominated for the Governor General’s Literary Awards, one of Canada’s oldest and most prestigious literary prizes, and the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction.

In 2024 Sterritt announced her second book, Breakable, to be released in the spring of 2026. Breakable will investigate how racism and colonialism cultivate harmful behaviors in men and how Indigenous men and communities are breaking cycles of unhealthy notions of masculinity.

In 2021 she won an Academy Award (Canadian Screen Award) for Best Reporter of the Year in Canada for her coverage of an Indigenous man and his then 12-year-old granddaughter who were arrested while trying to open a bank account at the Bank of Montreal in Vancouver. In 2020 Sterritt was named in Vancouver Magazine’s Power 50 list of the city’s 50 most influential people. Also that year, the Canadian Screen Awards nominated her for best local reporter for her journalism on Indigenous babies apprehended by the Ministry of Children and Family Development.

As a motivational speaker, Sterritt talks about overcoming adversity, breaking stereotypes, and creating change. Her visual art—mostly large-scale paintings and murals—has been exhibited across Canada, the United States, and China.

MRS: Writing and journalism go hand in hand; however, there are differences between journalistic writing and the autobiographical approach. Can you speak about how you balance these two, and specifically how you use them interchangeably in Unbroken?

AS: Many tensions unfolded in writing my debut book. Balance is a good word, as Unbroken was about creating an

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emphasis on the stories and experiences of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls while sharing my own lived experience as an Indigenous girl and woman living in the margins, without overshadowing those who did not survive. Coming from a journalistic background, it is engrained into your psyche that you are never part of the story. When I wrote Unbroken from 2015 to 2020, this was taboo, and fortunately, today with the advent of podcasts and other media that normalize lived experience as expertise, it is more common now.

However, back then it took a lot of coaxing from my agent and editor to include myself in the book. There was also an underpinning idea that this type of genre-bending in the literary world was unorthodox. At the time I saw a few examples of investigative journalism blended with memoir.

So there was an awkwardness in presenting my work to peers in both journalistic and writing circles. It was challenging, but in the end, I am glad I stayed true to my vision as it has largely informed my next book.

MRS: I wrote much of my dissertation on autobiographical art, which meant reading and studying a wide range of literary memoirs and scholarship, then applying those ideas to the visual arts. I’m curious, what do you think makes for strong memoir or autobiographical writing?

AS: I think what people find appealing about memoir writing is shifting a bit. We are hardwired for narrative as human beings; we want to engage in a story that brings us emotional connection, wisdom, and inspiration.

Today I see people yearning for more chiaroscuro or shades of unknowing, reflecting a hunger for deeper conversations and understanding that life is not always as pellucid as we wish.

I think readers are also looking for ways to widen the aperture to explore the world we are witnessing—largely genocide and colonial violence on social media—and find ways to resist, reclaim, and improve it and ourselves.

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emotional experience. When you are sharing heavy truths, you need to be ready.

I always tell new writers that sharing personal, especially traumatic, aspects of your life requires careful thought. My first book was psychologically taxing at times.

I was also intellectually and spiritually bound by legacy journalism standards, where I was under a microscope. Writing Breakable is different. I was not bound by stodgy and colonial standards and had personal agency, but I had also undertaken years of trauma therapy, built a solid community, and had strong connections around me. So this book was more of a journey of spiritual, intellectual, and emotional liberation and catharsis rather than carrying the raw emotional pain one can experience when writing a book and pulling apart complex threads. There is a lightness that comes in emoting from a place of strength and love—qualities that come from going through difficult passages of life that entail lessons and growth.

above Cover of Unbroken: My Fight for Survival, Hope, and Justice for Indigenous Women and Girls (Greystone Books, 2023). opposite Angela Sterritt. Photo: George Lawson. Both images courtesy of the author.

People are also hungry for solutions and peace, even in a memoir style. I am drawn to stories that have elements of surprise, love, and joy, especially in these times of chaos, while not shying away from the hard realities we live in.

MRS: Do you find that writing a memoir offers a kind of catharsis—a way to work through the heaviness of life, emotionally, intellectually, spiritually?

AS: Writing a book, regardless of the content, can be a very lonely and

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MRS: Scholar Nancy K. Miller once wrote—though I’m paraphrasing— that in reading memoir, we come to better understand not only the author’s life, but our own. I’ve always found that idea so compelling and so true. With that in mind, why was it important for readers of Unbroken (and soon to be Breakable) to reflect on themselves and their positionality through your words?

AS: The impact of a book is profoundly different for each reader. Some see Unbroken as empowering and validating; others read it as educational or overwhelming. I find that white people in particular feel the latter, while Black, Indigenous, and people of color find it the former. I am always surprised by the reactions to Unbroken and how people connect to its body of work. One Indigenous man said he saw his mom in my book, a woman who refused to give up against all odds. The land was a main character in Unbroken, and place will always connect the reader, whether we consciously grip it or not, as we are all innately connected to the land just as much as we are to each other. As someone

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who is part white, I want people to really lean into what lands their ancestors arrived from and understand both intergenerational colonialism and their own trauma. That is something I find a lot of white people have a hard time reckoning with: their own trauma they inherit from their ancestors, what they were escaping, and how that has affected their sense of belonging and how they connect.

MRS: Being nominated for a Governor General’s Award is a major literary accomplishment in Canada.

How has it changed your life? Has it made certain things easier, other things more difficult?

AS: To be honest, [the award] did not change my life, but writing a book and leaving my reporter job created a crystalline vestibule, an avenue for space, time, and an understanding of the distance ahead that I have not felt for a very long time. My world, my voice, my purpose, and my nervous system have all healed and strengthened. Sometimes looking back, I have no idea how I worked in the chaotic and emotionally suppressive world of daily news. Writing and storytelling are in my DNA, and being gifted this opportunity to share my craft, unfettered, is life-changing.

MRS: Can you talk a bit about Breakable? It traces a clear line from Unbroken not only by name but through its impactful subject matter.

AS: Breakable is about severing the chains of oppression tied to patriarchy, colonialism, and capitalism that we have all fallen for in every aspect of our lives. It is also a love story, embracing my relationships with men—my brothers, my son, my fiancé, and my family. Giving only a little here, but we are only in early edits now, so the shape may change this year.

MRS: Have you written or published poems? I know it may be an unexpected question, but for a writer and a painter like yourself, it seems like they could hold powerful symbolism, powerful imagery.

AS: It is a good question that I’ve pondered a lot. I’ve written a lot of poetry, probably 20 books worth, but none are

published. Looking back through those books, a lot of the themes and ideas sync with my life now, post-newsroom life, and so I am considering a short interlude, if you will, between nonfiction books.

Maybe some of that poetry will also come through in Breakable.

MRS: As a curator, I have to ask about your paintings and graphic design work. What’s the philosophy behind them, and do they connect to your writing practice in any way?

AS: A lot of my paintings have the color yellow as the background to symbolize faded newspapers because I wanted people to know that painting is a type of “news” story. I was trained in formline design by Nisga'a carver Henry McKay as a teenager, but I also did my minor in visual art at UBC, where I leaned more into portraits. I was always embarrassed in school when people would say I was a good artist. I never thought I was that good. But I did and do have some good visions. I want people to see themselves in my paintings, to see the stories that encapsulate not just our survivance or survival but our beauty and values that the colonial world could benefit from.

MRS: Who are you reading these days? Whose work are you following?

What book recommendations do you have for the folks reading this?

AS: I loved Born Sacred: Poems for Palestine by Smokii Sumac. It is loud, soft, kind, and empowering all at the same time. He is a beautiful writer. The Message by Ta-Nehisi Paul Coates has the kind of chiaroscuro I was talking about earlier. I am also a big fan of Frantz Fanon and find his life and writing fascinating.

I love Valarie Kaur’s poetic justice and am currently reading See No Stranger.

Jackson Katz’s Man Enough is a great read for those lost in the Trump weeds. I am also currently reading Legends of the Capilano by E. Pauline Johnson and am captivated with her poetic style and her life in general. As you can tell, it is a wide range. I read more than 50 books this year and am still reading.

MRS: Breakable will be published in 2026. What comes after that? What’s your next literary project?

AS: I have thought about poetry, comedy, and healing a lot. With that, I have a lot to learn, a lot to understand. My plan currently in terms of literature is to keep reading and learning. I know that is a boring answer, but that is the truth.

MRS: Can you tell me a dream project of yours: be it a book, documentary film, television series, etc.? What is your ultimate goal?

AS: My North Star, if you will, has never really faltered or shifted. I seek to be in service, using the gifts I was born with, to be part of healing a world and people in deep turmoil and pain. I am here to learn, be curious, courageous, and to connect. Smokii Sumac told me something recently: that for him, being in service could mean supporting kin in grief or spending a few months learning through quiet reading or just being present in community. I want to be a better human with the values my ancestors lived by: generosity, kindness, gentleness, and connection. I want to know how to love my people better, be a better friend, partner, and mother. That is my ultimate goal.

ANGELASTERRITT.COM FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE NO. 48, FALL 2025 | 103

MEMORIAL

MARY AITSON November 11, 1931–September 19, 2025

M

ARY ALENE (RECTOR) AITSON was born a Cherokee Native citizen and a member of the Wolf clan in Adair County, Oklahoma. Recently recognized by the Cherokee Nation as a National Treasure for her skill and commitment to preserving basket weaving, Mary joined a select group of honored tribal artisans recognized by the nation for their contribution to the preservation of Cherokee cultural arts. A middle child of ten children, Mary grew up on her mother’s tribal allotted land in Christie, Oklahoma. She attended Whitmire School through eighth grade and went on to graduate from Stilwell High School before earning a bachelor’s degree from Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. It was at Northeastern that Mary met her husband, Lucius Weeks Aitson, a citizen of the Kiowa Indian Tribe of Oklahoma. They were married on Valentine’s Day of their senior year. Mary said that Lucius picked Valentine’s Day so he would always remember their anniversary date.

Mary was an educator. Her first teaching assignment was at a rural school near Manhattan, Kansas, while Lucius served in the U.S. Army at Fort Riley, Kansas. Upon Lucius’ discharge, they moved to Vici, Oklahoma, where they both found teaching jobs. During the summer months, they attended Northeastern and earned their master’s degrees. After nine years at Vici, they 104 | FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE NO. 48, FALL 2025

moved to Woodward, Oklahoma, where Mary spent 38 years in the classroom, with 37 years teaching sixth grade. Mary retired from Woodward Public Schools in 1993.

Retirement for Mary meant that she could pursue her cultural roots, and she studied Cherokee basketry with Mavis Doering (Cherokee Nation, 1929–2007) and became an exceptional weaver. Working with buckbrush and honeysuckle, Mary also focused on natural dyes and collected a wide variety of plants to achieve different hues. Mary would teasingly say that baskets became her side hustle. She participated in various American Indian art markets and exhibitions, including the Red Earth Festival and Kirkpatrick Gallery at the Omniplex in Oklahoma City, Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa, Southern Plains Museum in Anadarko, Plains Indians and Pioneers Museum in Woodward, and Santa Fe Indian Market.

She spent a lot of time learning how to weave Cherokee honeysuckle baskets and buckbrush baskets with natural dyes.

Mary’s works are displayed across Oklahoma. They can be seen at the Oklahoma Judicial Center and several Cherokee Nation Properties. Her baskets are cherished by private collectors around the world. Mary received an abundance of awards for her basket weaving, including the Red Earth Honored One in 2018 and her most recent distinguished designation as a National Treasure of the Cherokee Nation. She was a beautiful basket weaver and a ᏓᎶᏂᎨᏍᏙᏗ ᎠᏓᏅᏙ (golden heart). Mary was laid to rest beside her beloved Lucius and his family at Rainy Mountain, a sacred site for the Kiowa people.

—Jay Hannah (Cherokee Nation)

above, right A basket by Mary Aitson. Image courtesy of Jay Hannah. above, left Mary Aitson. Photo: Red Earth.

MEMORIAL

PATRICIA DEADMAN April 24, 1961–November 29, 2024

left Patricia Deadman. Image courtesy of the Woodland Cultural Centre.

A

S HAUDENOSAUNEE, we often reference the Good Mind as a philosophical practice and way of carrying ourselves in the world. Patricia Deadman (Tuscarora/Mohawk, Six Nations Grand River) exemplified this philosophy. She engaged in critical dialogue about Indigenous arts and the arts sector with a patience that came from her four-decade-long career as a practicing artist and curator. Her biggest lament was the need to continuously explain that Indigenous art was any art in any medium made by Indigenous peoples, including those practices often deemed “craft” by the fine arts world.

Patricia received her diploma from Fanshawe College, London, Ontario, in 1986 and completed her bachelor of fine arts at the University of Windsor in 1988.

She knew everyone; she had worked with and exhibited alongside every major Indigenous artist at a time when women, especially Indigenous women, faced an unfriendly industry. She had a deep passion for the ways in which art, especially photography, could convey so much without any words.

Patricia’s understanding of land and her process-oriented approach was grounded in awareness of self, the environment, and her relationships with people. In her own words, she said, “The landscape represents a sense of place whereupon physical, spiritual, or psychological connections to the land may become apparent. As resources are consumed for profit, the consequences of these actions inevitably affect the individual. The photographic image becomes a representation for what we take for granted as our memory becomes forgetful of what is real.”

In her last few months, Patricia was sorry to not have the time, energy, or health to be out on the trails. She was planning to go back to Banff and return to her art practice. Like all artists who end up curating, her first passion, her love, was the art itself, and for Patricia

this especially meant process. She never worked in digital photography because she loved developing film as much as the final piece.

Her career spanned many esteemed institutions, including the Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Museum London, MacKenzie Art Gallery, and finally in 2019 she came to the Woodland Cultural Centre, a gallery in which she had exhibited many years earlier as an emerging artist. Her dedication to her craft was recognized through her selection for the Aboriginal Curators Delegation to prestigious events such as the Sydney Biennale and the Venice Biennale, making a lasting impact on the art community.

Patricia was to have curated Indigenous Art’s 50th-anniversary exhibition as her final show with Woodland. Without her mentorship, kindness, and friendship we would not have been able to bring the show together. Patricia tended the seeds of our generation, and in her memory, we hope to carefully tend the seeds of the next generation of Indigenous artists and curators in a way that is as kind, patient, and gentle as Patricia was with us.

—Alex Jacobs-Blum (Cayuga), independent curator; Heather George (Mohawk), executive director, Woodland Cultural Centre; and Jake Jamieson (Mohawk), artistic and programing director, Woodland Cultural Centre

FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE NO. 48, FALL 2025 | 105

MEMORIAL

RAMONA LOSSIE June 6, 1964–August 26, 2025

above Ramona Lossie at the Heard Museum behind Navajo Water Girl (1990), by Doug Hyde (Nez Perce, tribally designated artisan).

Image courtesy of Monā Lossie and Precise’ Lossie.

I

T IS WITH HEAVY HEARTS that we, the daughters of Ramona Lossie (Eastern Band Cherokee), reflect on the life and legacy of our mother, a cherished artist, an elder in our community, and a loving mentor. Our mother, Ramona, leaves behind not just a family, but a community she helped shape and a cultural tradition that not only survived but will continue to thrive because of her.

Our mother was an artist and a protector of our Cherokee heritage. Her baskets were not just objects: they were living, breathing pieces of our culture. She wove her first basket at the age of five, her curiosity sparked by watching her mom weave until the knowledge was entrusted to her. In our family, we believed first that you had to build a relationship with the materials of a basket before you built the basket itself. We were always taught to have honor in the way we harvested the materials and dyes and to listen as we wove. She told us, “We don’t weave the basket; we help the basket weave itself. Before that happens, we 106 | FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE NO. 48, FALL 2025

have to get to know the rivercane or the white oak. There has to be trust.” That trust came from the way you harvested the materials. We were never taught to just go into the mountains or along the riverbank and start taking whatever we found. There was a way of harvesting that ensured that whatever you took would return the following year.

Our mom used the same method of preparing her splints as our grandma did, and hers before her. She only ever used natural materials and dyes. She always soaked her material in a running creek or spring head, dyed her splints over a firepit in a deep steel pot blackened by years of built-up soot, and scraped each splint on the same old piece of leather. Through decades of hard work and practice, she became known for her intricate designs and the quality of her baskets, each piece woven to last generations. Each piece echoing the ancient stories of the mountains and the lives of our ancestors.

“You don’t just weave the material to make a basket, you weave to tell the stories of our people—of resilience, creativity, and survival,” she said. “Each basket leaves a blister that turns into a callus and a cut that turns into a scar, and those become memories of the stories you’ve told.”

Her work was a living history of Tsalagi.

The world knew Ramona Lossie as a mentor, an artist, and a friend. But we knew her as a mother. She was brave, silly, selfless, loving, and free-spirited. She had a big heart and often provided a haven for anyone who needed it. She taught us the meaning of love, respect, and the importance of culture and community. She believed that we are all interconnected, just as the splints of a double-weave basket are woven together.

Our mother was many things, including an award-winning artist, an elder, and a fluent speaker of the Cherokee language.

She drove big rig trucks across the country and stood in the line of fire at Standing Rock in 2016. She was a single mom who rode horses and played stickball. She was a beloved member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. She was dedicated to preserving the stories, knowledge, and resources of our people. She was an advocate for the arts and taught others not just how to weave but why it mattered. She worked with museums, cultural centers, and educational programs to teach future generations about the importance of traditional Cherokee art. She would say: “When I pass, this can’t die with me. It has to live on.”

Her work was celebrated at festivals, exhibitions, and gatherings, where her baskets were not only seen but revered for their artistic excellence and cultural significance. Her work was never about fame or recognition—it was about the responsibility to honor those who came before her and to pave the way for those who will come after. Her legacy, both as an artist and a mother, will continue to inspire as we carry her teachings forward.

—Monā Lossie and Precise’ Lossie (both Eastern Band Cherokee)

MEMORIAL

TED MOORE August 19, 1953–September 10, 2025

I

MET TEDDY through the Osage Arts Council in Pawhuska in 2003.

Theodore “Ruski” Vern Moore Jr. (Otoe-Missouria/Osage/Pawnee/Sac & Fox/Potawatomi) was an artist and a grant writer for the Osage Nation tribal education program. We had previously crossed paths in Inlonshka before I went off to college almost 20 years earlier. Our paths would bring us together many times over the years, even though I am from the northeast corner of the reservation, and he was from the southwest corner. We later both taught at Bacone College in Muskogee, Oklahoma. In a nutshell, Teddy was an artist who worked within his community to promote their arts and cultures.

He most recently had work in Reflections of Our People, Our Ways, Our Land that opened in September 2025 at the Great Plains Art Museum in Lincoln, Nebraska. He was most proud of Across Generations (2024), a two-person show of his and his daughter’s artwork at Phillips Theological Seminary in Tulsa. As the brochure for the exhibition read, he “paints to remember his ancestors and to leave a mark for understanding our Native culture and traditions, for being equal to all peoples as a Native American, and to emphasize the importance of being included and belonging within our larger diverse society.”

While he was formally educated with a BFA in painting from the University of Oklahoma, he was equally proud of his designing and making fashions for Indian dancing. He beaded, sewed, and made metal and fur accessories. These practices influenced his paintings as much as his college education. To him, they were all the application of color—be it paint, beads, or materials to convey a spiritual meaning—in what he called his “blanket style.”

above, top Ted Moore and his paintings. above, bottom Ted Moore (Otoe-Missouria/Osage/Pawnee/ Sac & Fox/Potawatomi, 1953– 2025), Elompah, 2021, acrylic painting on drum made by Rock Pipestem (Osage/Otoe-Missouria), 2021, pine, birch, and bison hide. Photo: Osage Nation Museum.

His master of education degree in gifted and talented education from Oklahoma City University served him well, as he focused his professional life on Indian education, not just to lift an individual Indian up but to lift up Indian communities. He held positions with tribes he was part of and taught at Indian schools from elementary level to colleges in Minnesota and Oklahoma.

Students were lucky to get his attention and energy to help them become who they would become, and he always made sure they understood who and where they came from because these were important to who they could be.

Teddy was a great draftsman and painted expressive portraits. They were naturalistic because he wanted to honor individuals and place them within the tribal cultures they honored. His portraits demonstrated his excellent technical skills. Just as his “blanket style” paintings showed Indian life and cultures, his portraits also meant life to him since they were of people he loved.

—Matt Jarvis (Osage)

FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE NO. 48, FALL 2025 | 107

MEMORIAL

THOMPSON WILLIAMS December 8, 1956–July 20, 2025

T

H IS SUMMER we lost Thompson “Otto” Williams, Ha imay Iwi' (Big Eagle), a spiritual and ceremonial man, an extraordinary Caddo artist, mentor, and friend. His passing is a profound loss to all who knew him, as he was not only a gifted artist but also a one-of-a-kind human being whose presence could brighten the room.

Uncle Thompson had a unique way of making people feel seen, heard, and valued.

Whether it was through his bold art, his infectious laughter, or his heartfelt stories, he always created a space for connection. His art was deeply rooted in Caddo cultural pride, but for him, it was never just about the artwork. It was about creating community, lifting others up, and fostering relationships to last a lifetime.

In 2020 Thompson cofounded The Art Path, a virtual space for Indigenous artists to come together during the isolation of the pandemic. This initiative was a testament to his character; he always looked for ways to turn challenging circumstances into opportunities for healing and growth. Thompson faced personal struggles but would smile and express gratitude for his life.

Friend and artist Michael Hast says: “Thompson’s humility and ability to inspire others were unparalleled. He often said ‘It’s incredible!’ whenever he saw someone’s art, no matter how simple.

He would look at it with awe and appreciation, which made everyone feel their work was valuable. I want to emulate that in my life.”

Sky Yarbrough (Afro-Indigenous), cofounder of The Art Path, says, “He wanted to push people to be their best and do their best, and he was really good at it. He was one of the best mentors I’ve

ever had as an artist and a photographer.”

Thompson mentored many artists. Tracy Thomas (Mohawk) says: “Thompson has passed, but he’s not really leaving us. He loved to dance, and now he’s dancing with the ancestors.”

Stephanie Williams, an Art Path artist, noted how Thompson would ask thoughtful questions about the artist’s process, and says, “Everything I do now has his touch on it, and it’s just so beautiful to know how he has affected my art.”

Chad Earles (Caddo) said: “He was usually working on a painting, even when in the hospital. I loved hearing about Caddo elders he grew up around and their stories. We’d talk about art, designs and their meaning, Caddo songs and dances, ceremony, and the importance of our traditional ways. He was a good man with a good heart.”

Thompson was not just an artist; he was a collector of stories and history who bridged generations. “He was a wealth of stories and history; someone you could talk to about anything without fear of judgment. If he really loved you, he’d make jokes about you, and you’d laugh together,” says Jennifer Hast. “Thompson

108 | FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE NO. 48, FALL 2025

gave us a tremendous gift by just being there and fostering these connections.”

The Art Path became a vibrant community where artists can share their stories, struggles, and successes. It’s a legacy of connection that Thompson so deeply believed in and nurtured. Thompson’s sense of humor was contagious. He had a laugh that could illuminate the space, and he had a way of making everyone around him feel included. One of the things he loved most was Halloween, and his enthusiasm for it was legendary.

Despite his passing, the love and inspiration Thompson spread will continue to ripple through the lives of those he touched. His children, whom he adored, carry forward his legacy of love and encouragement. “I grew up around art, and he loved talking about art,” his daughter AuNane Williams (Otoe-Missouria/Caddo) says. “During COVID, he made a virtual art show, and he was so excited about it. I know he’s happy now knowing that you all will continue The Art Path.”

I miss my uncle deeply. His boldness, joy, and open heart will remain with all of us who were privileged enough to know him. His art will live on, but even more so, his love and encouragement will continue to inspire us for years to come. As Ed Sandoval says, “We’ve all gained something positive from knowing this man.”

Thompson’s life was a testament to the power of connection, the importance of lifting others up, and the incredible impact one person can have on the world.

I am so proud of the legacy he leaves behind, which will continue to inspire and guide us as we walk our own Art Paths.

—Robin Williams (Wichita/ Caddo/Comanche)

CALENDAR October 4, 2025–February 8, 2026: Tulsa, OK Interwoven: Cherokee, Muscogee (Creek), and Yuchi Baskets at the Philbrook Museum of Art, 2727 S. Rockford Road | philbrook.org October 5, 2025–February 16, 2026: Denver, CO Andrea Carlson: A Constant Sky at the Denver Art Museum, 100 W. 14th Avenue Parkway | (720) 865-5000 | denverartmuseum.org

We Each Hold Stories

November 7, 2025 - May 2, 2026 Co-curated by Tom Jones, Ho-Chunk Nation and Paula Lincoln, Gallery Director, The Sheldon

Photo courtesy of John Hitchcock

October 11–30: Nevada City, CA PAMBLO: Remembering a Forgotten Leader at the ‘Uba Seo Gallery, 225 Broad Street. A group exhibition honoring the legacy and descendants of Chief Pamblo (Nisenan, 1830–1905) | ubaseo.org October 11–November 16: White Cloud, KS Americans at the Iowa and Sac and Fox Mission Museum, 3345-B Thrasher Road. Traveling NMAI exhibition curated by Paul Chaat Smith (Comanche/Choctaw) and Cécile R. Ganteaume iowatribeofkansasandnebraska.com October 12 & 13: Catoosa, OK 19th Annual Cherokee Art Market at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino Tulsa, 777 W. Cherokee Avenue | cherokeeartmarket.com October 18: Oklahoma City, OK Red Earth Fallfest at Myriad Gardens, Devon Lawn, 301 W. Reno Avenue. Art market and powwow. 10:00 am–5:00 pm | redearth.org October 18: Davis, CA Rick Bartow Discussion with Charles Froelick at the Gorman Museum of Native American Art, 181 Old Davis Road | (530) 752-6567 gormanmuseum.ucdavis.edu October 18, 2025–February 15, 2026: Minneapolis, MN Dyani White Hawk: Love Language at the Walker Art Center, 725 Vineland Place | (612) 375-7600 | walkerart.org October 23, 2025–October 23, 2026: Window Rock, AZ Rain God Mesa: The Heart of Monument Valley at the Navajo Nation Museum, Highway 264 and Postal Loop Road. Opening reception: Thursday, October 23, 5:00–7:00 pm | discovernavajo.com

Thomas Antell • Martha Arquero • Chelsea Bighorn • Jackie Larson Bread • Jolene Frechette • Noelle Garcia • John Hitchcock • Tom Jones • Monty Little • Dakota Mace • Chris Pappan • Mikayla Patton • Henry Payer • Jaune Quick-to-See Smith • Jason Wesaw • Dyani White Hawk • Holly Wilson thesheldon.org 3648 Washington Ave. St. Louis, MO 63108

OSCAR HOWE O N LI N E

October 24 & 25: Mendocino, CA Native Arts Expo 9 at the Mendocino Art Center, 45200 Little Lake Street | (707) 937-5818 | mendocinoartcenter.org October 24–December 19: Norman, OK Jacobson House Art Biennial at the Jacobson House Native Art Center, 609 Chautauqua Avenue. Intertribal, competitive, juried art show open to regional artists | jacobsonhouse.art October 24, 2025–January 2027: Washington, DC Water’s Edge: The Art of Truman Lowe at the National Museum of the American Indian, Fourth Street and Independence Avenue SW. Retrospective of the acclaimed Ho-Chunk sculptor | americanindian.si.edu October 25: Dragoon, AZ Amerind Autumn Fest at Amerind Museum, 2100 N. Amerind Road.

Celebrating O'odham history, culture, and arts with artists, public talks, singers, and dancers. 10:00 am–4:00 pm. $10 per vehicle | amerind.org October 25: Marksville, LA 9th Annual Intertribal Basketry Summit at the Tunica-Biloxi Gymnasium, 171 Melacon Road, hosted by the Tunica-Biloxi Tribe of Louisiana. $25 registration that includes lunch. 9:00 am–4:00 pm (800) 272-9767 x7430 | tunicabiloxi.org

Oscar Howe, Buffalo Hunt, 1968, Casein on paper, Gift of Drs. Eric and Ruth Brown in Memory of Dona S. Brown

EXPLORE the South Dakota Art Museum Oscar Howe Online Collection of 27 paintings by the celebrated Yanktonai artist.

Scan to view Howe online collection

Follow us: SouthDakotaArtMuseum.com FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE NO. 48, FALL 2025 | 109

Plains Ledger Art A discussion with

GORDON YELLOWMAN & JOHN ISAIAH PEPION

Gordon Yellowman (Southern Cheyenne), Fort Marion Cheyenne Prisoners, 2001

John Isaiah Pepion (Blackfeet), Catching a Wild Horse, 2025

Charles M. Russell Center for the Study of Art of the American West

University of Oklahoma, 409 W. Boyd St., Norman, OK Tuesday, Dec. 2, 2025, 5–7 pm. Dinner by Junebug Catering | registration at firstamerican.art/russell

October 29–31: Mérida, Yucatán, Mexico 2nd International Colloquium and 1st International Congress on Indigenous Architecture in the Americas at the Centro Cultural Universitario de la Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán, Edificio central de la UADY, C. 60 57, Parque Santa Lucia | arqa.com October 29–31: Denver, CO Indigenous Art Without Borders Symposium and 24th Annual Mayer Center Symposium: “Maya Women: Past, Present, Future” at the Denver Art Museum, 100 W. 14th Avenue Parkway. Art takeover: Friday, October 31, 6:00–10:00 pm. Ticketed events | denverartmuseum.org November 1: Niagara Falls, NY 3rd Annual Seneca Indigenous Fashion Show at the Seneca Niagara Resort and Casino, 310 Fourth Street. More than a dozen designers and 60 models | senecaniagaracasino.com November 1, 2025–February 8, 2026: Albuquerque, NM Cara and Diego Romero: Tales of Futures Past at the Albuquerque Museum, 2000 Mountain Road NW. Organized by the Figge Art Museum cabq.gov/artsculture/albuquerque-museum November 2: Norman, OK Northern and Southern Plains Ledger Art Discussion at the Charles M. Russell Center, 409 W. Boyd Street, with Gordon Yellowman (Southern Cheyenne) and John Isaiah Pepion (Blackfeet), moderated by Jeremy Goldsmith. Dinner by Junebug Catering. 5:00–7:00 pm | ou.edu/finearts November 5–7: Indianapolis, IN NAASA Conference, hosted by the Native American Art Studies Association and the Eiteljorg Museum of Native and Western Art, 500 W. Washington Street | nativearts.org 110 | FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE NO. 48, FALL 2025

November 6–22: Sault Ste. Marie, MI Celebrating Indigenous Culture through Art at the Sault Area Art Center, 217 Ferris Street | saultartcenter.com November 7 & 8: Clewiston, FL American Indian Arts Celebration at the Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki Museum, 34725 West Boundary Road, Big Cypress Seminole Reservation. Arts, dance, music, alligator wrestling. 10:00 am–5:00 pm | ahtahthiki.com November 7, 2025–May 2, 2026: St. Louis, MO We Each Hold Stories at the Sheldon Concert Hall and Galleries, 3648 Washington Avenue. Group exhibition co-curated by Tom Jones II (Ho-Chunk) and Paula Lincoln | thesheldon.org November 8: Tahlequah, OK Skasdicon at the Chota Conference Center, 3307 Seven Clans Avenue.

10:00 am–6:00 pm | skasdicon.com/about November 8: Madison, WI Native Art Market at the Arts & Literature Laboratory at Madison Contemporary Arts Center, 111 S. Livingston Street #100. Founded and curated by Dakota Mace (Diné) and Paige Skenandore (Oneida Nation).

10:00 am–6:00 pm | artlitlab.org November 10–26: Granville, OH We’re Still Here at the Bryn Du Mansion, 537 Jones Road NE. Work by: Dani Tippman (Miami), Holli Margell (Eastern Shawnee), and Travis Mammedaty (Kiowa/Seneca-Cayuga). Organized by the Great Circle Alliance | greatcirclealliance.com | bryndu.com November 12–16: Saskatoon and Regina, SK 20th Anniversary Indigenous Curatorial Collective / Collectif des

commissaires autochtones (ICCA) Gathering at Remai Modern, 102 Spadina Crescent E, and MacKenzie Art Gallery, 3475 Albert Street icca.art/gathering November 14, 2025–April 19, 2026: Kansas City, MO Raven Halfmoon: Ride or Die at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, 4420 Warwick Boulevard | kemperart.org November 15 & 16: Durham, NC IndigipopX | Continuum at Duke University, Penn Pavilion, 039 Bryan Center. 9:00 am–6:00 pm. Tickets: $25–$49 | indigipopx.com November 15, 2025–March 8, 2026: Omaha, NE Dripping Earth: Cannupa Hanska Luger at the Joslyn Art Museum, 2200 Dodge Street. Organized by the Margre H. Durham Center for Western Studies at the Joslyn Art Museum | joslyn.org November 15, 2025–May 29, 2026: New York, NY Clearly Indigenous: Native Visions Reimagined in Glass at the National Museum of the American Indian George Gustav Heye Center, One Bowling Green | americanindian.si.edu November 15, 2025–June 2027: Los Angeles, CA Creative Continuities: Family, Pride, and Community in Native Art at the Autry Museum of the American West, 4700 Western Heritage Way. Curated by Joe D. Horse Capture (A'aninin) | theautry.org November 20, 2025–March 1, 2026: Windsor, ON BIG Doll: XWAT Naaniitus at the Art Gallery of Windsor, 401 Riverside Drive West | artwindsoressex.ca November 21–23: Oneida, WI Woodland Indian Art Show and Market: Echoes of the Forest at Oneida Casino Hotel, 2040 Airport Drive. Hosted by Woodland Indian Art | (920) 855-2044 | woodlandindianart.com November 22: Philadelphia, PA Native North America Gallery opening at Penn Museum at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, 3260 South Street | (215) 898-4000 | penn.museum November 22 & 23: Seattle, WA United Indians Native Art Market at Daybreak Star Indian Cultural Center, Discovery Park, 5011 Bernie Whitebear Way | unitedindians.org November 22, 2025–January 3, 2026: Wichita, KS Americans at the Mid-America All-Indian Museum, 650 N. Seneca Street. Traveling exhibition curated by Paul Chaat Smith (Comanche/ Choctaw) and Cécile R. Ganteaume | theindianmuseum.org November 22, 2025–February 1, 2026: Albuquerque, NM 45th Annual Native American Student Art Show: Planning Our Future Homes at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center, 2401 12th Street NW. 9:00 am–5:00 pm | (505) 843-7270 | indianpueblo.org November 25: Santa Fe, NM 6th Annual Wheelwright Holiday Art Market at the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian, 704 Camino Lejo. 9:00 am–4:00 pm wheelwright.org November 26: Evanston, IL Dagwaagin (Fall) Artist Market at the Gichigamiin Indigenous Nations Museum, 3001 Central Street. 10:00 am–5:00 pm. Free museum admission | gichigamiin-museum.org November 29: Rochester, NY Rochester’s Fourth Native Made Market at the Rochester Museum & Science Center, Eisenhart Auditorium, 657 East Avenue. 11:00 am–5:00 pm | nativemadehq.com

Since 1981 Jewelry Carvings Pottery 227 Don Gaspar, Santa Fe Keshi.com 505.989.8728

Cuprite Mountain Lion by Loren Tsalabutie, Zuni Pueblo

The Magical City: George Morrison’s New York The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC July 17, 2025–May 31, 2026 Maggie Thompson: Interactions Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Santa Fe NM July 25, 2025–January 4, 2026 Eric-Paul Riege: ojo|-|ólǫ́ The Bell, Brown University, Providence RI September 3–December 7, 2025 Andrea Carlson: A Constant Sky Denver Art Museum, CO October 5, 2025–February 16, 2026 Grace Rosario Perkins: Circles, Spokes, Zigzags, Rivers Whitney Museum of American Art, NYC October 18, 2025–February 8, 2026 Dyani White Hawk: Love Language Walker Art Center, Minneapolis MN October 18, 2025–February 15, 2026

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ALL MY RELATIONS ARTS GALLERY PRESENTS

November 29 & 30: Santa Fe, NM 20th Annual SWAIA Winter Indian Market at Santa Fe Community Convention Center, 201 W. Marcy Street. Saturday: 10:00 am–6:00 pm.

Sunday: 9:00 am–4:00 pm. Ticketed admission | swaia.org December 2: Norman, OK Ledger Art Panel with John Isaiah Pepion (Blackfeet) and Gordon Yellowman (Southern Cheyenne) at the Charles Russel Center, 409 W. Boyd Street. Tuesday, 5:00–7:00 pm | ou.edu/finearts December 5–7: Chicago, IL 3rd Biennial Mound Summit Symposium​at the Center for Native Futures, 56 W. Adams Street, and the Kimpton Gray Hotel, 122 W. Monroe Street | centerfornativefutures.org​ December 6 & 7: Washington, DC Native Art Market at the National Museum of the American Indian, 4th Street and Independence Avenue SW | americanindian.si.edu December 6 & 7: Oklahoma City, OK Winter Holiday Art Market at First Americans Museum, 659 First Americans Boulevard. 11:00 am–4:00 pm | famok.org

October 16th - December 13th, 2025 allmyrelationsarts.org This exhibition is made possible by:

December 6 & 7: Flagstaff, AZ Winter Market and Open House at the Museum of Northern Arizona, 3101 N. Fort Valley Rd | Highlighting over 25 Indigenous Artists from the Colorado Plateau | 10:00 am–5:00 pm | musnaz.org December 13: Orono, ME Annual Wabanaki Winter Market at the Collins Center for the Arts, 2 Flagstaff Road. Hosted by the Hudson Museum umaine.edu/hudsonmuseum December 13: Olympia, WA Annual House of Welcome-Longhouse Holiday Native Art Fair at The Evergreen State College, 2700 Evergreen Parkway NW. 11:00 am–6:50 pm | evergreen.edu/calendar December 13 & 14: Oklahoma City Hushtola Art Market at Okana Resort, 639 First Americans Boulevard.

Hosted by the Chickasaw Nation. Intertribal | hushtolaartmarket.com December 13 & 14: Phoenix, AZ 48th Annual S’edav Va’aki Museum Indian Market at the S’edav Va’aki Museum (formerly Pueblo Grande Museum), 4619 E. Washington Street. 9:00 am–4:30 pm | (602) 495-0901 | svmfoundation.org

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December 13, 2025–February 10, 2026: Albuquerque, NM Holiday Cheer at Gallery Hózhó at Hotel Chaco, 2000 Bellamah Avenue NW. Group exhibition | galleryhozho.com December 18, 2025–TBA: Toronto, ON New Acquisitions: Selections from the Dr. Ronald M. Haynes Collection at the Art Gallery of Ontario, 317 Dundas Street | ago.ca January 10–February 22: Mayetta, KS Americans at the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation, 16281 Q Road.

Traveling exhibition curated by Paul Chaat Smith (Comanche/Choctaw) and Cécile R. Ganteaume | pbpindiantribe.com January 23–TBA: Phoenix, AZ Kay WalkingStick / Hudson River School at the Heard Museum, 2301 N. Central Avenue. Organized by the New York Historical | heard.org January 31–February 1: Scottsdale, AZ Arizona Indian Festival at the Scottsdale Civic Center, 3939 N. Drinkwater Boulevard | arizonaindiantourism.org/azindianfestival

For more events, visit our online calendar at

FIRSTAMERICAN.ART/CALENDAR 112 | FIRST AMERICAN ART MAGAZINE NO. 48, FALL 2025