Sandra Hale Schulman
Special to ICT
The latest: A top fashion designer joins a prestigious group, ‘Prey’ star gallops into new film, and Indigenous writer’s Thanksgiving tale opens on Broadway
FASHION: Designer elected to top council
Indigenous fashion designer Jamie Okuma has been elected to the prestigious Council of Fashion Designers of America, a nonprofit trade association whose membership includes America’s most successful womenswear, menswear, jewelry and accessory designers.
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Okuma, La Jolla Band of Luiseno (Mission) Indians, is known for her imaginative and sophisticated womenswear designs that incorporate traditional indigenous beading, symbols, flowers, and graphics into modern clothing. She has beaded birds onto platform boots, printed butterflies onto bomber jackets, and created flowing dresses worn by top indigenous models and artists.
In 2022, she was one of the first Native designers to have work chosen for the Metropolitan Museum’s Costume Institute’s exhibition. The museum purchased two of her pieces for the permanent collection, including a dress that was in their exhibition, “In America: A Lexicon of Fashion.”
She is also a regular at Santa Fe Indian Market, and is expected to be featured there this summer in the main fashion shows and gala in addition to her booth.
Okuma’s designs spring from her 30-year career as a multidisciplinary artist and designer.
She is a citizen of the La Jolla Band who is tribally Luiseno, Shoshone-Bannock, and Wailaki on her mother’s side, and Okinawan on her father’s side. She runs her thriving clothing and accessories e-commerce shop from her home on the La Jolla Indian Reservation in southern California with her husband and two young sons.
Her lifelong love for her culturally embedded art practice began as a child while attending the Fort Hall Festival on the Fort Hall Indian Reservation in Idaho, where her grandmother is from. Her career began there when she entered her first art show at the age of six and began sewing and creating outfits for powwows.
After high school she moved to Santa Fe to attend the Institute of American Indian Arts. During that time demand for her work rapidly increased and she has since had her designs in magazines and exhibited around the world.
She has won awards from the Southwestern Association of Indian Arts, the Heard Museum Art Market, and was the recipient of the 2019 Knudsen Prize. Okuma has work in the permanent collections of the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, the Denver Art Museum and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian.
The stated mission of the CFDA is to strengthen the impact of American fashion globally by showcasing creative excellence, business longevity, and positive impact. The organization hosts the CFDA Fashion Awards each year.
FILM: ‘Prey’ star has new role in ‘Centurion’
“Prey” star Amber Midthunder, Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux Tribe, has notched another starring role in “Centurion: The Dancing Stallion,” based on a true story about overcoming adversity and finding strength from unexpected places.
The journey starts when Ellissia, played by Midthunder, adopts a white stallion, Centurion, who has been abused. Ellissia falls critically ill, however, which keeps her from competing in a celebrated equestrian event featuring traditional Mexican “dancing” horses.
Under the guidance of her father, played by Billy Zane of “Titanic,” a new ranch hand, played by Aramis Knight, steps in as trainer.
The stars attended a special screening of the film at the Autry Museum of the American West in Los Angeles, and the film was released on digital and on demand April 25 from Lionsgate Home Entertainment.
The film, directed by Dana Gonzales, is based on real events.
Theater: Native playwright makes it to Broadway
Larissa FastHorse is among the first Native playwrights to have work performed on Broadway with the opening of “The Thanksgiving Play” on April 20 at the famed Helen Hayes Theater in New York City.
With inclusion doors opening in the entertainment world for Indigenous artists, Fasthorse’s play had an off-Broadway debut in 2018 and became one of the most-produced plays in America.
The play focuses on four non-Native adults who struggle to produce a politically correct elementary school production of the first Thanksgiving for Native American Heritage Month, worrying over gender stereotypes, casting and “emotional space.”
“Even though it does openly poke fun at a lot of the folks that I work with who are more on the liberal side, I was really trying to make it so everybody can kind of see each other,” FastHorse, Sicangu Lakota, told The New York Times.
In 2021, a version was streamed online that starred Keanu Reeves, Bobby Cannavale, Alia Shawkat and Heidi Schreck. FastHorse has heard from people who read the play aloud annually on Thanksgiving with their families.
The new production, directed by Rachel Chavkin, includes a multimedia element that was not seen in the off-Broadway version. The filmed scenes feature schoolchildren acting out incorrect Thanksgiving pageantry.
FastHorse has taken on another colonial misrepresentation of Thanksgiving — Macy’s annual Thanksgiving Day Parade.
Under her counsel, the 2020 parade began with a Wampanoag blessing and a land acknowledgment recognizing the original inhabitants, the Lenape. In 2022, the parade added a float that was designed in consultation with Wampanoag artists and clan mothers.
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