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Newsletter articles, blog posts, Fellow updates – any news that needs to appear in the Blog queue

Young Filmmakers Capture Climate Change

The Native Arts and Cultures Foundation (NACF) was honored to partner with Wisdom of the Elders’ (WOTE) and support its community collaboration project, the Native Youth Film Academy and Climate Change Film Festival. This project is NACF’s fifth Community Inspiration Program, which are artist-driven projects that address pressing social, cultural and environmental issues to bring about community conversations connecting Native and non-Native people.

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Forget Me Not: Mothers and Sons by Marie Watt (Seneca), NACF Visual Arts Fellow, on view at the Portland Art Museum.

NACF President Profiled by Philanthropy Northwest

Lulani Arquette, Native Arts and Cultures Foundation President & CEO, spoke last spring with Philanthropy Northwest about the challenges,  successes, and opportunities she has encountered through her leadership of the…
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Return from Exile

This traveling art exhibit was conceived to encourage healing and reconciliation and intentionally organized around the work of Native artists currently enrolled in the displaced tribes of the Creek, the Cherokee, the Choctaw, the Chickasaw and the Seminole.

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Celebrating the Life of Dave Hatch

Dave Hatch was a Native environmental activist and a cultural heritage advocate who became well known for his ability to bring together usually disparate tribal and non-Indian groups to pool resources to address regional issues.

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NACF Launching New Mentorship Program

For thousands of years, master Native artists have dedicated time, resources, and support to the next generation, passing on the skills, arts practice, and cultural understanding needed to perpetuate visual…
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Vicky Holt Takamine

Conversations on Hula

“Our people can’t live without hula and hula cannot live without our people.” 2015 NACF Fellow Vicky Takamine and Kahikina de Silva recently talked to Americans for the Arts about…
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Celebrating Women’s History

March is “Women’s History Month” in the United States. At the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation, we recognize and honor our women artists and culture bearers that have received fellowships since our inception seven years ago. While we acknowledge them during “Women’s History Month”, we actually cherish and hold them in high regard every month of the year. These remarkable women are always in our thoughts and hearts for their commitment to keeping the arts and cultural expression of Native peoples alive.

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2015 Highlights

The following covers highlights from seven Fellows, the Community Inspiration Projects, Sponsorships and California Bridge Initiative. To see and learn more about any of NACF’s Artist Fellows or Projects please…
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Repellent Fence, Scare Eye Balloons

“What’s up with the balloons?” The hopes of a community

After eight years of creative visioning, planning and community engagement Postcommodity’s “Repellent Fence” (or Valla Repelente, in Spanish) goes airborne connecting the lands north and south of what is today the U.S./Mexico border. The installation, which launched October 10th, involved 26 scare-eye balloons tethered to the Sonoran Desert ground, that spanned a two-mile stretch and physically and metaphorically created a direct line of communication between communities and their many stakeholders. Repellent Fence is one of NACF’s Community Inspiration Program Pilot Projects.

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Where Do We Come From?

A fusion of talent and energy came together in the sold-out world premiere of The Story of Everything (TSOE) in Honolulu, Hawai`i on September 26, 2015. Kealoha, an award winning spoken word poet and a graduate of MIT with a degree in nuclear physics, led the effort. The theatre, filled with a community of mothers and babies, students, and young adults to elders of all ethnicities and professions, represented the vast diversity of communities Kealoha desires to work among. The performance was the culmination of a lifetime’s work for Kealoha and one of the pilot projects of NACF’s Community Inspiration Program.

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A World Where Performance is Part of Life

Yup’ik dancer and choreographer Emily Johnson galvanized four large urban centers in the country and her hometown of Homer, Alaska, with her multi-disciplinary project SHORE – one of NACF’s Community Inspiration Pilot projects. Story, volunteerism, performance and feasting engaged local communities who were willing to show up and be open to the possibilities.

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The Profound and Numerous Benefits of Arts and Cultures

I believe there is a benefit of arts and cultures that has not been written about nor studied enough in more intentional ways, although it has gained value in arts and philanthropic circles in the past few years. This is the value of arts and culture as a social change tool. The head of a social change organization and one of the national proponents of social change and the arts had this to say: “The single most powerful social change tool in the world is arts and creative expression. There is nothing that transcends barriers across language, economics, cultures, and place in a way that engages people and community like arts and cultures can. Nothing (emphasis) is that powerful.”

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