Native American Heritage at Mia
The Minneapolis Institute of Art museum resides on Dakota Makoce, the homelands of the Dakota people and their Anishinaabe and Ho-Chunk neighbors. Mia recognizes the legacy of colonization, genocide, its painful history, and its impact on Native people. Mia is committed to continuous learning and embraces a living relationship with Native communities to build a more inclusive, empathic, and equitable space for all.
Mia is a proud and long-standing supporter of Native art and the Native community. The museum opened a gallery devoted to Native American art in 1988, and over the decades this space has been expanded to three galleries. We recognize the significance of gathering together to share the stories and celebrate the art created by Minnesota’s original peoples as well as by Native makers across North America and Canada, both from the past and those actively creating today.
CURATORS
Beginning under the tenure of director Evan Maurer (1988-2005), Mia created a permanent Native American curator position charged with caring for the collection and expanding our knowledge of historical and contemporary Native art.
2014 – 2024 Jill Ahlberg Yohe
1998 – 2013 Joe Horse Capture (A’aninin)
GUEST CURATORS
2023: Jaida Grey Eagle (Oglala Lakota) – In Our Hands: Native Photography 1890 to Now
2021: Alexandra Buffalohead (Bdewakantowan Dakhóta, Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate) – Shifting the Perspective
2019: Teri Greeves (Kiowa) – Hearts of our People: Native Women Artists
NATIVE AMERICAN FELLOWSHIPS
We are grateful to the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community (SMSC) for their generous support which has sponsored Native fellow positions since 2005. Mia’s Native American Fellowship Program was one of the first among art museums in the U.S. The fellowship program has offered professional training to Native American students in curatorial research,exhibition development, collections care and record-keeping, community outreach, educational material development, and other museum projects. Past fellows include:
2023: Justice Jensvold (Pejutazizi Oyate)
2020-2022: Juan Lucero (Isleta Pueblo)
2019-2020: Jaida Grey Eagle (Oglala Lakota)
2018-2019: Elizabeth Day (Ojibwe)
2017-2018: Marlena Myles (Spirit Lake Dakota & Mohegan/Muscogee)
2015-2016: Dakota Hoska (Oglala Lakota)
January – June 2013: Coreana Fairbanks
September 2010 – August 2011: Coral Moore (Seminole/Cherokee)
May – September 2010: Amanda Norman (Anishinaabe/ White Earth Band of Ojibwe)
April-July 2010; February-May 2009: Carolyn Anderson (Diné [Navajo])
January – June 2007: Heather Pollock (Blackfeet)
SPECIAL EXHIBITIONS
October 2023 – January 2024
In Our Hands: Native Photography 1890 to Now
Enter into the vivid worlds of Native photography, as framed by generations of First Nations, Métis, Inuit, and Native American photographers themselves. Presenting more than 150 photographs of, by, and for Indigenous people, “In Our Hands” encouraged all to see through the lens held by Native photographers. Learn more.
June – August 2019
Hearts of Our People: Native Women Artists
Presented in close cooperation with top Native women artists and scholars, this first major exhibition of artwork by Native women honored the achievements of more than 115 artists from the United States and Canada spanning over 1,000 years. Learn more and view media related to the exhibition.
June 2017
The Many Voices of Colonial America: Charleston Dining Room and Charleston Drawing Room
For more than 80 years, these rooms have been interpreted as late-1700s interiors featuring high-style Chippendale and Federal-style American and English furniture and objects. This temporary exhibition replaced a stylistic approach by reinserting African and Native American presence into these spaces.
October 2010 – January 2011
Art of the Native Americans: The Thaw Collection
A highpoint of Joe Horse Capture’s tenure at Mia was this exhibition which featured 110 spectacular objects spanning more than 2,500 years drawn from the Eugene and Claire Thaw Collection of American Indian art. The collection featured works from all of the major North American cultural regions: Arctic/Subarctic, California and the Great Basin, Northwest Coast, Plains/Prairie/Plateau, Southwest, Woodlands, and Southeast – a rare opportunity to see Native American art in a single and comprehensive exhibition. Learn more.
February 22 – May 16, 2000
Beauty, Honor, and Tradition: The Legacy of Plains Indian Shirts
Through interviews with tribal elders and archival research, this exhibition demonstrated how cultural garments function as a symbol of status, honor, and tradition within the Plains Indian world. In a rare curatorial collaboration between the National Museum of the American Indian-Smithsonian Institution and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, “Beauty, Honor, and Tradition” featured forty-three Plains Indian shirts created by twenty-two tribes. Learn more.
June – August 1988
Objects of Bright Pride: Northwest Coast Indian Art from the American Museum of Natural History
Nearly 100 ceremonial and utilitarian objects produced by the Indians of the Northwest Coast were featured in this exhibition drawn from the collections of the American Museum of Natural History.
1976
I Wear the Morning Star
This exhibition was the first public display of Ghost Dance and depicts the beauty and splendor of the ritual clothing and objects used in the ceremony.
October – December 1973
American Indian Art: Form and Tradition
This temporary exhibit was located on the eleventh floor of the IDS Tower (due to renovations in the existing Mia facilities) and produced as a cooperative venture with the Walker Art Center and the American Indian Art Association and drew a combined attendance of 180,000. The exhibit was widely acknowledged for its community involvement as well as its presentation of objects.
GALLERY INSTALLATIONS
November 2023 – May 2024
Reimagining Native/American Art
What happens when Native American and American art is seen together, rather than in separate places? This Indigenous-led, consensus-based curatorial experiment is based on Dakota philosophies and ways of being. It includes thematic installations that center “place,” honor the living land, explore the power of relationality and ends with a reflection, inviting visitors to imagine the future we wish to have. Learn more.
July 2023 – March 2024
The Lyrical Artwork of Jim Denomie
Jim Denomie (Ojibwe, Lac Courte Oreilles Band, 1955–2022) drew inspiration from lived experiences, pop culture, Anishinaabe traditions, and American histories to tell compelling narratives that depict his experiences of being Native in America. The exhibition examined Denomie’s creative process, tracing his ability to transform inspiration into monumental artworks. Learn more.
March 2023
New Acquisition: Winter Count
Plains Indian tribes preserved the events of their lives through oral history, recalling important stories to mark the year and passing those accounts down through the generations. Mia acquired a “winter count,” a pictographic calendar created by the Lakota people, which records these stories from 1798 to 1904, offering a glimpse into Lakota history.
February – June 2023
Northern Visions: Art and Life of the Inuit
This intimate exhibition was composed of Inuit sculpture and prints lent by the Winnipeg Art Gallery, representing works from several Inuit communities located in northern Canada. Inspired by the work of their ancestors, contemporary Inuit artists use themes of traditional life in many of their works.
November 2021 – November 2022
Alexandra Buffalohead: Shifting the Perspective
In her installation, guest curator Alexandra Buffalohead (Bdewakantowan Dakhóta, Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate) examined how museum narratives obscure some histories in preference of telling others. Placing the James J. Hill presentation tray (Tiffany and Co., 1884) in dialogue with Native artworks, Buffalohead offered a more complex and accurate framing of the history of St. Anthony Falls and Wita Wanagi (Spirit Island). In doing so, she provided a corrective lens that transcended and enriched Mia’s presentation of the past. Learn more.
July 2022
New Acquisition: Northern Plains Indian Moccasin Collection
With the support of The Ulrich Acquisition Fund and The Driscoll Art Accessions Endowment Fund, Mia purchased a large collection of Northern Plains Indian moccasins to be placed on display with the Institute’s existing moccasin collection.
August 2021 – August 2022
Virgil Ortiz: Convergence
This immersive experience celebrated the futuristic worlds created by multidisciplinary artist Virgil Ortiz (Cochiti Pueblo). His characters are inspired by the largest uprising in North American history: in 1680, Pueblo communities banded together to defeat a brutal colonial Spanish regime in the Southwest. This past informs the future in Ortiz’s 1680/2180 series, and offers contemporary Pueblo people sources of strength for creating future realities that recognize Pueblo sovereignty and survival. Learn more.
August 2021 – August 2022
Parska/Shada
This collection of Pueblo art highlighted Keresan, Tewa, Towa, and Hopi voices and culture. Curated by Juan Lucero (Isleta Pueblo), Mia’s Mdewakanton Native Art Fellow, this exhibition transported visitors to the oldest villages in the United States for a parska (in Keresan) or shada (in Tewa) community dance. Over 40 works of art—watercolor paintings, bow guards, manta weavings, ceramics, and Hopi katsinam dolls—came together to create one ceremonial spirit. Learn more.
March – December 2021
Unexpected Turns: Women Artists and the Making of American Basket-Weaving Traditions
This installation chronicled experiments in basketry—all made by American women artists from the 1800s to the present day—that explore the boundaries between utility and whimsy, weaving and sculpture. Artists include Elizabeth Hickox (Karuk), Gail Tremblay (Mi’kmaq and Onondaga), Josie Robinson (Ojibwe), Mary Giles, Elaine Small, Ferne Jacobs, Carole Hetzel, Tracy Krumm, and Henrietta Snype (Gullah Geechee). Learn more.
November 2019 – October 2020
Storytelling: Julie Buffalohead
In this exhibition, Buffalohead created visual narratives told by animal characters and connected the mythical with the ordinary – coaxing visitors to view her work within their own experiences to discover additional layers of meaning. Learn more.
October 2017 – July 2018
George Morrison in Focus
George Morrison, a renowned Anishinaabe modernist from Minnesota, constantly explored new ways to translate nature and personal experience. This exhibition placed “Untitled,” a newly conserved Morrison painting from 1960, alongside the work of artists he knew and exhibited with in the 1950s and 1960s, reconnecting him to the scene he both embraced and eschewed. Learn more.
October 2017 – July 2018
George Morrison: Drawings and Small Paintings
Re-examining Morrison’s life and legacy, this exhibition showed 23 of his works from Mia’s collection. His visionary art was inspired by the natural world, a profound sense of place, and Native American culture. Learn more.
December 2016 – August 2017
Brilliant! Pairing Continuity and Influence
This show celebrated the artistic possibilities and inherent beauty of color and offered a fresh way to think about Native, modern, and contemporary art. Native American art significantly influenced modern art, which in turn had an effect on contemporary Native art. Rather than viewing Native art as unchanging and of the past, this exhibition presented ways to reframe our perspective by viewing Native art as complex and cutting edge. Learn more.
May 2015 – February 2016
Arriving at Fresh Water: Contemporary Native Artists from Our Great Lakes
This exhibition presented 14 of the region’s most visionary Native artists as they tackled the most universal issues of the day. Their work explores truth and justice, community and self – celebrating the past while challenging the expectations of the future. Learn more.
December 2009 – March 2010
From Our Ancestors: Art of the White Clay People
Several years in the making this exhibit showcased garments and artifacts from Joe Horse Capture’s own tribe, the A’aninin (in the tribe’s language this translates to “white clay people” or “people of the white clay”) – providing insight and perspective on the tribe’s history and culture. Objects were drawn from Mia’s permanent collection, along with loans from several other museums. This show was a milestone for Horse Capture because it explored the cultural history of his tribe and tapped the expertise of tribe members by having them catalog the objects. The museum also provided free copies of the exhibition catalogue to tribal members. Learn more.
June 2009
New Acquisition: Bella Coola Headdress
The Bella Coola are known for their distinctive sculptural tradition. Their best headdress frontlets are the most exuberant and expressive carvings of this type among Northwest Coast cultures. Surviving frontlets with intact headdresses from earlier generations are rare so Mia was thrilled with the arrival of this great acquisition.
March 2002
New Acquisition: Native American Beadwork
Purchased through the William Hood Dunwoody Fund and Art Quest 2001, the beadwork designs on a rare nineteenth century Native American shirt displayed in the Recent Acquisitions exhibition in the Cargill Gallery included a combination of two tribal styles: A’ani (Gros Ventre) and Nakoda (Assiniboine).
PROGRAMS & LECTURES
Ongoing
Native American Heritage Month
Though November is nationally recognized as Native American Heritage Month, celebration and education of Indigenous art is available at Mia year-round through virtual offerings including exploration of past exhibitions and Resiliency Care Packages, presented in collaboration with local Native artists, teachers, healers and elders.
November 2023
A Talk with Shelley Niro
Shelley Niro is a multi-disciplinary artist and a member of the Six Nations Reserve, Turtle Clan, Bay of Quinte Mohawk. Niro produced a film, Café Daughter, which has received support from Telefilm Canada, the Indigenous Screen Office, Ontario Creates and The Northern Ontario Film Office. Niro’s visual works on canvas, paper, and film tackle the misconceptions or stereotypical portrayals of Native women. Listen to the discussion.
October 2023
Opening Conversations: In Our Hands: Native Photography, 1890 to Now
Listen and learn with the artists, scholars, and knowledge-sharers behind In Our Hands: Native Photography, 1890 to Now in three informal panel discussions. Moderated by Mia co-curators Casey Riley, Jill Ahlberg Yohe, and Jaida Grey Eagle, each conversation explores ideas central to the art and artists involved in this path-breaking exhibition at Mia. Learn more: Panel Discussion 1/Panel Discussions 2 and 3
April 2023
McKnight Discussion Series: Dyani White Hawk
The series is co-presented with the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and funded by the McKnight Foundation. This discussion features Dyani White Hawk (Sičáŋǧu Lakota), a multidisciplinary artist based in Minneapolis. Her practice, strongly rooted in painting and beadwork, extends into sculpture, installation, video, and performance, reflecting upon cross-cultural experiences through the amalgamation of influences from Lakota and Euro/American abstraction. View the discussion.
May 2022
Lecture Series: Parska/Shada with Juan Lucero
Join Juan Lucero (Isleta Pueblo), Mia’s Mdewakanton Native Art Fellow and curator of “Parska/Shada” for a virtual gallery talk and tour. This exhibition transports visitors to the oldest villages in the United States for a parska (in Keresan) or shada (in Tewa) community dance, and highlights Mia’s collection of Pueblo art, featuring Keresan, Tewa, Towa, and Hopi voices and culture. View the discussion.
December 2021
Lecture Series: Will Wilson
Will Wilson’s creative work centers around the continuation and transformation of customary Indigenous cultural practice. Through three primary projects – Auto Immune Response (AIR), The Critical Indigenous Photographic Exchange (CIPX), and Connecting the Dots: for a Just Transition – Wilson expands the possibilities of what contemporary art can be. View the discussion.
December 2021
Lecture Series: Rose B. Simpson
From the Santa Clara Pueblo in New Mexico, Rose revisits her own creative navigation through the concept of authenticity. From the prerequisites of a cultural voice to social guidelines and gender expression, Rose explores the many facets of the question “who do you think you are?” View the discussion.
December 2021
Lecture Series: Only through Community with Dyani White Hawk
Artist Dyani White Hawk, joined by Sandy White Hawk (her mother), Terri Yellow Hammer (a family friend), and Wakinyan LaPointe (her cousin), hosts a discussion on Očeti Šakowin kinship and creation. White Hawk will reflect on what and who made her artwork possible and the important relationships and cultural teachings that influence her work. View the discussion.
October 2021
Juan Lucero: From the Feast Table
In “Parska/Shada” visitors can explore Mia’s collection of Pueblo art and the ceremonial spirit of the community dances-parska (in Keresan) or shada (in Tewa)-held in the oldest villages in the United States. Join exhibition curator Juan Lucero, Mia’s Mdewakanton Native Art Fellow, and several Pueblo artists to learn about Pueblo dance and explore the connections between belonging and longing. View the discussion.
May 2021
Indigenizing Photography: The Importance of Self-Representation in the Native American Community
Cara Romero was born in Inglewood, CA and raised between the rural Chemehuevi reservation in the Mojave Desert and the urban sprawl of Houston. Her practice is shaped by years of study, and a visceral approach to representing Indigenous and non-Indigenous cultural memory, collective history, and lived experiences, from a Native American female perspective. View the discussion.
April 2021
The Art of Floral Island: Dakota Floral Legacy
Holly Young, creator of Art in Bloom’s 2021 signature artwork Floral Legacy, and multidisciplinary artist Graci Horne join Jill Ahlberg Yohe, Mia’s associate curator of Native American art, in a lively conversation. Learn about Dakota art, Young’s inspiration for Floral Legacy, and Native perspectives on floral art. View the discussion.
December 2020
Sam Olbekson – Cultural Expression in Architecture as a Means to Community Building
Olbekson is Principal of Native American Design at Cuningham Group and founder of Full Circle Indigenous Planning. Sam brings the perspective of a member of the White Earth Nation of Ojibwe who grew up in Native communities. He believes that design, health, equity, culture, community, economic opportunity are all inextricably linked. View the discussion.
December 2020
Robin Wall Kimmerer – Learning the Grammar of Animacy: Subject and Object
Drawing on both Indigenous and scientific knowledge, botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer talks about the importance of cultivating a reciprocal relationship with the environment, and how understanding our connection to the land helps us connect more deeply with one another. View the discussion.
October 2020
Virtual Family Day: Z Puppets
How can YOU help keep alive an endangered language and celebrate Indigenous People’s Day? Through catchy songs and fun storytelling from their show Say It! Sing It! Play It! In Cherokee, award-winning Minneapolis performers, Chris Griffith (enrolled tribal member of the Cherokee Nation) and Shari Aronson of Z Puppets Rosenschnoz, lead an adventure into reclaiming language. Watch the show.
November 2019
Native American Artists Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon
This event invited the public to join in honoring Native American artists whose work is represented in Mia’s collections by writing or enhancing Wikipedia articles.
February 2019
Nora Naranjo Morse – Numbe Whageh: Pueblo Perspectives in Public Art
A life-long resident of the Santa Clara Pueblo, Morse has been steeped in the rich traditions of her people as well as exposed to a different set of traditions in the Anglo world. Morse attempts to resolve these conflicting pulls through her work, which pays homage to her long lineage as it embraces aspects of the contemporary world. In this talk, Morse discusses public art from a Native, and specifically Pueblo, perspective. View the discussion.
October 2018
Horse Nation of the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ”
Artists Arthur Amiotte, Keith BraveHeart, Ashley Pourier, and Gwen Westerman explore how
horses shape the history, spirituality, and culture of the Dakhóta, Nakhóta, and Lakȟóta
(Dakota, Nakota, and Lakota) people, collectively known as the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ (Seven
Council Fires). View the discussion.
June 2018
Lecture Series: Hrag Vartanian in Conversation with Erik Benson and Julie Buffalohead
Erik Benson is an artist whose process-based paintings are informed by architecture and
everyday objects found in urban landscape. Julie Buffalohead is an enrolled member of the Ponca Tribe of Oklahoma whose work focuses thematically on describing a cultural experience, an Indian experience, through a personal language. View the discussion.
May 2018
Identity in Our Fashion
The Native Arts and Cultures Foundation (NACF) partnered with Mia to present a collaborative panel event featuring NACF Mentor Artist Fellows – TahNibaa Naataanii (Navajo), Cara Romero (Chemehuevi) , Lisa Telford (Git’ans Git’anee Haida), and Delina White (Ojibwe) – who discussed how their cultural identity and their art intersect, and in what way they incorporate their Native identity into their chosen traditional or contemporary visual art form. View the discussion.
April 2018
Ledger Craft Performance
Rory Wakemup, artist and director of All My Relations Arts gallery, staged a “Ledger Craft” performance at Mia, working with students from Anishinaabe Academy. It was a conceptual mash-up of the video game Minecraft and ledger art, the historical chronicling of life as prisoners of war by Plains Indian artists.
June 2017
Roxanne Swentzell: Who Are You? Standing in Our Own Shoes
Focusing largely on interpretative female portraits, Swentzell’s figures attempt to restore the balance of power between the male and the female inherently recognized in her own culture. Her work, though steeped in her own Native American culture, demonstrates an astounding universality, speaking to people of all cultures. View the discussion.
May 2017
Poetry Reading: TGIFryBread Native Writers Speak
As part of Mia’s Global Movements program series, several talented Twin Cities Native American writers read from their poems, short stories, and other writings of life in the city, life on the road, and life worth living.
October 2016
Lecture Series: Wendy Red Star – The Insistence of an Apsáalooke Feminist
Wendy Red Star uses photography, fiber arts, video, and sculpture to shape a novel perspective on Native American life, an unexpected commentary that has carved out a forum for Native women’s voices in contemporary art. Red Star sees herself as a “cultural archivist,” unaffectedly addressing the experience of being a Crow (Apsáalooke) female in today’s society, both on and off reservations. View the discussion.
November 2015
Seeing Clearly: What Photography Reveals about Native American Identity and Perception
Tom Jones, assistant professor of photography at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, explains how his Ho-Chunk identity helps him to challenge our perceptions and assumptions of Native people, offering new perspectives of tribal members as active agents in the 21st century. View the discussion.
November 2015
Native American Women Artists Exhibition Roundtable
Mia hosted a roundtable for Native Women Artists and scholars to meet and plan for the first comprehensive exhibition exclusively devoted to Native women artists from prehistory to the present, in all media, and from the entire United States and parts of Canada. Learn more.
June/July 2013
Modern Spirit: The Art of George Morrison
This lecture documented, celebrated and investigated the artistic achievement of George Morrison, the distinguished and beloved Chippewa modernist. Often inspired by land, water, and sky, Morrison mixed abstraction with representation to produce sensuous works of art that explore form, color and texture.
April 2007
Family Day: Traditional and Contemporary Arts of Native America
Attendees were invited to celebrate traditional Native American culture with a performance of storytelling, music, and dance by Chickasaw/Choctaw M. Cochise Anderson.
March 2006
Friends Lecture: Tibetan and Navajo Sacred Wisdom
Peter Gold, an anthropologist and author, discussed the remarkable similarity between the Navajo and Tibetan spiritual and artistic traditions – drawing parallels between both cultures regarding creation myths, cosmology, visionary arts, and health and initiation practices.
November 2004
Navajo Textiles: Weavings of the Dine 1850-1940
Mark Sublette, president of Medicine Man Gallery, Inc., presented some of the finest textile interpretations of Navajo life and environment by the people who know it best.
March 2004
Family Day: Every Shirt Tells a Story
This event invited attendees to create their own shirt using images, colors and patterns from traditional Plains Indian clothing and included music and dance by Fast Horse, a Native American performance duo.
ARTICLES
June/July 2011
New Acquisition: Native American Shirt Comes Home
Very few works of art created by Native Americans in the eighteenth-century Great Lakes region survive today. This Arts Magazine article highlights Mia’s acquisition of the only known existing painted shirt made by eighteenth-century Native Americans from the Great Lakes region. After 300 years away in a private collection in France, Mia finally brought it home (Arts, June/July/August 2011, page 20).
September/October/November 2010
Art of the Native Americans: The Thaw Collection
This Arts Magazine article highlights the first Native American art exhibition in more than 35 years at Mia to present a comprehensive overview of artworks created by Indigenous artists from the entire continent of Native North America (Arts, Sept/Oct/Nov 2010, page 7).
December 2009
From Our Ancestors: Art of the White Clay People
This MPR article highlights how, with a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, Joe Horse Capture was able to continue the work of this father to track down the artifacts of his tribe – the A’aninin (the White Clay People) – and place some of the results of his search on display at Mia. (This exhibit was also featured in the December 2009/January/February 2010 Arts Magazine, page 4).
May/June 2005
The Minneapolis Institute of Arts Salutes Dr. Evan M. Maurer
After 16 years as director and president, Dr. Maurer leaves Mia with a legacy of excellence, placing it among the world’s greatest art museums. The Arts Magazine details Maurer’s contributions as well as his focus on Native American collections and communities. (Arts, May/June 2005, page 12).
January/February 2004
Beauty, Honor and Tradition: The Legacy of Plains Indian Shirts
Finely crafted Plains Indian shirts tell stories, bestow honors, and carry responsibilities. This Arts Magazine article by Joe Horse Capture shares details of the Mia exhibition and related programs including lectures, as well as both adult and youth classes (Arts, January/February 2004, page 8).
Mia is committed to championing policies and practices that value diversity, foster equity, and empower an accessible and inclusive environment. We invite you to learn more about our Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Accessibility Policy and impact.