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David Bernie (Yankton Sioux — Ihanktonwan Dakota) sits quietly in the noisy coffee shop while motion flows around him — the rhythm of the patrons, the sounds of good hip hop, the sights of life being lived by everyday people. This is part of his inspiration, the chance to watch and feel how he can impact the world with his art. Art comes from personal experiences and the collective lives of those in his community.

David ventures from the independent coffee shop, out to find the creative space he needs. Out in the wilds of the streets, he searches for stories behind the imagery. Story is what connects people to David as the artist.

On the streets, in his backyard or in the studio, David finds inspiration that breeds his thoughts. From thoughts spring the visuals he brings to life.

A while back, David met a man out of gas in the parking lot of a stale-blue store. David himself was broke down. The man entertained him with a guitar and stories and five little dogs. The man was stuck fifty miles from where he needed to be. No phone. No one to call if he did have one, but he managed to raise David’s spirits. David bought him a full tank of gas. When he offered to pay it back someday, David told him to pay it forward. David’s reward was more inspiration for his art.

David’s art addresses the relationship between historical and contemporary issues of his people. He lives and breathes Native identity. It is time to dispel ignorance and stereotypes. It is his time.

In the end, David hopes each piece he’s created will have its own identity, that it will not be solely about the one who created it. That others will be inspired.

A drum song leads the way, the drum carried and played by youths. Wayne Valliere (Lac du Flambeau Chippewa) follows, one hand gripping the birchbark canoe. But he doesn’t carry it alone. Nine adults and youths help carry the canoe, their hands touching it like a thousand other hands had when Wayne led the construction of the traditional Anishinaabe birchbark canoe.  

The group carries the canoe from the Lake Lac du Flambeau Public School through the sunshine to the shores of Lake Pokegama. Wayne had brought the canoe home from the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus to northern Wisconsin, where its materials had been harvested. The Wiigwaasi-Jiimaan: These Canoes Carry Culture project was designed to teach Wayne’s culture to students.

An elder told Wayne that their people are not losing the birch trees. The birch trees are losing them. So Wayne works to build canoes the way his ancestors did.

But he and his brother have developed techniques to make a stronger canoe, just as Wayne works to build a stronger generation. The Anishinaabe are an innovative people. If his ancestors had a chainsaw to cut down a tree, they would have used that. If they had a chance for a college education, they would have done that. They may no longer work with stone tools, but they are still Anishinaabe. The canoes Wayne builds are built with the hands of a Native.

They arrive on the shores of Lake Pokegama, where all of Wayne’s canoes find their way to, a lake his people have launched into for generations before him, and will for generations after him. He launches the canoe for this generation. These students carry culture.

This is why Wayne teaches birchbark canoe building to young tribal members and why he apprentices young adults who are strong enough to carry on the tradition. He doesn’t know how many canoes he has left in him, but his knowledge is secure in the next generation.

It’s time to go home. But where is that? Chris Pappan (Kaw) is from Flagstaff, Ariz. Now he lives in Chicago. But home for him is also Kansas, the ancestral homelands of his people, the people of the south wind.

Chris sees his culture in the ledger art of the past, a distinct form of historical prison art those before him created to tell the world about their home, their people, their ways. His ways. But the art is evolving, growing, connecting the world.

In the 1870s the Fort Marion prisoners — made up of Cheyenne, Kiowa, Comanche, Arapaho and Caddo warriors — became prolific ledger artists. Like them, Chris can take anything he has and turn it into art. He sees his style in theirs, connecting him to the past as he lives in the present and moves forward into the future. The future for him is a learning process of finding his way back home.

Kansas derives its name from the Kanza, or Kaw, people. In popular culture, Kansas is known as “no place like home.” Chris sees this from a different perspective, a much older one than the Wizard of Oz.

But Chris’ ledger art — the distorted images and displaced people spread across old maps — takes his home around the world. His art has brought invitations from places like the Kansas Historical Society, and Rainmaker Gallery in Bristol, UK.

Hillary Kempenich (Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa) stares at her current work. The set of eyes tells a story she’s told before. A story 20 years old, when she was a student at the Turtle Mountain Community High School. The story of a Native youth stepping from pain into the light of hope. Here’s the story again, on the canvas of her newest work as she prepares for the Indigenous Fine Arts Market in Santa Fe, N.M. This opportunity fulfills a dream. But first, Hillary travels back to the past.

She rushes down the stairs to her basement and rummages around until she finds it. With gentle hands, tender heart, and moist eyes, Hillary unrolls the dusty painting. She takes it to her studio to examine and is amazed by the similar composition of her very first painting to her present one. History overcomes her, a past that is her own.

Hillary’s school had been preparing for a collective art show, when her aunt Janelle tragically lost her life. As a teen, Hillary walked into the school’s art studio and began to truly paint. She didn’t emerge to herself until she’d completed From Their Eyes. Though haphazard like her grief, it expressed a story.

From Their Eyes, 2015

That’s when she became a storyteller without words.

Like then, Hillary gives voice to Native youth and to herself. Her artwork has been selected to represent the 2016 National Indian Child Welfare Association’s annual conference. Her prayer is for strength and healing. She breathes life into those prayers through her art. With each stroke, she is an advocate, a protector, a storyteller.

Hillary’s aunt left her with a smile and a story. She tells her story with a paintbrush.

Soon, Hillary heads to Santa Fe with her new work, the set of eyes telling a story she’s told before.

Her aunt would be proud.

There is a story that needs to be told about the history of the writing of the United States Constitution, and Native artist Mark Fischer (Oneida) says he is willing to tell it. Fischer, a blacksmith from Wisconsin who learned the trade as a child from his grandfather, has toured the country with a life-size copper bison sculpture he created to draw attention to the importance of the bison in American history, and the role of Native people in the writing of The Great Law, or Everlasting Tree of Peace.

The name of the bison, "Ancient Dignity," is a symbol of pride for the animal itself and The Great Law, which Fischer says was written by Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) women, as a set of laws for how to govern Native society and was the basis of the U.S. Constitution. The bison is also the national mammal of the United States.

The federal government admitted in 1991 that The Great Law was the basis of the U.S. Constitution, he said. The document is the backbone of American democracy and it is significant that Native people helped create it. "It should be important to everybody," he said.

"It's the laws of our freedoms. Native Americans did great things to make this country great because of the laws we lived by."

The 1200-pound bison, which took 1800 hours of hammering, cutting, welding and forming copper, stands at 5 feet, 6 inches tall. The bison is made of copper, a nod to the copper culture of Northern Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

An I-beam inside the piece honors the Iroquois ironworkers who built the New York City skyscrapers. "We built that great city," Fischer said. "We were the steel workers. It's important to remember, and honor, history and the people. When I told the elders I did that, they cried."

The piece also features a medicine wheel, which means good will to all. A lightning symbol on the rear leg means grandfather, which Native tradition says brings the rain. The bison also includes a description of the Oneida Tree of Peace on the wampum belt around the sculpture.

The project took Fischer a year to complete, with him oftentimes times working seven days a week. "I was on a mission," he said.

Now, that mission is focused on educating. Before becoming a full-time artist, Fischer helped build the Indian Community School in Milwaukee, a state-accredited school where Native families could send their kids for culture, language and academics. Continuing to make sure Natives have access to education is still important, he said, and including non-Natives in the conversation about history is too.

"I've been touring around," he said, and the response to the piece has been overwhelming. Many children have been attracted to the piece at markets and fine art shows.

"Kids have hugged it, pet it and talked to it," he said. "And a lot of politicians come and want to stand by it. I took it to the reservation and it was just incredible. It was so beautiful."

Fischer said the project wouldn't have been possible without funding and support from First Peoples Fund through an Artist in Business Leadership Fellowship this year. "It's a great honor to be recognized by First Peoples Fund," he said.

He hopes the far-reaching message of "Ancient Dignity" will continue to move through the country. He plans to continue to feature the sculpture at art markets throughout the United States, and has been accepted into the art market next year at the Heard Museum in Phoenix, Arizona.

As a former educator, he hopes that Natives and non-Natives alike will appreciate the history and culture the surrounds the bison and The Great Law. It's not the Native way to draw attention, he said, so art is a great way to start important conversations.

"You don't see us marching in the streets," he said. "Sometimes we're silent, but I want to showcase this."

Mark Fischer (Oneida) watched dozens of people swarm around the copper bison. It took him 1,800 laborious hours to cut, hand-pound, form, weld, and grind the American buffalo sculpture Ancient Dignity II. After being honored in second place as Artist of the Year at the IACA Indian Market and Wholesale Show in Santa Fe, this moment seemed like the ultimate reward. With the faithful support of his family, friends, and First Peoples Fund, a dream had come true.

People show genuine interest in the hidden history this bison held for those willing to hear his story. Embellished around his waist is a Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) wampum belt that represents the Great Law of Peace. Mark tells visitors how the Iroquois wrote the law, and that it’s recognized as the basis for the U.S. Constitution.

Bolts of lightning with rain patterns flow down the bison’s hind legs to represent and honor the Grandfathers. A medicine wheel on the buffalo’s hips is a universal symbol of peaceful interaction among nations. Mark chose a steel I-beam for the armature in the chest, to honor the Iroquois iron-workers who built New York City. When Mark explains this to the elders, they cry.

Ancient Dignity II made introductions and sparked conversations. Not only did this 1,200-pound sculpture educate people about true history of Native Americans, it brought out an affection in visitors, who took their photos with him. Ancient Dignity brought people to tears.

Appreciation expressed to Mark by members of his tribe, community and strangers has been rewarding. Mark thought his heart could not be warmed more than this.

But at that art market in Santa Fe, a little Navajo boy — maybe 3-years old — walked up to Ancient Dignity II. He hugged the copper bison before kissing it on the nose and gently stroking his cheek. The little boy spoke to the bison in his native language.

Mark’s heart melted. This was a dream come true.

By Sarah Elisabeth Sawyer, Artist in Business Leadership Fellow 2015  

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This is it! Delores Churchill (Haida) claps her hands in joy at her latest discovery. Maidenhair fern grows along a small waterfall, where they sprut between the damp rocks. One side of the fern stem is black, the other brown.

But that isn’t all Delores came for. Leaving the crisp waves capping along the shores she has walked since childhood, collecting seagull eggs and fishing, Delores takes a group into the woods to dig for spruce roots. At 86-years-old, she teaches her students to carefully cover the remaining roots after gathering material to weave baskets, as her mother taught her.

Long ago, her mother looked at Delores’ daughter and said, “She won’t know who she is. Take her back to the village.”

Many young Natives have not hunted for maidenhair fern and, most important, roots. They do not know who they are. They are discouraged, defeated.

So Delores collects roots and weaves baskets while teaching young people how to do Haida weaving and about their own roots. She is publishing a book to document her knowledge of basketry.

Delores discovered another way to share this traditional art with the help of filmmaker Ellen Frankenstein. Ellen followed Delores on her journey of preserving a culture and heritage blown away by a cold wind each time a Haida elder passes on.

Through the film Tracing Roots, Delores’ story has traveled across the country with assistance from her First Peoples Fund award. The film sparks strong emotion and debates. The defeated attitudes of young people come from a lack of roots, of not going back to where they started. But clearly youth are inspired when Delores shows the film and Native students are reminded of what their culture and elders mean to their lives.

Delores travels beyond the place and time where she is and shares her adventurous heart with others. She keeps moving, back into the past or forward to future generations.

But Delores always digs up roots.

Delores Churchill is a 2002 Community Spirit Awards Honoree and a 2006 and 2015 Cultural Capital Fellow. Read more about her FPF journey here.

It will be coast-to-coast travels for artist Jhane Myers (Comanche/ Blackfeet) this holiday season. Myers, who hails from Santa Fe, New Mexico, is at the outset of a four-gallery-show run that will take her from California to Washington this winter.

Myers is a doll maker, jeweler, regalia maker and clothing designer who has been making dresses since the 1990s. She is also a traditional buckskin dancer, and one of this year’s First Peoples Fund Artist in Business Leadership Fellows.

Having started her career by studying at the Fashion and Art Institute, and working for designer Ralph Lauren—Myers said her art has evolved over time, particularly during the last two years.

She attributes some of that to her work with First Peoples Fund, where she has received multiple fellowships and hopes to become an artist trainer someday. "People ask you 'how to' questions," she said, of other artists. "And, it's one of our Native core values to help each other. The support you get from First Peoples Fund makes you want to continue that generosity by helping others."

Having the resources to create art and then take it to the marketplace has helped transform who she is as an artist. “I’ve really grown professionally,” she said.

“It gives you the confidence to have access to the tools you need to create. My art has really been elevated."

With a previous fellowship, Myers recreated a traditional Native recession dress, drawing on a wartime tradition to use canvasses from missionary tents to design dresses. This year, Myers allocated the grant toward completing a website.

Meyers said her business has benefited from having a quality site where people can become more educated about her work, contact her, or commission art. "It's just wonderful."

She also used some of the funding to purchase equipment and a new display set-up for art markets, including panels, banners and jewelry display pieces. She has attended the Santa Fe Indian Market every year since 2007 and said it was nice to have a high-quality set-up that showcased her art and attracted the eye. “People came by and commented on how great it looked,” she said.

Myers said she is busy right now trying to keep up with inventory, but has an eye to the future, particularly helping newer artists who might be following in her footsteps. Her advice includes following your dreams, and taking advantage of the practical tools and guides First Peoples Fund offers in the way of training and mentorship.

“First Peoples Fund gives you sustainability and comfort to know you can do this,” she said. “It’s scary once you’ve made that investment in your business, but you have to remember you’re investing in yourself and your art. It’s really made a difference for me.”

It was the encouraging words of a First Peoples Fund staff member that initially led multimedia installation artist Luzene Hill (Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians) to apply for the Eiteljorg Museum Contemporary Native American Art Fellowship.

Hill, who lives in Atlanta, Georgia, was encouraged to apply for the Eiteljorg Fellowship by Miranne Walker, senior program manager. “I told her I thought I was going to apply and she sent me an email that said I should do it, with big exclamation points, and that’s what gave me the confidence to do that,” she said.

Hill went on to receive the Eiteljorg Fellowship. As a 2015 First Peoples Fund Artist in Business Leadership Fellow as well, she had resources and training this year to complete a website, publish Cherokee language books, and continue her installation artwork that addresses the issue of violence against women.

Hill’s work is now seen in collections around the United States and she is featured in Susan Power’s book, “Cherokee Art: Prehistory to Present” and Josh McPhee’s book, “Celebrate People’s History: The Poster Book of Resistance and Revolution.”

Hill’s exhibit at the Eiteljorg will be up until February 28 and is included alongside work by four other Native artists.

Her current project is an artist’s book, “Spearfinger,” which promotes the Cherokee language through traditional myths. Illustrating folktales has given her a way to contribute to the efforts to preserve the language, which is disappearing. “There are only 200 Native speakers left in North Carolina,” she said. “It’s in peril. When it’s gone, it’s more than just the words that are gone.”

"The books help me assert language sovereignty for the Cherokee people. I’m making my tiny little statement."

Hill’s interest in the books began in 2007 when she worked in a language revitalization program and began to illustrate books based on Cherokee myths. It was during that time, she said, that she realized traditional language sometimes reflects culture that isn’t translatable.

She said she has been humbled by the support of her work and has been surprised every time she has been well received, beginning with the first time she was accepted in to the Santa Fe Indian Market on her first attempt in 1997. “If I had known the scope of it, I wouldn’t have applied,” she said. “Ignorance is bliss.”

Hill said she still considers herself a newer artist, having started her art career in 1996 at the age of 48. “I feel like I’m having to make up for lost time,” she said, laughing.

She started with paintings and drawings and eventually moved to books and multimedia installations. Her work to address violence against women began in 2009. The two mediums allow her to talk about two important issues facing Native Americans today—language loss and sexual assault of Native women.

“I make art about silence, being silenced and having a voice,” she said. “This takes two parallel paths.”

Hill attended First Peoples Fund's artist fellows training in the spring and was encouraged to meet other people on the same page as her. The First Peoples Fund staff made her feel like part of the family immediately, Hill said.

“It’s been extraordinary. It exceeded my expectations by far,” Hill said. “From meeting so many people from other tribes to the continuing interest First People Fund has in my work, I am just thrilled at having this connection. It’s a great, encompassing kind of feeling.”

Paul High Horse's (Sicangu Lakota) strategy is simple—squeeze every last drop of opportunity, knowledge and funding out of the First Peoples Fund Artist in Business Leadership Fellowship he was awarded this year.

"I have really tried to stretch this grant," said High Horse, who grew up on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota and now lives in Council Bluffs, Iowa.

His purposefulness is also reflective of straddling two careers—that of a full-time art teacher at Ft. Calhoun Junior and Senior High School, and as a professional mixed media Native artist. "I absolutely love teaching," he said. "It's tough to balance teaching and doing my art. But, I don't think I could give up either. There are things with my classes that I can do in my professional work and then things that I am doing in my professional work that I can teach to my kids."

The Artist in Business Leadership Fellowship gave him a much-needed push, he said, including the completion of two solo exhibitions in South Dakota. The first was at Crazy Horse Monument and the second was at the Journey Museum. "They were excellent," High Horse said. "One of my main objectives with this grant was to get more exposure. The exhibitions helped me expand my fan base and gave me more experience."

High Horse will open a two-man exhibition with artist Steve Tamayo at the Hot Shops Art Center in Omaha, Nebraska, next month. Tamayo, he said, is very knowledgeable in Lakota art and history and has shared his wisdom.

High Horse hopes to use the Nebraska show as an opportunity to connect with other gallery owners and managers to talk about his work.

Besides exhibitions, the fellowship from First Peoples Fund has also allowed him to start a website, purchase art materials, and a trailer to haul his art to market. High Horse's art, which is mixed media mostly on birch panels, includes geometric details and fine lines. He is inspired by the Lakota culture, but also spirituality, graffiti and architecture. He has been honing the craft since the early 2000s, and met First Peoples Fund President Lori Pourier in 2014, but almost didn't apply for the fellowship when it was brought to his attention.

"I was new to showing my art," he said. "But I met a lot of artists and they told me to apply to First Peoples Fund."

One of the best aspects of support from FPF has little to do with money, he said. "They're very professional and structured," he said. "It's all the extra stuff, the workshops and the assistance."

The Santa Fe, New Mexico, Native Artist Professional Development Training put on by First Peoples Fund that High Horse attended in April was just one example of that. "It was phenomenal," he said. "It was really fun to be around that much talent and creativity. The staff was there to help us figure out what we wanted to do. It was awesome. I learned so much."

Lani Hotch (Tlingit) has a vision. When people first walk through the Chilkat weaving exhibit in her community’s first Native heritage center, they will be not only educated on her tribe’s history but moved by the importance of weaving throughout the generations.

Hotch, who is a member of the Chilkat Indian Village in Haines, Alaska, first came to know First Peoples Fund when receiving the prestigious Community Spirit Award in 2011. Currently, as a First Peoples Fund 2015 Cultural Capital Fellow, she spent the year moving forward with her work to build the Jilkaat Kwaan Cultural Heritage Center. The building for the center has been framed and it is set to open in May 2016.

“This is the culmination of my adult life’s work,” said Hotch, who first learned how to weave from her grandmother.

Hotch made a name for herself in the weaving world when she was part of a group of local women in 1992 who started the Klukwan Healing Robe. It took eight years to finish the robe, which is representative of the self-guided healing that Native people can take ownership of, she said. She got the idea after reading about how some Holocaust survivors said they began to heal as their stories were honored and told through museums dedicated to honoring those who suffered and those who died.

“Our own people need a way to get past our generational trauma,” she said. “That’s how I thought of the healing robe. It’s something tangible to deal with the intangible.”

The completion of the robe secured her desire to continue weaving—and to continue spreading the art form of weaving on to the next generation.

Hotch has since worked in several cultural arts focus capacities, including at the Klukwan School where she started the Tlingit Language and Culture Program, and for the Chilkat Indian Village Tribe.

She is currently working on a small robe that will include a maritime theme, a reflection of the fact that Klukwan sits on the north bank of the Chilkat River. It’s just one way that weaving can speak stories and life, history and even geography to people. It’s one way her tribe has been speaking for generations.

“Klukwan is known for its legacy of weavers,” Hotch said. “And we want to share that.”

Working with First Peoples Fund has been an encouragement, Hotch said. Not only has the fellowship helped her secure contracts with artists to display in the heritage center, President Lori Pourier played a central role in helping Hotch secure the first major grant for the building. “I was discouraged and I was trying to come up with funding,” she said. “I called Lori and asked her if she knew of any sources and she gave me a list.”

One of the organizations on the list had an applicable grant that Hotch applied for and received, in the amount of $107,000, to move forward on the building. “It was just what we needed,” she said.

Hotch said she hopes her work, and the work on display in the Jilkaat Kwaan Cultural Heritage Center will be a true testament of her tribe, she said, as it will play a key role in the long-term goals of cultural revitalization and economic development in the region.

“It will have cultural displays that feature what our community members have decided were some of the most compelling aspects of our community,” she said.

Hotch said she has been honored to work alongside dozens of volunteers in her community as they bring the dream of the heritage center to life.

“It’s monumental,” she said. “It’s not just me. It’s the whole community. They’re behind it.”

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Doug Limón (Oneida Nation of Wisconsin) has never been more certain of the calming focus he experiences when he works on his art than during his recent recovery from heart surgery.

Limón, who was a First Peoples Fund 2014 Jennifer Easton Community Spirit Award recipient and a 2015 Cultural Capital grantee, was part way through a series of community cradleboard workshops as part of his Cultural Capital fellowship when he fell ill. He underwent heart surgery in June and was in the hospital for over a month. He is now at home recovering.

"I'm still weak," he said. "I still need rest, but I'm getting stronger every day."

Limón has been a traditional and contemporary beadwork artist for 58 years and finds solitude in his work. "I felt like if I could start beading, I would heal faster," he said. "It does calm me down. It puts me in another state of mind."

Beading is one of the aspects Limón reviewed as he kicked off his cradleboard project this year, which is focused on revitalizing the art of making woodland-style cradleboards for infants. Limón was inspired to teach the cradleboard tradition by the birth of his youngest son five years ago.

Limón led four workshops, each of them scheduled over two weekends held one month apart. The first weekend included education about the history and purpose of the boards. The students—about 10 in each class—watched a demonstration on how to drill 50 holes in to the board before bending them. The students then took the boards home to work on them with family, and complete beadwork on the bag that carries the baby. It's during that month that creativity abounds, he said, and students learn to seek out elders and family members for input and help.

"I've never seen two cradleboards alike," he said.

"There's spirit in the projects."

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People from all walks of life take the class, he said, including many different ages and for different reasons. One woman said she always wanted to make cradleboards for her kids, but never knew anyone to teach her. She is a grandmother now and has taken the initiative to learn. "It gets emotional," Limón said. "It's a way to connect the family together."

It's also a great place for reflection. Some students have come in to class with misconceptions about the boards. "I teach them that this is very healthy for the baby," he said, citing research that shows that babies who were in cradleboards walked sooner because of the strength in the legs, back and neck muscles.

The word is out now that people can learn how to make the boards, and it's exciting to see the classes fill up, Limón said. "It filled up in four hours the day we first announced it," he said. "Then there is a long waiting list."

Teaching never gets old, especially when the students return for the second session with their bags designed and the stories of who helped them. "It's really amazing to see," Limón added. "It's like opening Christmas packages when they bring them in."