Help ICT make strides in 2024. Our goal is to raise $150,000 by the end of the year with generous contributions from funding partners and collaborators like you. We’re thankful for your support, and we’re thriving because of it. DONATE TODAY!
Sandra Hale Schulman
Special to ICT
It’s been a busy, wild year for Indigenous creatives with major films, retrospective art shows, hit TV series, a crippling strike, and cover story fashion.
Film news was dominated by the Osage murder drama, “Killers of the Flower Moon,” and breakout star Lily Gladstone, whose appearances in other films provided a boost to them as well. Elvis’s granddaughter, Riley Keough, made her directorial debut with the film, “War Pony,” about two boys on the Oglala Lakota reservation.
Artists made huge strides with Nicholas Galanin’s large-scale public sculpture, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith’s museum retrospective, and Jeffrey Gibson’s selection as a featured Venice Biennale artist.
Fashion is having a big moment, with sold-out shows at Indian Market and designer fashion showing up in museums, on magazine covers and on stars walking the red carpet at the Cannes Film Festival.
And then there were books, music and Barbie.
FILM: Native stories from the source
It was hard to avoid director Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon,” the nearly forgotten, epic story of the Osage murders, known as the Reign of Terror, in 1920s Oklahoma.
With a staggering $200 million budget, the film featured a big-name cast of Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert DeNiro, Tantoo Cardinal and dozens of Osage extras, but the film’s real standout was the luminous Gladstone, Blackfeet, who stole every scene faster than the White guys stole her character’s oil.
Gladstone also brought her honesty to the film, “Fancy Dance,” as the hustler aunt of a niece who goes in search of her missing mother, and appeared in the heady animated western “Quantum Cowboys” with Kiowa Gordon, Hulapai. Next up she is set to star as 1930s Native jazz singer Mildred Bailey in an upcoming film by Erica Tremblay.
Gladstone graced the covers of several film and fashion magazines and was recently nominated for a Golden Globe, with an Oscar nod likely in the wings.
Keough’s film, “War Pony,” follows two boys on the Lakota reservation as they navigate difficult choices. Featuring some first-time Indigenous actors, the film was directed and produced by Keough, who had a big year starring in “Daisy Jones & The Six” while having her first child, losing her mother Lisa Marie, and inheriting Graceland.
Television streaming was dominated by two shows – “Reservation Dogs’ in its third and final season, and “Dark Winds” in its second season. The shows were helmed by Native directors, Sterlin Harjo, Seminole/Muscogee, and Chris Eyre, Cheyenne and Arapaho, who dug deep to blend contemporary lives with Native myth and mystery.
While “Rez Dogs” took a more comedic approach (most of the time) and “Dark Winds” dealt with tribal cops investigating murders, they both blended veteran Indigenous actors with new actors to stellar effect, even creating connections across the decades.
“Reservation Dogs” included veteran actor Gary Farmer, Cayuga; Michael Spears, Sioux; and Graham Greene, Oneida. “Dark Winds” introduced new actors Kiowa Gordon and Jessica Matten, Red River Métis.
There were also connections across the decades. Wes Studi, Cherokee, played the part of Officer Joe Leaphorn in the previous TV series based on the Tony Hillerman novels – a part now played by Zahn McClarnon, Hunkpapa. In “Rez Dogs,” McClarnon is Officer Big, who gets into some riotous situations with Studi’s sculpture-making fisherman, Bucky.
A special shout-out for the year goes to the versatile Podemski sisters — Tamara, Sarah and Jennifer, Ojibwe — who appeared in several shows apart and together, including “Little Bird” and “Reservation Dogs,” in front of the camera and behind the scenes.
Other notable films included “Boil Alert,” about the fight for clean water in First Nations Canada; an animated Indigenous story in a Metallica video for “Inamorata” by a Taos Pueblo couple; and a spirited documentary, “Art of Native America: Earl Biss,” on the late artist whose mischievous antics fueled a wildly prolific career.
And that’s not to forget “Frybread Face and Me,” a charming rez tale of two generations coming to terms with each other.
On the small screen, acclaimed documentarian Ken Burns broke our tatanka-loving hearts with “The American Buffalo,” his unflinching history of the fall and rise again of the American bison.
ART: Native art goes big and international
Indigenous art and artists finally got some major recognition in 2023 from museums, collectors, and critics.
Nicholas Galanin, Sitka, had a high-profile year with his stirring public sculpture in Brooklyn, “In every language there is Land / En cada lengua hay una Tierra,” made of the same steel tubing used to construct the 30-foot tall U.S.-Mexico border wall. The metal was cut out to spell LAND in a riff off Robert Indiana’s 1966 sculpture, “LOVE.” An anti-climbing plate caps it off.
He also had a solo show at SITE Santa Fe with new works in materials as diverse as neon and polar bear fur, and hit the talk circuit with coast-to-coast presentations.
Galanin and Gibson both made the ArtReview magazine’s Power 100 list along with Forge Project director Candice Hopkins, Carcross/Tagish First Nation, who is married to another high-profile Indigenous artist, Pulitzer Prize- and MacArthur Foundation-award-winning composer Raven Chacon, Diné.
Gibson, a citizen of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and of Cherokee descent, has been announced as the first Indigenous artist to represent the U.S. in the 60th Venice Biennale, with a sprawling exhibit of his paintings, beaded sculpture and floor-to-ceiling wall art expected to take up multiple rooms and courtyards. The exhibit opens in April 2024 and runs through November. Gibson has also released a comprehensive book, “An Indigenous Present,” featuring 60 Native artists.
Phoenix-based Lucinda Hinojos, Mexican/Pascua Yaqui and Pima, was in the spotlight in early 2023 after being tapped to be the first Indigenous artist to be featured at the Super Bowl. Her Arizona desert-inspired images graced game tickets, displays and a massive mural in downtown Phoenix that managed to reflect both her multicultural roots and the sports football trophies.
Breaking “the buckskin ceiling,” as she calls it, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribe, had the first solo show, “Memory Map,” of an Indigenous artist at the Whitney Museum in New York. Exhibiting five decades of her work, the 83-year-old Smith uses map imagery, newspaper clippings, sculpture, and pop culture objects to tell complicated histories. The traveling show is now in the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth through Jan. 21.
MUSIC: Taking the show on the road
The Native Guitars Tour took music to a host of venues all over the country with stops in Nashville, Santa Fe, and many more. Rockers Mozart Gabriel and The Osceola Brothers rocked Third Man Records and Meow Wolf.
TV series also had notable soundtracks in “Reservations Dogs,” “Dark Winds,” and “Little Bird,” with music, retro and new, telling the tales. Link Wray, Redbone, The Halluci Nation, Floyd Red Crow Westerman, and Stenn Jodi – who plays rapper Punkin Lusty in the “Reservation Dogs” series – all made appearances.
Artist, film composer, producer and violinist Genevieve Gros-Louis, Huron-Wendat Nation, scored the new season of the National Geographic docuseries, “Life Below Zero: First Alaskans,” and played in Paris and Santa Fe.
And Link Wray, who died in 2005, also made it — finally — into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
FASHION: From dentalium to gorgets
Indigenous fashion and design exploded in 2023, as designers made waves and headlines for their work on actors, musicians and politicians.
The fashion events during the Southwestern Association for Indian Art’s Indian Market have become so popular a whole separate event has been announced for May 2024.
Patricia Michaels, Taos Pueblo, made a spectacular hand-painted dress that she calls “Tantoo in Flight” for actress Tantoo Cardinal to wear at the premiere of “Killers of the Flower Moon” in Cannes, which became a bit of an international drama.
Jamie Okuma’s startling graphic separates were seen on Lily Gladstone in magazine stories and on Crystal Echo Hawk, Pawnee, at the Indigenous House events in Santa Fe and Los Angeles.
Emmy-nominated “Prey” producer Jhane Myers helped behind the scenes as her model son Phillip Bread starred in the new line, Polo Ralph Lauren X Naiomi Glasses, Navajo, with Quannah Chasinghorse and others. Myers’ daughter, Peshawn Bread, modeled, produced fashion shows and launched a line of jewelry.
Sky Eagle Collections’ Dante Biss-Grayson, Osage, put on a dazzling outdoor multi-media show with live music and performance art at Bishop’s Lodge during Indian Market. He also appeared in a scene of “Killers of the Flower Moon,” portraying a painter.
Lauren Good Day collaborated with Prados Beauty on a line of cosmetics, while Barbie got a Navajo makeover by weaver Barbara Teller Ornelas before Mattel produced a Wilma Mankiller doll for its “Inspiring Women” series.
Jeweler Kenneth Johnson, Muscogee/Seminole, made gorgeous gorgets from his Santa Fe studio and starred in a documentary, “Kenneth Johnson; Speaking Through Metal.”
Amidst all the good news, however, a rising talent, Chris “Spanto” Printup, Apache/Seneca, founder of L.A.-based clothing line Born X Raised, was tragically killed in a car accident after releasing a hugely successful collaboration with Levis.
Books, dolls and strikes
“Contenders,” a picture book for young readers by Traci Sorell, Cherokee, and illustrator Arigon Starr, Kickapoo, told the true story of the racism endured by baseball players in the 1911 World Series.
“The Lost Journals of Sacajawea: A Novel,” by Debra Magpie Earling, Bitterroot Salish, blew the roof off any romanticism there may have been about young, abused Sacajawea’s fateful trip with Lewis and Clark.
“A Council of Dolls” is earning accolades as a historical fiction novel about multiple generations of Yanktonai Dakota women grappling with the effects of settler colonialism, told through the point of view of their handmade dolls by PEN award-winning author Susan Power, Standing Rock Sioux.
And through it all, the strikes by writers and actors complicated almost everything, as members could not talk about or promote their work. The Writers Guild of America was on strike from May 2 to Sept. 27, and members of the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists followed with a strike from July 14 to Nov. 9.
The strikes eventually were settled with demands and concessions made, but they delayed productions and award shows into next year.
It was quite a year, and 2024 promises big news in the arts and entertainment. Stay tuned.
Our stories are worth telling. Our stories are worth sharing. Our stories are worth your support. Contribute $5 or $10 today to help ICT carry out its critical mission. Sign up for ICT’s free newsletter.