Indian Theater: Native Performance, Art, and Self-Determination since 1969 takes its impetus from a modest, yet significant document: “Indian Theatre: An Artistic Experiment in Progress”, published by the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) in 1969 and written by Lloyd Kiva New and Rolland R. Meinholtz, together with IAIA students. The document initiated the New Native Theater movement, which offered a radically different way to contextualize the long-standing practice of performance in Native societies across Turtle Island. It also created a template for its future. It is a methodology and an origin point for this exhibition. For the participating artists and performers, it is a guide. This exhibition situates performance, performativity, and theater as an origin point for the development of contemporary art by Native American, First Nations, Métis, Inuit, and Alaska Native artists; this includes the influential role that Native artists played in the self-determination era.

In the artworks and archival materials in Indian Theater, visual sovereignty is enacted via strategies and long traditions of material agency and invention; storytelling and testimony; blanketing and adornment (as material and method); masking, and taking on new identities; representations of the body and its absence; Native music; inauthenticity and fabrication; racy humor; historical and contemporary secret societies; Native and non-colonial economies; #LandBack and #WaterBack movements; and Native resistance movements, of the present and the past.

Every attempt at history is always partial and inevitably filled with omissions. Consider this exhibition an unfolding of relations—both known and yet to be defined.

Artists

KC Adams (Métis); asinnajaq (Inuk); Sonny Assu (Ligwiłda’xw Kwakwaka’wakw from Wei Wai Kum Nation); Natalie Ball (Klamath/Modoc); Rick Bartow (Wiyot); Rebecca Belmore (Member of the Lac Seul First Nation [Anishinaabe]); Bob Boyer (Métis); Dana Claxton (Lakota); Theo Jean Cuthand (Plains Cree, Scottish, Irish); Ruth Cuthand (Plains Cree, Scottish, Irish, Canadian); Beau Dick (Kwakwaka’wakw, Musgamakw Dzawada’enuxw First Nation); Demian DinéYahzi’ (Diné); Rosalie Favell (Métis [Cree/ British]); Jeneen Frei Njootli (Vuntut Gwitchin, Czech and Dutch); Nicholas Galanin (Tlingit/Unangax̂); Jeffrey Gibson (Mississippi Band of Choctaw and Cherokee); Ishi Glinsky (Tohono O’odham); Raven Halfmoon (Caddo); Gabrielle L’Hirondelle Hill (Métis); Sky Hopinka (Ho-Chunk Nation/Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians); Maria Hupfield (Anishnaabek, Wasauksing First Nation/Canada); Matthew Kirk (Navajo/Diné); Kite (Oglala Sioux Tribe); Cannupa Hanska Luger (Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara, Lakota); Tanya Lukin Linklater (Alutiiq/Sugpiaq); Linda Lomahaftewa (Hopi/Choctaw); James Luna (Payómkawichum, Ipai, and Mexican); Rachel Martin (Tlingit/Tsaagweidei, Killer Whale Clan, of the Yellow Cedar House [Xaai Hit’] Eagle Moiety); Kent Monkman (member of Fisher River Cree Nation in Treaty 5 Territory [Manitoba]); Audie Murray (Métis); Lloyd Kiva New (Cherokee); New Red Order (Adam Khalil [Sault Tribe of Chippewa Indians]; Zack Khalil [Sault Tribe of Chippewa Indians]; Jackson Polys [Tlingit]); Jessie Oonark (Inuit); Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (Salish member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation); Eric-Paul Riege (Diné); Walter Scott (Kanien'kehá:ka [Mohawk]); Spiderwoman Theater (Lisa Mayo, Gloria Miguel, and Muriel Miguel [all Rappahannock and Kuna]); Charlene Vickers (Anishinaabe); Kay WalkingStick (Citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma and Anglo); Marie Watt (Seneca and German-Scot); Dyani White Hawk (Sičangu Lakota); and Nico Williams (Anishinaabe).

Performances

Nicholas Galanin’s White Carver is performed every Saturday, 11 AM to 2 PM
June 6–September 5, 2026

About the Performer: David Schimpff is a Santa Fe-based storyteller and performer who has been active in narrative and roleplaying communities since moving to the city in 2009. He has contributed to podcasts including The Esoteric Order of Roleplayers and Frivolous Gaming, co-hosted the late-night KSFR radio program Lullaby’s for Cthulhu, and performed with the Santa Fe Renaissance Faire.

Venues

Indian Theater was originally organized by the Hessel Museum of Art, Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College. Following its presentation at CCS Bard, the exhibition traveled to the MacKenzie Art Gallery and SITE SANTA FE. This iteration of Indian Theater is presented in collaboration with the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (MoCNA) and the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA).

IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (MoCNA) is the country’s leading museum for exhibiting, collecting, and interpreting the most progressive work of contemporary Native artists. MoCNA is dedicated solely to advancing the scholarship, discourse, and interpretation of contemporary Native art for regional, national, and international audiences—as such, it stewards over 9,500 contemporary Indigenous artworks (created 1962 to present). MoCNA is at the forefront of contemporary Native art presentation and strives to be flexible, foresighted, and risk-taking in its exhibitions and programs.

Thank You

Indian Theater: Native Performance, Art, and Self-Determination since 1969 is generously supported by the Carl and Marilynn Thoma Foundation, Teiger Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, Nusenda Foundation, Century Bank, Diane and Werner Grob, Helen Kornblum, Ted Kornblum, Courtney Finch Taylor and Scott Taylor, McCune Foundation, New Mexico Spirit, the SITE SANTA FE Board of Directors, and contributions made to the SITE SANTA FE Exhibitions Fund.

Additional support is provided by the City of Santa Fe Arts and Culture Department and the 1% Lodgers Tax and the County of Santa Fe Lodgers’ Tax.