Artists Supporting Indigenous Communities

Monday, August 31
2:30pm PT, 3:30am MT, 5:30pm ET

For this special fundraiser event we will learn about the environmental conditions that Indigenous communities are living with in New Mexico and Arizona, and how these impacts correlate with the number of Covid-19 cases and deaths. We will hear from an African American photographer, an Indigenous foods expert and musician, and a Indigenous curator who will present work by Native artists are using Indigenous knowledge to bring healing to Native communities.

chip thomas

Thomas, aka “jetsonorama” is a photographer, public artist, activist and physician who has been working between Monument Valley and The Grand Canyon on the Navajo nation since 1987. There, he coordinates the Painted Desert Project – a community building project which manifests as a constellation of murals across the Navajo Nation painted by artists from all over the rez + the world. These murals aim to reflect love and appreciation of the rich history shared by the Navajo people back to Navajo people. As a member of the Justseeds Artists Co-operative he appreciates the opportunity to be part of a community of like-minded, socially engaged artists. You can find his large scale photographs pasted on the roadside, on the sides of houses in the northern Arizona desert, on the graphics of the Peoples Climate March, climateprints.org, Justseeds and 350.org carbon emissions campaign material. website

lyla june

Lyla June is an Indigenous musician, scholar and community organizer of Diné (Navajo), Tsétsêhéstâhese (Cheyenne) and European lineages. Her dynamic, multi-genre presentation style has engaged audiences across the globe towards personal, collective and ecological healing. She blends studies in Human Ecology at Stanford, graduate work in Indigenous Pedagogy, and the traditional worldview she grew up with to inform her music, perspectives and solutions. She is currently pursuing her doctoral degree, focusing on Indigenous food systems revitalization.website

polly nordstrand

Nordstrand (Hopi), is curator of Southwest Art at The Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center at Colorado College. As Associate Curator of Native Art at the Denver Art Museum from 2004 to 2009, she made important acquisitions of contemporary Native art, including works by Jeffrey Gibson, James Luna, Jolene Rickard, Harry Fonseca, and Melanie Yazzie. Recent exhibitions she has curated include solo exhibitions of Nora Naranjo Morse, Melanie Yazzie, Christine Howard Sandoval, Anna Tsouhlarakis, and Baseera Khan. In 2019 she received a curatorial research grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation in support of her project on queer Indigenous artists. She's a former Research Associate of Native American Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and has taught at the University of Denver, University of Colorado, Denver, and Cornell University.

Above: Chip Thomas, Mask: jini, 2020, photo mural, Arizona

$10 per person. Registration fees will be donated to: