Location: Native Nations

Arlene Fairbanks and Jessica Travis opened a one-stop shop to support sewing and regalia-making, an important cultural and creative practice for Native Americans.

Thanks to curator Dorene Red Cloud, the Eiteljorg Museum gets a needed makeover to better showcase Indigenous art and culture.

The Sacred Pipe Resource Center, a Native community center in Mandan, North Dakota, empowers Native artists to become catalysts for change to help heal their communities.

In Indigenous culture, the arts aren’t mere entertainment but a vital practice grounded in community. Those arts include hoop dancing, a form of storytelling through movement. Starr Chief Eagle is among a generation of women making the traditionally male practice their own.

An act of preservation in 1911 made way for this living project that reclaims Lakota culture, knowledge and religious freedom.

A space is truly of the community when it is shaped by the needs of the people it serves. The Sitting Bull Visitor Center in Fort Yates, North Dakota, the tribal headquarters of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, is recognizing and addressing its community’s need for holistic education around food sovereignty through their proposed Open Kitchen. This initiative complements their rich portfolio of offerings related to Indigenous knowledge and tradition.

Sisseton, South Dakota is a unique place. This rural town of 2,400 is located on the Lake Traverse Reservation: about half the town is Native American, and the other half is mostly white. But it is not only the residential makeup of the Sisseton that makes it unique. It is the survival and persistence of art in the area, and new movements that are bridging a historically separated community.

Lake Superior State University (LSSU) is located in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where five Native nations are located. In 2020 and 2021, LSSU staff, students, and community members dug deeper into the area’s Native American culture and history through a National Endowment for the Arts Big Read grant. Louise Erdrich’s award-winning novel The Round House inspired impactful discussions, book talks, writing workshops, and performances.