RAPID CITY, S.D. – First Peoples Fund, one of the oldest national organizations dedicated to supporting Native American artists and culture bearers, has announced its roster of 2024 fellowship recipients.

Selected from a pool of “exceptional candidates,” 15 artists have been chosen for the Artist in Business Leadership Fellowship and 11 artists have been awarded the Cultural Capital Fellowship. As part of their fellowship, each artist will receive a $10,000 award and ongoing professional development support from First Peoples Fund throughout their fellowship year. 

Among the 15 artists selected for the 2024 Artist in Business Leadership Fellowship is Cherokee Nation citizen Richard York of Muldrow, Oklahoma. 

“I would love to bring attention to First Peoples Fund and the importance of the work they do and the cultural fellowships they offer. An aspect of this fellowship is relating to how I can give back to the community, so I want to facilitate that,” York said. “Hopefully, other Cherokee artists will be inspired to apply to First Peoples Fund programs especially with the tribe’s investment in artists and culture bearers. 

The Artist in Business Leadership Fellowship/Grant I received is a $10,000 grant to help me establish my art practice and business and to do these things in a way that potentially gives back to the Cherokee community.”

The Artist in Business Leadership Fellowship annually assists independent Native artists in developing their crafts into successful businesses through networking, training, and financial aid, aiming for their long-term success. Concurrently, the Cultural Capital Fellowship supports artists committed to preserving ancestral knowledge and celebrating Indigenous heritage in Native communities, ensuring its continuity for future generations. 

Dr. Lara Evans, Ph.D., Vice President of Programs at First Peoples Fund, expressed her excitement about the new fellowship cohort. 

“We are excited about the wide variety of cultural and artistic practices of the 2024 fellowship cohort,” Evans said. “Their creative endeavors bring together traditional knowledge, community perspectives, and each has their own spirit of growth and determination.”

Since its foundation, First Peoples Fund has honored more than 410 artists from 117 tribes across 32 states and three Canadian provinces with fellowships. In addition to its fellowship and grants programs, FPF also helps support the inclusion of the arts in communities through values-based artist workshops, community art classes, youth programming and nationwide partnerships with other organizations invested in the arts. 

With more than $9.3 million distributed in grants, fees, and honoraria since 1999, First Peoples Fund champions Indigenous artists. The achievements of the 2024 Artist in Business Leadership and Cultural Capital Fellows highlight the significant impact and importance of supporting and celebrating Indigenous artistry. Visit firstpeoplesfund.org to explore how these cultural advocates contribute to their communities and how you can help preserve Indigenous arts and culture for future generations. 

Loren Waters, (Kiowa Tribe, Cherokee Nation), of Norman, Oklahoma, also received the Cultural Capital Fellows grant. She is an award-winning filmmaker whose work centers on environmental knowledge, culture revitalization and Indigenous futurity through storytelling. 

Visit firstpeoplesfund.org for a full list of 2024 Artist in Business Leadership Fellows and 2024 Cultural Capital Fellows. 

Margaret Grenier grew up immersed in the traditions of her Gitxsan and Cree ancestry, traditions that are only around today because her parents and grandparents fought to keep them alive.

“I was very fortunate because I grew up as one of the first generations to grow up with song and dance once again,” said Grenier, executive and artistic director of the Dancers of Damelahamid.

The songs and dances of Grenier’s people were almost completely lost due to a part of the Indian Act known as the potlatch ban which made traditional dance and regalia illegal across Canada from 1885 to 1951.

Dance holds an important place in Gitxsan traditions as they relate oral history. 

“Our people don’t have a creation story in terms of like when the land was created,” Grenier said. “But we speak about a time when the people of the Damelahamid started and that was when our first three ancestors were placed on earth and our original earthly home became known as Damelahamid.”

During the ban, Grenier’s grandmother hid the family’s regalia within the walls of her home to protect and maintain them. Once the ban ended in 1951, Grenier’s mother and father worked to revitalize traditional dance. 

Across Turtle Island and beyond, Indigenous dancers are fighting to occupy dance spaces and venues that excluded their ancestors. Grenier is part of a growing movement inspiring a new generation of dancers to reclaim sovereignty over dance forms previously lost. 

“It has been the women in our family that have carried forward the work,” Grenier said. “And I think that it’s something that we want to be able to leave to our daughters and we want to be able to do it in a way that they can bring their voice to the stories that are going to come.”

Grenier’s newest work, Raven Mother, celebrates the legacy of her late mother Margerat Harris who Grenier says is the reason  Gitxsan people “even have song and dance today.”

The piece premiered at the Vancouver Coastal Dance Festival earlier this year. Grenier runs the festival, to ensure that Indigenous dancers always have a space to celebrate a culture that wasn’t always welcomed in Western dance venues.

“The festival is intended to be a space to hold their community, to allow our artists to represent their families, their communities, their songs, their stories, their dances in a way that’s true to themselves,” said Grenier.

‘Let’s gather all together’

In Quebec, Ivanie Aubin-Malo always found spaces and opportunities to celebrate and support her love of contemporary dance. However, she couldn’t find regular meeting spaces to partake in pow wow dance.

“I graduated from the École de danse Contemporaine de Montréal in 2014,” Aubin-Malo said. “After that, I really wanted to focus on my Indigenous identity. And I was like: ‘It’s through dance, but how can I start that?'”

Aubin-Malo eventually attended the Canada Dance Festival in Ottawa and met James Jones, also known as Notorious Cree on TikTok, who encouraged her to travel to Vancouver and learn more about pow wow dance. In the months she spent there, she gathered regularly with other dancers and learned a type of pow wow dance called Fancy Shawl.

Eager to keep on with the practice, Aubin-Malo searched out a similar space in Montreal. And while there were places like the Friendship Centre that accommodated drumming, no spaces were big enough to regularly host dancers.

“So when an Indigenous organization wants to organize workshops …it can take place over a session — and then it stops,” she said.

WATCH | Dancers gather for the MAQAHATINE pow wow celebration

MAQAHATINE: Let’s gather all together

3 days ago

Duration 1:12

A one-of-a-kind event where powwow dancers and dancers outside of the pow wow community have gathered together to take part together in a powwow at the Place des Arts in Montreal, Quebec (Ivanie Abin-Malo)

That’s when Aubin-Malo decided to take matters into her own hands. In 2021, she started a collective with two others where they hosted 30 Indigenous-only workshops over three years at the Place des Arts in Montreal. Aubin-Malo says this was intentional so that each Indigenous dancer would feel comfortable in the space.

All this work culminated in a one-of-a-kind event where dancers were invited to come together at a pow wow. Aubin-Malo calls the celebration MAQAHATINE, which translates from Wolastoqey to “Let’s gather all together.” 

“Like any pow wow, it’s open for everyone,” said Aubin-Malo. “I wanted for the contemporary dancers to feel familiar and to feel good in a space, but I also wanted the pow wow community to take over that space.”

‘It was the Norwegians that danced’

The idea of taking over a space — or in this case land — is a concept familiar to Sámi contemporary dancer and choreographer, Elle Sofe Sara.

In Norway, Sámi communities have lost land due to resource extraction and the climate crisis. Inspired by the political protests in her homeland, Sara choreographed Vastadus Eana: The answer is land to examine reclamation of Sámi identity.

“When I was younger, I did a project about [dance] to interview elders in my area about dancing and actually asked my neighbour,” said Sara. “He said that they didn’t dance. It was the Norwegians that danced.”

As Sara pushed for more answers, she discovered that her people did not dance in the traditional sense of the word. When they would joik — a form of singing in Sámi culture — they would sway, adjust the belts on their girdles and do other natural movements.

Sara utilized these movements, her knowledge of contemporary dance and Sámi joiks to create a piece that speaks to the trauma that comes with colonialism, assimilation and displacement. 

“Some of the joiks here that we have are also about Sámi who have been displaced,” Sara said. “And I think also many indigenous people have lost their home or have been taken away from their home in different ways.”

Vastadus Eana includes Sámi sayings that encourage people to think about how they live with the land rather than off of the land. It’s a call for others to acknowledge land and protect it.

“People are raising their voice more,” said Sara. “I think that of course the young generation is the loudest, but I think … older people are also seeing that many things in the system are very wrong, so we have to raise our voice.”

Grenier is equally proud of the younger generation. As the work to revitalize ancestral traditions continues, young dancers are becoming more steadfast in their Indigenous identities, making her grandmother’s dream a reality.