At the heart of her research, SAR senior scholar Dean Falk asks, “What can fossils, babies, and Einstein tell us about the way our brains have evolved?” Falk addressed this question and more during a tour of lectures and interviews across western Australia this summer, where, on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) Radio program “Late Night Live”, she touches upon evolution and language, the uniqueness of Einstein’s brain, and “hobbits”, or the newly discovered (and short) human species, Homo floresiensis.
Every August, Santa Fe fills with people passionate about Native American art. Visitors and locals filter downtown to peruse the booths of Indian Market and to strike up conversations with the artists. Here is your guide to IARC’s former Native American...
Mateo Romero is interested in motion—bodies and ideas moving through space, history, ceremony, art. Romero describes his work as juxtaposing “timeless, archaic elements of Pueblo culture” with “contemporary abstract expressionist palette knife and brush work.” In 2002 he came to SAR’s Indian Arts Research Center (IARC) as the Ronald and Susan Dubin Native artist fellow.
“It may ruffle feathers, but diversity means there’s a different way of doing things. If you want buy-in from the Native communities, you have to listen to them.” —Teri Greeves, SAR’s 2003 Eric and Barbara Dobkin Native artist fellow, quoted in a recent New York Times article exploring the current Minneapolis Institute of Art exhibit, Hearts of Our People: Native Women Artists.
Ruined great houses, corn kernels and bones—these are just some of the archeological fragments that have offered researchers new insights into how Middle San Juan Puebloan peoples lived in the 12th and 13th centuries. Featured earlier this year in the Santa Fe New Mexican’s Pasatiempo, the book Aztec, Salmon, and the Puebloan Heartland of the Middle San Juan covers these topics and more as eleven contributing writers examine new evidence that helps shed light on the settlements.
Kelli Jo Ford, SAR’s 2016 Indigenous writer in residence’s Crooked Hallelujah will be published by Grove Atlantic in 2020, and one of the stories received the 2019 Plimpton Prize for Fiction from the Paris Review. Read more about Ford’s project and time at SAR.
How does a self-proclaimed perfectionist navigate the often messy process of making art? Northern Cheyenne printmaker and painter Jordan Craig tells us that even when the creative journey is difficult, a work’s flaws may become integral to the artist’s achievements. Explore her artistic perspective and learn about the work she produced as SAR’s 2018 Eric and Barbara Dobkin Native Artist Fellow.
A new, widely acclaimed book by SAR scholar alumnus David Treuer is challenging long-held views of the state of Native America. The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee, argues that Dee Brown’s famous history of Native American dispossession and genocide, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, perpetuates a mistaken impression of the situation of American Indians today.
This week, the Washington nonprofit, Artist Trust, announced Casandra Lopez, SAR’s 2013 Indigenous Writer-in-Residence, as the recipient of the 2018 James W. Ray Venture Project award. Given to two individuals annually, the award honors creatives who the Trust believes demonstrate exceptional originality.
