2007 Cultural Capital

David Moses Bridges

Passamaquoddy
Birch Bark

Project Description:

David returns to First Peoples Fund following his 2005-2006 honoring as a Community Spirit Award artist intent on perpetuating Passamaquoddy traditional birch bark art forms. David will use his grant to build a canoe as a community project with the Schoodic Band of the Passamaquoddy Nation at Qonasqamkuk (St. Andrews, New Brunswick). David says, “By bringing these projects to the community we are able to concentrate our cultural resources and affect our communities in ways that reflect our ancestor’s life ways.”

Hulleah Tsinhnahjinnie

Seminole/Muskogee/Navaho
Photography

Project Description:

Hulleah was honored at First Peoples Fund’s initial Community Spirit Award ceremony in 1999. She has been a practicing photographer for the past thirty years, freelancing, working on commissions and exhibiting nationally and internationally.

Hulleah will finish construction of her darkroom, enabling her to print images from her archive negatives. Ultimately, Tsinhnahjinnie plans to select images from her archives to be featured in a book of photographic works that would include topics of her Native community, its functions, portraits of activists, and images that would provoke thought about land issues, sovereignty, native rights, etc.

Carrie Estey

Minnesota Chippewa Tribe-White Earth
Sculpture

Project Description:

Carrie returns to First Peoples Fund after being honored for her Community Spirit five years ago. Her project is driven by a dream that has been with her since childhood—in this dream Chief Bemidji is sitting with a rattle, drum and stick in his hand as he sings a healing song. She wants to make this dream a reality by creating a monumental sculpture of Bemidji in place of a crude wooden “Injun” caricature that currently stands on the shore of the Mississippi River in the city named for him.

Lois Chichinoff Thadei

Aleut, Sealaska Corporation
Weaving

Project Description:

Lois was honored at First Peoples Fund’s 7th Annual Community Spirit Award ceremony for her work as a “tireless artist and teacher”, sharing Aleutian weaving with her community. Furthering the concept of generosity, Lois will use her Cultural Capital grant to embark on a photo documentary project. She plans to produce a printed catalogue of twenty to thirty images of Aleutian woven materials currently held in private collections and small museums within western Washington state. She will share these catalogs with remote Aleutian communities and the weavers residing there.