Defiance in Native Arts & Representation

How has art served as a powerful act of defiance for Native peoples over the past 500 years? This insightful panel brings together contemporary Native artists and art experts to discuss the ways their work (and other native artists’ work too!) confronts historical injustices, reclaims Indigenous narratives, and shapes a future of self-representation. Engage in a vital conversation about the resilience, innovation, and enduring impact of Native arts.

Final panel to confirm. Currently confirmed panelists:

Tom Myer is a native artist who moved to Boulder in 2019. He is Haudenosaunee (what your people called the Iroquois) on his father’s side, and Ngäbe-Bugle (the Meso-American tribe that ended Columbus’ fourth voyage to the New World) on his mother’s side. He is a self-taught artist who works in acrylics, pastels, pencils, and digital mediums.

Dallin Maybee is Seneca and enrolled Northern Arapaho. Raised on the Cattaraugus territory of the Seneca Nation of Indians in Western New York, he is an accomplished artist, public speaker, performer, and is currently the Assistant Director of Development at the Native American Rights Fund (NARF). Dallin has a B.A. degree in Philosophy, as well as a Juris Doctorate from the Sandra Day O’Conner College of Law with an emphasis in Federal Indian Law. As an artist, his work can be found in private collections and museums across the country; including the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, the Autry Museum, the Heard Museum, and the Portland Art Museum. He has won numerous awards including Best of Show at the prestigious Santa Fe Indian Market (2007), the Cherokee Art Market (2020), the Hodinohso:ni’ Art Show (2021), and Tesoro Indian Market (2021).

Nico Strange Owl is a member of the Northern Cheyenne Tribe of Montana and has worked with Indigenous art and artists over the past forty years. She is the current owner of Eagle Plume’s, a historic trading post at the base of Long’s Peak near Allenspark, Colorado. She has also worked as a beadworker, an appraiser, and a consultant of Native art, worked with museums, operated galleries, and has been in the art business all her life. She is also the descendant of Sand Creek Massacre survivors and is truly home in Colorado.

Tom Myer's notes on the featured image: I love this image, even though it was made by a non-indigenous artist. Could be a kickoff point to discuss a few things. It is called The Murder of White’s Assistant and was drawn in the 1880s and supposedly depicts Mr White’s assistant (Mr White was a cartographer) being shot full of arrows by indians just outside the Roanoke colony. The artist is unknown. The representation here is fairly one-sided, down to the title, but the composition is dramatic and quite telling - natives sneaking around in the tall dark grass, shooting arrows at the hapless target in the foreground, but to me obviously a moment of defiance in the face of encroaching colonization. Print from Cassell's History of the United States, by Edmund Ollier, Volume I, Cassell Petter and Galpin, London, c1880.