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By Sarah Elisabeth Sawyer (Choctaw Nation), Artist in Business Leadership Fellow 2015

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Addison Karl (Chickasaw Nation, Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma) is a contemporary artist. His work manifests itself in drawing, painting, and sculpture in exhibitions, public art, lectures, and installation. His art projects have found their way to Hong Kong, Pakistan, Mexico, Malaysia, Japan, Israel, Russia, the United States, and Europe.

Support from Addison’s 2019 First Peoples Fund Artist in Business Leadership grant is helping him tell the Chickasaw story in a visual narrative. He resides in Bremerton, Washington.  

Strength and beauty broke forth as Addison hammered away the ceramic shell surrounding his bronze sculpture of Mary Shackleford (Chickasaw Nation). Posed in traditional Chickasaw dress, Mary sat with folded hands, her expression one of calm determination. The sculpture of her had emerged from the fiery heat, enduring to the moment where it rested among the shattered pieces of ceramic, a symbol of perseverance, tenacity, and hope.

When Addison visited Oklahoma in 2017 for the Chickasaw Nation Annual Meeting and Festival, he captured the realness of people like Mary for his Heritage Preservation Sculptures project. From linguists and stomp dancers to storytellers and elders, he gathered reference material for his current focus of sculpture combined with heritage preservation. Addison is expanding his abilities as an artist to bronze sculpting, a strong material that represents the unconquerable spirit of the Chickasaw people.

Addison’s first attempts at 3D art were a learning process. He created a mold with plaster of Paris and sent it in the mail, only to have it arrive in crumbs. He needed to find something to withstand any journey.  

“That’s where the bronze comes into play,” he says. “Thankfully, First Peoples Fund saw the benefit of this narrative in personal storytelling and using a material that has longevity to it. The cool aspect of this is, I’m learning so much throughout the process. Mary Shackleford is only my third sculpture in bronze. This is all brand new.”

Addison’s first translation into bronze was “Kamassa” (elder), an Oklahoma Chickasaw man whose quiet demeanor and tranquility shows in the gentle lines etched on his face.  

The statue was durable enough for the journey to Munich, where it was on display before Addison brought it back to the U.S. and into the home of a private collector.

Addison has traveled worldwide with his work as he attempts to expand viewers’ understanding of the context, structures, and surfaces that his art inhabits. He will continue to create pieces like Mary Shackleford that symbolize rising out of brokenness.

“As for many tribal members, creating is a means of honoring our ancestors and passing down cultural values from one generation to the next,” he says. “It’s an important factor in turning the past’s hardships and wounds into something beautiful.”

First Peoples Fund (FPF), in partnership with the Black Hills Area Community Foundation, Bush Foundation, HRK Foundation, Johnson Scholarship Foundation, and Northwest Area Foundation, hosted a roundtable discussion this month. Titled Within, Together, Collective, the day was part of an ongoing conversation around the idea that now is the opportune time to thoughtfully deepen our collective efforts and investments in Native communities. Several intersecting bodies of research discussed throughout the day illustrated the urgency for, and challenges in, creating a more equitable future in which Native communities are not left out.

Malcom Chapman, former city council member for Rapid City, South Dakota, walked around the room holding a piece of artwork. He had asked everyone to write down their reaction to the piece, detailing what thoughts came to mind as they considered what they were seeing. Then he asked them to circle a single word in their description, the word that most fully encompassed their reaction:

“Knowledge.”

“Motherhood.”

“Learning.”

“Technology.”

This opening for the day’s events reminded people that even when we all look at and react to the same thing, our understandings can be different. Malcom, the event’s facilitator, asked people to, “Take time to reflect within as we go through today’s conversations so that together we can come up with ideas and solutions that move us forward as a collective.”
Gathered in the room were representatives from sixteen foundations and nonprofit organizations: Artspace, Better Way Foundation, Black Hills Area Community Foundation, Bush Foundation, Center for Cultural Innovation, First Nations Development Institute, HRK Foundation, Jerome Foundation, John T. Vucurevich Foundation, Johnson Scholarship Foundation, McKnight Foundation, The Nathan Cummings Foundation, Native Americans in Philanthropy, Northwest Area Foundation, NoVo Foundation, and Sioux Falls Area Community Foundation.

Going around the room, everyone introduced themselves and said a few words about their hopes for the day, creating a motivating energy for the coming conversations. Then the first panel of the morning kicked-off. Presenting a wide-range of data regarding everything from mainstream perceptions of Native people to trends in philanthropy’s support of Native communities, this panel set the tone and purpose for the day’s conversations. Three bodies of research combined to create a picture of the realities and challenges facing Native communities and their philanthropic partners.

The first body of research examined the state of large foundation giving to Native organizations and causes from 2006 to 2014. The key findings of the study found a decline of 29% in total funding over these years. This decline represented a $35 million drop in funding, meaning less than 0.02% of philanthropic dollars go to organizations focused on Native causes and Native-led organizations. The second body of research, conducted by First Nations Development and Echo Hawk Consulting resulted in the groundbreaking publication regarding perceptions of Native people: “Reclaiming Native Truth”. The study gathered feedback from over 11 different focus groups across the United States, with a wide range of proximity to areas with high Native populations. The focus groups were both urban and rural, and comprised of various ethnic, academic and socioeconomic backgrounds. Among the study’s more striking findings was that 40% of people believe Native people no longer exist within the United States.

40% OF PEOPLE BELIEVE NATIVE PEOPLE NO LONGER EXIST WITHIN THE UNITED STATES

- Reclaiming Native Truth, 2018

The final piece of research presented in the morning was from an internal project conducted by the Bush Foundation’s Native Nations Activities Manager, Carly Bad Heart Bull (Dakota/Muscogee Creek). This project, the “Native Nations Investment Report”, looked back at the available grant information from Bush Foundation’s funding, starting in 1970. The purpose of the report was to share and illustrate the ways Bush programs invest and support Native nations and people in the three-state region. Carly’s presentation served as an example of how a foundation can look critically at its past funding to Native organizations and use that data to plan more equitable funding in the future.

“The majority of the work happening in Indian Country is on the grassroots level,” said Carly. “It can be difficult for the people doing this work to have the time and capacity to manage grants and reports. For some funders, it can be a challenge in easily investing without the help of a more established intermediary organization. Challenges like these are opportunities for us to be intentional in learning from communities in order to develop solutions.”

Challenges in Philanthropy

Delving deeper into the discussion on intermediaries, Jackie Franke, Vice President of First Nations Development Institute (FNDI), and Lori Pourier, President of First Peoples Fund, shared a panel discussing the role of intermediary organizations in philanthropy’s relationship to Indian Country.  Serving as a bridge between Native communities and philanthropy, intermediaries such as First Peoples Fund and FNDI often serve a crucial role of educating philanthropy on, and advocating for, the good work happening in Native communities. Additionally, intermediaries help change-makers in Native communities and smaller organizations navigate the world of philanthropy.  

The roundtable discussions continued to delve into the challenges presented by philanthropy’s hesitation to invest in Native nonprofits. These hesitations, as highlighted in FNDI’s research, are based on common misconceptions and misguided narratives that include a lack of accurate information about Native people and how their communities function; concerns about the misuse of funds; and feeling overwhelmed by the perceived amount of time required to learn about Native history and governmental structures and to build relationships with Native communities and governments.

“So much of philanthropy is focused on short-term, transactional interactions rather than long-term change making ones,” said Kevin Walker, President of the Northwest Area Foundation. In advocating for more funding for Native communities, Northwest Area Foundation leads by example through a commitment to devote 40 percent of new grant dollars to Native-led organizations in their funding region. Kevin explained to the group that this commitment acknowledges and honors the history of the wealth of their region and foundation, and its roots in Native lands and communities.

LESS 0.02% OF PHILANTHROPIC DOLLARS GO TO ORGANIZATIONS FOCUSED ON NATIVE CAUSES AND NATIVE-LED ORGANIZATIONS.

- Reclaiming Native Truth, 2018

Commitments like Northwest Area Foundation’s are rare, in part due to persistent myths. As a result of pervasive, damaging narratives about Native communities, Native nonprofits consistently have to present  “Indian 101” information in order to fully contextualize their work in a way that is reflective of accurate, contemporary realities. The recent research and data about Native communities, incorporated into compelling narratives, offers a pathway for deeper and more nuanced understandings of contemporary Native communities and organizations.

The funders present recognized that challenging and dismantling myths about Native communities also requires listening to and learning from Native-led organizations, allowing Native communities to define their own measures of success, and investing in long-term relationships.

Listening to Community Voices

The afternoon welcomed in representatives from local Native-led grantee organizations Four Bands Community Fund, Lakota Federal Credit Union, and Thunder Valley Community Development Corporation. Their panel offered funders in the room the opportunity to listen to pertinent feedback, ask questions, and engage in earnest discussion.  

Stories and data presented during the afternoon showed that rather than being a “risky” investment, Native organizations are an integral part of their local communities. Far from being a funding risk, supporting Native-led organizations provides philanthropy with an authentic connection to communities and is an effective and efficient way to support lasting change.

“Funders often see it as we only impacted 250 lives with the 250 loans we’ve made,” said Lakota Vogel (Cheyenne River Sioux), Executive Director at Four Bands Community Fund. ”Well, I can tell you a story of the impact of every one of those 250 loans we made and the lives changed as a result, and I would challenge a bank in the middle of a city to do the same.”

“Funders often see it as we only impacted 250 lives with the 250 loans we’ve made. Well, I can tell you a story of the impact of every one of those 250 loans we made and the lives changed as a result, and I would challenge a bank in the middle of a city to do the same.”

— Lakota Vogel (Cheyenne River Sioux), Executive Director, Four Bands Community Fund

Thunder Valley CDC’s representative, Andrew Iron Shell, described how their organization’s systemic approach to community development work means that their program areas fall under everything from early childhood education to food sovereignty, workforce development to home construction. Although individual program numbers vary in quantity, it’s the interconnected, collective system of programs that contribute to the “petri dish” of possibilities for the future, as he described it. Siloed program funding can make if difficult to fund this kind of work, requiring organizations to patch together a wide variety of funding sources, each with their own grant requirements and restrictions. And sometimes, being a Native organization can make a grantee into a “program area” regardless of the specific work they do.

“Saying ‘we don’t have a program area for that’ isn’t a reason to not fund Native communities,” said Carly. “Native organizations are doing work in education, in economic development, in anything you find in other communities. You don’t have to have a program area specific to Native communities in order to fund the work of Native people.”

By Sarah Elisabeth Sawyer (Choctaw Nation), Artist in Business Leadership Fellow 2015  

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Deborah A. Jojola (Isleta Pueblo, Jemez Pueblo) is an expert in a variety of mediums — painting, frescos, printmaking, ceramics, and bookmaking, with a special interest in the process of lithography. She has shown her artwork at the Santa Fe Indian Market (SWAIA) for over 25 years and served as curator of exhibitions at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center in Albuquerque. As an artist, she has worked nationally and internationally in Hawai’i, Canada, Russia, and Japan.

Deborah is a 2019 First Peoples Fund Cultural Capital Fellow and resides in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

As Deborah reaches in for a scoop of plaster from the bucket, the feel and smell of damp earth brings her a sense of comfort and purpose. She makes plaster from soil she gathers in cultivated fields. After sifting it clean, she adds ash and distilled water.  

Most of her mason board panels, which she makes herself, represents tablitas, a traditional Pueblo headdress worn during ceremonies by men and women. Spreading the plaster thinly on the panel boards, she’ll add willows, shells and turquoise stones to create the traditional fresco wall hanging.

Ever since she was young, working with mud has fascinated Deborah. She helped her aunties, in Jemez Pueblo, plaster their adobe homes. That was when she knew she was an artist.

“My mother and Auntie from Jemez Pueblo share memories or reflections of their youth,” Deborah says, “learning from our grandmothers and grandfathers no longer with us about old ways and the understanding of ‘why’ we still continue to keep these traditions.”

Deborah recently received an Artist in Residence at Mesa Verde Historical Site. Living in a hogan, she pursued and researched the environment, soils, minerals, and art forms as she walked the trails of her ancestral lands.

“Literally walking in their footsteps, climbing the ladders to cliff alcoves and cliff dwellings once occupied by many Native families, it became my personal pilgrimage,” she says. “It was very powerful and enlightening. They worked together as a community, there was no I or me. It was we and us.”

With few elders who retain the knowledge of how to make frescoes, Deborah’s role in the community becomes more critical each year.

“My purpose in life is within my artwork, using my art to speak to my people, to teach and to revive a technique that will be lost if not learned and practiced,” she says. “It is critical that art, culture, and ancestral knowledge is passed on from one generation to the next.”

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Note: Deborah’s Cultural Capital fellowship was funded through your generous donations during our 2018 Giving Tuesday event. We appreciate everything you do in supporting culture bearers like Deborah. She truly embodies every aspect of how the fellowship is used by Native artists who are committed to carrying on their community’s traditions.

By Sarah Elisabeth Sawyer (Choctaw Nation), Artist in Business Leadership Fellow 2015

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Darby Raymond-Overstreet (Diné) is a digital artist and printmaker. She received her B.A.s in Psychology and Studio Art and graduated with Honors from Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire in 2016. During her first time at the Santa Fe Indian Market (SWAIA) in 2018, she won multiple awards and received exposure in the Albuquerque Journal and Santa Fe New Mexican.

Darby is a 2019 First Peoples Fund Artist in Business Leadership Fellow and resides in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Darby sits with her portrait subject on their couch, going through photo albums as they tell the stories behind each photo they show her.

Those moments of sitting there with the person she is going to create a portrait of, reliving the experiences that have shaped their life gives Darby a feel for what she is going to create. Every portrait she does incorporates intentional, meaningful patterns. After careful consideration, she selects one of the photos. Based on the person’s personality, and inspired by Navajo weavers in the late 1880s-1950s, Darby chooses a rug pattern.  

“I really respect weavers’ artistic integrity and their fortitude and resilience through hardship,” she says. “If not for their efforts, it may be that some of the people today would not have been woven into the cultural fabric that is Diné.”

Darby finds patterns in books, collections, museums, and sometimes from her own family, then scans the design and drops it into her digital program. It becomes an endless pattern.  

Using digital tools, Darby overlays the photo and rug pattern, meticulously designing and interweaving them. When finished, she prints the portrait on canvas with archival inks and uses churro yarn to attach it to a traditional weaving loom she built. The entire process of creating a one of a kind portrait wall hanging takes up to 40 hours.

“The technique is something I came up with my senior year at college,” she says. “My professors were trying to get me to talk about the concept of creating pattern portraits, and the loom was a great way to put the idea out there of being woven into a culture, a society, an identity, and to have it really accessible to an audience.”  

“Interwoven” is a piece Darby created from a photo of her mother and herself, enhanced with turquoise stone and mother of pearl inlay.

“Through the time we spent being nourished in her womb, we are interwoven,” she says. As part of her landscape series, Darby is using funds from FPF to travel and capture photos of sites important to her people.

“My efforts are to not only celebrate my Diné identity and heritage,” she says, “but to educate and give perspective on the history and relationship that the art of weaving has with my ancestors, current generations, and the history and landscape of the Southwest.”

By Sarah Elisabeth Sawyer (Choctaw Nation), Artist in Business Leadership Fellow 2015

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Dream Warriors is the subject of a video story First Peoples Fund has created with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts. There will be an accompanying official written component for this video story. This video study is one of three focusing on how performing arts is creating healing pathways for Native youth into performing arts-based enterprises. These are rooted in traditional culture, knowledge, and values through performing arts, allowing them to reclaim, reconnect, and revitalize themselves and their culture in their communities.  

First Peoples Fund Video Story: Dream Warriors

ABOUT THE WORK OF DREAM WARRIORS: A STORY FROM THE DREAM WARRIORS FAMILY

“I just got out of the hospital after trying to commit suicide.”

This is what one youth in Oklahoma shared with the five Indigenous members of Dream Warriors after one of their shows on their “Heal It” tour. During three days in Oklahoma, they played six shows. It was exhausting for Tanaya Winder (Duckwater Shoshone Tribe), Frank Waln (Sicangu Lakota), Lyla June (Diné / Cheyenne), Paul Wenell Jr. (“Tall Paul,” Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe), and Mic Jordan (Ojibwe), but stories the youth share remind them of the reason they are on the road.

“Our Native youth struggle with coping mechanisms to heal their traumas,” Tanaya says. She is a spoken word poet, founder of Dream Warriors Management, and 2017 First Peoples Fund Artist in Business Leadership (ABL) Fellow. “Without healthy methods of processing their mental and emotional needs, their lives are at stake.”

The youth who came up after a concert filled with voices, guitar, and drum told the Dream Warriors how her life was changed by hearing how they had overcome painful experiences in their lives. She was happy to be there to hear their stories after her own painful experience.

Frank had stickers in his bag, which he signed and gave to her and other youth with a message: “When you guys are having a hard time, pull these out and think about today –– think about this conversation because you matter to us. We’re doing this because you guys are special to us and we know what you’re going through.”

Frank, a two-time First Peoples Fund (FPF) ABL Fellow and hip-hop artist, intimately understands the struggles of youth and performs his original songs for healing. He launched the hashtag #healit after youth started telling him that with his music, he “killed it.” The Dream Warriors felt a better description of their work was performing to “heal it.”

“I feel really blessed individually as an artist because everywhere I go, every show I do, a young Native person comes up to me and tells me that my music changed their life,” he says.

The Dream Warriors mission is to embody, teach, and live their heartwork by providing a range of multi-faceted services around performance art and arts-based education to communities throughout Turtle Island. They define a Dream Warrior as someone who uses their passion, dream, or gift to provide for their loved ones and community while understanding the responsibility in using the gifts he/she has been given. Dream Warriors seek to empower others to tell their stories through art. By providing arts-based education and pedagogy as well as performances to community members, youth, and teachers, they hope to help those they serve find healthy outlets to address historical and present-day traumas.

Ultimately, their goal is to help communities heal.  

Last year, one of the Dream Warriors, Lyla June, a public speaker, poet, hip-hop artist, and acoustic singer-songwriter, had the idea to reach out to Native boarding schools. Combined with Frank’s Heal It hashtag, Tanaya decided they could bring it all together for a tour. Dream Warriors received a 2018 Our Nations’ Spaces grant through First Peoples Fund to help support the tour.

The Dream Warriors impacted communities as individuals and collectively. Their stories and styles twine together to touch youth of all backgrounds and pain — cycles of drug and alcohol abuse, sexual assault, and historical trauma.

“All of us have broken those cycles,” Lyla says. “What we try to do through our music is to help kids understand they are beautiful Indigenous people and to never, ever think less of themselves than that.”

“I always tell them I share these hardships about my life not to be a tearjerker, but to let people know where I’ve come from and what I’ve experienced in life,” says Paul, a 2018 ABL Fellow. He often brings the power of Native language into his songs.

“They can see me right here in person,” he adds. “Here I am, far away from home, doing things that I love to do. If we can do it, you can do it too.”  

The artists expressed how they’ve grown individually in their artistry by being together, learning from one another. But their collaboration takes it a step further. “We’re not just individual artists anymore,” Mic says. “We’re like a family. No egos are there when we do what we do. It’s all togetherness, and we wanted to prove that it’s a beautiful thing to just heal together, and also to get together as a team and build something.”

In 2017, Mic used his First Peoples Fund ABL fellowship to expand on his #DearNativeYouth project.

“All it takes is one moment of inspiration to change the course of a young Indigenous person’s life,” Tanaya says. “Each of the Dream Warriors has our own story of how music, how poetry, how art has helped us heal. If we can help youth find healing pathways towards empowerment by sharing our journeys, we can help heal our people.”

Dream Warriors has taken on not only a national identity but one that will last well beyond this clip of time they are together.

“We are the new ancestors,” Mic says. “We are the ones who our children and grandchildren are going to look up to in the stars. They’re all going through the same thing. It’s not us trying to help them heal, it’s all of us healing together.”

By Sarah Elisabeth Sawyer (Choctaw Nation), Artist in Business Leadership Fellow 2015

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Ten years ago, Kamaliikupono Hanohano (Native Hawaiian) began a lifelong apprenticeship with Su‘a Sulu‘ape Keone Nunes (Native Hawaiian) in his traditional tattoo school known as Pāuhi where he teaches “Kākau uhi” which is generally defined as traditional Hawaiian tattooing.

Kamaliikupono is the youngest traditional Hawaiian tattoo artist today. He was awarded a 2019 First Peoples Fund Cultural Capital Fellowship to fund travel to conferences and materials needed to perpetuate this traditional practice.

When Kamaliikupono was 15, he asked his art teacher to let him meet an elusive man. It took a year, but Kamaliikupono’s teacher finally had this man, master traditional Hawaiian tattooist, Keone Nunes, come into the classroom.

When Keone entered his life, Kamaliikupono wanted to receive Alaniho, a uniquely Hawaiian tattoo running from hip to ankle. Keone, a 2015 First Peoples Fund Community Spirit Awards recipient, agreed on one condition — that Kamaliikupono receive blessing from his family.

Kamaliikupono’s father said no.

“My dad doesn’t have tattoos himself,” Kamaliikupono says. “He and my grandfather were part of the lost generation of Hawaiians who were beaten for speaking the language. Just being Hawaiian was frowned upon.”

But Kamaliikupono diligently asked his father every month for four years. When his father realized that Kamaliikupono was serious and did understand what he was committing to, he gave his blessing.

Keone tattooed Kamaliikupono and, a year later, took him in for a traditional apprenticeship, one that will last a lifetime. Keone brought him into his home to sit and observe the work, learning by watching. Over time, Kamaliikupono received blessings to do the work himself.

The protocol for tap tattooing involves time; it’s a spiritual journey. The person receiving the tattoo undergoes a rigorous time of physical restrictions. When all is prepared, family is often a part of the ceremony when the tattooing takes place.

Creating the traditional tattoo tools Kamaliikupono uses is as significant as each step in the process. A mōlī is made of albatross bone, turtle shell, and wood harvested from Hawai‘i (big) Island that requires him to travel at least once a year. Kamaliikupono uses a hitting stick to strike the tool and create the pattern.

By Sarah Elisabeth Sawyer (Choctaw Nation), Artist in Business Leadership Fellow 2015

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Margaret Jacobs (St. Regis Mohawk Tribe) studied Studio Art at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, graduated with high honors for her thesis work, and received the prestigious Perspectives on Design award.

She works full-time in her art business, traveling throughout the U.S. for juried art markets, residencies, and shows. She currently acts as the secretary on the Board of Directors for the Native American Alumni Association at Dartmouth, and the Treasurer on the board of directors for CATV (Community Access Television).

Margaret’s 2019 First Peoples Fund Artist in Business Leadership program is funding a custom-built oven and spray booth in her home studio she shares with her husband in Enfield, New Hampshire.

Culture and family ties often sink into Margaret’s subconscious and come out through her sculptures and jewelry. She explores the tension between natural and synthetic objects and colors and how objects hold cultural and personal importance. The Mohawk Ironworkers went out from their communities into the world to build iconic structures, and their work, lives, and culture inspires Margaret in her own metal work.

“I’m influenced by this layered history of iconic buildings like the Empire State Building, the World Trade Center and the George Washington Bridge,” Margaret says. “These quintessential ‘American’ buildings are so familiar to many people and also integral to daily life, but contain this complex and unique Indigenous narrative.”

Her work is infused with colors she applies through powder-coating. “It’s a process where pigment is applied as a dry powder electrostatically to an object then cured under heat,” she explains

Powder-coated brass jewelry is a newer venture for Margaret, a different medium to explore branches of the same concepts.

“Sometimes when I’m working with a natural object, I don’t quite know where I’m going with it,” she says, “but I like to see what the material or what the object that I’m using can inspire. I’m very much about using a material or process in an organic matter to see how and what it can lend to the work and add to my story.”

One of her pieces, “Steel Medicine,” speaks of adaptation and cultural identity. The forms in the piece allude to the spud wrench holders that Mohawk Ironworkers used to hold their tools, along with the imagery of cedar branches and eagle feathers.

“I see my family’s lineage built into my work,” Margaret says. “The concepts in my work stem from a fusion of ideas that I’m exploring: Mohawk Ironworkers and their relationship to steel as a material; the fragility and cyclical complexity of decay and growth in nature; and storytelling elements from traditional Mohawk stories.”

By Sarah Elisabeth Sawyer (Choctaw Nation), Artist in Business Leadership Fellow 2015

Cover Image by Bryan Parker (White Mountain Apache, Muscogee Creek, Mississippi Choctaw)  

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Kristina Iron Cloud (Oglala Lakota) arrived at the colorful, one-of-a-kind bus rolling across the Pine Ridge Reservation. She was there to sell her star quilts during a Buying Day hosted on First Peoples Fund’s Rolling Rez Arts bus, made possible through a partnership with the Heritage Center Gift Shop at the Red Cloud Indian School. While she had sold to the Heritage Center before, on that day she was introduced to the Rolling Rez Arts bus that is making waves on the Reservation and across the country.

“The bus is bigger than life,” says Bryan Parker (White Mountain Apache, Muscogee Creek, Mississippi Choctaw). He is the First Peoples Fund Rolling Rez Arts bus coordinator. “A project that was focused on our local arts community has grown into a national personality.”

Wherever it goes, the bus brings people together — a vehicle for community and creativity.

Through the Rolling Rez Arts program’s annual series of art classes, Kristina held a two-day workshop in the garage space at Racing Magpie in Rapid City, South Dakota. The participants completed their own satin baby star quilt. Kristina is widely recognized in the community as a well-known star quilt maker, so having her instruct the course helped people feel confident in the process. Those with little experience were helped along by Kristina and some of the more experienced quilters in the class, allowing them to overcome the intimidation of quilt patterns.

Bryan also invited Kristina’s husband, Jozee Campos (Kiowa), to teach some of his art mediums — moccasin-making, regalia, parfleche-making, and painting — on the Rolling Rez Arts bus.

“That’s basically what we do,” Kristina says. “We take this art and spread it to other parts of our Native community. The bus has made it more convenient.”

When the Rolling Rez Arts bus first started roaming the Reservation, few people knew what to make of the sky blue bus with its floating white clouds and herd of brightly painted buffalo.

Gradually, people learned what the Rolling Rez Arts (RRA) bus was about, and now climb inside whenever it comes through their area. They conduct online banking through the Lakota Federal Credit Union, take classes, and sell art at the monthly buying days like Kristina did when she discovered the bus.

Now in its fourth season, the bus has become a place where community gathers. Beginner artists climb on board during classes, learning and receiving feedback on their work. Bryan loves watching the results of those interactions.

“They’re taking those skills and applying them to their professional life –– entering art shows and winning awards, using the banking services with the Lakota Federal Credit Union or selling art to the Heritage Center,” he says. “Some apply for First Peoples Fund fellowships or become a trainer to facilitate the Native Artist Professional Development Training. They’re getting involved in some way, and the bus has a role in that.”

The celebrity status of the bus has come to the attention of outlets such as PBS News Hour, the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Times, and in the 2019 Rural Action Guide for Governors and States.

Organizations across the country are learning about this model and how it can break barriers that nonprofits face when it comes to developing and nurturing their artists and economies. The bus reaches people in the community otherwise isolated from one another, unable to access resources like banking, markets, and training.

“They can go back to their own communities and add to what they’re already doing in a creative way that will help other people,” Bryan added.

By Sarah Elisabeth Sawyer (Choctaw Nation), Artist in Business Leadership Fellow 2015

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“I am not alone as an artist.” This was a key takeaway for Denise McKay (Standing Rock Sioux Tribe) at the First Peoples Fund Indigenous Arts Ecology convening this past February. An artist and culture bearer from Fort Yates, North Dakota, Denise makes traditional art and regalia for her family and the community. She has taught more than 20 traditional art classes at Sitting Bull College on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation. Denise attended the convening as a community artist with Sitting Bull College, a 2019 Indigenous Arts Ecology grantee.  

Jennifer Martel (Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe) is the Sitting Bull Visitor Center Coordinator and was able to observe Denise’s interaction with fellow Native artists at the convening. Jennifer is passionate about bringing traditional arts and culture back at the community level.

“Just being with the artists at the convening, and getting ideas, engaging, and seeing a connection with them really opened my eyes,”

Jennifer says. “It made me ask myself questions, like how do I continue to help the artists? How do I encourage them, how do I make resources available for them? Understanding their needs and wants to be an artist was critical.”  

Jennifer took the experience home to contemplate along with ideas and proposals that Sitting Bull College had initially put forth in their Indigenous Arts Ecology (IAE) grant. Guided by Lakota/Dakota culture, values, and language, Sitting Bull College is committed to building intellectual capital through academic, career and technical education, and promoting economic and social development. The college is located on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation which spans 2.3 million acres across southern North Dakota and northern South Dakota.

They offer cultural classes and workshops in making star quilts, shawls, horse masks, ledger art, parfleche, painting, pottery, regalia, skirts, ribbon shirts, baby moccasins, beading, and quilling. The college believes artists give life to a creative community by thinking outside the box and teaching traditions important to Lakota/Dakota lifeways.  

Through work in the community, Sitting Bull College meets and offers resources to artists. In classes for traditional arts, students come to understand how the traditional community works with the value system of helping one another. Students gain an appreciation not only for art and culture, but community. Art and culture provide students with a sense of now, and motivates them to envision where they want to be. In turn, they become skilled in traditional art or craft and use those to teach others in the community. This has generated a revitalization of traditional Lakota/Dakota art in the surrounding communities who have started art classes.

The college’s focus with the Indigenous Arts Ecology (IAE) grant was on developing an arts organization. Now, Jennifer is taking conversations she’s had with artists like Denise, and reconsidering the urgent need to facilitate them traveling to markets outside their community and generating revenue. While the Sitting Bull Visitor Center and Sitting Bull College Bookstore are steady markets for many of their artists, Denise made an observation in Phoenix during the IAE convening: While people may not buy her art within her own community, off the reservation her work could sell.

The college recently hosted an FPF Native Artist Professional Development Training (NAPD) and community meeting to hear from local artists about their needs. Jennifer attended her first NAPD training in Oklahoma four years ago as part of her work with Sitting Bull College. She realized the potential it had to impact artists within the community of Standing Rock.

“There was good communication that was brought forth by the artists, who were engaged at the training,” she says. “They talked about things they would like to see as well as things that they are dealing with, offering ideas and making connections.”  

By Sarah Elisabeth Sawyer (Choctaw Nation), Artist in Business Leadership Fellow 2015

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First Peoples culture bearers continually keep us grounded in our work at First Peoples Fund. Created to recognize these individuals, the Jennifer Easton Community Spirit Awards (CSA) is one way FPF honors those whose generosity sustains the cultural fabric of their communities. This spring we traveled to Wisconsin and Alaska to honor two of our 2019 Community Spirit Awards (CSA) honorees and welcome them into the FPF family.

MOCCASINS FOR ALL OCCASIONS

Miscobinayshii (St. Croix Chippewa Indians of Wisconsin) was a year old when her mother died, and her grandmother began raising her and her sister, Margaret. Their grandmother taught them what she did — make moccasins for all occasions. When someone passed, families called on her to make “going home shoes.”

Miscobinayshii didn’t fully dedicated herself to moccasin-making until she was grown. Her sister Margaret was her main motivator, urging her to carry on the tradition.

Before long, the sisters were sharing their work at the state capitol grounds and folk art festivals, and then, on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. in 1998. Their work began to become so recognized that workers from the Smithsonian Institution approached them, asking of they would create a pair of moccasins to be displayed.

Miscobinayshii and Margaret got busy. She made one, her sister made the other — in one day.

“That was the quickest we ever did anything!” she laughed

Melissa Fowler (Lac Courte Oreilles, St. Croix Chippewa Indians of Wisconsin), Miscobinayshii’s granddaughter-in-law, nominated her for the FPF Community Spirit Awards. Melissa feels as though Miscobinayshii’s life has been dedicated to not only practicing traditional art and speaking the language, but to continually sharing that knowledge by teaching both youth and adults.

“Without her, St. Croix Tribe wouldn’t know many of the stories, history, and language,” Melissa said. “As a first speaker, she is able to teach and pronounce the Ojibwe language with the correct dialect of the St. Croix Tribe. When she gifts her knowledge, she is gifting a person the ability to carry this knowledge throughout their lifetime.”

On a sunshine-filled day, FPF representatives, participants from culture camps, family, and friends gathered to celebrate and honor Miscobinayshii near her home in the Round Lake Community of the St. Croix Chippewa Indians of Wisconsin. Held at the St. Croix Danbury Conference Center, drumming, song, and stories filled the atmosphere.

FPF President Lori Pourier (Oglala Lakota) said the most incredible moment for her was when the question was asked of how many people in the room had learned the language from Miscobinaysii.

“Over two-thirds of the room raised their hand,” she said. “You could see right then the impact she has had in her community and just how much her warmth and generosity have helped people carry on their culture.”

Ojibwe culture keeper Lee Staples was one of the speakers. “Each of us has a purpose and a reason for existing on this earth,” he said. “Miscobinayshii is a prime example. May she make many more moccasins.”

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BLESSINGS OF THE BERING SEA

Dressed in regalia with an aqua crystal headdress and turquoise dress, Margaret Nakak (Yup’ik/Inupiaq) welcomed FPF representatives to her community in Anchorage this April. At the Alaska Native Heritage Center, with her family’s help, Margaret spread a banquet of traditional foods for the guests at her honoring.

A host of relatives and friends joined the event themed, “Blessings of the Bering Sea.” The Stebbins Yup’ik Dance Group, which Margaret is a member of, performed as well as the King Island Inupiaq Dancers.

“I enjoyed both as they are my relatives of our ancestral language, drumming, singing, and dancing,” she said.

High school girls from one of Margaret’s traditional sewing programs took the stage and shared how she taught them to sew kuspuq, an outer layer garment made from a variety of fabrics. It is essential wear in the challenging Alaskan climate.

Depending on the level of design and decoration of a particular kuspuq, Margaret’s garments and require a wide range of fabrics (cotton, polyester, silk, velvet, and corduroy), furs (ground squirrel, fox, wolf, polar bear, beaver, mink, otter, seal), ivory, beads, and seashells. She studies historical photos and replicates the pieces worn. She brings them from the past to present and, through workshops and classes, into the future. She also teaches skin sewing, beading, and doll making.

Alaskan artist Michael Livingston (Unangax/Chugach) nominated Margaret for a FPF Community Spirit Award.

“I first met Marge in 1999 when I began building an iqyax [Unangax skin on frame sea kayak] at the Alaska Native Heritage Center,” Michael said. He works with Margaret at the Heritage Center. “Marge has touched many lives for over half a century. I worked in Alaska for 27 years as a police officer and know how important it is to have community spirit leaders like Marge teach and guide others.”

Margaret began dedicating her life to sustaining cultural traditions in 1965 and continues strong today. But she doesn’t call what she does “work.”

By Sarah Elisabeth Sawyer (Choctaw Nation), Artist in Business Leadership Fellow 2015  

Talon Ducheneaux-Shoots The Enemy (Cheyenne River Lakhota, Crow Creek Dakota) is a beatmaker, rapper, and producer. While his primary medium is hip-hop, traditional music plays an inspirational role in how he approaches art. Growing up several of South Dakota’s reservations, Talon bases much of his music on those experiences.  

He graduated with a Bachelor’s in Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania and now resides in Pierre, South Dakota. He is the founder of Wonahun Waste’ Studios/Records.

When he was a teen on the Crow Creek Indian Reservation, Talon would take walks and wish there was a music studio nearby, a place where artists could gather to create a sense of community. He was already making beats and keeping friendly rivals with other guys as they tried to find ways to make music and record it.

A few years after graduating with his bachelor’s and looking toward a master’s in Interdisciplinary Studies to make his dreams of a studio happen, Talon learned of First Peoples Fund’s (FPF) fellowships. He applied. Around that time, the Crow Creek Housing Authority approached him and asked what it would take to get a studio going.

“It’s all the things that I’ve been passionate about and wanted to do. With the fellowship, I can pass on the knowledge and tools needed for Native youth to express themselves, continue the art and culture, and remain here.”

Together, they worked out a space for a professional recording studio in the tribe’s telecom center. Talon received a 2019 FPF Cultural Capital Fellowship, which is helping sustain the work.

“It’s all the things that I’ve been passionate about and wanted to do,” Talon says. “With the fellowship, I can pass on the knowledge and tools needed for Native youth to express themselves, continue the art and culture, and remain here.”

He opened the studio for sessions, then watched in amazement as his dream took form.

“The studio has been exceeding my expectation on just the amount of voices, and the heart that’s been put into the songs,” Talon says.

Most of the people who visit are youth. He helps them record their messages as they look toward a compilation album, showing them their dreams are within reach.

Talon produced part of his latest album “Myosotis” through the studio and released it in March 2019, and watched the music community he wished for as a teen come to pass.

“When someone comes for their first time, they’re nervous,” Talon says. “But once they’ve been there 20 times, and someone new comes, they help them get through it, saying, ‘trust me, I know how you feel. Just breathe.’ They’re giving them those techniques, that mentorship. I’m really proud to see that because I didn’t need to encourage it. It was already there.”

By Sarah Elisabeth Sawyer (Choctaw Nation), Artist in Business Leadership Fellow 2015

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Two years ago James Pakootas found himself starting the next chapter of his life. Less than a month out of treatment for addiction, James was considering focusing his energy on his lifelong passion: writing and performing hip hop. Encouraged by one of his closest friends, an uncertain James attended one of First Peoples Fund’s Native Artist Professional Development (NAPD) trainings. From there, the next chapter began to unfold.

Fast forward to today –– James is not only using everything he learned during his very first NAPD training, but he is now a certified NAPD trainer for First Peoples Fund. James has also helped pilot the recently developed performing arts component of the NAPD, teaching the curriculum to other artists in his community. He enjoys being able to encourage artists who, like he felt two years ago, might be uncertain about their capacity to pursue their dreams of being a full-time artist.

“We’re trying to grow that arts ecology,” James explains. “It goes from the individual to the community, to the world. It feels like it’s growing because First Peoples Fund validated me as an individual, and now I’m starting to bear fruit, without intentionally trying to live out their purpose or mission. It’s naturally aligned: My mission is their mission, my values are their values. It really is a family.”

Experiences such as James’s are at the core of why First Peoples Fund’s developed the NAPD training and curriculum –– to connect artists to skills and resources that would help them support themselves while affirming the value they bring to their communities. Rooted in traditional values, the curriculum allows participants to build a foundation for their business that resonates with their deepest sources of inspiration and motivation. Approaching business development through the lens of artists’ Indigenous values helps them to maintain the fortitude needed to take on the challenges of being an entrepreneur, full-time artist or community leader.

“We’re trying to grow that arts ecology. It goes from the individual to the community, to the world. It feels like it’s growing because First Peoples Fund validated me as an individual, and now I’m starting to bear fruit, without intentionally trying to live out their purpose or mission. It’s naturally aligned: My mission is their mission, my values are their values. It really is a family.”

— James Pakootas (Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation)

“NAPD is the only professional development training that’s specifically for Native artists, and it is rooted in Indigenous perspectives,” says Tosa Two Heart (Oglala Lakota), FPF’s Program Manager of Community Development. “We’re dedicated to continuing to honor those perspective by incorporating artists’ feedback into the new components of the NAPD curriculum.”

Through site visits, online webinars, and getting in the room with Native artists, we listen as they express themselves, the challenges they face, and their ideas for creating greater impact. Working with artists like James is essential to making sure what we create will meet the needs of the artists we serve, and our trusted partners and certified trainers offer valuable input as well. They work with hundreds of artists across the mainland, and Alaska and Hawai’i, which prompted the recent performing arts revision to the curriculum and are informing the next component to be introduced to the NAPD: leadership.

Culture Bearers Leading a Movement

Though the NAPD recognizes the importance of artists need to support themselves in a cash economy, we also emphasize the importance of every community’s cultural capital, composed of the wisdom of our ancestors. This approach often resonates with artists and culture bearers since for many of them, their primary motivation for creating their work is not monetary, but rooted in much deeper connections to culture, land, tradition, and family. The NAPD wants to support the fact that measures of success for our artists and culture bearer are not solely connected to monetary wealth, but rather to sustaining themselves and their families culturally as well as financially.

Our Community Spirit Award (CSA) honorees embody these efforts and we look to them as guides as we develop the leadership component of the NAPD, written by Ben Sherman (Oglala Lakota). With the larger movements in Indian Country to reclaim and revitalize Indigenous economies, the leadership component is one way FPF can support and affirm the contributions of culture bearers and artists to these processes. The strength of culture bearers and artist-leaders in every Native community we serve shows us at that they are a driving force in the movement to reclaim lifeways, and are critical to ensuring the perpetuation of ancestral knowledge and traditions for future generations.

“When I think of leadership, I think of the idea of how leadership and culture-bearing and being an artist in the community all tie together,” Tosa says. “We are using examples of our CSAs as models for what leadership looks like in the community and how it benefits not just the artists, but perpetuates culture.”

CSA honoree and FPF trainer, Theresa Secord (Penobscot) hosted some of the live webinars FPF has offered this spring. One of her webinars served as a practical guide on how to diversify income as an Indigenous artist, recognizing that mainstream business models do not fulfill all their needs. Participants posed questions in the chat feature, creating opportunities for learning from Theresa’s extensive experience. Those questions and answers also help inform how we will create tangible guidance for artists through the leadership component of the NAPD.

“Success looks different for every artist, and we’re just laying out all the avenues that they could potentially take if they want to pursue a certain path,” says Tosa. “We’re gathering more information from artists and fellows, trying to update resources and think of other professional needs. Say your medium is film, what does your artist portfolio look like? Or how does an author approach publishers? These are things I think about, making sure we eventually touch all these to a certain extent. It’s an incremental process.”

The trainings already scheduled for this year will also provide more opportunities to gather feedback and continue informing the trajectory of the curriculum. NAPD trainings are scheduled in North Dakota, Hawai’i, Montana, Minnesota, and Washington, just to name a few, with regular requests coming in from all across the United States. FPF hopes that with each NAPD training, we are helping an artist guide how the next chapter of their life will be written.

“First Peoples Fund continually validates the importance of me being an artist, and the path I’ve chosen and being a leader in my community,” James says. “They validate me as a human being. It’s powerful.”