Three Indigenous Artists Share How Ancestral History & Notions of Identity Influence Their Practices

To mark Indigenous Peoples’ Month in November, Pace Live will host Towards Right Relations: A Roundtable Dialogue, an evening that will focus on the ways cultural institutions can move towards right relations with Indigenous communities and the role that art can play in that repair. Among the roundtable’s participants are Nadema Agard, a Cherokee, Lakota, and Powhatan artist, writer, curator, and educator in Repatriation and Multicultural/Native American arts and cultures; Jeremy Dennis, a contemporary fine art photographer and tribal member of the Shinnecock Indian Nation; and River Whittle, a two-spirit Caddo, Lenape, and white multimedia artist, youth mentor, and community organizer.

In the following interviews, Agard, Dennis, and Whittle each discuss their artistic practices and creative influences, offering advice on how art institutions can meaningfully support Indigenous artists and communities.