1 Shop Indigenous art.

The Museum of Indian Arts and Culture (MIAC) hosts the Native Treasures Art Market at the Santa Fe Community Convention Center on Saturday and Sunday. With more than 180 Indigenous artists in attendance, there is plenty to see and shop. Ticket sales benefit the museum, while the artists keep 100 percent of their profits. “Native Treasures is a local kickoff to market season,” says Danyelle Means, interim director at MIAC. “Markets are so important to our artists; they provide so much economically, and we want to be good partners.” 

On Friday, the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture honors fashion designer Patricia Michaels (Taos Pueblo) as its Living Treasure with a special work of art from a previous winner.  “It feels like the award is being passed down,” Means says. “The comradery, the effort of welcoming the next Living Treasure into the fold is a very important aspect of this.”

Sculptor Martha Arquero (Cochiti Pueblo), who creates colorful storyteller pottery, is being recognized with the Legacy Award. “Her work is so whimsical and delightful,” Means says.

The deadline for the Wyoming Arts Council’s Native Art Fellowship has been extended to Friday, May 24.

Additionally, Wyoming Arts Council staff will be present at the Wind River Community Alliance, located at 1202 S Federal Blvd, Riverton, Wyo., on Wednesday, May 22, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. to provide application assistance. Wyoming Arts Council staff members will be present to give hands-on assistance with the Native Art Fellowship application, take images of any 2D or 3D works, and to answer any programming questions. 

“This fellowship is an excellent way to recognize the exceptional work of indigenous artists in Wyoming. We are hoping that with some additional outreach, we can help spread the word about this program,” said Kimberly Mittelstadt, Creative Arts Specialist for the Wyoming Arts Council.  

The Native Art Fellowship is awarded based on the artist’s portfolio and is open across various artistic disciplines, including visual, literary, performing, folk, and traditional arts. Its primary aim is to elevate the visibility of Wyoming’s remarkably skilled Native artists and commend their creative endeavors. This fellowship is open exclusively to residents of Wyoming.  Up to two $5,000 fellowships will be awarded. 

Noted Native artists from outside the state will evaluate all applications. Applications must be submitted online through Submittable. Serving as jurors for this year are Ben Pease and Dakota Hoska.

Recipients of the Native Art Fellowship will also be given support to find a venue to showcase their work.

This story originally appeared on Underscore.news.

The smell of burning piñon pine filled the air at Portland’s Center for Native Arts & Cultures on May 10, lending itself to the dreamlike feeling of Matrilineal Memory, an exhibition by Hopi artist Mikaela Shafer.

Viewers’ eyes gravitated to the left corner of the room when they first entered the art gallery. There sat a rusted, antique bed frame covered in twigs and tumbleweeds. Three sheer, silk chiffon fabrics hang above the bed with printed images of the artist as if she is floating above the bed, almost like an out of body experience as she watches from a dream.

“You know that dream state that you’re in when you’re waking up from a dream, or from a daydream, and you’re in between that here and now — I wanted to create this feeling of being in that kind of dream state,” said Shafer, Hopi, from the Coyote Clan.

In another section of the room, over a dozen silk chiffon screenprints of her art pieces hung from the ceiling with viewers invited to walk among and interact with them.

‍An artist and a mother

From painting on the walls as a young kid to making her own clothes in high school, Shafer has been an artist all her life. When she became a parent 16 years ago, Shafer put her art on the backburner to focus on motherhood. Now, Shafer is the mother of two daughters, 16 and 11.

As her daughters entered adolescence, Shafer’s partner encouraged her to start creating again, and she began to paint. Last fall, the Native Arts & Cultures Foundation (NACF) announced Shafer as one of the 15 LIFT – Early Career Support for Native Artists award recipients.

The year-long, $10,000 award includes professional development opportunities and marketing support for artist awardees.

“This is our first time partnering with a LIFT artist to hold an exhibition of their project in our space,” said Laura (Cales) Matalka, Chickasaw Nation, associate director of programs at NACF. “So this really deepens the work that NACF does to support emerging Native artists.”

At the art opening on May 10, Shafer provided a home-cooked meal for people to enjoy while experiencing her art. She spent nearly four hours before the opening in the kitchen with her dad, cooking 120 tamales and a Hopi stew made of hominy, meat and chilis that she says is common at family gatherings.

“When people are coming to this opening, I want them to feel like they are being welcomed into a familial space,” Shafer said.

Shafer will be at the final exhibition days, May 24, 25 and 31, and will host a discussion about her work on June 6.

She hopes Matrilineal Memory stirs something in viewers, and that they take part in the healing process that Shafer experienced while creating her work.

“I hope that it’s a healing experience for people to think about memories that they have that maybe they’ve been repressing or maybe they have shame about or maybe it’s a good memory,” Shafer said. “We need to share those memories and preserve them and connect through them.”

‍’My belly is a galaxy’

Framed original paintings hang along the walls of a square room at the Center for Native Arts & Cultures, with a large tumbleweed sitting in the middle. The pieces are all part of the Matrilineal Memory exhibition, an exploration of what it means to heal.

“It’s about how people can hold generations of trauma within them, but they can also hold generations of strength,” Shafer said. “Each painting is kind of like an unboxing of a memory and then the healing and sewing it back together in my own way.”

Walking clockwise around the room, Shafer displayed her work to tell a story. It starts with the moon, followed by the sun rising over a desert landscape and fades back into the sky and the moon, according to Shafer.

The watercolor pieces are full of texture — layers of paper, thread stitches and dried kombucha leather, made from the culture of bacteria and yeast called a SCOBY, which is sometimes referred to as a “mother.”

Between each piece, Shafer displayed some of her poetry, stitching all the work together.

My stomach feels like a galaxy

You are there,

and ancestors too

And everything is orbiting

so fast I lose my footing

and stumble into the street

Displayed next to the above poem is Shafer’s favorite piece: “My belly is a galaxy.” Burnt orange, olive green, mustard yellow and shades of blue crowd the frame.

To create this piece, Shafer hauled a generator out to the ocean in Seaview, Washington. She sewed on the beach, blending the colors of the desert with pieces of the ocean.

“It felt like I was connecting my homelands to the land that I live on now, the desert to the ocean,” Shafer said.

In creating each piece on display during the exhibition, Shafer focused on healing and reconnecting with her Hopi culture.

“It’s very important to heal yourself in order to heal your mother and grandmother so that you can preserve culture,” Shafer said. “It’s really important to do the work to heal ourselves so that future generations have stories of resilience.”

Now she has her own story of resilience and healing to pass on to her daughters.

Underscore News is a nonprofit investigative newsroom committed to Indigenous-centered reporting in the Pacific Northwest. We are supported by foundations and donor contributions. Follow Underscore on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok.”

Details

By Elyse Wild

May 17, 2024

Nina Sanders (Apsáalooke) filed suit on May 14 in an Illinois court against the Chicago Blackhawks organization, alleging she was the victim of sexual harassment and fraud during her employment.

When Sanders was hired as an independent contractor by the Blackhawk Organization in 2020, the team was mired in criticism following an announcement from the Washington Redskins that they would retire their name and logo.

According to the lawsuit, Daniel Wirtz, Blackhawks chairman and CEO, reached out to Sanders, offering her the position of liaison between the team and the Native American community. Wirtz made several promises to entice Sanders to accept the role, including hiring Native Americans, educating employees on Black Hawk, a Sauk leader, facilitating landback to the Sac and Fox Nation, and changing the team’s logo. 

In the lawsuit, Sanders states that none of these promises were fulfilled and that Wirtz “only intended on the Organization benefiting from their association with Ms. Sanders, as her standing and reputation in the Native American community.”

The suit alleges that shortly after Sanders began employment with the Blackhawk Organization in Septemeber 2020, her direct supervisor told her not to communicate matters such as sexual harassment in written form, such as email; rather, she should communicate such complaints through telephone or in person.

The lawsuit details several allegations of sexual harassment and assault toward Sanders and other women in the organization by two men associated with the team. One alleged incident involved an agent for the team sending Sanders sexually explicit videos of him masturbating on Snapchat; another in which he grabbed her arm and insisted he come to her room. 

The suit alleges that in November 2022, a Blackhawks dancer approached a woman and a private suite at the United Center and groped her. The woman, Sanders says, previously filed a police report against the dancer alleging he raped her. In another alleged incident, a man associated with the team sexually assaulted an employee. Sanders puts forth that none of the complaints were investigated by the Blackhawks organization or reported to the police. 

Following Sanders complaints of the incidents to her direct supervisor, she was moved out of team’s headquarters at Chicago’s United Center to a different location.

In June 2023, Sanders’ contract was terminated when, while an extension of her contract was being negotiated, she reassurted her allegations of harrasment and asked the organization how it planned to address the complaints.

“support specific initiatives in partnership with the Sac & Fox Nation and other Native American communities” and that “the organization had noted operational issues in her work, and had received feedback from external partners that they did not want to continue to work with her.”

According to the New York Times, the Blackhawk’s organization issued the following statement in response to the allegations:

“The Chicago Blackhawks have a zero-tolerance policy for misconduct and take allegations of harassment in the workplace very seriously,” one of the team’s statements read. “In response to Ms. Sanders’ allegations, the organization immediately conducted a thorough investigation with the assistance of outside counsel, including interviews with internal and external parties, and review of pertinent materials and digital records. Based on the information available to us, we found insufficient evidence to substantiate her claims. Of note, the persons identified by Ms. Sanders in your question are not, and have never been, independent contractors with nor employees of the Chicago Blackhawks.”

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Larissa FastHorse. (Courtesy of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation)

Larissa FastHorse is the first Native American woman to have a play produced on Broadway. That show — “The Thanksgiving Play” — is now onstage at Steppenwolf Theatre. It’s a satire about earnest theater folks who attempt to stage a historically accurate Thanksgiving play. Mistakes are made, and political correctness, wokeness and virtue signaling get carved and stuffed.

FastHorse belongs to the Sicangu Lakota Nation. She is a 2020 MacArthur Fellow, a founder of the consulting group Indigenous Direction, and worked on the touring production of “Peter Pan,” devising a new backstory for the character Tiger Lily.

WTTW News spoke with the playwright, who was at her home in Santa Monica.

WTTW News: So what do you do on Thanksgiving? Is it just another Thursday? Do you order takeout?

Larissa FastHorse: Oh, no, I love the goofy food! I love a big plate of beige and orange food. I grew up eating stuffing, mashed potatoes, turkey and sweet potato. It’s all one color palette, plus it’s more carbs than you ever get to eat. I grew up in South Dakota and my father came from an agricultural background, so it was very much about harvest and being appreciative and for the time of rest for farmers. You still have to get up every morning and feed animals and milk the cows, but you don’t also have to do planting and cultivation. It’s an exciting kickoff to a new season for farmers in a way that I think city folks don’t understand.

I sure don’t. Your play was written a few years ago, so what’s your role when Steppenwolf calls?

FastHorse: When Steppenwolf calls, I show up because I’m a fangirl of their work and their place in American theater. To their credit, they reached out to me right away and said, ‘Hey, we’d love to have you involved,’ and I was like, ‘Yay!’ I helped with the choice of director (Jess McLeod) and somewhat in casting. I was there for the first week of rehearsals, and then I came back during tech rehearsals. I was in and out of the process but was there as an advisor and spent time talking about things like how to engage the local Indigenous communities.

“The Thanksgiving Play” runs through June 2 at Steppenwolf Theatre. (Michael Brosilow)

Was it fun to write a satire? Did you care who gets offended, or did you just want to hold up the mirror of truth?

FastHorse: I poke fun at everybody. No one escapes. It’s not like, ‘Oh, we’re just going to laugh at those people.’ There’s definitely fun to be had in this production, and I wanted people to be rewarded for leaving their couch and their streaming service and coming to the theater. It matters that a space like that is filled with laughter, and at the same time you’re going to hear a truth. I was lucky with this piece. It was fairly easy to write, in that 80% of it is just lines from my life, things people have said to me. I just had to connect that with a bunch of jokes. [laughs]

Is there a Lakota-style sense of humor or approach to storytelling?

FastHorse: In most Native cultures, and Lakota culture for sure, humor is a core cultural trait. I always warn people who are not Lakota when I bring them back home that teasing is how we learn who you are and how we show love. Once they start making fun of you, you’re in. [laughs] I rarely speak in generalizations about Native American people on the continent, but if you get any Natives together, within a minute the laughter is off the charts. Laughter is how we connect. Laughter is how we cope. It’s something that’s a huge part of our resiliency. We’re in the longest ongoing genocide — it’s been hundreds of years, and it’s still going – and we’re still here.

“The Thanksgiving Play” runs through June 2 at Steppenwolf Theatre. (Michael Brosilow)

In conversations with Native artists, I often ask, ‘What do you want people to know about you?’ And I hear a lot of: ‘That we’re still here. That we’re creative and vibrant and not stuck in your 19th century notions.’

FastHorse: We’ve been frozen in the time when White people first encountered us — roughly 1830 through the 1860s — and that’s so messed up. That’s when White people saw us and painted us, and photography showed up on the scene. What about the 1,000 years before that? What about the years after that? Like all humans, we’re constantly evolving and growing and adapting. For many years I couldn’t even apply for some grants because I’m not, quote, ‘a traditional Native American artist’ because I’m not doing things White people saw us doing in the mid-1800s.

Do you have any parting thoughts on your experience working on theater in Chicago?

FastHorse: You know, I’m an LA girl, but I will say Chicago audiences have earned their reputation for being serious theater people. They’re deeply involved and so engaged. They get there early and stay late and have discussions about the work. Among non-Chicagoans, folks can be like, ‘Really? You think you’re the theater people?’ Well, you are. You show up and know your stuff. It’s beautiful to see.

“The Thanksgiving Play” runs through June 2 at Steppenwolf’s Ensemble Theater.

Australia’s richest woman is apparently hopping mad at a portrait of her now on view at Canberra’s National Gallery of Australia. She wants the painting, by the indigenous Western Aranda artist Vincent Namatjira, removed from view in the exhibition “Vincent Namatjira: Australia in Colour.” 

The museum is standing firm in support of the artist and in defense of its right to display the canvas.

“Since 1973, when the National Gallery acquired Jackson Pollock’s Blue Poles, there has been a dynamic discussion on the artistic merits of works in the national collection, and/or on display at the gallery,” the museum said in a statement shared with Artnet News. “We present works of art to the Australian public to inspire people to explore, experience, and learn about art.”

Installation view of “Vincent Namatjira: Australia in colour at the National Gallery of Australia, Kamberri/Canberra, 2024. Photo courtesy of the National Gallery of Australia.

Rinehart did not immediately respond to a request for comment, emailed to her in care of her company Hancock Prospecting, a mining and agricultural firm. The museum’s website shows that she is a friend of the museum and has made a gift between $4,999 and $9,999 ($3,338 to $6,679 in U.S. dollars).

“I paint the world as I see it,” Namatjira wrote in a statement on Thursday, quoted in the Guardian. “People don’t have to like my paintings, but I hope they take the time to look and think, ‘Why has this Aboriginal bloke painted these powerful people? What is he trying to say?’” He paints significant people who have impacted society for better or worse, he said. “Some people might not like it, other people might find it funny but I hope people look beneath the surface and see the serious side too.”

Gina Rinehart in Sydney, Australia, 2015. Photo: Matt King/Getty Images.

It’s true that Rinehart doesn’t look so great in the portrait, which gives her a very prominent double chin and staring eyes that make her look a bit unhinged. All the same, there was no fuss when the painting hung at Adelaide’s Art Gallery of South Australia, where it was on show for several months, ending in January. 

Namatjira has portrayed Rinehart before. His 2017 painting Gina Rinehart and Me shows the two shoulder-to-shoulder, neither looking too pleased with the arrangement. The Richest (Gina Rinehart), from 2016, earned him a finalist spot for the $100,000 Ramsay Art Prize the following year. 

“I like to paint with a little bit of humor,” the artist said about Gina Rinehart and me II, in the collection of the Art Gallery of Western Australia (in which both look a bit happier). “Humor takes away some of their power and keeps us all equal.”

Also coming in for the Namatjira treatment in the current exhibition are an international host of famous figures past and present, from Queen Elizabeth II (who exhibits a strange grimace) to Australian rules footballer Adam Goodes to musician Jimi Hendrix.

The museum describes the artist, from Indulkana in South Australia, as “a satirical chronicler of Australian identity.” He has been painting portraits of significant figures since 2013 and has won considerable attention: in 2020, he became the first Indigenous artist to win the Archibald Prize, granted by the Art Gallery of New South Wales, for his portrait of Goodes, and was decorated with the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) for his contribution to Indigenous visual arts.

Vincent Namatjira at the National Gallery of Australia, Kamberri/Canberra, 2024. Photo courtesy of the National Gallery of Australia.

Namatjira, a native of Alice Springs, was torn from his family at age six and raised in foster care in distant Perth, where he was deprived of all contact with and knowledge of his relatives. 

“I was just taken away by strangers,” he said in a video on the museum’s website. “I lost connection with family, Country, and culture. That was a bit hard.

“That’s why I paint the politicians and people with tuxedos and suits, that’s what the politician was to me and my sister—’We raise you until you’re 18, you can go back to family, pushed out the door and sent back on a plane to Alice Springs.’” 

“They don’t apologize at all. We never got a ‘see you’ or ‘good bye’ or ‘take care,’ that kind of thing.”

Also on view is a selection of works, curated by the artist, by his great-grandfather, famed artist Albert Namatjira, whom he cited as his “number one key role model.” He had no knowledge of his connection to the elder artist until he was an adult, and was amazed to discover that he was part of an artistic lineage.

“I believe in the power of art, the power of the paintbrush,” said Namatjira. “I know that art can change lives—it changed mine—and I hope that art can change the world too.”

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The Keeper of the Plains turns 50 this year and has become a symbol of Wichita and an inspiration for Native artists.

The 44-foot-tall statue is a major influence on three local artists. Its creator — Black Bear Bosin — has also had an impact on them.

Writer, actor, comedian and digital artist Daniel Pewewardy recently showed photos at the Wichita Art Museum as a part of the exhibit “Twice Removed.” Pewewardy, who’s not originally from Wichita, moved here early in his life and has a great appreciation for the “Keeper of the Plains.” And not just for its artistic properties.

“A lot of times if work is hard or something, or stressed or whatever,” he says. “I’ll kinda look at the Keeper, and …I might say something corny like, ‘Yeah’ or something…just the acknowledgment.

“We’re on the second floor of the Advanced Learning Library in the learning pavilion facing north-ish. Right behind the Exploration Place and above the tree line, you [can] see ‘The Keeper,’ … that’s like the perfect silhouette from the angle we’re at.

“I believe ‘The Keeper’ keeps us safe from tornadoes. And I feel maybe that was an underlying intent with the project. Mad respect out to Blackbear for that too.”

Jokes aside, Pewewardy is enthusiastic about what he is celebrating this weekend.

“We’re celebrating … [the] Wichita ‘Statue of Liberty’ … one of the most noticeable like landmarks in town,” Pewewardy says. “For me personally, I’m celebrating like a monumental achievement for a member of my tribal nation. This is something that you could be proud of because it was made by a Native American.”

Pewewardy has also made shirts to raise money for the Bosin Society. He says he was aiming for a more bootleg-style design.

“The aesthetic that I was going for … was like a 1990s, like flea market bootleg shirt,” he says. “On the bottom, you see Bosin’s name in flames and then we have a picture of Bosin next to ‘The Keeper.’

“There’s a lot of copyright infringement in regards to ‘The Keepers’ image and likeness that continues to happen throughout the city of Wichita. To pay the most respect to ‘The Keeper,’ You have to remember who made ‘The Keeper.’

Artist Maria Massu also had work on display at the Wichita Art Museum as a part of “Twice Removed.” She finds inspiration in the story-telling aspect of Blackbear Bosin’s work.

“I think I would describe it like, just very colorful and just alive kind of like you can actually … follow the photo and kind of get the story a little bit,” Massu says.

Bosin’s work also encouraged Massu to embrace more of her artistic notions.

“I like that he shows his muses doing certain poses and movement[s] because I don’t like doing … still poses,” she says. “I like showing people actually moving around.”

Massu and Pewewardy grew up going to pow-wows at the Mid-American All-Indian Museum. Those are some of their favorite memories.

“I’ve spent a lot of time of my childhood growing up there … going to different pow-wow’s … almost every weekend. …The Native American culture is so alive in Wichita and that it isn’t gone any more.”

Tattooer Megan Shelton had a similar experience going to pow-wows. She now gets to tattoo “The Keeper” on people….a lot. When she first started, she realized more details that were often overlooked.

“I think from far away you don’t see all the little tiny details of like, you know, just that there’s like that cutaway the underside of the chin, the nose, those types of things. I feel like when a lot of people reproduce the image, they oversimplify it,” she says.

Shelton’s tattoo style is somewhat influenced by Blackbear Bosin. She describes his style as “in motion.”

“It’s a very bold graphic image. But there’s also a story that you can see, you know, if you kind of look and like absorb all the imagery that he uses in it.”

The image of this huge sculpture standing at the confluence of the Arkansas River has immense meaning for these artists.

“You know, the Keeper like just kind of symbolizes the people that were here before Wichita is what we know it today,” Shelton says.

“When I was a kid, I remember first reading that it was made by a Kiowa Comanche,” Massu says. “Tribal members have felt like a little bit represented. Nice knowing that there was a piece of my culture like actually being shown that other people can look at.”

“Like a giant Native American … in the middle of downtown Wichita is … beyond any kind of representation I could have expected growing up,” Pewewardy says.

A celebration in honor of the “Keeper of the Plains” takes place on Saturday at the Mid-America All-Indian Museum. The event is hosted by The Bosin Society, The City of Wichita and Sedgwick County. The event starts at 7 a.m. and lasts all day, ending with fireworks after dark.

Saskatchewan Métis artist Melanie Monique Rose made a return visit to the Humboldt and District Gallery on Thursday evening. She is the curator of ᑌᐸᑯᐦᑊ/Tepakohp/7, an exhibit featuring the work of seven Indigenous women. Rose had previously placed a solo exhibit in the Humboldt and District Gallery, That exhibit is now in Brantford, ON for her first solo venture outside the province.  

Tepakohp (ᑌᐸᑯᐦᑊ) is the Néhiyaw word for seven which has a deep significance for Indigenous communities throughout the world. She outlined the concept of the Seven Generation Principle in which decisions should be made with an eye to the impact on seven generations of ancestors. 

Another precept is the Seven Grandfather Teachings of Love, Respect, Bravery, Truth, Honesty, Humility and Wisdom, the guiding principles to having a good life. 

In a nod to the renowned Canadian Group of Seven artists, Indigenous artists created their own group of seven, six men and one woman, who worked to establish a group to establish Indigenous art creators as a viable force in contemporary art.  

“The Professional Native Artists Incorporated or the Indian Group of Seven were very influential in the early ‘70s,” Rose explained. “Daphne Odjig started a collective in Winnipeg, and she was the lone female Indigenous artist.” 

Out of this came Tepakohp, the seven member women collective and subsequent show.  

“I was really wanting to think about continuing that legacy. These artists (Tepakohp) really took those Seven Sacred Teachings into consideration in their work. Many of these artists are very much inspired by the Indian Group of Seven.” 

Rose said after the showing, she is hoping someone else will take the torch and continue the legacy of giving talented Indigenous women artists and avenue for others to explore their work.  

Much of the work is about reconnecting with individual identity, reassimilating a collective culture in the wake of residential schools, and exposing everyone to the vibrant and vital connection to the land and nature reflected in the work.  

In addition to Melanie Monique Rose, artists in the exhibition include Marcy Friesen, Stacy Fayant, Brandy Jones, Larissa Kitchemonia, Donna the Strange, and Audie Murray. 

Following the talk, Melanie and a group of local artists headed to the Gathering Place for a workshop on creating scarves using botanicals, a favoured element is her work.  Thank you to Darlene Ford for the workshop images. 

ᑌᐸᑯᐦᑊ/Tepakohp/7 will be on display until Saturday, June 22.