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Transition At NACF

After over five years of dedicated service to NACF, Director of Programs Francene Blythe is returning to her home town…
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NACF 2019 Annual Report

Aloha Friends, The Indigenous arts and cultures of the Native peoples of the United States are strong and thriving, despite…
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NACF Welcomes New Staff

WELCOME The Native Arts and Cultures Foundation (NACF) is pleased to announce that Barbara Soulé (Diné) and Leah Altman (Oglala…
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Re-Imagined Diné Textiles

Will Wilson (Citizen of the Navajo Nation) is a photographer and visual artist whose work focuses on transforming Indigenous art practices…
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2019 Honolulu Biennial Events

The Honolulu Biennial is an international contemporary art exhibition that brings together artists from Hawaiʻi, the Pacific, Asia and the…
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NACF 2018 Annual Report

Lulani Arquette (NACF President/CEO) Welina me ke aloha,  The Native Arts and Cultures Foundation expresses sincere appreciation to our friends,…
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NACF Fellows Receive Western Arts Alliance Native Launchpad Award

This year, three Native Arts and Cultures Foundation (NACF), National Artist Fellows have been named the inaugural Western Arts Alliance (WAA), Native Launchpad award recipients. Congratulations to Christopher Kau’i Morgan (2013 – NACF Dance Fellow), Allison Warden (2018 – NACF Music Fellow) and…

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Native Arts for Social Change

NACF has a passion and talent for bringing exceptional artists together before diverse audiences to share their insightful work and…
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Manahatta by Mary Kathryn Nagle

This past spring the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation (NACF) supported three panel discussions with three Native female playwrights –…
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NACF’s Community Inspiration Project Airs on National Television

One of the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation’s Community Inspiration Project pilots, “Repellent Fence”, is scheduled to air on prime-time national television Tuesday, April 24, at 8:00 pm Eastern (check local stations here). It will be broadcast as part of the new season of the award winning “America Reframed”.

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Weaving for Generations to Come

2017 Mentor Artist Fellow Lani Hotch (Chilkat Indian Village) comes from a long lineage of weavers starting back with her great-great-grandmother. She began weaving with her grandmother and is using her opportunity as a Mentor Fellow to ensure that the tradition is passed on to younger generations.

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Join the 2018 Revolution of Values!

We call on artists, creative organizers, concerned citizens, and all community members to join together from April 2-8, 2018, to draw inspiration from and breathe new life into the prophetic words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

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Can You Name #5WomenArtists?

Can you name five women artists? Many people can’t. If you can, it probably takes you much longer to think of five female artists than five male artists. Now, try to name five women artists of color. Join us in the #5WomenArtists campaign.

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Remembering James Luna (1950-2018)

Installation and performance artist James Luna has died. Luna, of Puyukitchum, Ipai, and Mexican American Indian descent, passed away on March 4, 2018. While our hearts are heavy with his loss, we remember his relentless spirit and poignant voice as a Native artist.

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Save the NEA

The following is a statement on behalf of the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation, regarding recent proposals to eliminate the…
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Missing Indigenous, 2017, director LaRonn Katchia

Missing Indigenous To Screen in Paris

Missing Indigenous is a seven-minute film which personalizes the heart wrenching epidemic of Native American women going missing. NACF is proud to support its first international screening.

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#HonorNativeLand – A guide to respectfully acknowledge ancestral lands

In countries such as New Zealand, Australia, Canada, and among tribal nations in the U.S., it is commonplace, even policy, to open events and gatherings by acknowledging the traditional Indigenous inhabitants of that land. While some individuals and cultural and educational institutions in the United States have adopted this custom, the vast majority have not. Together, we can spark a movement to change that.

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Take Action April 4th – #Revolution Of Values

The Native Arts and Cultures Foundation is proud to be a partner in #RevolutionOfValues, a day of creative action on April 4th, 2017, the 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s powerful speech “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence.”

Fifty years later, to walk in his footsteps, to give voice once again to his powerful words, and to kick off a year of efforts by many organizations around the U.S. to remind people of Dr. King’s real message and unfinished work, the U.S. Department of Arts and Culture, the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation, and partners are sponsoring #RevolutionOfValues.

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A Closer Look at “Connecting Lines”

Saturday, March 11, is a proud day for the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation and our 2016 Visual Arts Fellows Brenda Mallory (Cherokee Nation) and Luzene Hill (Eastern Band of Cherokee). The two installation artists open their joint exhibit “Connecting Lines” at the Portland Art Museum bringing unique perspectives on themes of disruption, violence against Native women, survival, renewal and empowerment.

Hill’s “Enate” and Mallory’s “Recurring Chapters in the Book of Inevitable Outcomes” masterfully blend contemporary and past in a multi-layered exploration of history and the resilience and determination to overcome them.

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Engaging and Fostering Change: Community Inspiration Program Update

We believe that the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation has a responsibility to support those artists and culture bearers whose voices and actions are championing justice. Our Community Inspiration Projects do just that by providing artists and communities opportunities to address issues of social concern through artmaking. Here are some of the great things that are happening with some of our Community Inspiration Projects:

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“Saying Our Share: Surviving the Missions”

Through performance, literature and art, “Saying Our Share: Surviving the Missions”, outlines the tragedy that befell a pre-contact California indigenous population of close to one million people and, over 70 years post contact, reduced it to an estimated 250,000 to 300,000 survivors.

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Saying Our Share: Surviving the Missions

Through performance, literature and art, “Saying Our Share: Surviving the Missions”, outlines the tragedy that befell a pre-contact California indigenous population of close to one million people and, over 70 years post contact, reduced it to an estimated 250,000 to 300,000 survivors. This project attempts to educate in a way that engages the public and advances the historical record.

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Remembering Teri Rofkar

Teri Rofkar. Still from Rasmuson Foundation   Teri Rofkar passed away in December 2016. While we are deeply saddened by…
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What is #GivingTuesday?

#Giving Tuesday is a one-day annual movement focused on supporting your favorite charity and cause. Celebrated on the Tuesday after…
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Young Filmmakers Capture Climate Change

The Native Arts and Cultures Foundation (NACF) was honored to partner with Wisdom of the Elders’ (WOTE) and support its community collaboration project, the Native Youth Film Academy and Climate Change Film Festival. This project is NACF’s fifth Community Inspiration Program, which are artist-driven projects that address pressing social, cultural and environmental issues to bring about community conversations connecting Native and non-Native people.

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Return from Exile

This traveling art exhibit was conceived to encourage healing and reconciliation and intentionally organized around the work of Native artists currently enrolled in the displaced tribes of the Creek, the Cherokee, the Choctaw, the Chickasaw and the Seminole.

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Celebrating the Life of Dave Hatch

Dave Hatch was a Native environmental activist and a cultural heritage advocate who became well known for his ability to bring together usually disparate tribal and non-Indian groups to pool resources to address regional issues.

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Vicky Holt Takamine

Conversations on Hula

“Our people can’t live without hula and hula cannot live without our people.” 2015 NACF Fellow Vicky Takamine and Kahikina…
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Celebrating Women’s History

March is “Women’s History Month” in the United States. At the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation, we recognize and honor our women artists and culture bearers that have received fellowships since our inception seven years ago. While we acknowledge them during “Women’s History Month”, we actually cherish and hold them in high regard every month of the year. These remarkable women are always in our thoughts and hearts for their commitment to keeping the arts and cultural expression of Native peoples alive.

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2015 Highlights

The following covers highlights from seven Fellows, the Community Inspiration Projects, Sponsorships and California Bridge Initiative. To see and learn…
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Repellent Fence, Scare Eye Balloons

“What’s up with the balloons?” The hopes of a community

After eight years of creative visioning, planning and community engagement Postcommodity’s “Repellent Fence” (or Valla Repelente, in Spanish) goes airborne connecting the lands north and south of what is today the U.S./Mexico border. The installation, which launched October 10th, involved 26 scare-eye balloons tethered to the Sonoran Desert ground, that spanned a two-mile stretch and physically and metaphorically created a direct line of communication between communities and their many stakeholders. Repellent Fence is one of NACF’s Community Inspiration Program Pilot Projects.

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Where Do We Come From?

A fusion of talent and energy came together in the sold-out world premiere of The Story of Everything (TSOE) in Honolulu, Hawai`i on September 26, 2015. Kealoha, an award winning spoken word poet and a graduate of MIT with a degree in nuclear physics, led the effort. The theatre, filled with a community of mothers and babies, students, and young adults to elders of all ethnicities and professions, represented the vast diversity of communities Kealoha desires to work among. The performance was the culmination of a lifetime’s work for Kealoha and one of the pilot projects of NACF’s Community Inspiration Program.

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A World Where Performance is Part of Life

Yup’ik dancer and choreographer Emily Johnson galvanized four large urban centers in the country and her hometown of Homer, Alaska, with her multi-disciplinary project SHORE – one of NACF’s Community Inspiration Pilot projects. Story, volunteerism, performance and feasting engaged local communities who were willing to show up and be open to the possibilities.

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The Profound and Numerous Benefits of Arts and Cultures

I believe there is a benefit of arts and cultures that has not been written about nor studied enough in more intentional ways, although it has gained value in arts and philanthropic circles in the past few years. This is the value of arts and culture as a social change tool. The head of a social change organization and one of the national proponents of social change and the arts had this to say: “The single most powerful social change tool in the world is arts and creative expression. There is nothing that transcends barriers across language, economics, cultures, and place in a way that engages people and community like arts and cultures can. Nothing (emphasis) is that powerful.”

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The 1960’s had a great impact on me

In my lifetime, I have not seen this level of racial discrimination and hatred in our country since the 1960’s and early 1970’s. As a very young girl, too innocent to understand what was going on, but intuitive enough to know that something very wrong was happening, I remember seeing on national television these horrific images of police dogs and fire hoses turned on the demonstrators in Birmingham, the violence at the Pettus Bridge in Selma, and the burning neighborhoods of the Watts riots in Los Angeles. These images from Alabama and California flashed on TV screens across our nation and stayed with me for a long time.

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Delina White (Ojibwe), Man's Regalia

Catch this Rising Star

Delina White, 2014 Regional Artist Fellow for the Upper Plains, is going to be busy this fall in five upcoming exhibitions throughout Minnesota. She’s presenting historical to contemporary women’s dress regalia through display and lectures along with meet-the-artist receptions; catch her event if you can. The event is called, “The Great Lakes Native Woodland Skirts” Project. “The project is giving me the opportunity to do what I have always wanted to do – to make beadwork and clothing that focuses on the historical significance of materials that I love and the beautiful way Native people used those materials to adorn themselves to create a culture identifiable as belonging to the woodlands of the Great Lakes region,” says Delina, member of Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe.

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One Hand Full of Earth

Jennifer M. Stevens, 2014 NACF Regional Artist Fellow for the Upper Plains, lands her debut solo exhibition at Neville Museum in Green Bay Wisconsin entitled, “One Hand Full of Earth.” Her spirit and ancestral heritage is sculpted into every piece she creates.

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Trusting Your Instincts

As a guest lecturer selected by students to participate in the Paul Brach Visiting Artist Lecture Series at the California…
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Aloha from the President

[us_single_image align=”left” image=”6284″ size=”medium” link=””] Time has been on my mind lately, and I’ve been wondering about the ways in…
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David Treuer (Ojibwe), cover of his novel Prudence.

Writing the Human Experience

[us_single_image image=”5144″ align=”left” size=”medium” link=”url:http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FPrudence-Novel-David-Treuer%2Fdp%2F1594633088″] Author David Treuer (Ojibwe) completed “Prudence,” a novel set in post-WWII Minnesota, wrote several essays…
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Directing Mainstream Media

[us_single_image image=”3549″ align=”left” size=”medium” link=””] Support from a 2014 NACF Film Fellowship allowed Billy Luther (Navajo/Hopi/Laguna Pueblo) the flexibility to…
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Report on impact created by the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation from 2009 to 2013.

Our First Five Years

June 2014 The national Native-led Native Arts and Cultures Foundation has produced a report sharing the work of the new…
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