IAIA alumni took home an extraordinary number of prizes at the recent Heard Museum Guild Indian Fair and Market, which took place March 5 and 6, 2016, at the Heard Museum in Phoenix, Arizona. The Juried Competition was held on March 4, 2016.

The Heard Museum Guild Indian Fair is a world-acclaimed cultural event that draws nearly 15,000 visitors and more than 600 of the nation's most prominent and successful American Indian artists each year. The Heard Market welcomes traditional and cutting-edge contemporary artists as well as developing artists who may be selling their art alongside their more-established relatives. All proceeds support the museum's mission of educating the public about the arts and lifeways of Indigenous peoples of the Americas with an emphasis on American Indian tribes and other cultures of the Southwest.

19 IAIA Alumni collected 29 awards in total -- which represented 22% of the awards given. Included in the list was the Best of Show winner -- Alumna Jody Naranjo (Santa Clara Pueblo '01), who along with Glendora Fragua (Jemez Pueblo/Walatowa) took home the top prize for their collective piece "Pueblo Luck". The pair also received the prize for Best of Class: Pottery. On her own, Jody was also awarded the Guild 60th Anniversary Theme Award - Contemporary Pottery, plus three other awards. Other IAIA Alumni winners included:

Marla Allison (Laguna Pueblo '00), Benjamin Harjo, Jr. (Seminole/Absentee Shawnee '63),  Robert Dale Tsosie (Navajo/Picuris Pueblo '91), Kenneth Williams (Arapaho/Seneca '07), Crystal Worl (Tlingit/Athabascan '13), and many more.

Three IAIA students have been named as SITE Scholars by SITE Santa Fe: George Alexander (Muscogee Creek), Amanda Beardsley (Hopi/Laguna Pueblo/ Choctaw), and Tania Larsson (Gwich'in). As part of this honor, there was a group exhibition at SITE Santa Fe March 19 through April 3, 2016.

The SITE Scholars Program is an initiative to honor college and graduate level creative students in the community. Founded with the goal of increasing student participation in the museum and contemporary art world, this program enables students to enrich their educational experience. Comprised of top students from The Santa Fe University of Art and Design, the University of New Mexico, the Institute of American Indian Arts, the Santa Fe Community College, St. John's College, and Highlands University, these nominated students are recognized by SITE Santa Fe as high achieving leaders within their schools. The students selected for the SITE Scholar program are given opportunities to network and work on projects that help them transition from student to professional artist. Additionally, the students are presented with a membership card that gives these students free access to SITE's programs as well as membership in the North American Reciprocal Museum Program and the Modern/Contemporary Membership program, both of which offer complimentary admission to most art museums nationwide.

IAIA Performing Arts honored noted Indigenous dancer and instructor Daystar Rosalie Jones (Pembina/Chippewa) with a Lifetime Achievement Award on Monday April 11, 2016.

Daystar Rosalie Jones's career spans fifty years, during which time she taught throughout the United States and Canada to encourage and promote the development of Indigenous talent in the performing arts. Born on the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana, she holds an MS in Dance from University of Utah, with postgraduate work at the Juilliard School, NYC. In 1980 Rosalie Jones founded Daystar: Contemporary Dance Drama of Indian America, touring North America, Ireland, Finland, Bulgaria and Turkey.

Daystar has a long and important history with IAIA. She came here to teach in 1966 and choreographed IAIA's landmark production Sipapu: A Drama of Authentic Dance and Chants of Indian America that toured to the Carter Barron Amphitheatre in Washington, D.C., where Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall and his wife Lee Udall were in attendance. As a result of seeing Sipapu, Mrs. Udall created The Center for Arts of Indian America, which provided scholarships to broaden their experience and training within the performing arts and implementing this training for Indigenous creative and professional work. Daystar was one of the first recipients of this scholarship, which took her to Juilliard. Daystar returned to IAIA from 1989 to 1995, which included serving as Chair of Performing Arts from 1989 to 1992.

James Lujan (Taos Pueblo), Department Chair of Cinematic Arts & Technology at IAIA, has been appointed by Mayor Javier M. Gonzales and the Santa Fe City Council to the recently-formed Santa Fe Film Commission.

James is filmmaker and playwright from Taos Pueblo. He currently serves as Department Chair of Cinematic Arts & Technology at the IAIA. James spent many years in Los Angeles working as the head of InterTribal Entertainment, an employment and training initiative of the nonprofit Southern California Indian Center, Inc., which produced several award-winning short films by American Indian directors, writers, producers and actors. He is an alumnus of the Sundance Institute Native Screenwriting Fellows program. His feature film The Four Quarters (co-directed with Diane Glancy) premiered at L.A. Skins Fest in 2014.

IAIA's Cinematic Arts & Technology Department has recently been the subject of local and national attention -- and the students in the program have been receiving much recognition and many awards.

The New Mexico Museum of Art hosted a screening of short films created by students from IAIA's Department of Cinematic Arts and Technology's Directing Class - taught by filmmaker Peter Kershaw - as part of a partnership program between IAIA, New Mexico Museum of Art, and Rancho de Las Golondrinas. The screening took place Saturday, April 2, 2016, in the St. Francis Auditorium.

Seven IAIA student filmmakers' works were featured at the T aos Shortz Film Festival during the festival's Native American Showcase on Friday, April 8, 2016. The featured works included:

• Trust in Maggie by Felicia Nez (Navajo)
• The Exile by Frosley Fowler (Navajo)
• Pueblo Love by Kenneth Kanesta (Cochiti Pueblo)
• Big Sister Rug by Dwayne Joe (Navajo/Hopi)
• Daydreams by Sydney Issacs (Tlingit)
• Devil's Throne by Echota Killsnight (Northern Cheyenne/Cherokee) Winner of Free Spirit Award
• The Blanket by Razelle Benally (Oglala Lakota/Navajo)

The end-of-the-semester showcase of all-new CINE student films will be held on Thursday, May 5, 2016 at 6pm in the LTC Auditorium.

The 3rd Annual CINE Student Filmmaker Awards will take place on Wednesday, May 11, 2016 at 6pm in the CLE Commons.

The 2016 AIHEC Student Conference and Competition took place at the Minneapolis Convention Center, in Minneapolis, MN, March 13-16, 2016.

IAIA Director of Marketing and Communications Eric Davis was part of a panel discussion on "Communication Strategies for Promoting Your College."

IAIA students won over 40 prizes, including: 14 of the Film Festival prizes; seven for Echota Killsnight (Northern Cheyenne/Cherokee), six for Razelle Benally (Oglala Lakota/Navajo), and two for Frosley Fowler (Navajo). IAIA also won 18 of the Art prizes, plus One Act Play Best Actor: Teklu Hogan (Alaska Native); First Place in the Poetry Slam: Deloris Cortez; Top Fiction Ronald Dean Johnson; and Top Nonfiction Vivian M. Carroll (Cherokee Nation).

AIHEC represents our nation's 37 Tribal Colleges Universities (TCUs) - a unique community of tribally and federally chartered institutions working to strengthen tribal nations and make a lasting difference in the lives of American Indians and Alaska Natives.

The IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts is presenting a Student Filmmaker Showcase, now through July 31, 2016. "Now in its third year, IAIA's Department of Cinematic Arts and Technology is encouraging, training, and inspiring a new generation of Native filmmakers by providing them with the tools and a curriculum founded on the principles of meaningful storytelling, technical proficiency, ethical behavior, and a knowledge of cinematic history and concepts. IAIA is taking a leadership role in addressing the critical lack of American Indian representation in film, television and the media by offering a BFA degree in film, and is the only tribal college in the U.S. to do so," remarked James Lujan (Taos Pueblo), Chair, Cinematic Arts & Technology at IAIA.

This screening presents a mix of new films and award-winning past work from current students and recent graduates that spans the storytelling spectrum of live action drama, documentary, and animation. Guided by a dynamic team of faculty including award-winning filmmakers James Lujan, Kahlil Hudson (Tlingit/Haida), Craig Tompkins, and Mats Reiniusson, the talent and energy coming from the students at IAIA signals an exciting future for Native cinema.

IAIA Alumna Layli Long Soldier (Oglala Lakota '09), was recently awarded the 2015 Whiting Award. The Whiting Awards are given annually to ten emerging writers of fiction, nonfiction, drama, and poetry -- and are based on early accomplishments and the promise of great work to come.

Layli Long Soldier holds a BFA from IAIA, and an MFA from Bard College. She has served as a contributing editor of Drunken Boat and is the current poetry editor at Kore Press. Her poems have appeared in The American Poet, The American Reader, The Kenyon Review Online, and others. She is the recipient of the 2015 NACF National Artist Fellowship and a 2015 Lannan Literary Fellowship. Her work of poetry, WHEREAS, will be published by Graywolf Press in 2017. Long Soldier is originally from South Dakota; she is currently based in Tsaile, Arizona, where she is an adjunct faculty member at Diné College.

Layli is not the first Whiting Award winner to come from from IAIA. Fellow Alumni, poets James Thomas Stevens, '91, (Saint Regis Mohawk) won the award in 2000, and Sherwin Bitsui, '99, (Diné) won in 2006.

IAIA hosted an evening of poetry, read by a variety of Santa Fe and Albuquerque community leaders on April 21, 2016 at 6:00 pm in the CLE Commons.

The My Favorite Poem Project is hosted by the UNM English Department and IAIA. The events are organized by Luci Tapahonso, professor and inaugural Navajo Nation Poet Laureate, who also directs the Creative Writing Program at UNM.

My Favorite Poem Project is based on former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky's 1998 initiative; it continues to be held in various cities to this day. The project features community members - business owners, civic leaders, teachers, students, spiritual leaders, non-profit leaders, and media personalities - who read their favorite poems in five minutes or less.

Readers in Santa Fe included:

• Stephen Wall (White Earth Reservation), Chair, Indigenous Liberal Studies, IAIA
• Poets Vivian Carroll and Chee Brossy (Diné)
• SFPS student Christian Flahive
• SFIS student Phillip Bread (Comanche/Kiowa/Blackfeet)
• Kelly Zunie (Cherokee/Zuni Pueblo), Cabinet Secretary, NM Indian Affairs Department
• Pamela Pierce, Attorney and CEO, Silver Bullet Productions
• Patsy Phillips (Cherokee Nation), Director, IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts
• Tazbah McCullah (Diné), General Manager, KSFR Radio
• JoAnn Balzer, IAIA Board of Trustees member and Arts Advocate

The Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) Indigenous Liberal Studies Department, chaired by Stephen Wall (White Earth Reservation) held an Indigenous Intervention into Indigenous Narrative on Thursday, March 31, 2016 and Friday, April 1st, 2016, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The Indigenous Intervention was convened to bring forth ideas related to the Indigenous experience with the concept of "Narrative" in culture, literature, philosophy, history, politics, economics, film, television, art, music, social theory, and business. The concept of Indigenous Narrative has many applications and responses in the Indigenous world including assimilation, economic development, education, cultural change, artistic expression, evolution/devolution, language, psychology, and more.

Stephen Fadden (Saint Regis Mohawk) was the keynote speaker on Thursday and Lucy Tapahanso (Navajo) was keynote speaker Friday.

Four IAIA Alumni have been selected to transform guestrooms into works of art at Nativo Lodge, a Heritage Hotels and Resorts, Inc. hotel. This bold artist room project is the first of its kind in New Mexico and has been going on since 2013.

Acclaimed Native American contemporary artists and IAIA Alumni Ishkoten Dougi (Jicarilla Apache/Navajo '96), Peterson Yazzie (Navajo '05), Geraldine Tso (Diné '89), and Estella Loretto (Jemez Pueblo '72) are New Mexico artists who have received local and national attention. Nativo Lodge partnered with IAIA to select these featured artists for this project. The Open House and Unveiling of Rooms, which will take place on on May 5, 2016 at 5:00 pm, is free and open to the public. The Nativo Lodge is located at 6000 Pan American Fwy NE, Albuquerque, NM.

Artist Rooms can be reserved by calling reservations at Nativo Lodge at (505) 798-4300. Additional details and photos can be seen at www.NativoLodge.com.

Some of the existing artist rooms were also created by IAIA alumni including Rose B. Simpson (Santa Clara Pueblo) '07 and Heidi K. Brandow (Native Hawaiian/Diné) '13.

IAIA and Santa Fe's I nn and Spa at Loretto, a Destination Hotel, partnered to showcase IAIA Students during a pop-up gallery event on April 15 and 16, 2016, in the Living Room at the Inn and Spa at Loretto, 211 Old Santa Fe Trail. Participating artists included Boderra Joe (Navajo Nation), Rylin Becenti (Navajo Nation), Roxanne White (Navajo Nation), Terran Kipp (Blackfeet), Justus Benally, (San Carlos Apache), Dakota Yazzie (Navajo Nation), Rebecca Gough, Frank Andrews III, (Confederated Colville Reservation), DeVaughn Denaetchee, (Laguna Pueblo), Anna Nelson Osceola (Crow Tribe of Montana), Elizabeth Elliot, (Poarch Band of Creeks), and Krista Vanderblomen (Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation). This event is part of the hotel's partnership with IAIA that began in November of 2015.

Jonathan Thunder (Red Lake Ojibwe) is a painter and digital media artist currently residing in Duluth, Minnesota. He attended the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe and received a BFA in Visual Effects and Motion Graphics from the Art Institutes International Minnesota. His work has been featured in many state, regional, and national exhibitions, as well as in local and international publications.

Royce Manuel (Ak-Mierl Aw-Thum, Salt River Pima- Maricopa Indian Community) and Debbie Manuel, MSW (Diné), bridge art and science, using traditional knowledge about plants and animals, woodworking skills, and physics to create functional bows and arrows. An additional recent endeavor for the couple has been reviving a near-lost traditional Aw-Thum Kiaho (burden basket).

Jonathan Thunder and Royce Manuel & Debbie Manuel were in residency February 19-March 18, 2016.

Rory Wakemup (Minnesota Chippewa Tribe) holds an MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2015. He received his MA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2014. He received his BFA from IAIA in 2010. He is a multidisciplinary artist whose work turns the script of cultural appropriation on its head. He has morphed his experience in Indian ceremonies with his studio art practice and has become a conduit between conceptual ideas and the materials at hand. Wakemup enjoys playing with the grey areas of what is appropriate in today's society. He was a co-founder of the Humble Experiment, Independent Student Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico and was on a panel for Native Underground, sponsored by the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture.

Natalie Ball (Modoc and Klamath Tribes), was born and raised in Portland, Oregon. She has a BA in Ethnic Studies from the University of Oregon and she furthered her education in New Zealand at Massey University where she attained her MA in Maori Visual Arts. Natalie currently resides with her three children on the Klamath Tribes' former reservation. She is an indigenous artist who examines internal and external discourses that shape Indian identity through contemporary art. She believes historical discourses of Native Americans have constructed a limited and inconsistent visual archive that currently misrepresents our past experiences and misinforms current expectations. She excavates hidden histories, and dominant narratives to deconstruct them through a theoretical framework of auto-ethnography. Her goal is to move "Indian" outside of governing discourses in order to rebuild a new visual genealogy that refuses to line-up with the many constructed existences of Native Americans.

Rory and Natalie's residency was from March 28, 2016 through April 21, 2016.

IAIA Senior Thesis Exhibition Transforming Landscapes at the Balzer Contemporary Edge Gallery, was curated by Terran Kipp Last Gun Piikani (Blackfeet), BFA Museum Studies. The show was up from March 10-April 1, 2016.

This group exhibition took the concept and idea of "landscape" and reimagines what our landscapes are or what they can be. Transforming Landscapes features works done by IAIA students, staff, faculty and alumni. This art exhibit is unique in that it represents both young emerging artists along with renowned established artists from the IAIA community, and it showcases their diverse and challenging artworks that convey ideas of timeless utopian- and dystopian-like landscapes.

The Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) holds frequent readings by noted authors in the Library and Technology Center (LTC). Recent readers include:

Joaquin Zihuatanejo, Collestipher Chatto (Diné), Jennifer Love, Barbara Robidoux (Eastern Tsalagi/Cherokee/Metis), V irginia Gaffney, and Monique Sanchez.

Acterra has announced the recipients of the 2016 Business Environmental Awards, identifying nine Bay Area companies and organizations that have demonstrated extraordinary environmental leadership from among a highly competitive field of applicants. Bon Appétit Management Company was honored to be selected as the recipient of the Acterra Award for Sustainability, Acterra's highest award, which recognizes businesses whose programs achieve significant triple bottom line benefits (people, planet, profit) and advance the state of sustainability in a given industry or across industry sectors.

Bon Appétit Management Company is an on-site restaurant company offering full food-service management to corporations, universities, and museums as well as public restaurants across the country, including here at IAIA.

The 2016 awardees will be honored at the Business Environmental Awards Reception on May 26 at Intuit in Mountain View, CA.

IAIA would like to congratulate our students who participated in the Alpha Chi Honor Society annual conference last week and earned scholarships.

Winners included:

• Nami Okuzono: Region I Chapter Scholarship: $250
• Damian Price (Isleta Pueblo): Region I General Scholarship: $1,000
• William Thoms (Confederated Tribes of the Chehalis Reservation): National Student Presentation Prize, Overall Winner of Visual Arts Competition ($100 prize)

Congratulations to all!


IAIA President Dr. Robert Martin (Cherokee) recently attended the American Indian College Fund Hall of Fame Gala in New York City.  We know the impact scholarships can have by promoting student success.  For example, retention rates more than double for IAIA students who receive scholarships.  We invite you to stand with students by donating either to the American Indian College Fund or the Institute of American Indian Arts scholarship programs.

On April 21, IAIA hosted The Art of Change: Indigenous Peoples for Climate Justice Art Show in the Auditorium Lobby in the Library building. The show featured art by IAIA students, faculty, and staff.

IAIA Student Del Curfman (Crow) will be having a exhibition of his work at Rainmaker Gallery in Bristol England this June. Congratulations Del!

The 21st Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry at the Library of Congress, Juan Felipe Herrera, has selected poet Allison Hedge Coke (Metis) for the 2016 Witter Bynner Fellowship. Hedge Coke will receive a $10,000 fellowship. This is the 19th year that the fellowship has been awarded.

Hedge Coke is the author of four poetry collections: Streaming (2015); Blood Run (2006 UK, 2007 US); Off-Season City Pipe (2005); Dog Road Woman (1997); a memoir Rock, Ghost, Willow, Deer (2014); and a chapbook Year of the Rat (1996).

IAIA would like to congratulate Associate Professor Kim Parko on her newly released book called The Grotesque Child. The Grotesque Child received the 2015 Tarpualin Sky award. For more information on Kim Parko's success, see www.tarpaulinsky.com/kim-parko/grotesque-child.

The Cine 350 Directing class along with instructor Peter M. Kershaw and Daniel Goodman, Curator at Las Golondrinas, shown at the screening of the director's films at The New Mexico Museum of Art on Saturday, April 2. Photo taken by Art Museum staff member Sara VanNote.

Celeste Stokes is working with the Office of Institutional Advancement as Campaign Assistant. Celeste reports directly to Eileen Berry, Development Officer and will be working on the campaign for the new Arts and Fitness Center. She comes to IAIA with a wealth of project coordination experience, most recently as a Project Coordinator for the New Mexico Project Management Office. Celeste is certified in IT Service Management, holds BA in Philosophy from Beloit College and a BA in Information Management from College of St. Catherine.

Raquel Covarrubias is our new Admissions Specialist. Reporting directly to Mary Curley, the Director of Admissions and Recruitment, Raquel joins IAIA with wonderful experience. Her resume includes work as an editor and writer, English Professor at the Universidad de Valladolid Yucatan, Manager of the Rooz Café in Oakland California and most recently as a Family Assistance Analyst for the State of New Mexico. Raquel holds a BA in Ethnic Studies from San Francisco State University and is fluent in Spanish.

Anita Gavin is our new Assistant Director of Institutional Research. She reports directly to Bill Sayre, the Director of Institutional Research and joins IAIA with wide ranging experience in education and analytics. Her resume includes work as an instructor at Santa Fe Community College, substitute teacher and administrative assistant in the Santa Fe Public School System and quality control coordinator for Integrated Genetics. Most recently, Anita was the Operations Research Analyst for the New Mexico Higher Education Department. Anita holds an MS in Plant and Soil Science from the University of Tennessee.