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Literary Arts

Chelsea T. Hicks

6 Jul at 6:30 pm

Jessica (Tyner) Mehta

6 Jul at 2:00 pm

Gretchen Potter

6 Jul at 1:30 pm

OPEN CALL: Accepting Letters of Interest for the SHIFT Program

19 Jan at 12:02 am

OPEN CALL: Accepting Applications for the LIFT Program

19 Jan at 12:01 am

National Headquarters Office
400 E. Evergreen Blvd., Suite 101B
Vancouver, WA 98660

By appointment only
Phone: 360-334-7266

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Meet NACF LIFT Artist Camas Logue (Klamath Modoc Y

Meet NACF LIFT Artist Camas Logue (Klamath Modoc Yahooskin). Logue lives in the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community in northwest Washington state, where he is apprenticing with his father-in-law, Swinomish elder and master carver Kevin Paul. Together they are working on community carving projects including pole carvings and show pieces. He has learned from elders in different tribal communities and traveled up and down the West Coast, studying different harvesting and weaving traditions. He has found that working with earth pigments and plant dyes affords him a closer relationship with his painting and allows him to interpret the landscape in new ways.

Logue’s multi-disciplinary work includes traditional weaving and carving, alongside his visual arts practice of oil painting, illustration, and printmaking. All of his work, whether oil, copperplate, woodblock, or illustration, is a reflection of his connection to place and his relationships with his ancestors. His labor-intensive techniques conjure the processes of geological time, eroding and revealing hidden layers within the work. Alongside his other practices, Logue also plays drums and guitar in the Indigenous queer band, Black Belt Eagle Scout, led by Katherine Paul, his wife.

For his LIFT project, Logue will create a series of paintings made with materials collected from his tribal homelands in southern Oregon. He will also create a display of pigments and dyes on archival paper, documenting their sources and their names in the Klamath language, addressing land loss and the dispossession of Klamath/Modoc people. The project will culminate with an exhibition of this new series of paintings at the Klamath administration building on his reservation.
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#nativeart #NACFlift #nativeamerican #americanindian #indigenous #nativeartist #klamath #modoc #yahooskin #artist @camaslogue

Meet NACF LIFT Awardee Carrie G. Lind (Cherokee Na

Meet NACF LIFT Awardee Carrie G. Lind (Cherokee Nation/Shawnee). Using clay she finds on her Cherokee allotment in White Oak, Oklahoma and hometown of Vinita, Lind hand processes the clay she uses to make her pottery. She then hand-coils, builds, and open-fires the work. Lind’s pots reflect her Cherokee and Shawnee ancestry and draws inspiration from the techniques of her esteemed teachers and mentors.

Through her creative practice, Lind contributes to reclaiming and reinvigorating her culture so that, as a people, they can leave their contemporary mark on tribal history. As a busy mother, she takes every available opportunity throughout her day to develop her pottery practice. She also teaches to reconnect other Native women to pottery, as a way to revitalize and protect traditional practices. She says, “I feel that this gift is not mine, but one I am obligated to share with my people.”

Lind’s LIFT project, 7 Directions / 7 Conversations / 7 Actions / 7 Pots, organizes seven conversations with spiritual leaders from tribes across Turtle Island, honoring each of the seven directions, filming them as part of a documentary. After responsibly sourcing local clay from ancestral tribal lands, she will memorialize each conversation in a new pot.
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#nativeart #NACFlift #pottery #nativeartist #cherokee #shawnee #oklahoma #nativeamerican #indigenous #indigenouswomen

Meet NACF LIFT Awardee Dawn E. LeBeau (Oóhenunpa

Meet NACF LIFT Awardee Dawn E. LeBeau (Oóhenunpa Itázipčo – Cheyenne River Lakota Nation). LeBeau is an independent photographer, is Itazipčola Oóhenunpa (without bows and two kettle) of the Tetonwan Oyáte Lakota (People of the Prairie). She currently resides on the Wakpá Wašté Lakota Makoc’e (Cheyenne River Lakota Lands) with her two beautiful wakanyeja (children), promoting Lakota wellness, gardening, Lakota language and Lakota kinship values.

LeBeau was introduced to photography when she was given her first Nikon camera while working on a tribal youth project in 1996. She is inspired by portrait, landscape and documentary photography. She studied the Lakota language in college and interviewed a Lakota language professor about the importance of learning the language. That experience, at the beginning of her adult life, has shaped her trajectory forward. Her community shares her passion for revitalizing the language and participate as subjects in her work.

With the LIFT award, LeBeau will complete the Lakota Language Speaker project, which celebrates and preserves Lakota culture by honoring every single fluent Lakota language speaker on the Cheyenne River Nation in a series of photograph portraits and video interviews. The photographs will first be presented as an outdoor exhibition printed on large banners that wave in the South Dakota wind. A QR code on each image will lead viewers to the videos, which they can watch on the spot and revisit at home.
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#nativeart #cheyenneriverlakota #lakota #americanindian #NACFlift #artist #photographer #indigenous #indigenouswomen

Meet NACF LIFT Awardee ShanDien Sonwai LaRance (Ho

Meet NACF LIFT Awardee ShanDien Sonwai LaRance (Hopi, Tewa, Navajo & Assinaboine). LaRance is a champion hoop dancer and instructor. Growing up immersed in Native American arts and traditions, she shares her culture around the world, acting as an unofficial ambassador for Native American and First Nations peoples. Through the years, the LaRance family dance troupe traveled around America showcasing hoop dance and performing at pow wows and festivals. The experience opened doors for them to travel extensively and build relationships across nations and cultures.

Growing up in Arizona with her artistic family, she was taught how to hoop dance when she was eight years old by her eldest brother, Nakotah, a multiple world champion hoop dancer who passed away tragically in 2020. At the age of eighteen, she followed in her brother’s footsteps and “ran away from home” to join Cirque Du Soleil’s Big Top show, “TOTEM”, where she toured the world for 8 years, performing 300 times annually. When LaRance is not under the Big Top, she returns to her home on the Tewa Reservation of Ohkay Owingeh, New Mexico, where she teaches the hoop dance to the Indigenous youth. Reflecting her high aspirations, she is now pursuing careers in film, television and modeling.

For her LIFT project, LaRance will create a video course for Indigenous youth on how to hoop dance, presented as a rigorous dance and fitness exercise. The episodes will focus on hoop making, rhythm, footwork and dance steps, ending with basic dance skills and the manipulation of 1-5 hoops. The video course will be shared on online platforms and for the final presentation, students will participate in an international dance competition.
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#nativeart #nativedance #hoopdance #dancer #indigenous #indigenouswomen #NACFlift #americanindian #Hopi #Tewa #Navajo #Assinaboine @sonwaii

Meet NACF LIFT Awardee Olivia Komahcheet (Comanche

Meet NACF LIFT Awardee Olivia Komahcheet (Comanche/Otoea). Her vibrant music blends together elements of alternative R&B, neo soul, and indie-electronic. Komahcheet’s natural blend of organic sounds and downtempo bedroom-lofi beats resonates and embodies her unique and ever-evolving music style as an emerging artist. She has published score compositions in First Americans Museum, is an official platinum producer of Timbaland’s “Beatclub,” and is a 2021 Alumni of the Sundance Film Festival’s Composers Lab.

Komacheet has attained an advanced level of present day “artist-preneurship”, having hands on experience performing live shows and being a music mentor and presenter at several media camps tailored specifically for Indigenous youth. She is self-represented, which includes being an artist, manager, agent, social media curator, and video editor all in one. Her touring experience includes performing throughout the nation for over eight years. She has mentored youth, include hosting two 45-minute music workshops for over 500 indigenous youth at the UNITY Conference in Denver, Colorado; an intimate songwriting workshop and live music presentation in Salt River Reservation, Arizona; and several week-long intensive music/media camps throughout the state of Oklahoma.

For her LIFT project, Komahcheet will provide mentorship to an aspiring Native musician, sharing core knowledge and giving ample support in the development of a music video, a song release, and a community-based project. The activities will include travel, filming, recording, and photoshoots. The project will empower them to create a supportive mental and emotional environment for themselves, providing financial aid and a positive outlet.
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#nativeart #nativemusic #nativemusician #musician #music #artist #nativeamerican #comanche #otoe #NACFlift #americanindian #indigenous #indigenouswomen @liv_theartist

Meet 2021 NACF LIFT Awardee Kalalea (Hawaiian Nati

Meet 2021 NACF LIFT Awardee Kalalea (Hawaiian Native). He is an active contributor to Native education and community renewal, a cultural practitioner, musician, and youth mentor/instructor. Kalalea has several years of experience working with at-risk youth with music as the focus at a Hawaiian-focused charter school. He has served as an instructor of music composition, guitar, performance, hula, creative writing, and basic film.

With roots in island reggae that branch out to modern R&B and hip hop, Kalalea has no shortage of variety when it comes to his music. He learned ukulele at age five, picked up a guitar before high school, then slowly taught himself how to play other instruments. His music is written, mixed, and mastered on his own, and he has been writing music since he was twelve. Still only in his twenties, his music has already taken him internationally and he has done extensive work with the Mana Maoli Collective, collaborating with many artists in Hawaii.

Kalalea’s LIFT project involves mentorship in the creation of original music for an EP and a short-story film that gives voice to the struggle of the Native Hawaiian community. He will mentor twelve high-school students for the original music and eight students for the short-story film, while creating his own work. The local and virtual community will be invited to a live performance headlining Kalalea, guest artists, and youth artists. The Short Story Music Video will be presented on a huge outdoor screen as part of the music performance.
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#nativeart #nativeartist #nativehawaiian #hawaii #musician #NACFlift #indigenous

Meet 2021 NACF LIFT Awardee Ursala Hudson (Tlingit

Meet 2021 NACF LIFT Awardee Ursala Hudson (Tlingit). Ursula is a weaver, printmaker, painter, photographer and writer and is of Caucasian, Filipino and Alaska Native descent.

After a career in freelance graphic design, Hudson began a fiber-art practice centered around Indigenous couture fashion designs that draw from the calculated, bold, and innovative practices of her digital art background. She primarily works in the hand-twining wool-around-wool artform of Chilkat and Ravenstail weaving styles from her ancestral homeland in southeast Alaska. Hudson has come to find that weaving ceremonial regalia offers her a voice to uplift her communities and reclaim sovereignty in an Indigenous future. The materials, designs, patterns, finishing techniques, and sources of inspiration expand a narrative of Tlingit interaction with the landscape and outside cultures.

For Hudson’s LIFT project, she will weave a full collection of regalia, with each piece crafted according to the techniques, customs, design principles, and spiritual practices of Northwest Coast Chilkat and Ravenstail weaving. Non-traditional treatments and techniques such as basketry twining, crochet, and tailoring, as well as materials such as feathers, flax fibers, and metal beads will be used as accents. In addition, the design will revolve around and accentuate the way “modern women” wear clothing, as a relatively new convention in Alaska Native art. The full collection of garments will be created to empower and uplift the contemporary Indigenous Woman.

#nativeart #alaskanative #indigenous #indigenouswoman #nativeartist #nativelit #NACFlift #tlingit #weaver #weavingarts

Meet 2021 LIFT Awardee Chelsea T. Hicks (Osage/Waz

Meet 2021 LIFT Awardee Chelsea T. Hicks (Osage/Wazhazhe). She is a fiction writer and songwriter living in the Bay Area in California where she earned an MA at UC Davis and an MFA at the Institute of American Indian Arts in creative writing. She studies Wazhazhe ie (Osage language) with mentors of her tribal district, Waxakaoli^. She belongs to the Tsizho Washtake, through her father Brian Hicks, and in Wazhazhe ie she is Xhuedoi^ or “Looking to the Eagle.” Centering language study in her writing has allowed her to address trends of healing and cultural revitalization for modern day Natives in her writing.

Hicks multi-genre writing work includes short stories, poems, essays, and novels. Ancestral stories and veneration are recurrent themes in her writing, as well as generational trauma and the methods by which generations heal and also fail to heal. Her first book is a collection of short stories incorporating poems in Wahzhazhe ie, forthcoming in 2022 from Unnamed Press in Los Angeles.

For her LIFT project, Hicks will be creating a poetry collection in translation, including Wahzhazhe ie (the Osage language) with both its orthography and latinized characters, in addition to English. At this time, the practice of publishing poetry entirely in an Indigenous language is not widely supported in the United States, where indigenous poets usually write solely in English or include select phrases of their indigenous heritage language in English writing. The work will be published by Unnamed Books of Los Angeles and there will be an accompanying book tour. It will also be available as teaching curriculum for Daposka Ahnkodapi, the Osage Nation immersion school, and Indigenous language creative writing workshops.
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#nativeart #nativeamerican #americanindian #indigenous #indigenouswoman #nativewriter #nativelit #writer #literature #NACFlift #osage

DEADLINE EXTENDED to SEPT 30 - The #Portland Mayor

DEADLINE EXTENDED to SEPT 30 - The #Portland Mayor’s office, working in partnership with the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation, is looking to showcase the work of 3-4 Native artists. The theme is to tell a story of the Indigenous Peoples in the Portland Metropolitan area, past, present, and future. Selected artwork will be purchased for the City of Portland’s art collection and will be installed in the lobby of the Mayor’s office.

In an effort to increase Native American visibility and convey a more equitable perspective of Portland’s history, artwork created by Native artists will replace portraits of previous mayors that are currently displayed in the entrance to the Mayor’s office. These works will tell the stories of the past, present and future of the city as expressed through the eyes of Native artists. Knowing that truthful storytelling can unify and build community relations, Mayor Wheeler is dedicated to showcasing Native art throughout the city while building stronger relationships with tribal nations and the urban native community.

CLICK ON THE LINK IN BIO FOR MORE INFO & TO APPLY!
#nativeart #oregon #nativeartist #nativeamerican #americanindian #indigenous #indigenousart

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