Nina Sanders (Apsaalooke), Senior Fellow at the University of Chicago, Neubauer Collegium, is a curator, writer, and culture consultant. Sanders has done work for the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe, NM, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, and the Field Museum in Chicago where she curated the groundbreaking exhibition “Apsaalooke Women and Warriors.” Nina has written for the Smithsonian, Native American Art Magazine and recently published “Apsaalooke Women and Warriors,” a scholarly publication associated with the Field Museum exhibition.
Nina curated The Eleven, Coming in Hot photoshoot of bright and talented artists that you can find in our Indige-Slay feature.
I would like to acknowledge that I live and work in O’ga P’ogeh Owingeh (Santa Fe), the current and ancestral land of the Tewa people. Home also to the Towa, Tiwa and Keres speaking Pueblo peoples and the many other tribes who followed including the Diné, Apache, and Comanche. As I live and breathe in this magnificent and sacred place, I offer my deepest respect and thank you to the original people of this land.
Aho.
K’uunda wo ha.
It took a team of remarkable humans to pull this photoshoot off, the exquisite realness that radiates from each of the eleven Native artists involved can be attributed to their creative passion and commitment to Native art and the legacy of Indian Market. This was a full circle moment as the space we occupied, the School for Advanced Research campus, which is also the White Sisters estate, dating back to 1923. Two women who were involved in the earliest iterations of Indian Market and supporters of Native Artists. Indian Markets origins can be attributed to a rather small group of people Native and non-Native who lived in the Santa Fe area and were involved in the cultivation and collection of Native art. One hundred years of Indian Market and we are still living in the presence of Indigenous excellence, this group of Native artists, some descended from those original Indian Market artists, came together to celebrate their talent and heritage, manifest new beginnings and claim space. These eleven artists embody the shared spirit of creative genius that has carried Native artists and Indian Market across generations of change, trauma, and resilience. Each of them lives around or in O’ga P’ogeh Owingeh (Santa Fe), they are also either an Indian Market artist or a descendant who is bound to Indian Market through ancestry.
In a time when our young people are faced with the insurmountable task of protecting the land and water, bringing justice to Indigenous women and children, and defending our cultures, we are forced to ask if they are up to the challenge. In my understanding and experience with the young artists I have spent time and conversed with I believe that we are in good hands. These eleven Native artists are exceptionally talented, kind hearted, hardworking and are explicitly present to make art, support their communities, and carry on the legacy of Indian Market. Let’s listen to them and support them as they bring about the positive and resounding change the world needs.
