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For over 16 years, Cynthia Masterson (Comanche Nation of Oklahoma) has beaded traditional objects for ceremonies and powwows. “Our Stories Are Mixed” was her first juried art show, held at the “In the Spirit” event at the Washington State History Museum.

Cynthia carries the name of her great-great-great-grandmother Cynthia Ann Parker, mother of Quanah Parker, one of the last Comanche chiefs. She is an enrolled member of the Comanche tribe and a Titchywy descendant. Born and raised in Oklahoma, she lives with her husband Bret in Seattle, Washington.

Cynthia reached for a blue dot bead and added it to her design. A bead weaving technique that is done one bead at a time around cylindrical objects, the traditional 3-drop gourd stitch is difficult to master. When Cynthia feared making mistakes, she often did the only thing she knew — a row of blue dots, the only element that would fit her unplanned design.

“When I’m feeling lost and don’t know how to begin or end, a round of blue dots always comforts me,”

To learn the 3-drop gourd stitch while living in Seattle, Cynthia watched a series of VHS tapes produced by someone in her church back in Oklahoma. It was challenging, but through the years, Cynthia started mastering the form, and people asked her to teach it. This developed into presenting workshops and teaching at every opportunity.

Cynthia was on the cusp of launching her art as a business with help from a 2015 First Peoples Fund (FPF) Artist in Business Leadership fellowship. But a few days after the FPF fellows convening in Santa Fe, she was hospitalized and faced two surgeries and months of bed rest. Later, she suffered from shoulder issues and more surgeries. It was a long road to recovery, one that inhibited her ability to bead.

But she found her way back. In 2019, Cynthia participated in a catalyzing show at King Street Station in Seattle though yəhaw. Yəhaw is a project series of collective of Indigenous creatives providing interdisciplinary cultural, art, and design services. The show opened new doors and gave her beadwork the recognition it needed.

Cynthia was selected to receive a Cultural Capital Fellowship and made plans to fly home to Oklahoma to present workshops. Due to the national shutdown, she had to switch to online teaching, finding herself in the difficult position of once again dealing with video instead of hands-on mentorship. However, she’s found ways to explain and demonstrate when a student has done a stitch incorrectly, showing it to them by live video.

Today Cynthia runs her own website, Blue Dot Beadwork, where she sells her creations and offers workshops and video tutorials.

“There are so few people who do this unique style of beadwork,” she says. “I want to change that. I struggled to learn, and I want to ease the way for others.”

Lori Pourier (Oglala Lakota) and Carlton Turner share heart thoughts on current events and how the Intercultural Leadership Institute allows them to embrace shared experiences and interdependence.

In response to the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and countless others before them, and the nationwide protests over the past few weeks, I find myself, as many of us, experiencing a full range of emotions from outrage, anger, and grief to an overwhelming empathy for each of the families who have lost their loved ones.

It has also spurred me to reflect on the work across communities of color that I’ve done for three decades and the numerous experiences when I’ve engaged in deep conversations on racism in America. One of my early experiences was in 1992. I joined Tia Oros Peters, Executive Director and Chris Peters, President, of the Seventh Generation Fund at an anti-racism workshop, Undoing Racism, presented by the Peoples Institute on Race which today has become one of the most reputable coalition-building anti-racism organizations directly addressing structural and historic racism in America. I had limited knowledge of how large a part government policies have played in the systemic racism imposed upon Black communities, some of which were already thriving. At the time, it was a struggle for me to hear a narrative that did not include Native peoples, because we too had been deeply impacted by destructive policies and my own family had been affected.

As one example, the Urban Relocation Program that began in the 1950's was designed to remove Native peoples from our homelands and to assimilate us into mainstream society. My parents were uprooted and sent to Dallas, Texas where they were promised housing and employment, but when they got there they were left on their own in the middle of an urban city. My mother recalls when she was homesick she would sit on the steps of a Black Baptist church and listen to their choir sing, as a way to bring herself some comfort.  

Twenty some years after the Undoing Racism workshop, I found myself in the Peoples Institute training again, as part of an arts and social justice working group. While engaging in a critical analysis on systemic racism in America, I was again confronting my personal struggles -- what seemed to me was the repeated invisibility of our 574 Tribal Nations who are still here, many of whom still remain in their own territories. My reaction was to stand strong in my own identity, my Lakota values and my own reality on the topic of race.

Fast forward to 2016 when First Peoples Fund joined with Alternate Roots, National Association of Latino Arts and Culture Organization and the PA’I Foundation to launch the Intercultural Leadership Institute (ILI). (ILI translates to “skin” in the Hawaiian language.) The common experience that brought us together was that as leaders within our own organizations, we repeatedly found ourselves in spaces where we were faced with having to fit into mainstream white organizational models of sustainability. Built on a foundation of trust, ILI allowed us to embrace our shared experiences and interdependence. While each leading our respective organizations, it was an important time for us to create a mutually-shared space, not only for critical analysis and action, but one in which we could build upon our collective intellectual and cultural knowledge.  

Over the past few years I have started to acknowledge that even in trusted spaces like ILI, I have felt a tension between my Black peers and American Indians, especially on the topic of Anti-Blackness. I’ve come to recognize that, while holding on to my Lakota values and my concerns around invisibility and erasure of Native peoples, I have become shortsighted in acknowledging the reality of Anti-Blackness and how pervasive it is.

As I continue to grow and learn, I am reminded of the words of my brother, First Peoples Fund board member and founding ILI partner, Carlton Turner from Utica, Mississippi that he shared at ILI Lakota in 2018. “When Native Americans pray and smudge and they speak in their language, it is very apparent that it is not from the mainstream. Yet when Black folks sing those are the same songs and language of the oppressor. Our rituals and our ceremony are not seen as ceremony because they didn’t come in the same types of packages.”

Carlton is speaking his truth when he talks about Black peoples’ loss of connection to their languages and African roots making it easier for others to discount their rituals and ceremonies as sacred.  Today, I have come to challenge my own biases and will make it my practice to honor and respect their sacred spaces as much as I do my ancestral homelands. The blood of each of our ancestors is rooted in these lands. Their ancestors survived slavery in America and through prayer and song they were given hope, faith and remained resilient even in the darkest times.  

Although we are in a dark time in America, I have faith that First Peoples Fund and our ILI partners will hold ourselves accountable to our Black brothers and sisters across this nation.  We must lift each other up and be the good relative that our Ancestors would expect of us.

First Peoples Fund was founded on the principle of Collective Spirit, “That which moves each one of us to stand up and make a difference, to pass on ancestral knowledge and simply extend a hand of generosity.” It is time that we extend a hand in humility and of shared resilience and stand with our Black relatives in the fight for freedom and justice.

—Lori Pourier

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For the first time in my memory the nation paused for a moment on Friday, June 19, 2020 to celebrate Juneteenth, the day the last group of enslaved people of African descent in Galveston, Texas learned of their freedom. However, the Emancipation Proclamation was signed by President Abraham Lincoln on September 22, 1862, more than two years before this date. The fact that Juneteenth is even a thing is an appropriate metaphor for the delayed freedom that African Americans have experienced under this government. This delayed justice is demonstrated in many facets of American history. It is a hallmark to the concept of separate and unequal, a foundational principle that stains the very fabric of American ideas. This delay allowed a constitution that states that all men are created equal to be written by white slaveholders that considered African descendants to be three-fifths of a person and considered our Indigenous family to be godless savages.

White supremacy contaminated the root of the American experiment from the very beginning. A plant growing in such circumstances is unable to produce healthy fruit. What we see today in the streets of Minneapolis, New York City, Los Angeles, and Atlanta is not the response to the murders of George Floyd or Breonna Taylor or Amaud Aubrey as an isolated or series of events. What we are seeing is the response to the death of the ideathat the possibility of freedom and justice could ever be attainable in the country’s current configuration. People are protesting because they have lost all hope in the system to be able to correct itself. They are now placing their faith in people, regular people like their neighbors and friends.

This moment is a confluence of a global pandemic, one that is adversely impacting Black and Indigenous communities; an economic crisis that is further widening the wealth gap between Black, brown communities and our white counterparts; and a rise in extrajudicial police killings of Black people. Things are dire, so much so that my son, a 2020 college graduate asked me, “Is this the beginning of the end of the world?”

I answered with a resounding yes and, well, no.

Yes, this moment marks the ending of the world as we knew it pre-COVID. A world that just accepts oppression and injustice as the norm. And no, the world will continue. I tell him, here is the caveat, we have the opportunity to shape what comes next. Our ability or inability to work together to build new systems and structures based on values of love and reciprocity, or not, will determine the world that you raise your children in.

In order for us to build the world we deserve we have to build on a foundation of trust. The type of trust that has led to multi-cultural coalitions like the Intercultural Leadership Institute. The type of trust that is founded on mutual respect, global indigenous knowledge, cultural competency, and a willingness to lean into our growing edges together. It is this trust that extended me an invitation to become a First People’s Fund board member. The same trust has brought me, time and time again, to the Lakota ancestral lands to break bread with Lori and her family. It is this trust that has allowed us to strategize for more than a decade on how to advance Indigenous sovereignty and anti-racist worldviews to the US cultural sector.  

The work Lori and I do together is part of our commitment to each other. Our commitments to each other are deeply tied to our individual commitments to our families and a deep respect for the legacy of liberation that we were each born into. I consider my work with First People’s Fund to be more than board service. I consider the work done in FPF’s name a practicum in the liberation of my own family and community. The work we do together is not theoretical, our lives literally hang in the balance.

—Carlton Turner

Surrounded by family and loved ones touched by her lifetime of basket making, Molly Neptune Parker (Passamaquoddy) passed peacefully in June 2020. The matriarch of four generations of Passamaquoddy basketweavers, Molly left behind footprints for future generations to walk in. She was a 2008 First Peoples Fund Community Spirit Awards (CSA) recipient and lived a life dedicated to the preservation of Passamaquoddy traditions and values.

Born in Indian Township, Maine, in 1939, Molly would sit and watch her mother make baskets. Molly gathered leftover scraps of ash and sweet grass from her mother's work and played with them.

The basket making process began with her dad pounding ash trees with the bottom of an ax to loosen each ring around the tree. Going from one end of the tree to the other, he loosened upwards to 20 rings. Molly's mother, and the other women of her family, stripped and split the ash into the correct thickness for basketweaving, depending on if they were making work baskets or fancy baskets.

Instead of going outside to play like the other children, Molly fooled around with scrap material, her interest growing with age. She soon began picking out useable material from her mother's little basket to weave, starting a 75 year journey of making baskets.

In her early twenties, Molly married a truck driver who hailed from a family of basket weavers. In the off times of work, together with a few others, Molly and her husband made 100 baskets per week to sell to fish factories.

Molly gravitated back to fancy baskets in the early '70s. She developed her signature acorn basket that features an ash flower on top, a design used by her mother and grandmother.

It wasn't long after that Molly began selling fancy baskets at craft fairs. Every time she sold a basket, she put the money in a special account, eventually saving enough for a downpayment on a home.

Molly rapidly gained recognition in the art world, though for Molly, her craft was about looking forward and also looking back to her ancestors, determined to carry on their traditions. She studied and handled baskets from present to past, up to 200 years old, from several tribes. She even had an opportunity to see a basket made by her great-grandmother.

"When I hold a basket of someone who has gone before, I am holding part of them, and it is a link to the future and all the hands that will hold it."

In her 2008 CSA application, Molly said, "When I hold a basket of someone who has gone before, I am holding part of them, and it is a link to the future and all the hands that will hold it. Art is both a way of healing by learning the discipline of basket making while being a means of expression."

Nominated by First Peoples Fund CSA honoree and Native Artist Professional Development trainer Theresa Secord (Penobscot), Molly's CSA award acknowledged her leadership in the resurgence of basketry in Maine. On Molly's passing, Theresa wrote:

"Molly Neptune Parker of Indian Township, Maine, was a natural leader in the resurgence of Wabanaki basketry among the four tribes; Passamaquoddy, Penobscot, Micmac, and Maliseet. Like a few other elders keeping the tradition alive, she continued to weave and teach Passamaquoddy basketry, during the times in the last century before there were higher prices and awards for doing so. She is credited with helping to save the endangered (at the time) ash and sweet grass basketry tradition in Maine. During Molly's nearly 20 year tenure as president of the Maine Indian Basketmakers Alliance, the average age of basket makers decreased from 63 to 40, and numbers increased from 55 founding members to around 150, bringing forth a new younger generation of ash and sweet grass basket makers. Some of these basket makers have gone on to win national acclaim for their artistry and earn viable livings through their practice, ensuring the art form will survive."

"As Gal Frey (Passamaquoddy basket maker) said upon her passing, 'Molly's loss represents the end of an era of Wabanaki basketry, where people grew up learning their traditional basketry and speaking their language in the home.' There are strong efforts currently underway to save and revive these practices thanks to the hard work and steadfast commitment of people like Molly. She is sadly missed by her family, the Passamaquoddy tribe, and the entire Wabanaki community."

The National Endowment for the Arts recognized Molly as a National Heritage Fellow in 2012, the nation's highest honor in the arts, a lifetime achievement award. Molly earned numerous awards and recognition in her lifetime, but it always came back to mentoring the next generation.

She had ten children — six natural and four adopted — and taught basket making to the ones who were interested. When her grandchild, Geo Neptune (Passamaquoddy) was four years old, they asked their grandmother if they could sit with her and make baskets. They now create their own designs, staying with traditional, yet incorporating their own style into each basket they make.

Molly was a conduit between the past generations of basket makers and future ones.

"There are more people today making baskets then there were in the '70s," Molly said in an interview with the National Endowment for the Arts. "They realize the value of the work, not only for money but to continue the tradition. They're finally realizing how important it is to carry on the tradition our forefathers started.”

"Art is both a way of healing by learning the discipline of basket making while being a means of expression."

“A lot of the artists are expressing that they thought they were alone in this struggle, that they were the only ones having a hard time.”

—Leslie Deer (Muscogee), NAPD Trainer

When a cascade of canceled events started in March 2020, First Peoples Fund (FPF) heard directly from artists, community members, and relatives who shared their greatest needs, from income loss to lack of human connection.

In response, Hillary Presecan, FPF Program Manager of Community Development, reached out to Native Artist Professional Development (NAPD) trainers to discover what they felt was most critical to share through training.

“The NAPD trainers stepped up to a whole new level,” Hillary says. “Our trainers are part of our community, and they are artists to the core. It’s great that I’m able to say, ‘Tell me what you think people need. I want you to educate me on how we need to use our platform as an Indigenous organization.’”

Together with NAPD trainers already committed for the annual First Peoples Fund fellows convening and NAPD trainings across the country (all cancelled due to COVID), Hillary found ways to address the community’s needs. One of the challenges was shifting the NAPD curriculum to virtual training. Out of that developed the online “Resilience Webinar Series.”

Knowing it would be difficult for people to sit in front of a screen for eight hours straight, FPF chose drip feed training to break down the topics and allow people to get a taste of what the NAPD has to offer. One of those topics was “Planning the Artist Calendar,” drawn from the Marketing section of the manual.

Leslie Deer (Muscogee) — 2016 Artist in Business Leadership Fellow and NAPD trainer — led that session from the sewing studio in her home in Holdenville, Oklahoma.

“It’s important in these times to know how to plan for the future,” Leslie says. “[Continuing to learn] keeps people’s minds focused on what’s next. What can I be doing, or what opportunities are available? What are other artists doing? How is everyone coping? It is beneficial to network with others, and I think the Resilience Webinars Series is really, really important for artists.”

Hillary’s colleague, Rolling Rez Arts coordinator Bryan Parker (White Mountain Apache, Muscogee Creek, Mississippi Choctaw), knows it is critical to share inspiration. He launched “Saturday Art Live,” a vibrant, upbeat mix of performing and visual artists to bring a light of hope and inspiration to relatives around the world. The sessions include a 10-minute performing arts segment and an artist demonstration, offering both kinds of artists a platform to showcase their work.

“Before, the Rolling Rez Arts bus was limited on where we went, what community we provided resources to,” Bryan says. “Since everything was going virtual, my idea was to send the Rolling Rez out everywhere, virtually, and to utilize our fellows more with the program.”

2015 Artist in Business Leadership fellow Micheal Two Bulls (Oglala Lakota) got creative with his visual art session on printmaking, reimagining how he could share with a wide audience in a simplified way. He chose cyanotype printmaking as the most accessible for people, especially youth, to follow along as if they were at the bus, doing the project hands-on.

“You don’t need a lot of material, and what you need is relatively easy to find,” Micheal says. “It was great to have Bryan because while I was working, people would ask questions in the comments, and he would facilitate it. So it was a nice flow.”

The online interactions often continued with people private messaging or emailing each other. One thing viewers latched onto was that many of the artists were presenting from their studios.

It was the first time Micheal had opened his newer studio, located in his basement, to other artists.

“These times are hard, but there is some light,” Micheal says. “You get more access to artists with them streaming from their studios, talking through their processes.”

“It’s very relatable,” Bryan says. “When you see somebody else’s studio that may be set up similar to yours, it doesn’t make you feel as lost or helpless, in that you don’t have all the tools you want. You see somebody who’s making it work with what they have, and you think, ‘If they can do it with minimal resources, so can I.’”

“By sharing these cultural practices and cultural history, hopefully, we’ll be able to move forward in a more positive light,”

The Resilience Webinar Series, Saturday Art Live, and On the Virtual Road with Rolling Rez Arts, led by FPF artists and trainers, help meet the needs of artists, community members, and relatives with inspiration and training to keep them focused on what’s next.

“By sharing these cultural practices and cultural history, hopefully, we’ll be able to move forward in a more positive light,” Bryan says. “My whole idea with the video series is to inspire people, and to celebrate arts and culture.”

An award-winning artist and culture bearer, Kelly Looking Horse (Oglala Lakota) shares Lakota stories and makes and performs art through traditional dancing, drumming, singing, leather and wood work, beading, quilling, and painting — to enhance, reinforce, and illustrate the stories.

Kelly founded Lakota Red Nations, a family-owned and operated enterprise specializing in traditional Native arts, crafts, and Oglala Lakota history. He and his wife, Suzie (Pomo of the Robinson Rancheria Band), live in Batesland, South Dakota. He is a 2020 First Peoples Fund Cultural Capital Fellow.

Children entered the room, most of them hesitant and uncertain. They were there to learn what it means to become a powwow dancer. Kelly and his wife, Suzie, welcomed them and explained the significance of the journey they were embarking on. By the end of the orientation for the Grandchildren’s Dance Society, the children’s shyness had melted away.

“Both the parents and children are excited about it,” Kelly says. “When you become a dancer, you’re in a position for people to call upon, whether you dance performances for somebody or contribute to a powwow. When you show up in your regalia, the organizers get excited because you’re a dancer. You become a special person.”

With the global shutdown, the Dance Society has been put on hold, but Kelly and Suzie are keeping some part of it alive by posting  moccasin makings virtual workshops on the Oglala Lakota College website. One of their dance students watched the workshop video then went to buy needles. Suzie offered to give the student everything else she needed to start beading moccasins with the help of her parents.

“They are excited about the day they can see their child coming out in full regalia and dancing,” Kelly says. “We got the fire started at the orientation, and the parents are doing a good job keeping it going.”

Kelly is using funds from his First Peoples Fund Cultural Capital Fellowship to purchase materials a little at a time for the rest of his fellowship project. He hovers over the hides and drum shell in storage for the big powwow drum project he plans to do with students. He battles the temptation to put it together himself. But he is patient, wanting everyone to have a hand in making the drum.

“We want to encourage people [to come] together and see the children learn to dance. It’s an inspiration for the community.”

“The [fellowship] project is more than a workshop or trying to build our dance group,” he says. “We want to encourage people [to come] together and see the children learn to dance. It’s an inspiration for the community.”

“Once they hear the stories about the origin of where the dance bustle came from, or what the proper definition is of a moccasin, they get excited, and it makes us excited, too. One day, when we’re not here, the people we taught will carry on these stories. These stories will live and continue on into future generations.”

Stanley Goodshield Hawkins is an enrolled member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe and has been practicing his craft for nearly 30 years. Raised in San Jose, California, Stanley moved back to the Rapid City area in 1969.

He launched Black Hawk Creations in November 2014, and today, his business has multiple lines, including wood products, Native jewelry, and regalia.

In 2017, Stanley earned a bachelor’s degree in Business and an associate’s degree in Arts in Lakota Studies from Oglala Lakota College and currently teaches classes on traditional arts. He is a 2020 First Peoples Fund Cultural Capital Fellow.

Stanley traced the rawhide X on the back of the hand drum, showing his work to the KEVN- Black Hills FOX news camera. The buffalo hide drum he crafted echoes the voices of his people, as does each handmade piece he creates. The TV news feature captured a brief glimpse into Stanley’s artistic life.

After 28 years in the electronic field, he longed to reconnect with his peoples’ culture. He’s put his engraving and woodworking skills to use by making pool cues embellished with traditional designs. He also makes men’s and women’s breastplates, shields, earrings, chokers, turtle rattles, bracelets, and necklaces. A box of buffalo bone ribs showed up at his studio one day, and he turned those into a men’s breastplate.

“I produce what I consider traditional style, but I leave some room to create my own style in the design,”

“I produce what I consider traditional style, but I leave some room to create my own style in the design,” he says. “I only use the best and close-to-time period components available. My work is as close to traditional as I can get, with old-style beads and other supplies becoming scarce.”

Being as correct in his materials and processes as possible, Stanley regularly consults elders and artistic peers like Kelly Looking Horse (Oglala Lakota), also a First Peoples Fund fellow. Stanley has learned to approach each piece with a right attitude, smudging, and a prayer.

“You are never supposed to start anything if you are in a bad mood,” he explains.

In 2007, he began making regalia and jewelry for relatives and friends. In 2014 he launched Black Hawk Creations.

“I started out of pocket and later looked for funding,” he says. “Lakota Funds stepped up and gave me a loan. It took several years of creating before I started making a profit.”

He opened a studio at Racing Magpie in Rapid City, South Dakota, and has three apprentices working with him: two grandsons and a niece. His work in wood, leather, feathers, and stones has become recognized in the community for its authenticity and craftsmanship.

“This inspires me because I want this practice to be continued by future generations.”

But Stanley feels he is always learning, continuing to consult elders as he creates art that echoes the voices of his people. “This inspires me because I want this practice to be continued by future generations.”

Kinsale Hueston (Diné) is a 2017-2018 National Student Poet and a sophomore at Yale University. An enrolled member of the Navajo Nation, Kinsale’s work centers on personal histories, Diné stories, and contemporary issues affecting her tribe. She is the recipient of the Yale Young Native Storytellers Award for Spoken Word/Storytelling, the J. Edgar Meeker Prize (May 2019, Yale University), and three National Scholastic Gold Medals for poetry and dramatic script. In February 2019, she was named one of “34 People Changing How We See the World” by Time Magazine in its Optimists Issue.

Kinsale is a 2020 First Peoples Fund (FPF) Cultural Capital Fellow and a national Mellon Mays scholar.

As she performed spoken word poetry in Los Angeles, a familiar face in the audience caught Kinsale’s attention. It was one of her former writing workshop students from Sherman Indian High School in Riverside, California.

After the performance, Kinsale connected with him and his two friends who had come to hear her perform.

“He told me that our workshops at his school had changed his outlook on art and poetry,” she says. “It was now something he was pursuing seriously as a writer in the LA area and was encouraging other Indigenous youth to pursue as well. It was a wonderful moment.”

This is a part of who Kinsale is as a poet — working with Indigenous youth to draw out their talents. One of the ways she shares with others is by holding community workshops to communicate Indigenous values and stories through poetry and spoken word.

“Most of the time we focus on finding creative ways to write about ancestral lands, ancestors, and key figures in our lives,”

“Most of the time we focus on finding creative ways to write about ancestral lands, ancestors, and key figures in our lives,” she says. “At the end of a series of workshops I usually collect work and produce a chapbook for participants and their home communities that can be displayed or shared.”

Kinsale has taken this a step further by launching Changing Womxn Collective with support from her FPF Cultural Capital Fellowship. Kinsale’s team helps her monitor social media and curate the writing.

“It’s been a lot of fun to see different women of color, Indigenous women, submit work and see their reactions when it’s published,” she says. “For a lot of them, it’s the first time they’ve been published. We don’t have the same selection processes of other literary magazines. We have a very fast turnaround, so I think it creates much more of a community feel than a literary magazine in the traditional sense.”

Much of the inspiration for Kinsale’s writing comes from stories her maternal Diné family passed down. She says, “To properly function as culture bearers and those who will pass on our knowledge to future generations, we must find outlets and ways to adapt, preserve, and keep our communities’ stories alive.”

SOUTH SHÁDI’ÁÁH

In beauty I walk Hózhóogo naasháa doo

God translation spoken in Diné

Open throat upturn hands

Trail marked with pollen

Naasháa doo I will have a light body

I will be happy forever Shideigi but I am only saying words

Hózhó náhásdlíi’ my words will be beautiful

But only if I remember His name Shideigi

hózhóogo naasháa doo open mouth open hands

I walk home in beauty

-Kinsale Hueston

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Banner image: Urban Rez, 2016 by Kevin Michael Campbell

Kawerak, Inc., a regional non-profit Alaska Native corporation, provides services within the Bering Strait Region of northwestern Alaska which covers about 23,000 square miles on the Seward Peninsula. They serve approximately 7,400 Alaska Native residents from twenty federally recognized tribes located throughout sixteen communities.

Kawerak is headquartered in the hub community of Nome and employs 230 individuals. One of their missions is to advance the arts community within the Bering Strait Region. Through its Community Planning and Development department, Kawerak provides technical assistance to approximately 30 artists in the region per year.

“You start[ed] your parka, and I want to see you finish it,” Aunt Adeline said.

When Lydia Apatiki (Sivuqaghhmii) wanted to learn how to make bird skin parkas, her aunt became her mentor. Partway through the difficult project, Lydia wanted to give up, but her aunt wouldn’t let her.

Lydia did finish. Learning the traditional stitching and eventually mastering it, she has now completed several parkas. But she isn’t keeping the knowledge to herself.

Partnering with First Peoples Fund (FPF) and Kawerak Inc., Lydia created a curriculum to share her cultural knowledge.  

“Lydia and her husband Jerome participated in one of the FPF Native Artist Professional Development [NAPD] Trainings in Gambell,” Alice Bioff (Inupiaq) says. Alice works in Kawerak’s Community Planning and Development department as the Business Planning Specialist. “We’ve built a relationship with Lydia and Jerome. Lydia had this amazing mission to create a sewing curriculum. Through her enthusiasm and commitment to the project, she was able to complete it with the support of First Peoples Fund.”

Kawerak, Inc. received an Indigenous Arts Ecology (IAE) grant in 2018. They used it in part to host NAPD trainings, reaching out to rural artists like Lydia who had received a 2017 First Peoples Fund Cultural Capital fellowship. The region it serves includes St. Lawrence Island, King Island, Little Diomede Island, and the communities along the eastern and southeastern shores of Norton Sound. Three culturally distinct groups of Indigenous people — Inupiaq, Central Yup’ik, and St. Lawrence Island Yupik — have lived in the region for thousands of years.

The main focus of the IAE grant for Kawerak was completing an artist survey that would be developed into a report, “Arts of the Bering Strait Region.” The study illustrates the intersection of art with the culture, economy, and place of rural artists. One-on-one interviews with artists in their homes, along with three focus groups, revealed how artists are vital contributors to their communities’ existing economic landscapes. According to the study, “…hunters and gatherers combine subsistence harvesting with the cash economy to offset the high cost of living in rural Alaska. Families must navigate this new landscape, and the sale of art plays a critical role in the balance. Today, artists are economic drivers within their communities.”

“Working with our partners, we are looking at developing a program to support the arts in the region,” Alice says. “Utilizing the data to support that effort, we can show why the support is needed.”

The focus groups gave Bering Strait artists the opportunity to voice their suggestions on strengthening the practice of traditional arts and crafts forms in the region:

• Establish dedicated arts-and-crafts workplaces in communities.
• Increase education and awareness about ivory ban issues, their potential implications, and action-steps.
• Promote education about and develop opportunities for advertising and selling works online.
• Build a network of art dealers who pay equitable prices for work.
• Encourage youth interest in art.
• Provide educational opportunities to learn traditional arts, including ways to learn skills requiring use of legally protected materials (e.g. walrus ivory, baleen).
• Explore ways to support insurance and shipping costs associated with sending artwork to purchasers.
• Encourage grassroots organization around arts sales, such as supporting small groups of people transporting the work of multiple artists to conferences.
• Promote intergenerational teaching and interactions about art and crafts (particularly within families).

The study also affirmed much of what Lydia was already experiencing, especially when it comes to the transference of cultural knowledge through the generations — critical, yet often not readily available.

“It broke my heart when a young lady wanted to learn how to make a bird skin parka but had no one to teach her,” Lydia said.

Lydia’s traditional sewing curriculum is now on her website for educational programs and individuals to download for a small fee.

“There’s a direct connection between our subsistence activities providing for the family, food security, and the arts,” Alice says. “It’s all interwoven, all connected, and having access to those resources and advocating for that is important.”

Note: Kawerak, Inc. would like to thank the following organizations and individuals for their contributions to this study:

All artists and crafters who participated in the survey, focus groups, and interviews.

Randall Jones, Isabelle Ryan, and all tribal offices that helped distribute and collect surveys.

Artists who agreed to be photographed and have their photos used in the report.

McDowell Group for developing the report.

Dartmouth Interns Tia Yazzie and Shelby Fitzpatrick.

Photos by Taylor Booth Photography; Katie Miller; Alice Bioff, Nome; Huda Ivanoff, Unalakleet; and Danielle Slingsby, Nome.

Kawerak, Inc. (Danielle Slingsby, Donna James, Julie Raymond- Yakoubian, Vera Metcalf, Patti Lillie, MaryJane Litchard, Rose Fosdick, Carol Piscoya, Alice Bioff [Project Lead].

Northern Arapaho and African American poet CooXooEii (pronounced Jaw-Kah-Hay) Black grew up with family in close proximity on the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming. His mixed-race heritage and his family heavily influence his poetry. Over the past few years, he has focused on learning the Arapaho language and ceremonies. The language and ideas surrounding their ceremonies are an inspiration for most of his writings.

CooXooEii is currently attending Colorado College, graduating in the spring of 2020 with a degree in creative writing. He is a 2020 First Peoples Fund Cultural Capital Fellow.

“I believe [readers] will get an idea of how poetry can pass on ancestral knowledge and lead to self-discovery,”

“Am I saying this right?”

Last summer, CooXooEii sat with his grandmother in her house on the Wind River Indian Reservation. Language worksheet in hand, he practiced his daily lesson with her. They went through fluctuations and the hard-hitting syllables.

But CooXooEii was discovering more than the proper way to speak the language. He connected with his grandmother and who she is.

“I always knew she was a fluent Arapaho speaker,” he says. “But until last summer, when I started practicing with her, hearing her speak it, I realized how powerful the language is and how powerful she is.”

CooXooEii’s goal with his First Peoples Fund Cultural Capital Fellowship is to create a book of 50 original poems that pass on knowledge of his people. As he learns from his elders, people will learn from his poetry.

“The Arapaho language is a descriptive language,” CooXooEii says. “Instead of calling an item what it is, the Arapaho language describes it. For example, ‘coffee’ is woo’teenowuu’ and it is translated as black water or black liquid. The translations sometimes won’t be perfect, but it’s been amazing learning our language because it’s a different way to think of the world. I’ve been focusing more on detail in the things around me. I wonder how an item might be described or understood through imagery. This was powerful for me to learn because I had already used imagery in my poems. So not only has it given me a new way of interacting with the world around me, it’s aided my writing as well.”

Poetry has also been a way for him to engage with his experiences as a racially mixed person living in an Indigenous community.

My Grandpa Speaks Arapaho

when arapaho fills my mouth

my spirit craves to speak

with my grandpa the way he did with his parents.

i'm not fluent.

english tastes bitter when it brushes against arapaho words

and tells them how to work if they want to be in its structure.

i want to speak as if our language wasn't forced from our land

and drowned in bloody-beat knuckles in boarding schools.

our land

our land.

i imagine my grandpa,

my grandpa's grandpa,

and the land that held him.

the same land so crucial to parks

and to hot springs swimming pools.

my grandpa tells me

you have it easier

you have everything you need.

in some ways, i believe him

but it's hard when you realize how much has been lost

what's it like to lose something

you've never completely had?

i've been told if you know your language

you know yourself.

sometimes i'm not sure if i know myself

i've read books on our tribe and never finished them,

have so many questions and never asked them,

ceremonies i have yet to learn,

things i do not recognize

blood i don't know

grandpa, who am i???

don't worry grandpa,

i'm learning our music,

i'm learning our dances,

i speak

whether it's one word or two words,

i'm not fluent,

i've seen our land,

And i still have my hair —

—CooXooEii Black

‍

“I believe [readers] will get an idea of how poetry can pass on ancestral knowledge and lead to self-discovery,” he says. “As I’m teaching my fellow tribal members to process their situations through writing, and teaching them about their heritage, we will all be empowered.”

“Watching from Los Angeles.”

“Love from Frisco, Texas.”

“Listening from Florida.”

“Saunders County, New England here.”

These comments and more popped up on Facebook as Lynette Two Bulls (Oglala Lakota) and Phillip Whiteman, Jr. (Northern Cheyenne) went live with an evening of traditional storytelling. The COVID-19 crisis continues to cause mass cancellations of performing and visual arts events across the country, including storytelling. Still, culture bearers like Lynette and Phillip are turning these challenging times into an opportunity to reach people across the U.S. and around the world. Viewers tuned in from Canada, France, Italy, and African countries.

Lynnette and Phillip are 2016 First Peoples Fund (FPF) Community Spirit Award Honorees, and Philip was awarded a 2007 Artist in Business Leadership Fellowship. They founded Medicine Wheel Model, LLC; Medicine Wheel Model—Beyond Horsemanship; and Yellow Bird, a grassroots, nonprofit organization. They teach their life model and do traditional storytelling throughout the U.S. and Canada to share the lifeways of Native people with teens, adults, and elders.

When Lynnette and Phillip started seeing their events being canceled in March, they decided to push through and learn how they could best connect with people online.

“Actually I like it, though it was challenging at first just getting used to doing things a different way,” Lynette says. “Especially with technology, it’s harder as you get older. But at the same time, I think it’s good to challenge yourself with all the available platforms. Artists are creative already, so we need to go with that and be creative in the way we reach people.”

Lynette and Phillip asked elders in their area if they would be willing to share traditional stories on camera for a multi-part online series. They hosted the special events through the Yellow Bird Facebook page. After the live recordings end, the videos are shared widely. The first has 5,000+ views and counting.

“We have to slow down and be quiet, listen to the stories because these stories have a very powerful message. I think that’s what resonates with people because the messages are timeless.

“It’s something that connects with people,” Lynette says. “We have to slow down and be quiet, listen to the stories because these stories have a very powerful message. I think that’s what resonates with people because the messages are timeless. The stories are not just history of long ago. No, this is a way of life that we live today, so it brings it to the present.”

Lynnette and Phillip only planned to host the traditional storytellings through March, but after the response they received, they brought them back for April, plus added more innovative ways to help bring light into peoples’ homes. They added Morning Coffee with Yellow Bird and Talk for Teens with Yellow Bird while continuing their wellness coaching through online video conferencing.

“I’m almost busier now than I was before,” Lynette says. “It’s exciting because we’re doing something different and something creative. We’re resilient people.”

The COVID-19 crisis hit performing artists hard when spring bookings were suddenly canceled. Kaloku Holt (Native Hawaiian), 2016 FPF Artist in Business Leadership fellow and executive director of the Ke Kukui Foundation, had a three-city tour lined up with other Native Hawaiian artists.

Now with much more time on his hands, Kaloku is using the time at home to pivot his work. He went live on Facebook with an informal music session, playing the piano and singing with his two-year-old son. To his surprise, someone in a mortgage company watched his performance, visited his website, and then booked Kaloku for a paid performance. Kaloku’s live performance for the company’s virtual party was a hit, and also directed viewers to his online tip fund.

A significant aspect of Kaloku’s work is event planning. Sponsored partly through an FPF Our Nations’ Spaces grant and hosted by Ke Kukui Foundation, the annual 4 Days of Aloha in July 2019 drew 40,000+ visitors to the Pacific Northwest for a celebration of Hawaiian art and culture. While Kaloku hopes the 2020 event goes as planned in July, they are prepared to scale it down or move it to later in the year.

With all the uncertainty, Kaloku is focused on the positives coming out for him, professionally and personally.

“Since I’m forced to be a homebody, I’ve noticed how much I was always on the go, go, go, and stressing myself out by being so busy,” he says. “But now I can really enjoy family time, spend time with my son. As far as work goes, and festival planning, doing shows, I got a chance to look over things and think, maybe I’m doing a little too much in a lot of different areas. Maybe scaling things down, but adding quality to the things that I can. I want to make sure I’m always creating. If I keep my mind busy creating, I think that’s what keeps me alive and energetic.”

Visual artists have experienced equal hardship with the crisis. Community Spirit Award  honoree, Artist in Business Leadership fellow and FPF trainer Theresa Secord (Penobscot) took it upon herself to create a valuable list of tips for fellow visual artists.

“As an FPF fellow (basketmaker) I wanted to share some things I'm working on during the pandemic to try to keep art income coming in,” Theresa says. “Basically, encouraging them to stay in touch with buyers, collectors, fans and to be as effective as possible in online art marketing and their social media presence.”

She also created a virtual sweet grass braiding workshop with her grand-nephews as part of their distance learning to continue teaching traditional arts during this time.

“I think their great, great, great, great grandfather, a Penobscot tribal chief and basket seller [shown here in 1920] would be proud,” she says.

““We constantly have to adapt and adjust and be like water and be able to go with the flow. This is another opportunity to reach a broader audience of people from all walks of life.”

— Lynette Two Bulls

During this time of art being generously shared, it is important to remember that many Native artists make their living through performances and markets. Please consider supporting them through purchasing their art online, giving monetary tips during streaming performances, and contributing to the Resilience Fund through FPF.

Delina White is an enrolled member of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe, Minnesota Chippewa Tribal Nation. An award-winning artist, Delina learned to create functional art — apparel and accessories such as moccasins, bags, and garments — using the traditional methods and designs reflective of the natural surroundings of the woodlands. She specializes in creating her own fabrics from her original beadwork designs. Her work mixes traditionally Indigenous materials with contemporary fabrics.

Delina is a 2020 First Peoples Fund Artist in Business Leadership fellow, residing in Walker, Minnesota.

Birchbark, wampum, shells, pearls, gemstones — Delina makes her material selections carefully. Indigenous materials that touch the heart. Blends of old and new, traditional and contemporary. The materials not only go into making a unique piece of jewelry; they serve a secondary purpose ever since Delina expanded her beadwork by using those beaded designs to create her own fabrics.

When her mother passed some years ago, Delina was left with the task of sewing regalia for the family. Sewing wasn’t something she had focused on, but circumstances forced her to learn. She started with ribbon skirts, bringing what she made into the everyday lives of her family. It led her down a new path that morphed into fashion shows and education.

“My work re-tells stories of the people who live on the great fresh waters, within its forests among the once bountiful fur-bearing animals,"

“My work re-tells stories of the people who live on the great fresh waters, within its forests among the once bountiful fur-bearing animals,” she says.

Delina enjoys doing beadwork for medicine bags, pipe bags, handbags, and bandolier bags, but had gotten away from those pieces for a time. She began looking at ways to bring her beadwork and sewing together.

“I wanted to do something contemporary, and to incorporate our traditional materials because I have an affinity for textures,”

“I wanted to do something contemporary, and to incorporate our traditional materials because I have an affinity for textures,” she says. “I use digital printing to create fabrics from photographs of my handmade beadwork on traditional velvets of the Great Lakes, and hand-tanned smoke hide. I use the fabrics to make apparel that is worn in today’s environment.”

Delina is using her First Peoples Fund Artist in Business Leadership funds to expand her art business, “I Am Anishinaabe.”

“I can either create a garment that is a replica showing this is how we dressed, or I can make it in contemporary clothing using my beadwork, which is the cultural foundation piece,” she says. “There has to be that foundation of my culture. I am inspired by the ancestral arts of my people, and contemporary works of all Indigenous people.”

Flora Jones (Red Lake Ojibwe) is a pillar of the Red Lake community in Red Lake, Minnesota. Her art includes quilt making, sewing traditional Ojibwe regalia, beading, and quillwork. She volunteers her time to children, young adults, and elders, sharing her skills. She has received numerous awards at fairs, powwows, and community events, and was awarded a 2020 First Peoples Fund Cultural Capital Fellowship.

It only took one yard of material for young Flora to make herself a pair of jeans. At boarding school in the 1960s, Flora learned to make her own clothes, and she continued sewing throughout her life. But she didn’t take it on as an art form until her daughter was at Red Lake high school in the 1990s, and Flora volunteered in the home economics classroom. It was there she learned the art of quilting.

“We started off making ‘trip around the world’ quilts, and I’ve been sewing ever since,” she says.

Flora began selling quilts and became proficient in star quilts. She shops sales at the local stores, gathering as much fabric as she can. At home, she lays out materials by shade and color, eyeing the combinations and picking out what catches her attention. Blues, blacks, reds, yellows. Her culture plays a substantial role, especially when she spots colors that remind her of the eagle or turtle.

“Some years ago, my sister, Earlene, bought me a new sewing machine, and it was then I decided I could do business with my sewing skills,” Flora says. “I have always wanted to start my own business in sewing and teaching others to make a star quilt, especially the younger children.”

After a few years, Flora found herself teaching people in her community how to quilt and to bead. Her First Peoples Fund Cultural Capital Fellowship is going toward hosting classes at the Northwest Indian Community Development Center located in Bemidji, Minn.

“I think it would have a great impact on the Indigenous community in Bemidji to learn the ways I was taught,” she says. “I want to thank you all [FPF] for everything you have given me and what I was able to buy with the money. It’s just a pleasure, and I wouldn’t have been able to do that without you.”

Grown from the little girl who could wear jeans made from one yard of material, Flora is now teaching her granddaughters to sew and bead.

“They are 17 and 15 years old,” she says. “I’ve been having them sew with me. One is kind of leery of the sewing machine, but she is learning. I told them you’ve just got to keep on. The most rewarding experience with my art is making people happy with what they can do and make when they come and sew with me.”