Las Vegas gallery marks heritage month with Indigenous art and free workshops

Fawn Douglas, a Las Vegas Paiute Tribe citizen, weaves conduit wire into basket bases at the Wai Gallery in Las Vegas, swapping desert plants for electrical wire for a display she plans to show at the space she runs with her partner, A.B. Wilkinson. The gallery opened ahead of National Native American Heritage Month in November and exhibits pieces by Indigenous artists.

The gallery and the IndigenousAF storefront run free art programs that include collage projects and sidewalk chalk paintings. Douglas said the programs draw people into conversation. "They're off their phones. They're having actual conversations together," Douglas said. She said the two storefronts push back against the idea that Native Americans and Alaska Natives are a single group and that all of them live on reservations.

A painting in the gallery shows a silhouetted Joshua tree against a backlit mountain range under a night sky, a desert version of Vincent Van Gogh's "Starry Night." The work backed the push to designate Gold Butte as a national monument in Nevada. Another piece, a black-and-white underwater photograph titled "Ha'ina 'ia mai," shows a Hawaiian dancer; the title translates to "let the story be told." Douglas said Native American art is not limited to geometric patterns and that each piece carries a narrative.

Elsewhere this month, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians Tribal Council unanimously passed a resolution this year granting five rights to the water system that rises in the Great Smoky Mountains and flows into the Gulf of Mexico, including the right to flow freely and to be free from pollution. The NAIWA Daughters, girls ages 10 to 17, brought the resolution forward after training on the rights of nature, hosting community dinners, conducting surveys and meeting with council members. The Earth Law Center calls it the first all-female-led rights-of-nature effort in the U.S.

Rosa Soto Alvarez, 50, leads the Pascua Yaqui Tribe's ICWA Committee, coordinating statewide advocacy supporting the federal Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 and encouraging states to adopt versions of it. She has cared for 25 foster children in her home. Hodokii Johnson, 24, a Muscogee Nation citizen and descendant of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes, tattoos three brown lines on clients' fingers, one for a mother, one for the client and one for a daughter, then says a prayer with them. Johnson has worked with Inchunwa, a project on healing through traditional tattoos from the southeastern U.S.