High Plains Rising
Meet Four Plains Indian Artists You Should Know About, and the Arts Group That Helped Launch Them

As appears in Southwest Art Magazine, August 2003
By Todd Wilkinson

Hard-edged, defiant, indomitable, intrepid. Jay Laber’s metallic warriors, positioned at the front entrance to the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in Montana, are more than symbols of a proud tribe that has survived generations of adversity. 

In ways exceedingly profound, these sculpted sentries, erected from wrecked car bodies, are vestiges of resilient hope flowering from the bud of pain. They’re also glow stones in a success story partially underwritten by the First Peoples Fund, an arts organization helping to bring international recognition to Indian artisans. First Peoples was founded in 1995 foremost to be an advocate for artists from high Plains tribes, though its focus has grown to extend from the Midwest to the Pacific Rim, from the sparsely populated prairie to the urban core of Seattle. 

“If an Indian artist has a dream of making a living off his or her art, then we’re here to give them the tools to make the right choices,” says the organization’s executive director, Lori Lea Pourier. 

For Pourier, an epiphany occurred some years ago while she was working for the Indigenous Women’s Network and traveled to the southern Mexico province of Chiapas under the auspices of the United Nations. Pourier, an Oglala Lakota (Sioux), was locked in conversation with Zapatista activists who were encouraging native farmers in the region to market their own coffee in order to give them a position in the global economy. One of the Zapatista commandantes asked Pourier two questions: What do you do with your land? How do you feed yourself? “When I described my own reservation community thousands of miles away in South Dakota and the hardships people confronted, they interpreted it as us living in prison camps,” she recalls. “Here were people I was trying to help taking pity on me.” 

It made Pourier realize that the paternalism practiced by the federal government on U.S. reservations had subdued the spirit of her community and undermined the ability of its individuals to move toward economic self-determination. Pourier saw art as a way of liberating her people on the high Plains, having already witnessed the link that exists between art and economic opportunity in Southwest pueblos. “Unlike artists in the Southwest,” Pourier realized, “we didn’t have access to major markets or collectors.” 

Joining forces with Jennifer Easton, a filmmaker and philanthropist from Minnesota, Pourier helped found the First Peoples Fund (www.firstpeoplesfund.org) with assistance from the Tides Foundation. First Peoples Fund, based in Rapid City, SD, is funded by individuals and foundations, and is pursuing grants from federal arts organization. It has attracted such notable board members as Blackfeet banker Elouise Cobell, who has become an international hero for leading the fight to have thousands of U.S. Indians compensated for the billions of dollars owed to them by the federal government; Carole Howe, who operates 28 shops including Spirit of the Red Horse in nearly a dozen airports; Ben Sherman, a marketer of high-end tours of Indian Country; and Don Owen, who founded the Indian Artists of America show held every winter in Scottsdale, AZ. Through a regimen of mentorship and careful business planning, artists who become First  Peoples fellows are taught how to represent their own best interests and market themselves. 

Pourier cites the story of Jason and Ladonna Denny. Jason, of Cree and Crow descent, and his wife, Ladonna, a Northern Arapahoe, for years created traditional vests, moccasins, and cradleboards using intricate beadwork designs. Their only known market was a pawn shop that turned around and sold the items for many times what the Dennys were paid. Today, having gone through the First Peoples Fund program, the Dennys not only have money in the bank but a large following. 

Recipients of Emerging Artist Fellowships are awarded $5,000 and a computer to practice their art, network with other artists, and establish an online marketing presence. Fellows have included painters, sculptors, jewelers, textile artists, and beadworkers—and they are brought together with mentors such as Don Montileaux. 

Montileaux, a Lakota painter, thinks of himself as a modern “image maker” carrying on the tradition of his ancestors. At age 55, he is regarded as one of the premier ledger artists in the world, heralded for his ability to translate the imagery of ancient pictographs and visions received by contemporary warriors onto tanned buffalo, elk, and deer hides. His work is prized by individual collectors and featured in museums across the country, including an upcoming exhibition scheduled for Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art in Indianapolis. 

The son of Lakota parents who were both born on the Pine Ridge Reservation, Montileaux was raised off the reservation in Rapid City. In 1966, after graduating from high school, he was accepted to study at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, which represented the hub of the Native arts movement in the West. There, he says, “I finally found out who I was as a person, and it was great knowing that there were other Indians, like me, who had an interest in art.” 

Now he has gained a different perspective. “Santa Fe is really a great ride for any artist and it will always represent the pinnacle of success for an Indian artist because it is the place where you want to be,” he says. “But it’s also a market where you can lose yourself if you’re not careful. In Santa Fe, when one thing gets hot, everybody does it. Sometimes artists arrive at a point, because of their success, where they need to make a difficult choice: Do they want to remain an individual person who is creating art that is inspired from within, or do they, for the sake of making money, become somebody else’s puppet?” 

Montileaux is convinced that even though high Plains artists have languished due to their geographical obscurity, their isolation from the centers of the western art world has allowed them to remain purer in their artistic expression. High Plains artists evolved from a different tradition than, say, the Navajo, Hopi, and Zuni cultures, whose pottery was developed in less nomadic conditions. Plains art was more utilitarian. Not only did it serve an ornamental function in ceremonies but it was also used in everyday life, visible on the walls of teepees, in attire, and carried as amulets. 

Just as Montileaux now mentors artists via First Peoples, so was he mentored years ago by Herman Red Elk, a painter from the Fort Peck Reservation. “He taught me how to paint with a bow and brush, ledger art style,” Montileaux says. Montileaux today works from a studio in Rapid City and regularly visits reservations across the Plains. “The greatest honor I’ve received isn’t public recognition from people outside my community, but from my peers and elders saying they know of my work and they would be happy if I could help translate some of their stories,” he says. 

Historically, one of the primary challenges for emerging Plains Indian artists is having a centralized gathering place to show their work. Lakota batik artist Linda Szabo, another First Peoples Fund mentor, decided that if no one else was going to take the risk of opening a venue on the reservation, she would do it. And the decision is paying big dividends. 

For travelers who make an effort to get off Interstate 90, a visit to Szabo’s Soldier Woman Gallery in Mission, SD, on the Rosebud Reservation is a treat, particularly for those who enjoy seeing the grassroots Indian arts movement taking shape. “For a long time, the only kind of art that people associated with high Plains Indian artists was the stuff they encountered in the gift shops around Mount Rushmore,” says Szabo, 47. “Unfortunately, besides much of it being junk or made in Taiwan, most of the original art did not come off the local reservations. It was usually jewelry or paintings or pots made by Indian artists from the Southwest. My husband and I wanted to change all of that.” 

Soldier Woman Gallery represents the work of 80 artists, most of them Lakota. Szabo, who studied with Blackfeet artist King Kuka and discovered a gift for the kind of painting that appears on her acclaimed batiks, gravitates toward images of horses, teepees, dragonflies, and feathers – all in vibrant colors. 

“I think the young artists’ program established by First Peoples Fund is really important,” Szabo says. “My husband and I confronted the same barriers that these young artists face and we made a lot of mistakes. With the kinds of services First Peoples is offering, we wouldn’t have had those struggles.” 

Every year, First Peoples Fund requires that fellows participate in a number of shows, including Santa Fe’s Indian Market, held each August. In 2002, Lyle Omeasoo, a Blackfeet mixed-media painter, discovered why. Omeasoo, 31, who also works as an electrician in his day job, scrambled to attend Indian Market. At the time, the shy father of five was short on cash and had only a few new paintings to display. His self-confidence was lacking. He drove the entire 1,100 miles from Browning, ND, to Santa Fe, NM, by himself with a small stack of portraits and landscapes in his trunk. One of them was a stunningly realistic portrait of his late grandmother that he didn’t really want to sell, but he needed the money. Arriving at the First Peoples Fund booth, he set out his paintings. 

Within a couple of hours, Omeasoo had made $4,500, including $3,500 from the sale of his grandmother’s portrait. He’s convinced that until an artist is forced to interact with the buying public and realize the level of professionalism required to make a sale, they cannot succeed. As he puts it: “If you’re an artist with First Peoples Fund, you learn there’s a whole different world beyond the rez.” 

Born and raised in Browning, Omeasoo was influenced by a high school art teacher who encouraged him to draw, then exposed him to oil painting. Impatient with the drying time of oil paint, he switched to acrylic, then expanded into mixed media with an airbrush. His first “public” airbrush mural was rendered on an unlikely surface, but it secured him a vaunted status among Blackfeet teenagers and has lead to a number of commissions. The subject: a portrait of martial arts legend Bruce Lee created on the hood of his wife’s car. “That’s what really got me local exposure,” Omeasoo says. “She drove her car to work and people crowded around. Whenever I see young people they tell me it’s pretty cool. They can’t believe that someone on the reservation could produce art like that.” 

Omeasoo also painted a portrait of basketball star Michael Jordan, which was purchased by executive from the Chicago Bulls passing through Browning on his way to nearby Glacier National Park. Omeasoo credits his First Peoples fellowship with educating him about what it takes to be a successful full-time artist. 

Blackfeet sculptor Jay Laber, too, has gained perspective from Firs Peoples. Through visual alchemy, using metal saws, blowtorches, and hammers, Laber takes pride in transforming destroyed, rusted cars—which often got that way through tragic circumstances—into three-dimensional wonders that are inspirations to the communities where they are displayed. “I wouldn’t describe what I do as modern,” considers Laber. “I would call it extremely traditional.” 

His work brings new meaning and appreciation to the notion of “found” materials. “All Native people, in one form or another, made artistic objects because art was an intrinsic part of their daily lives,” the 41-year-old artist/carpenter says. “For thousands of years, Indians used whatever they could find in the world around them. When I see a wrecked car, I don’t look at it as a foreign object. I see it as an opportunity.” 

Elders on the Blackfeet Reservation have told Laber that he has helped heal the painful memories of accidents that claimed the lives of their loved ones. The largely self-taught Laber only became a fine artist during the 1990s. Suffering from dyslexia, he had trouble reading in high school and never considered himself a serious student of anything other than the building trades. On a whim, while taking a break from his carpentry work, he stopped by Salish-Kootenai Community College in Pablo, MT. After being offered a scholarship, he enrolled and quickly gravitated to art classes. His drawing and painting eventually led him to metal sculpture. 

Today, at the same institution where Laber was a student only a few years ago, he is now an adjunct professor with a number of public sculptural installations and commissions from collectors around the world to his credit. 

“I haven’t circulated much in the fine art world,” he says. “I didn’t know what you’re supposed to do at shows, or how you set a price, or that you pay taxes. I never realized there’s so much to it. First Peoples Fund has given me a fresh look at what is possible in my life.” 

Laber chuckles at all the critical attention he’s received, particularly after sharing the fact that a professor at the University of Montana made his work the focus of an exercise in philosophy, asking students to provide their interpretation of what inspires his work. “My pieces aren’t going to last forever unless you make a serious effort to preserve them, and that’s not my call but the buyer’s,” he says. “After all, they are rusting cars. I’m not making art with a distant future in mind. I’m doing it for the here and now.” 

In that here and now, these and other Plains Indians are realizing they have the wherewithal to reach out and connect with collectors, galleries, and museums throughout the country.