Native Writers Awarded Pulitzer Prizes in Fiction and Poetry Two Native American writers were among the 2021 Pulitzer Prize winners on June 11, 2021. Louise Erdrich (Turtle Mountain Ojibwe) received the award for fiction for her novel The Night Watchman (Harper). Natalie Diaz (Mojave/Pima) received the award for Poetry for her collection Postcolonial Love Poem (Graywolf). Erdrich is the second Native novelist to receive the fiction prize, following Kiowa writer N. Scott Momaday’s House Made of Dawn in 1969. The Pulitzer site describes Erdrich’s novel as “a majestic, polyphonic novel about a community’s efforts to halt the proposed displacement and…
Author: Stacy Pratt
Fans of the long-running US television show Grey’s Anatomy are used to seeing work from Indigenous artists from the Pacific Northwest Coast. The show, a medical drama, is set in a hospital in Seattle, and prints of Indigenous art can often be seen on the walls of the hospital sets. On May 10, 2021, a storyline involving Suquamish characters who had a baby at the hospital showcased, up close, a red cradleboard. The episode, #15 of Season 17, is called “Tradition.” The creator of the cradleboard, Taylor Henry, is a citizen of the Tulalip Tribes of Washington. His aunt and…
Memorial for Durango Mendoza, Muscogee (Creek) writer/artist (1945–2020) When I was younger, I walked with my mother, aunt, and their cousin, Roselyn Bunny-Frye, down to the creek near our church, Thlewarle Indian Baptist Church, to see some handprints in the cement that held up the little bridge. When the bridge had been built, Roselyn and her siblings and cousins had snuck down there and put their handprints in the cement. She pointed them out. “That one is Tango’s,” she said. “Tango” was the nickname of her brother, Durango Mendoza, a Muscogee (Creek)/Mexican artist and writer. I thought how funny it…
FAAM Four is a series of brief interviews with Indigenous artists across nations and disciplines. Sarah Ayaqi Whalen-Lunn is an Iñupiaq multimedia artist specializing in Inuit hand-poked and skin-stitched tattooing. This ancient form of tattooing involves sewing designs directly into the skin or poking the designs on one spot at a time using a needle dipped in dye. Increasingly, Alaska Native women are having their faces tattooed in the manner of their ancestors, and Whalen-Lunn is part of that revival. She also tattoos contemporary designs for Native and non-Native people. Whalen-Lunn says of her art, “My work stems from trying…
MUSKOGEE, Okla. – Since 1935, some of the most well-known American Indian artists have passed through the art department at Bacone College, but recent years, financial difficulties resulted in the college almost suspending operations. The art department was subject to the ups and downs of the college, and it, too, was almost lost. However, Dr. Ferlin Clark (Navajo), who arrived from New Mexico to take over as president of Bacone in May 2018, recently announced the reestablishment of Bacone’s historic art program as a major component of the college’s recovery. With the support of Mvskoke filmmaker Sterlin Harjo, Clark hopes to…
Chase Kahwinhut Earles makes Caddo pottery. That’s a simple sentence for a complex endeavor that, for the artist, involved years of searching. Earles was always an artist, but he wasn’t always a potter. When he was young, family trips through the Southwest inspired him to learn about Pueblo pottery, but when it came time to make pottery himself, the creative motivation was not there. Earles did not feel it would be appropriate to imitate Pueblo pottery styles, as he writes in his bio. If he had, those works “would merely be ‘knock-offs’ of real Pueblo Indian artists. Replicas. I’m not…
The FAAM Four is a series of brief interviews with Indigenous artists across nations and disciplines. Osage artist Dante Biss-Grayson’s large, vibrant abstract paintings attracted attention at this year’s SWAIA Indian Market. Arising from his experience as a combat veteran, the paintings are a departure from the artist’s former work. Biss-Grayson was born in Santa Fe. He writes that he “grew up as the apprentice/protégé and son of [artists] Earl Biss and Gina Gray,” surrounded by the radical art of 1960s/70s-era Institute of American Indian Arts. Biss-Grayson joined the US Armed Forces shortly after the turn of the century. After…
Indigenous warrior artists of every generation have expressed their combat experience in their work, from the decorated ceremonial weaponry of ancient times to ledger drawings of the 19th century to Vietnam veteran Harvey Pratt’s upcoming public art for the National Native American Veterans Memorial at Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian. Post-9/11 artists carry on that practice, inspired by veterans of previous wars like Pratt and Kiowa/Caddo painter T.C. Cannon. Dante-Biss Grayson (Osage, US Air Force), Miridth Campbell (Kiowa, US Army, Marine Corps, and Navy Seabees), and Monte Little (Diné, US Marine Corps) are among the Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan)…
MUSKOGEE, OKLA. – Choctaw-Chickasaw artist Norma Howard’s watercolor Kanima School took Best of Show at the Five Civilized Tribes Museum Masters Art Show on Nov. 3. The Masters Show features work by artists distinguished by the museum’s Master Artist classification, which began in 1973. Kanima School, which depicts cheerful young students in a historic classroom setting, is based on memories of her own time as a student at the eastern Oklahoma elementary school. “Kanima School is the little school that I went to,” she said. “There were just three of us in the class. The little room was first, second, third,…
October is Inktober — That time of year when artists take on a drawing challenge that is alternately stressful and fun. The rules are simple: Draw something in ink every day for the whole month of October. Post it on social media under #Inktober. Or post it on your refrigerator. Or wherever. There are prompts for each day – words like “Poisonous” and “Tranquility” this year – in case you want an extra challenge. The goal, as the Inktober website states, is to “go make something beautiful.” As Inktober artists know very well, sometimes that happens, and sometimes you end…