“I hadn’t had any time to prepare outfits for us but I wanted my 4-year-old son Justus to look really cool," she said

"He had a new pair of slip-on Vans and I suddenly had an idea, looking at the checkerboard design.” After that, she started hand-beading the shoes to make them look like traditional moccasins. “Once they were beaded they had this sort of urban Indian vibe so I braided my son’s hair, put on those shoes and he was the coolest little guy at the pow wow.” she continued, “People were stopping us to take photos, he made such a splash.”

And the shoes didn't just wow others — they gave Charlene's son a chance to "express his tribal identity" and partake in the usual kid antics (like running around), and he was proud to show them off. "It wasn't entirely traditional but a modern adaptation in helping him expressing his culture," she tells Teen Vogue.

After the photos from the festival were posted on social media, Charlene started getting contacted by people wanting her to make them shoes as well, and that’s when it took off. On her website, Charlene shows examples of already-completed custom orders, each with their own unique spin, alongside stunning hand beaded jewelry that's also available for purchase.

Her current pieces stem from Charlene's original work as a Native artist creating dolls and figures with a historic background, in which she used traditional Lakota beadwork.

"I feel that I am continuing the process while establishing a Native unique aesthetic, as well as communicating Native survival and commitment to showing that," she says. "In this case, I expressed it in beading a pair of slip-ons.


There is a historical tradition design that I used specifically for the Vans based off Lakota moccasins."
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The Hopi have a sacred relationship with the ancient caretaker of the earth, Masaw, and respect every gift given to them.

 The clay they and their ancestors have sourced from the land for centuries is treated with the utmost regard. Because of this, the Hopi people maintain a beautiful and unique pottery tradition on the mesas in Arizona.

Craftsmanship and creativity drawn from generations of knowledge flow through the potters today as they work. The Gift of the Earth Blanket draws on the design elements from these brilliant pieces as a testament to learning from the past while moving into the future.

The Pendleton Gift of the Earth Blanket is robe size, the size preferred by Native Americans for ceremonial purposes and wrapping about oneself as a robe. They are impressive as wall hangings and practical when folded on a sofa or at the foot of a bed.

‘Gift of the Earth’ blanket honors Hopi, will benefit American Indian College Fund

Gift of the Earth joins the Pendleton American Indian College Fund collection, a series of ten blankets, many of which are designs created by some of the finest Native American artists.


A portion of the proceeds from the sale of College Fund blankets provides scholarships for Native students to attend tribal colleges.


American Indian College Fund President and CEO Cheryl Crazy Bull (Sicangu Lakota) said, “The College Fund appreciates our long-term partnership with Pendleton Woolen Mills which has resulted in scholarships that support Native student higher education success. Students face many barriers and having financial support means they can not only pay for tuition and books but they can pay for food and shelter. Our students know that people cared when they receive a scholarship through this partnership.”
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Activists are heartbroken after taggers made their mark Friday night on a downtown Las Vegas mural that stands as a symbol of hope for indigenous people.

“I am so saddened at the amount of prejudice on this art that brought our indigenous communities together,” Las Vegas Paiute Tribe member and activist Fawn Douglas said Saturday.

But graffiti investigators with the Metropolitan Police Department are not treating the tagging as a hate crime, Metropolitan Police Department Lt. Grant Rogers said.

Officers were called by activists about 3:30 p.m. Saturday to 1001 S. First St, an address in the downtown arts district, where the large mural colors an alleyway. “HAVEC” had been tagged across the painting.

The exact meaning behind the tagging is unknown, but Rogers said it isn’t biased.

Douglas and seven other activists were at the mural Saturday afternoon talking to Metro officers. “They told us it looks like the act of awful people who want fame,” she said.


On the night of the vandalism, nearly 250 protesters rallied in front of the mural as part of a national call to action in support of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, Douglas said.


“The message of the art is one of pride and hope for Native American people and allies,” Douglas wrote on facebook. “Unfortunately, on the night of our action the Native American faces were vandalized.”

Police said no arrests have been made in connection with the tagging as of Saturday night.
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VANDALIZED: Beautiful mural downtown depicting Standing Rock #NoDAPL fight was graffitied overnight. Artist, activists talking to police pic.twitter.com/ua8SwCxuAh

— David Schuman (@david_schuman) March 12, 2017

“As indigenous people we've contributed so many things to the world, and our kids don't even know about it,” " We need to educate our kids through our art.”

"When I was done I felt so relieved. A weight had been lifted off my shoulders," acknowledged Henriquez, who teamed up with Gregg Deal, a painter, street artist and performance artist who belongs to the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe, for the project.

Then, just as he was about to leave the site, a woman approached Henriquez. "[She said,] 'We need this. This is going to empower our community,'" he recalled. "Then I understood the reason we did that mural and sacrificed so much. It wasn't until you had to go through it that you really understood the bigger picture."

The realization came as a revelation for the Venice native, who has Mayan and Nahua roots.

“At first I was just a tagger” incorporating indigenous patterns into his graffiti, said Henriquez, but teachers convinced him he could make a living from his art. After a brief stint in art college — “They didn't really understand what I was trying to do, and I didn't understand it myself,” the artist explained — he moved into graphic design, exploring themes inspired by his indigenous identity and the Mexican Day of the Dead, Día de los Muertos.

Now Henriquez mixes politically minded murals and street art with apparel and more. His company NSRGNTS, conceived in 1999 and launched in 2000, promotes “the transmission of indigenous thought and philosophy” through everything.


Henriquez was in his early 20s when he attended his first pow wow. “I saw so many people who looked like my relatives,” he recalled, Native Americans who were truly “in tune with their heritage and their family history.”


He longed to connect with them and tap into a shared ancestral history. “We can learn from other ancestors — how to deal with reality, with life, with diversity,” Henriquez said. “All of us need to know that as indigenous people. There are lessons to be learned.”
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John Lopez uses the landscape, wildlife, and history of his South Dakota home as inspiration for his sculptures.

During the time of Manifest Destiny and westward expansion, pioneers had to make do with their own grit, guts, and gumption to survive. The wilderness is a tough place to live, even under the best of circumstances.

It’s this sort of history that South Dakota artist John Lopez uses as inspiration for his beautiful and iconic work. John doesn’t use paint or ink to create his masterpieces. Instead, he scours scrapyards and farms for discarded equipment—but it’s what he creates from that metal that truly hearkens back to the roots of his ancestors’ Wild West.

The resulting works seem to have a life to them that other art just doesn’t possess.

Telling the story of life on the prairie is incomplete without the bison, the main resource of generations of Native peoples who called this region their home. The Grand River once knew vast herds of bison, unconfined by fences, as it now knows cattle and sheep that are moved from pasture to pasture by ranchers on horseback.

Sculptor John Lopez is a product of a place. His people’s ranches are scattered along the Grand River in northwestern South Dakota—not far from where Sitting Bull was born and died.


Not far from where thousands of buffalo were killed during the westward expansion of settlers and gold miners. In the bone yards of Tyrannosaurus rex and grizzly bears. Since farmers and ranchers populated this chunk of reservation land, real cowboys have been roping and branding and sheering and haying and harvesting.


John’s own forte lies in gentling colts and perfecting their bloodlines—and he started his celebration of them by sculpting in clay. Capturing every nuance, every muscle, in this land where business is still conducted over a cup of coffee and “neighboring” is a way of life.


Somehow that way of life—where times seems to have stood still—has seen the transition from horsepower to vehicles. The rusted carcasses of discarded equipment stand testament to generations of labor. And the man who knows blood lines has picked through them, choosing the elements of the past—the actual implements that plowed the soil or cut the grain or dug the dinosaur—and created the curve of a jaw, the twitch of a tail, the power of a shoulder.


Join John on a tour of kitchens and scrap piles, barns and grain elevators, cemeteries and workshops—hosted by the people of the prairie. Meet Uncle Geno and brother-in-law Stuart, and scrap collectors from near and far. Listen carefully. There’s a story in the wind.
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At first glance, Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun's work reflects his Coast Salish and Okanagan heritage. Vibrant colours combine with cultural references in the forms of masks, animals and totems.

But on deeper inspection it tells stories of colonialism, corporate greed and pollution — just to name a few.

"You're looking at the landscape that is just butchered and destroyed and the shaman is standing there going, 'I can help you, I can heal your soul. But all the things you're looking at, I can't fix that,'" Yuxweluptun said, describing his painting Shaman Comes to Fix. It currently hangs in Ottawa's National Gallery.

A retrospective of his work, called Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun: Unceded Territories, is currently on display at Vancouver's Museum of Anthropology. The opening was the biggest in the museum's history, with over 2,000 people in attendance.

Yuxweluptun has been painting his environmental concerns now for over 40 years, and his work has been compared to that of surrealist Salvador Dali.


He cites clear cutting, climate change and oil pipelines as inspiration for the themes in his work.

"As an artist, our job description is the world," he said. "And these are things that the world has to [deal] with."


Lately, Yuxweluptun has been painting what he called "super predators" in paintings like Fish Farmers They Have Sea Lice and Christy Clark and the Kinder Morgan Go-Go Girls.

"And that's my job… is to talk to the world, to enlighten the world, to entertain the world, to make them happy, to make them sad, to make them think," he said.


"That's what I like to do, is to think in existential ways to allow people to say, 'Yeah, we can change, we can make this a better world.' And that takes time."
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