The resolutions have been broken and the best-of lists are done (perhaps), but we decided we’d take one last look at the year 2014 through the eyes of Natives in the arts. Seeking reflections and (optional) predictions, we asked these 11 creative types for their thoughts, and here’s what they had to say. 

Douglas Miles (Apache), Artist

2014 was perfect. I had a retrospective show in my hometown of Phoenix AZ called “Apache X: Douglas Miles and 10 Years of Apache Skateboards” at the Monorchid Gallery. This was considered the best show during Phoenix’s Art Detour. We were also interviewed by NPR. Apache Skateboards also did three projects (one in progress ) with the Ute Tribe in Fort Duchesne UT, a skate park christening, a large mural with Thomas Breeze Marcus and currently have a film in production about suicide prevention. I also opened a show of my artwork I create primarily for social media at University Of New Mexico: “Instapache”.

‘Elaine Frieda Alook was 35 when she disappeared on May 11 outside Fort McMurray, Alberta,’ writes artist Evan Munday. Portrait by Evan Munday.

I loved the new D’Angelo album Black Messiah for its sheer psychedelic funk complexity. He’s an heir to the Parliament-Funkadelic Sly Stone throne. I also thoroughly enjoyed the new Indigenous Fine Art Market based in Santa Fe NM. It came to the forefront unapologetically showcasing new native artists. 

We have two new current projects, a unique film produced by the Fort Duchesne Ute Tribe, directed by myself, “The Awakening”. It will address the issue of teenage suicide, prevention and encourages kids to seek help. We’ll also be dropping a new skateboard collaboration with the infamous Chiricahua Apache Sculptor, Allan Houser. We’re excited to bring the work of Allan Houser to a new generation making sure his enduring legacy and work is honored in the now.

Anti-mascot, anti-redface graphic created by Douglas Miles’ What Tribe project.

I would like to see Native people move past the harsh historically traumatic aftermath of history and rise from the toxic ashes of self-victimization. In order to do this it takes being able to see the impossible as possible, a willingness to serve tribes with humility, more activism on front lines of urban and rural centers that create a revolution that can feed, clothe and employ people, not just hype for social media fan “follows”. If its been said it takes a village to raise a child, it will take our tribes to support, feed and protect them. It would also be good to see less negative, stereotypical and institutionally racist images of Native people in media and even in our own art venues. Sometimes it seems that a certain segment of Native artists and performers thrive off of stereotypical content without looking at its effect on us in pop culture. (site: facebook.com/pages/APACHE-Skateboards/116109058377)

Charlie Ballard (Sac and Fox, Anishinaabe), standup comedian

2014 turned out to be a great year for me, here are some of my personal highlights! In April, my family decided to attend Gathering of Nations Powwow in New Mexico and I was interested in hosting Stage 49 again but this time I wanted to do it in drag — and that’s exactly how it happened! I just couldn’t believe how well I was received by everyone, I kind of felt like Selena, look for me again hosting the 2015 GON Stage 49 with my big wigs and boots!

Sometime last year I developed an addiction for Ramen noodles, I just couldn’t get enough. I think most people fear eating Asian noodles because they don’t know how to use chopsticks so I made a little instruction video on how to use chopsticks!

Margaret Cho with Charlie Ballard

My favorite highlight from 2014 was helping Comedian Margaret Cho raise money for the San Francisco homeless in December! We got people to donate clothes, food, tampons, socks, blankets, money and anything else the homeless could use. The great thing about this fundraiser is that all proceeds went directly to the homeless on hand. Organizations that directly benefited from online donations included Larkin Street Youth Services and Lava Mae (a non-profit in SF who provide showers to the homeless on wheels). Any can donate here: gofundme.com/berobin.

Nationally, 2014 was definitely the Year of the Native Activist, whether it was the keyrstone pipeline issue, the Mascot controversy or the fracking of Indian land. In 2015, we’ll see more of our Native communities being more politically active.

See you guys in 2015 !!!!
xoxo
Charlie (site: facebook.com/funnynative)

Tonantzin Carmelo (Tongva and Kumeyaay), Actress

Recent highlights for me include roles in three upcoming feature films: Child of Grace, Medicine Men, and Sundance selected Entertainment, opposite John C. Reilly. I’m also building my voice over credits playing Roxanne in Ubisoft’s hit open racer game The Crew. On the stage, I played historic figure Nellie Pathkiller in the world premier of The Beloved Women in Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia. (site: tcarmelo.com)

Kini Zamora (Native Hawaiian), Project Runway competitor and designer behind KINIandDINKO

Margaret Cho with Charlie Ballard

For our company, 2014 was whirlwind of business building, changing, launching, branching, reaching….and a whole lotta Project Runway. We are so very proud of our Kini Zamora for demonstrating his physical and emotional talents for the world to see. He not only promoted himself and this organization, but showcased our native and innate spirit of aloha.

KINIandDINKO introduced our website kinianddinko.com, collaborations, and fashions both at the local and international levels, showcased at Honolulu Fashion Week, and gave back to one of Kini’s collegiate alma mater and co-sponsored an annual Makahiki Maoli Festival for our Native Hawaiian Immersion families and community.

We feel very blessed at our achievements as a small business and look forward to 2015 to build up!

We are thankful to networks like Indian Country Today, and hope that we are fulfilling our cultural goals of respect and gratitude to contribute to the forward movement of our indigenous people. “

me ka ha’aha’a (with humility)

Nanibah “Nani” Chacon (Navajo/Chicana), Artist

My year: 2014 in general was great for me, very satisfying. I was able to work on many public work pieces that had very substantial social practice integration. With in the public art pieces I completed last year I was given the unique opportunity to collaborate with amazing organizations and collectives. This provided interesting projects that I feel allowed me to learn a great deal about artistic practice while having a very human experience. My favorite collaboration was with Friends of the Orphan Signs and Highland High School students: For this project FOS provided an abandoned route 66 motel sign for a unique collaboration with myself and a class of students. It was a teaching and learning experience on both ends. My other highlight was working with Young Women United creating a bus campaign with mothers who experienced drug addition during pregnancy. This was a new experience for me to create work from such an intimate space. I got so much more from it than the finished art piece.

Project by Nanibah Chacon with Friends of the Orphan Signs and Highland High School students.

Works I enjoyed: SITE Santa Fe Biennial was an interesting introspection from artist across the Americas. I enjoyed Christi Belcourt’s piece “Walking in Their Shoes,” which I found powerful and moving. Postcommodity’s “People of Goodwill” project is also an amazing integration of social practice and conceptual art.

Looking ahead: I am particularly inspired at this time by the Nihígaal bee Iiná :”Walk for our existence” awareness walk across the Diné Bikéyah. I think it is a powerful form of activism, that I hope sets the tone for 2015 and the years to follow. It is a blessing to begin the year in such unity. My hope is contribute to this flow of action with in the coming year. (site: facebook.com/nani.chacon1)

Johnnie Jae (Jiwere-Nutachi and Chahta Tribes of Oklahoma), Executive Managing Partner at Native Max Magazine

Well, 2014 was a great year to be indigenous. It was amazing to witness the power of our Native voices and to see those voices and our issues being recognized by mainstream media. It was a great year for the recognition of native media outlets as well.

Project by Nanibah Chacon with Friends of the Orphan Signs and Highland High School students.

Here at Native Max Magazine, we celebrated our 2nd year of being a print and digital magazine. We launched a Natives Against Domestic Violence selfie campaign as well as our 1st Annual Gentlemen’s Issue featuring Tatanka Means along with some of Indian Country’s finest gentlemen. Native Max Owner and Editor in Chief, Kelly Holmes, was named the recipient of the 2014 OEDIT/MBO Overall American Indian Small Business of the Year award through the Rocky Mountain Indian Chamber of Commerce.

Project by Nanibah Chacon with Friends of the Orphan Signs and Highland High School students.

Outside of Native Max, I also helped to start a non-profit organization along with Tara Houska, Maggie Hundley, Sarah LittleRedFeather Kalmanson and Toby Vanlandingham. The organization, Not Your Mascots, was founded to address the misappropriation of indigenous identity and imagery through the acceptance of mascots and stereotypes. The organization has played a huge part in organizing the March and Rallies that occurred in Minneapolis, MN in November and in D.C on the 28th of December. We’ve taken part in several panel discussions, workshops and this next year is already looking to be a busy year.

Some of the other projects that that I really loved this year was NERDS founded by Dahkota Brown and of course the work that our native fashion designers have been doing. JG INDIE, Helen Oro, Sho Sho Esquiro, Alano Edzerza, ROES by Tyrell Begay, Cher Thomas, OxDx, Turquoise Soul and Patricia Michaels and so many other wonderful talents. It was a huge, HUGE year for Native Fashion and we have several designers breaking into the mainstream fashion industry and in February, JG Indie and Helen Oro Designs will both be showing collections during NY Fashion Week.

Going into 2015, one of the projects that I will be working on is the launch of my own radio show on the Success Native Style network and helping to highlight all the individuals working on the issues we face in Indian Country from both our older and younger generations. What I would like to see happen this coming year is for our voices to continue growing more prevalent in mainstream media on the various issues we face. The more voices we have, the more progress we will continue to see and hopefully that will involve a certain NFL team changing its name. Indigenous people are rising up and I want this to be the year that break down every barrier that stands in the way our people thriving. 

Jeffrey Veregge (Port Gamble S’Klallam), Comic Book Artist, Graphic Designer, and ICTMN’s NDN Geek

Cover of G.I. Joe #1 by Jeffrey Veregge.

2014 was a year in which dreams came true for me. Starting with September’s release of my first professional comic book cover: Judge Dredd #23, which was listed as Paste Magazine’s best of the month & IGN’s best of 2014. This cover help lead to jobs as GI Joe‘s main cover artist, cover work on Zombies vs Robots and most recently Transformers. Look for more titles in 2015! (jeffreyveregge.com)

Tanis Parenteau (Metis), Actress

2014 was a very busy year for me. I guest starred on House of Cards season two, opposite Michael Kelly and Gil Birmingham, as the Native American waitress who was Doug Stamper’s only real lover. I originated the lead role of “Jane Snake/Le-le-wa’you” in the NYC/world premiere of Manahatta by Mary Kathryn Nagle (Cherokee), directed by Kate Whoriskey, produced at the most prestigious Off Broadway theatre in NYC, The Public Theater. The cast included Kimberly Guerrero (Colville, Salish-Kootenai, Cherokee), Brandon Oakes (Mohawk) and Albert Ybarra (Yaqui-Tohono O’Odham). I also originated the lead role of “Katie” in the NYC/world premiere of Miss Lead by Mary Kathryn Nagle (Cherokee), directed by Madeline Sayet (Mohegan), produced off Broadway by Amerinda Inc at 59E59 Theaters. I narrated the audiobook Divided: Elena Ronen, Private Investigator, Book 1, and starred in an Alaska PSA by Lizz Winstead (co-creator of The Daily Show) for her “Lady Parts Justice” project. I starred in Pocahontas Redux, by Vickie Ramirez (Tuscarora) and Quiet Wind, by Kim Snyder (Oglala Lakota), and was part of the NYC Native Shakespeare ensemble where we performed a staged reading of Macbeth. Finally, I originated the lead role of “Bonnie Red Bird” in the first staged adaptation of Pow Wow Highway, directed by Madeline Sayet (Mohegan), written by William S. Yellowrobe Jr. (Assiniboine), produced by Amerinda Inc. Whew!

I was really impressed by several Native films I saw in 2014, including Rhymes for Young Ghouls, Winter in the Blood, Mäina, Empire of Dirt, and Drunktown’s Finest. I love A Tribe Called Red’s single “Burn Your Village to the Ground,” StyleHorse Collective’s music video “We Shall Remain.” And like everyone I was thrilled to see our Native musicians on MTV’s Rebel Music.

My next project is a short dramatic film called “A Big Black Space.” I am the writer/producer and am starring in it. Devery Jacobs is also in the cast. The film has themes of sexualization of Native women and women/Native women in violence. We shoot January 20th and will hit the festival circuit. A Kickstarter will be launched soon as well. I am also working with Spiderwoman Theater and Aanmitaagzi on developing a play called Material Witness about Native women in violence. We will be in Syracuse in February continuing our work. (tanisparenteau.com)

Mic Jordan (Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa), Rapper

I launched a successful Kickstarter campaign for, and then released, my first full length album, Sometime After 83. I was a featured story with BBC News, and I performed at the anti-Redskins rally in Minneapolis on November 2. My video for “Modern Day Warrior” was selected for the RPM’s best Indigenous music videos of the year. Lastly, I am currently a finalist for the 1st Annual North Dakota Music Awards in the Best Native Group category.

As for other artists’ work, I would say the whole Rebel Music movement on MTV was HUGE for Native American artists. They are really paving the way for us up-and-comers. Can’t forget Supaman and what he is doing.

My first goal for 2015 is to release another album. I’d also like to be nominated for a Native American Music Award, book more events that are important for Indian Country. I’d like to put together a “Save the Youth” tour, where I travel to more reservations and talk to kids about suicide, alcoholism, and logo issues—and following your dreams. (facebook.com/MicJordanMusic)

Janet Rogers (Mohawk), poet, critic and radio host

As a radio host and music columnist I was so excited to see an expansion of and not a replication of, what A Tribe Called Red was so successful at doing. By that, I mean really talented musicians who are firmly grounded in culture using club beats and technology to produce new musical territories and doing it well. For example the viral video of Supaman (pow wow dancer in regalia using a looping station and playing flute and spitting rhymes and doing his fancy dance to it all). Just amazing. Flying Down Thunder and Rise Ashen were a less celebrated DJ and traditional dancer team, however they fused together pow wow and hand-drum songs with electro-beats in a very uncontrived and natural flow. There are more like them in the DJ/live vocals/video/hand-drum collective Skookum Sound System and potent word-smith earth warriors Mob Bounce. I predict this fire of musical fusion and culture authenticity will spread in 2015.

Cover of G.I. Joe #1 by Jeffrey Veregge.

I have to bow a deep bow to RPM.fm media keepers. They do so much to support native artists, musicians in particular. One visit to their website and you will increase, not only your music library, but your knowlege of the musicans they feature on their site 100-fold. They hit the scene strong and I predict they will continue to be a stellar resource of native music and music culture.

I am so, so pleased Inuit singer and unique artist Tanya Tagaq is finally getting the recognition and rewards due her by winning the national Polaris Music Prize in 2014. She has worked hard for many years and waited a long time for the listening public to catch up to her and now we have, I predict there will be more rewards coming her way in 2015.

Not mentioned, but undoubtedly important: Janet Rogers latest book of poetry, ‘Peace in Duress’

Personally, I am putting my passions for native radio into a documentary project that celebrates the history of Indigenous radio starting with my home-rez Six Nations radio CKRZ 100.3 Voice of Grand as they celebrate 25 years of being on the air. Look for a short doc by The Blood Collective (Janet Rogers and Jackson Twobears) to air on APTN in December 2015. (facebook.com/peaceinduress)

Cannupa Hanska Luger (Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara, Lakota), Artist and Filmmaker

The most important work I did in 2014 was funding and releasing This Is A Stereotype, an artistic response to stereotyping released as a film, and is free to the public. This project was 100% crowd funded through Kickstarter and featured interviews with contemporary Native voices including Adrienne Keene of Native Appropriations, Migizi Pensoneau of the 1491’s, Douglas Miles of Apache Skateboards and many more.

A Summary of the film: This Is A Stereotype is an artistic narrative about the possible causes and effects surrounding Indigenous identity with the intention to socially engage the public. The project is compiled of historical footage sourced from the Archives of the Institute of American Indian Arts’ “Native American Video Tape Archive, 1976” juxtaposed with imagery and interviews from contemporary artists, scholars, and activists from across the United States. This Is A Stereotype invites the viewer to become an active participant in society, thinking critically when making decisions regarding culture and appropriation. (thisisastereotype.com)