♪ ♪ [Native American singing] ♪ ♪ [Beatrice] Art is important because it shows who we were, where we came from.

[Ken Williams] I think art is in everything we do, but it's how we look at it and how we see things.

Just because you're not at home making a painting doesn't mean you're not an artist.

[Sarah Ortegon] There's just so many different expressions of art on the Res.

[Ken] Whether it be sculptures, pottery.

[Beatrice] Dance, singing groups, drumming.

[Zedora Enos] Art is an expression of every tribe.

They're identified by their art.

[George Abeyta] The outfits.

There's bright colors as well as the geometric designs and the floral patterns.

[Sarah] There's ledger art, photography, carving into bone.

[Ula Tyler] Porcupine quill work, beadwork.

[Ken] Story-telling, learning oral history, things of the past.

That's an art form as well.

[Zedora] Kids now, they do things not the way that it's usually done.

[Willow Pingree] We're evolving and we're changing, exploring what it means to be native.

And I think it comes through in the different art that you see.

[Native American singing] [gentle music] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ We're at the Shiprock Santa Fe Gallery.

It's the opening day of the show.

We love Ken.

We work a lot together.

He just has this sense of design and a way of putting things together that is just very unique.

And then he has a technical skill that is-- It's his view of the world combined with a great technical aptitude.

[upbeat music] [Jed] Verma, Hopi name Sonwai.

She's kinda been a friend, mentor to Ken along the way, and this has been the fourth year they've collaborated to create one market piece.

She's a very well known jeweler, and she's my icon.

[laughs] [woman] What's on the jar?

- Cotton candy.

- That's what I thought.

That was my muse, was cotton candy.

We started to pre-sell a few days before the show.

It's been very strong.

The show's completely sold out.

You pour your energy and your heart into something and you hope that it'll find where it's supposed to go.

Yeah.

[woman] Every show, turns out that we make new, meet new people, make friends, and more people who start collecting artwork.

So it's always a gain.

It's always fun to be here.

[Ken] I'm comfortable in the community where I live... but you never forget who or where you're from.

[gentle music] My uncle, Robert Spoonhunter really made an impact on me.

He was really into keeping cultural activities and practices alive through language, through beadwork.

He was also highly involved with St. Stephens Mission.

In the 90s, they renovated that whole church in Arapaho thematics, or Arapaho stories.

He was involved in spearheading traditional elements for the windows, traditional elements for the alters, and even the ceilings.

And he's always be working on stained glass pieces.

In his home at the time, he had a little office, he called it his office, but it was basically his beadwork room, and he had old photographs, old beadwork, items from the family that he would keep.

And he'd always let me look through them, and then we'd put them away.

You knew when he would be like, "Okay, put them away now."

But as a teenager, you remember those things, and they make an impact on you.

[gentle wind blows] [Beatrice] My parents used to work in the potato fields, because there was no work around here for people.

So I lived with my great-grandmother.

And she taught me how to make cradle boards and moccasins and beadwork, and a lot of the things that I know.

I learned to do this work from my grandmother.

It just seemed like she just enjoyed it so much, and I'd sit by her when I was a little girl.

Moccasins was usually what she was making.

She'd do this and bigger things, but moccasins was the thing she enjoyed doing.

And she, I think, probably made everybody in the family a pair of moccasins.

I was raised by my grandparents, so I was raised traditionally.

And so I've seen things that are not so contemporary, and I want to make things just like the necklace that I'm wearing now.

You can look up pictures of Blackfeet people or Northern Plains people and see them wearing something similar.

So it's nice to carry that through.

[Annie] My grandmother did a lot of the techniques that I am doing today.

She passed it to my mother, my mother passed it to me.

I have a respect for the animals that are used, and nature.

And so that's why I just stick to the traditional.

[Rose] When I think about my grandmother, some people today might think, "Oh, she's all dressed up while she's doing her pottery or doing her-- Cooking her feast."

No, that was her.

She was art.

To me, she was living art.

[upbeat music] ♪ ♪ [Sarah] My mom is Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho.

And so I'm enrolled Shoshone, and I'm a descendant of the Northern Arapaho.

I grew up in Denver, Colorado.

During the summers, we would go back to the Wind River Reservation in Fort Washakie.

City living was very structured.

My dad was a really strict man.

But time on the reservation almost didn't exist.

It was the freedom just to go and play, and on dirt hills, and I was able to be free.

I was able to be the big tomboy that I was.

My dad wasn't there to tell me to act like a lady.

[laughing] We used to go have barbecues at Bull Lake.

We used to hear that there was fish as big as us in the lake, and we would get scared to go too deep into the lake.

I took that time for my freedom to be the wild, little Res girl that I was.

Here in the city, I spent a lot of my time doing a lot more quiet things.

And I think that that's also how I started to get into art.

I needed to express myself in some sort of way, and that was the quiet expression of who I was.

I've been commissioned by the Dawson Art Project.

They're located out of Colorado Springs.

They give me almost a whole year to get ready for my next art exhibit.

I have a total of 15 pieces that I'm working on.

I'm going to do a preview in Lander, Wyoming.

I will be showing half of the art pieces that I have come up with for this next show.

Showing my work close to the Reservation is just-- it's another way for me to reconnect.

And it's another reason for me to go back home.

[soft music] My whole theme of my next pieces is to highlight indigenous women that have gone through abuse or who've overcome it and have not played the victim role.

I'm highlighting the power that they had.

And I believe that now, women can still do that.

Ada Blackjack was from the northern part of Canada.

She was actually taken from her family and put into a boarding school.

And she never learned how to do the survival skills that her family would innately teach her.

What she ended up doing when she got older was helping this expedition in the Antarctic.

She was supposed to just be there to sew and to help cook.

And what ended up happening was they got stranded out in the middle of nowhere.

Imagine just the coldest place you could be at.

Two of the men went and looked for rescue, while her and another individual stayed back, because he was sick.

She tried to help nurse this man back to health.

He was verbally abusive to her.

He would throw things at her.

And the reason why we know this is because she kept a journal.

Imagine having to survive but also keep somebody else alive who's abusing you.

That is just beyond strength to me.

He eventually passed away.

She was eventually found, but she survived through it all.

You know how they talk about the DNA, and how it's memory, blood memory.

I believe that that blood memory was in her for her to survive out in the cold.

[Ken] I started beading probably when I was about four or five years old.

I used to kind of just string beads and make little kind of really bad earrings and necklaces and stuff.

My early, early junior teen years, we moved to Utah.

And the Wind River Reservation was only four and a half hours away, so we'd go there quite often.

I got to know more of my mom's side of the family, the Arapaho side.

Hearing stories of the past, that's how I grew up as a kid.

I love seeing the old photographs and seeing who was who and how they used to dress and the regalia they used to wear.

I was kind of always the odd kid out.

Even my own cousins would pick on me, just kind of like, "Oh, you're the weird one of our cousins."

"You're like a little grandpa."

Or, "Quit being like an old lady.

You're always with those old ladies."

But to me, that was the most interesting aspect, you know, seeing them make a quilt or seeing them work with their hands to even make something like fry bread.

But it's also okay, then your aunts and your uncles were like, "Wow, you're the one to maybe carry the next things on."

And they would encourage me a lot.

My aunt, Agnes Spoonhunter Logan, she was also a major influence on me, teaching me more traditional type aspects of beadwork, how to do lazy stitch, how to grid out a pattern.

Our family, they wouldn't necessarily say, "This is how you do it, sit down and watch me."

You would just emulate what they were doing.

My family really stressed to me to produce the best you can, and use real brain-tanned buckskin hides.

They always taught me with the smallest cut glass beads.

It was like, "No, no, no, no.

"We're not using big beads.

"Our family uses these small beads, so this is the way you're going to bead."

I remember one time I made a project and my rows were kind of... arced, and my aunt's like, "Okay, well, rip it out now."

I was like, "Okay, well my aunt said this was not up to par.

"This was not good.

"Do I get mad at her and do I get frustrated "and throw my project away?

Or do you persevere and go on?"

Some people wouldn't do that.

They'd just give up.

And me, I was always like, "I'm going to learn the lessons that I was taught, and keep going."

To this day, I mean, like, I'm not a perfect beadworker.

I just try what I can do to the best ability that I can do it, and you know if you made a mistake and if you leave that mistake, it's going to be in your mind.

And even the way you're beading in these rows for these traditional things, your rows should be flat and tight.

There shouldn't be spaces or gaps from row to row.

So you shouldn't really see the hide underneath.

And so, if you rub it and it's nice and smooth, they say that's a good beadworker.

[Event Announcer] Let's hear a big round of applause, grand entree number three.

[Native American singing] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ My favorite form of expression is our Native American dances.

I happen to be a fancy dancer.

It's a modern contemporary freestyle type of dance, and there's a lot of intricate footwork, powerful spins, more of an uptempo dance with flashy colors, a lot of fringe.

That dance was passed down from generation to generation.

And we like to be known as champion dancers, as Shoshone people.

[Ula] When I get up there and dance, it makes me feel good.

It makes me feel good inside, just relaxed and makes me feel beautiful.

[applause] I love beading, and I think my favorite piece of beadwork that I like to work on are moccasins.

You'll see a pattern, and you know.

You identify.

Oh, that came from that family.

Colors sometimes will identify a family.

One of the things that I remember telling my grandmother that I liked her floral designs, and she said, "That's good."

She said, "You remember these."

And it's the way that we do.

Shoshones, they were flower designs.

They used to have geometric designs, until later on, the rose came out.

I think the rose represents something really special to the Shoshone Tribe.

And for the Arapaho, they use geometrics.

I really like the rainbow colors.

It's always been one of my favorite.

The designs, the red and blue design with the line in the middle, that's the Arapaho butterfly.

These are tipis.

And the reason I picked that was because I'd been raised using the tipi in our ceremonies, and it's just a part of my life and who I am.

And then the feathers are considered a protection.

[Zedora] In doing my beadwork, always remembering the fact that my grandmother said, "Sing.

"Feel good.

"Pray for this person that you're making these moccasins for, that they'll walk in them in a good way.

They'll do things that's good."

[Rose] My medium is in clay.

I've been living on the Wind River Reservation for about 25 years now.

Being a traditional potter, I always give thanks, and we pray, and that's how I've learned from my grandmother.

Pray for the clay before I take it from the earth.

This particular one, I'm calling "Red Shawl".

Red has become the color that symbolizes the indigenous women that are missing.

The fact that her mouth is open symbolizes that she is telling her story, or she is speaking, and she's making a statement.

I really felt the piece as more of an emotional piece.

She's not necessarily a victim, but stands in tribute to the women that are survivors.

[Native American singing] I first started singing in high school, when I wanted to start learning more about my culture.

We had different singers come and go, here and there, but the main ones that stuck with it and really enjoy it are the ones who are here.

[Native American singing] All these songs that we sang today are ones that I composed myself.

Original scout river songs.

We're young singers, we're young people.

And just what I was taught, so what I incorporate into what we do.

The songs we sing, they tell different stories.

We have different songs in our tribes that are too sacred to show public eyes.

That's for our tribal people.

We say the drum's been around since the beginning of time, so we consider the drum our grandfather.

We treat it just like we would treat our elders.

We treat it with respect.

I was always told that you'd take care of the drum, you pray to it, it takes care of you, and it's good medicine.

[Native American singing] [drumming] [Sarah] I graduated from college in 2013 from Metropolitan State University.

During that time, I really did wish I could go back to Wind River Reservation, but I didn't have a car.

I didn't have any way to get back.

I had no money.

I was paying rent but barely getting through, so it was hard to travel during that time.

On a daily basis, I was trying to reach my goals without breaking down.

And so I was completely shut off from my family.

That disconnect happened up until the point of where I decided to try out for Miss Native American USA.

I saw Miss Native American USA on Facebook, and it was like oh, that would be fun to do.

I didn't know how to wear heels.

I didn't know anything about makeup.

I didn't know anything about hair.

And it was just the fact that I was such a big tomboy that it was a huge thing for me to try out.

I was standing in line and they said my tribe.

My tribe's Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho from Denver, Colorado.

I was like there's no other girl from Denver, Colorado.

And nobody else is Eastern Shoshone or Northern Arapaho.

And I started freaking out because I didn't even write a thank you, because I didn't think I was going to win.

And I go up to on stage, and my brother, and he was like-- he says something explicit, but he's like, "That's my sister," and screaming because he's just so proud of me.

I had to go start speaking to schools.

I had to go perform.

I started traveling to different countries.

And it made me break out of my shell.

I started to fall into who I am now.

Right now, we are in downtown Denver.

Denver can be a good place for an indigenous artist to work and live.

The art district has a First Friday every month, and so I would say that it's flourishing.

And I just wish there was more buyers.

When I was going to school, I changed my major eight times.

And during that whole entire time, I was constantly going into art classes.

The tribe helped me, but I was also working at 7-11 and going to school, and walking to 7-11 from where I lived, and walking to school.

It was hard, but I just knew that once you start something, you finish it.

I began to love art through drawing, and I feel like that is the surface of where I started.

Every little decision that I make comes out onto the canvas.

And so that's-- it's kind of like a science experiment.

So, I'm going to buy this iridescent pearl, and I'm going to mix it with the turquoise.

And I'm going to be making some of the scenery.

Golden is my favorite, because of the high quality of the acrylics, but they're really expensive.

This one looks like it's maybe $15 dollars for this little thing.

So it might last me maybe two paintings.

I think I might put some stuff back.

[laughing] Have a good day.

It's been a slow, gradual hustle for me in the art world.

I'd say with everything that is an expression of yourself, it's work.

The work comes naturally to you, but to be able to get out there and to be successful in something, you have to do the hoof work.

You have to take the first steps in getting yourself to be known.

[upbeat music] [Ken] I work at the Wheelwright Museum here in Santa Fe.

When I come home, it's like okay, enter the door, go right to my work station and start working.

Maybe take a break to go take a walk, or get something to eat really fast.

Work until 11 o'clock.

And then go to bed and do it all over.

You work hours and hours and hours on a piece all by your lonesome self.

You do kind of zone out.

You think of things.

People sometimes say, "Is it relaxing?"

And I never considered it relaxing.

Around here in Santa Fe, the Indian art world is kind of like a Who's Who.

It's kind of no different than Hollywood, with like, people want to know you, they want to know who you are, why do you dress this way, why do you wear that jewelry, whose jewelry are you wearing?

How do you fit in to the overall puzzle of everything?

But we all have to start somewhere.

My parents were encouraging of me and my work.

They taught us how to work hard, and they said, you know, "Anything in this life is not free.

"You're going to have to work for what you want, work for what you have."

I think the most important part of creating my artwork is making the best piece possible, maybe telling a story of some sort, why you created it.

The body of work I created for the Gallery exhibition, it was based on cotton candy.

And people were like, "Why that?"

It's because I saw it at the store on a shelf, and it was beautiful colors.

And I took a walk several nights later, and the clouds looked like they were on fire, and they looked like cotton candy clouds.

In New Mexico, we sometimes have these beautiful clouds that can be brilliant pinks and turquoise and aqua colors, and it's just like, wow.

Inspiration is everywhere.

You may be driving down the road and, you know, the dead animal on the side of the road is your inspiration.

It could be a street sign, the color of somebody's shirt that came into the museum.

I'm experimenting a lot with color, and saturation of color, shades of color.

I think what I really want people to take away from seeing my work is that it's happy, it's bright, it's vivid.

I'm not afraid to do something different.

[gentle music] Some artwork has a real true life record of specific event, whereas others are left to interpretation.

[Kalem] Sometimes, the young men will be asked to go to the mountains and hunt.

We weren't having any luck finding any elk at all, to the point we were praying for it.

We needed meat.

We went into my last resort place that I don't take anybody there, there was abundancy of elk always in that area.

It means a lot to me in that area.

As we got over the peak of the crest, I thought I was going to see, how they all lay out, sprawl out.

And what my dad likes to call it, sunbathing.

The herd had been slaughtered.

We took hides that weren't ruined, but a lot of the meat was already gone.

I came across this baby, said a prayer, and I told that elk, "I'm going to take your horns and your hooves.

"I'm going to keep them alive for you.

I'll keep you dancing."

Those elk and those deer, they dance.

We feel that we have to keep these animals and these things that we make, we have to keep them alive.

This piece is very, very precious to me and to my heart.

My husband, Gerald Sage, created this.

With Arapahos, most of their designs have meaning.

Sometimes it told a story about their life.

The mountains are all the way around.

These are depicting hailstones.

There's the game trail.

And this is the same as the diamond.

It means something holy, respectful.

And again, we have the hailstones.

And then he said the lines also symbolized trails we take in life.

This is a piece of my heart, a piece of his heart.

And we're still, in a sense, together.

And I can carry his love with me.

This beadwork here tells a story of your home.

There's mountains that go around the outside.

The mountains are very, very precious to our people, was also known as a source of water, life-giving water flowing from the mountain.

There's also medicine there in the mountains that can't be found anywhere on the planet, just here in our mountains.

Your home, it's a place of your family, it's a place of warmth and comfort, strength and happiness.

It's the place where you look forward to going, because that's your stronghold.

That's your place of prayer.

[playful uptempo music] [Sarah] With my art process, I know that some people collect a lot of sketches, and they do a lot of preliminary work with their art.

Okay, so I used burnt sienna.

I don't.

I just go and do it.

Jordan Dresser was curating the show.

With him being the curator, it also reflects on him what art he brings in.

And so that made me want to create something amazing.

[Jordan] Art of Home is an exhibit.

It highlights artists from Wind River or who have ties to Wind River.

Before the exhibit, I was nervous about getting all the art there.

With artists and this is probably just true everywhere, you have to talk to them so many different times and hound them.

And I mean, you don't want to rush things.

And I think it's just the spirit of an artist too.

An artist wants something to be right.

[Sarah] It is.

It is stressful, but I always get thing done.

Oh my god, I got to finish some pieces.

[laughing] A lot of the things that I have painted, I didn't realize related back to who I was.

There's this one specific piece that I did.

I was holding a meadowlark, because I love meadowlarks, because that's one of the first sounds I remember hearing on the Reservation early in the mornings.

I painted a self portrait of me holding the meadowlark.

At the bottom, you could see the sound waves of what it would sound like if the bird was actually making noise.

I found out later that the Arapaho language came from the meadowlark.

I found my identity through a painting that I didn't intentionally make it about the language, but it was about the language in the end.

And it might not be a big moment to a lot of other people, but that was just really-- it showed me that's what I needed to do.

[soft music] So many of our tribal members have never come back to the Reservation.

They never had any connection with anything that their parents may have had.

[soft music] However, I believe it's in their DNA.

It's just there.

[Annie] I just feel like we all have a connection to Mother Earth.

That's where our people come from.

Just walking on the ground, being close to nature and its elements, even when you're away from the Reservation, keeping that in mind.

Even though I may not live on the Reservation, it doesn't mean I don't think about it.

We are tied to the land.

We are tied to where our ancestors are buried.

That's our blood.

That's where we come from.

[soft music] I'm looking forward to going back to the Reservation, to spend time with my relatives there, especially my Aunt Agnes, because she's my connection.

Her brother was my connection.

It's probably been 15 years since we've worked together.

As life tends to go in its own direction, it's a beautiful thing that we can spend time together and work together like we used to when I was a teenager.

So what do we want to make?

Of these, I'm trying to decide what to use on this bag.

Yeah, I think I like that one, with this color.

When I have to make... [Agnes] Yeah, that background, That would be a good background.

[Ken] A lot of the designs do have meanings too, right?

This little booklet here is a reference for me.

This was put together by Alfred Kroeber, an anthropologist who traveled through the western part of the country and collected things, collecting information.

- That's that thick book, right?

- Yeah.

[Ken] Called "The Arapaho".

These patterns, I think, are important for younger people and people my age to use because it's our point of reference.

We probably don't have enough that was carried down from family to family, to know what certain patterns mean, but this is something helpful.

[Ken] I used to love the times in the summer when I'd go back to the Reservation and spend time with my aunts and my uncles.

And we would have, I guess you could call them "beading parties".

Everyone would come together and there would be food and laughter and always coffee.

They'd be drinking coffee at eight, nine, 10 o'clock at night.

And just, we'd just sit around the table.

Everyone would bring their little box of beads or project out.

And you just work.

I remember how you got started.

You were constantly badgering Bob and I. Oh, I like that.

Can I have that?

No, make your own.

[laughing] As a kid, I always liked going through your bead box too, because you always had interesting things.

I think that was always the thing too, always encouraged me and Dallin to do the best we could.

And even when we were younger, you would give us beads.

And I think that's probably one of the reasons why we stuck with it, was because of the encouragement.

Well, you've both done pretty well.

I like your work.

It's very imaginative.

You put a lot of new good ideas into your work.

[Ken] Yeah.

There was this time I was working on a lazy stitch pouch, and I was working on a row and I was all happy to show you, and you were like, "That's too tight.

Pull it out and start over."

And I always tell people, "What was I going to do?

"Sit around and cry?

No."

I was notorious for that.

[Ken laughing] [Ken] That was a good lesson.

Yeah.

Otherwise, who knows?

I would have still been doing crunchy rows, you know?

Art kind of made me-- it provided for me.

It made me feel like I was part of something, that I was hopefully making my family proud.

Carrying on the tradition.

So this is my newest project I just finished.

It matches my shirt.

[Ken] Yeah.

Carry it on your wrist all day.

It made me feel connected, and I think it made me feel good to know that even though I was a young person, they were proud that I was carrying that tradition on.

This little bag right here, she pulled out this morning and I said, "Oh, are you going to finish it?"

And she looked at me and said, "No, you are."

[laughing] And I was like, "Oh."

The back was started by Robert, or Bob, Spoonhunter, her brother.

What made you decide it was for me to finish for you?

Because it's like whoa, that's uncle's work, and it hasn't been touched since he passed away years ago.

No, it's just something of his that I want to see done, and I want to see your ideas incorporated in finishing it, because you can put together such amazing things, very imaginative things.

But just...

I wonder what he would have thought of my work.

He would have loved it.

[birds chirping] [energetic music] So it is 7:35 AM, and I am on my way to the Lander Art Center.

I was the most nervous about the show in the morning.

It would have been nice if we had everything a week before.

I just wanted things there.

Hi, Sarah.

- Hey, how are you?

- Good.

Good to see you.

Are you ready to get your show all set up?

- Oh yeah.

- Okay.

Well, we're all ready, so you can go bring the pieces in.

Okay, all right, thanks.

The title The Art of Home speaks about the fact that traditionally, reservations weren't just the only places we all called home.

We have homelands from all over the place.

Arapahos went all the way from Minnesota, all the way down to Texas, all the way into Utah.

And the same with all Shoshones.

So I think home is various places, and it's those connections that you make.

And really, it's about respecting the land and having a view of the land, that you know that it plays an important role in your life, and also the future generation's life.

[Sarah] So I don't know if you want to keep the two older pieces together on this wall, maybe, because they're square.

Sometimes I worry that what I'm sharing is wrong, something's in the wrong context.

I'm not sure which one that is.

And I don't want to offend anybody.

So this one is scenery from Australia.

And that's where Truganini is from.

She's from Tasmania.

So that'll go like this.

So what I do is I depict the woman, and then I depict the land that she's from to tie it to her, because she's, they're indigenous women, and I believe that the land creates who they are, the strong-- the inside of who they are.

I trust Jordan to tell me what he thinks about my art, and just the way that we relate back and forth to each other, I just have faith in him to tell me, "That wouldn't work here."

That's beautiful.

[Sarah] Thank you.

That's all feather.

That's all emu feathers, and then that's the beadwork down there.

That's beautiful.

Yeah, it took me forever.

Wow.

Good job.

Thank you.

When I was in Australia, the aboriginal people there had gifted me with a bunch of emu feathers.

I had learned about Truganini.

And she was a woman that was put into jail for 20 years, just because she was trying to fight for her people, basic human rights.

And then after she had passed, her limbs were separated and put on display in different museums.

And I wanted to tell her story, but I wanted to also use the feathers that I believe would relate back to her story.

All right, well I'm going to go.

[Jordan] Okay, sounds good.

It's good to see you.

It's good to see you too.

- See you guys.

- See you.

[upbeat music] ♪ ♪ [Sarah] Showing my work, the anxiety, it's always there.

I always actually figure Wyoming is a very small state, how many people are going to try and make it to my art opening?

Not a lot.

It doesn't offend me if nobody shows up.

[uptempo rhythmic music] ♪ ♪ When the art opening happened and there were so many people there... Hey, Jordan.

[Jordan] Good to see you, Sarah.

[Sarah] Good to see you.

I was so happy.

That's so hard.

This show is called The Art of Home.

It's the only one we do every year like it, and it features exclusively Native American artists.

This year, it just happened that everyone does in fact come from the Wind River Indian Reservation.

Being able to showcase Sarah's work is really exciting.

It was really appealing that a lot of her work was larger.

Her pieces are mostly over 20 inches.

There's a lot of symbolic meaning to her work.

We just haven't seen anything like it.

This show is, it's really different because it does bring out so many other people, and it's really fun.

It's a much livelier opening.

There's a lot of energy in this show.

So it's just great.

That piece took me two months, because I had to work with the feathers in her hair.

What inspired you?

[Sarah] I think I was interviewing with the newspaper lady when Della Sage and Karen Jean came in.

Ah, so you can see where these people came from.

[Sarah] Yep, yes.

I was mid-sentence with the newspaper lady.

I was like... Ah, Della.

It is so good to see you.

Thank you.

Hi, how are you doing?

They call me sister, but they're my, I guess, white man way is cousin.

It was really good to see them.

I was very surprised to see them.

I really like your work.

[Sarah] Thank you.

[laughs] Yeah.

To see all the people there, and they were enjoying themselves.

It felt good.

And then the drum group, which is another aspect I've never had in an art opening, that was also a really good aspect to add in to-- singing is a part of art.

[Native American singing] [Sarah] It brought vibrations of energy into the space.

[Native American singing] I really enjoyed that.

[Native American singing] Up next, we'd like to have Sarah speak about her work, and being able to come here and do this show with us.

[applause] [Sarah] I don't speak for everybody, and I want people to know that.

I'm not trying to take the voice from anybody else.

How's everybody doing tonight?

Good?

I just, I want to make other people happy, and I want to let them know that other people relate to what they've gone through.

I just want to share a little bit about my art pieces that are hanging here, and then on the center wall as well.

My parents had 12 kids.

So it was always... it was always, I was super shy, and I expressed myself a lot through art, because it was a quiet expression.

My sister had passed away when I was 16, and she was abused by her boyfriend at the time.

And I wanted to show how much of an impact that she had on me.

While she was being buried, I remember seeing cuts on her arm and bruises from her boyfriend, and what I wanted to do was highlight the strong, indigenous women throughout the world.

Not just in America, but throughout the world who have overcome so many obstacles to be the backbone of our people.

I just really want to say thank you all for coming out tonight, and super thankful for Karen and Della.

You have no idea how much this means to me, for you guys being here.

I really appreciate it.

It's always good to see family.

[applause] Sarah's art was received so positively by everybody.

Every single piece told a story, how the strength of a woman is a lot of different things, and I think that was really exciting.

So this right here is showing she walked this... [Jordan] And I think that's the exciting part about a native art show.

You take all the strengths, but also the fears and the disappointments and the sadness of native people, and you put it all into one space.

And you allow people to hopefully walk away with a better understanding about native people.

I do believe that art is helping me heal even to this current day.

I'm learning more and more through my art that I'm creating a more powerful woman within myself.

[gentle music] It feels like I'm driving through a painting right now.

Everything looks yellow right now, which is very calming, and, um...

I love all the shadows that the mountains create.

And even though I'm nervous right now to go speak to the high school students, that scenery just lets me know that I am so much smaller than everything.

So it gives me some peace.

It's one of my, always my favorite memories coming and running around here.

The freedom of just being a kid.

I mean, look at this land compared to the city.

How could you not love it?

Hi Ken.

Hello.

How are you?

Good morning, my name's Sarah Ortegon.

I am enrolled Eastern Shoshone, but I'm also Northern Arapaho.

I think that art and creating is a part of all of us.

Whatever your passion is, if it's traditional Native American art or if it's just you being a Native American creating art, that's Native American art.

Being an artist is intrinsic.

I don't believe that it's based on what other people see.

Whoever creates some sort of physical manifestation of what they have in their mind, you're an artist at that point.

It's important that we learn our culture, our practices, who we are, who are backgrounds are, our grandparents, our great-grandparents.

It makes us who we are and ties us to who we are.

If I have something that I was told as a young person, who can I promote that or tell that to later?

Learning those little aspects carries that life on, and on, and on.

[woman] Dante, come here.

This is Dante Shakespeare.

He's hearing impaired, and he is a fantastic beadworker.

[Sarah] When did you start beading?

I was in third grade.

[Sarah] Third grade?

You're doing way better than I did when I was 13.

Do you feel like it helped you to communicate, to do art and beadwork?

Do you feel like it helps you express yourself in that sort of way?

- Yeah.

- Yeah?

Even if you don't see yourself as an artist right now, maybe in the future, people will look back and they'll think you're this amazing artist because you created some regalia, because it's an expression of who you are as, you know, as a talented beadworker.

[Ken] Little gestures of kindness, giving somebody even a spool of beading thread, maybe they couldn't afford that $20 dollars or something.

And that's going to encourage them.

Or maybe as a kid, you give kids a bunch of beads and needles and threads, and that really can make an impact.

[Sarah] That's really pretty.

What are you going to do with this?

Ooh, make it a necklace around here.

[Sarah] Around there?

Ooh.

That's cool.

There's so much talent in what our people can do, and I think now more than ever we need to really carry our traditions on.

[Jhane] When non-native people come and look at the art, they see that we're thriving as a society, as a culture, and as a civilization.

Making new stuff, embracing technology, but also still making traditional things.

[Zedora] Kids now, they are putting more art into it.

I'm very happy, because the younger generation are learning.

And you don't criticize them for what they're doing.

They're keeping it alive.

[Jordan] I think if native people always get put in certain boxes and people always think, "Well, if it's native art, then it's got to be a prairie scene with tipis," and that's what they come to expect.

Native American art, to me, is a piece of the artist.

And whatever tribe they may be, and whatever medium that it may be.

Maybe it is a beaded bracelet.

Maybe it is a brooch that they wear at a pow wow, but it could also be a doll that they made, an anime figure that they did.

This is one that I sold.

That's beautiful.

[Jhane] Making art, for me, is very therapeutic.

I can just be quiet and not speak, and it's my soul that's speaking into the art, and into the things that I make.

[Ken] Let's all share.

Let's take care of one another.

That's how the world stays beautiful.

[Beatrice] It's something that we got to hold onto, that's us.

That's who we are.

[Announcer] The Art of Home, A Wind River Story ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪