Awarded Grants

This grant supports the Bobcat Birthworker & Community-Based Training in Anadarko, Oklahoma

Post travel to Ocmulgee Mounds (Georgia) and Moundville (Alabama), I plan on hosting workshops within my community and surrounding communities about River Cane, its traditional uses, and the techniques I use while processing it. This will include opportunities for harvesting, shared discussions, shared meals, demonstration of freehand burning designs, story sharing, and community growth. As a result, I’m hoping to encourage others to connect with the land, find a plant they feel connected to and really get to know it. The plants have so much to teach us. I look forward to my growth as an artist so I can continue to share the Mvskoke culture through my designs, with all who are open to learning about it.

The outcome I hope to achieve is the knowledge of gathering times, process, use, etc., the basics introduction to weaving, understanding the ways materials are used and the tactile aspect of it. Would like to complete the initial item and continue on from there. Knowledge, confidence and understanding are my main goals. I would like to document this process, in written and photography form. Developing a quick guide of the steps from start to finish. I would like to have an electronic copy, that can be made available to Tribal entities such as TANF, Education, Behavioral health, etc. I will make available through social media and I will also share with community agencies such as NCIDC and any others that interface with Tribal members/communities. I think this would not only reach a lot of people of varying ages and skill level, but that it would plant the seed and be a motivator for people to want to start weaving or gathering. No one considers barriers that keep our people from engaging in such activities, but I feel providing this information will remove the barrier and encourage more people to get involved. Not everyone has someone knowledgeable or willing to share, there may be shame or stigma around weaving, intergenerational trauma, or hesitancy due to low skill level.

My mission is to keep the spirit in the pahu. That means keeping the connection to the ancients, to the woods and materials, and keeping the Hawaiian people in touch with the making of the pahu. That's an important relationship that you don't get when you buy one from far away, made in factories in places like Indonesia or the Philippines. That spirit of connection to place and ancestry will strengthen as we share our experience with the ancient pahu we see in the museums. My students will learn something new, because they don't know about these ancient, hidden artifacts. When we go to the archives I can take pictures, and I can bring that information to them: photos, descriptions, and memories from the archives that even their grandparents don't know. When I show pictures of the pahu carving workshops I taught over the years, it blows peoples’ mind, seeing how many community members made drums. This will be like that but more, because they can feel the presence of the older pahu and the knowledge of the ancestors. This is our time as an ʻohana to check it out, to go do research so we can share the knowledge and the relationship with the pahu. Over the next two years, I plan to teach pahu carving workshops through the Luce Fellowship in Kohala, Miloliʻi, Hilo, and Kona (all on Hawaiʻi island), plus on Kauaʻi and Molokaʻi. I will put together an album and presentation boards on the ancient pahu that I can share personally with groups in my workshops and at cultural festivals. I reach hundreds of people this way, and also by working in public at the beach parks and talking with people who stop to see what I’m doing. Not too many cultural practitioners work in public. The good thing about doing it is that Hawaiians, locals, and newcomers see Hawaiian work in action. This is my indigenous knowledge-sharing. I touch many people by introducing them to the culture in a friendly, down-to-earth style. The outcomes of all of this are more pahu, more traditionally based or inspired designs and techniques, more kumu hula using pahu they created or found the tree for or put an ancient or recent ʻohana design on. More hula, more chants, more history brought out in public by these kumu hula. More indigenous knowledge sharing through the sounds of Hawaiian drums connecting us to our ancestors and our future generations. Touching the ancient drums will touch the spirit of me, my ʻohana, and all the people we work with.

Support for the Hupa Language Immersion Nest, which is cultivating a new generation of Hupa language speakers.

Tepniwew strengthens tribal sovereignty by building a self‑sustaining food system. We protect and grow community assets—land, buffalo, gardens, milling, storage, and food access—to ensure our people can nourish themselves through the principle what we eat here, we grow here.

Through this grant period, I hope to grow as a practitioner, a scholar, and a connector of Indigenous knowledge communities across the Pacific. As a practitioner, I will deepen my competency in traditional Micronesian canoe carving and sail weaving under Palu Larry, skills that directly inform my understanding of Hawaiian material culture and pre-Western-contact voyaging technology. This embodied knowledge will enrich my PhD research in ways that no library can provide. As a scholar, I will present ongoing research and collaborative work at several international conferences and festivals, including ACHS (Wellington), ASAO (Samoa), and IMPAC6 (Dakar), contributing to Indigenous-led conversations about wayfinding heritage, maritime revitalization, and traditional ecological knowledge. These presentations will reach academics, policymakers, cultural practitioners, and community leaders across multiple disciplines and regions. As a connector, I will strengthen relationships between Indigenous wayfinding communities across Oceania and beyond (i.e., from Haida Gwaii to Fiji to PNG to Aotearoa), helping to build the inter-community network that makes knowledge sharing and mutual support possible. Through the Pacific Traditions Society, I will support ongoing revitalization efforts in Taumako, PNG, Fiji, and Micronesia (Polowat). Knowledge sharing will take multiple forms: conference presentations, community participation in cultural festivals and symposia, mentorship relationships, and the documentation of practices for community use. My PhD research itself is an act of Indigenous-led knowledge preservation — grounding pre-Western-contact Hawaiian wayfinding traditions in rigorous scholarship that can serve Hawaiian communities and future generations. Ultimately, this project contributes to a larger vision: a Pacific in which Indigenous wayfinding knowledge is not a relic of the past but a living, growing, inter-connected practice, carried forward by practitioners who know each other, support each other, and learn from each other across the blue continent of Oceania.

This project brings Tribal members together through a Healing Through Food Sovereignty event featuring Indigenous food demos, cultural teachings, and community meals. This overall advances healing and strengthens connections to traditional food systems, stewardship, and agriculture.

This project convenes Native producers and Tribal Leaders to highlight a diverse range of topics including healthcare, education, culture, economic development, and other issues impacting Native communities.

As artistic director and program coordinator, I will work directly with the members of my tribe and other local tribes from start to completion of Nuwu Um-buh-gah #2. First, Southern Paiute elders and knowledge keepers in Nevada and Utah who speak the language will help guide me and this project. Listening is essential when collaborating with our tribal knowledge keepers, and as an artist, I am carrying that knowledge to produce visual resources to teach and educate the following generations. As a main goal, I will produce the images and give the physical language access materials to tribal educators and community members – including youth and families. They will use the coloring pages and card decks in language-acquisition classes held on their respective reservation homelands. I engage with the Las Vegas Paiute Child Development Center and Moapa Childcare Center with both coloring pages and the second language deck. Through engaging the community and cultivating relationships with our relatives, we will accomplish a language project that assists in the revitalization of the rich heritage of the Nuwu, the original people of Southern Nevada. The seeds for this project were planted years ago, as environmental activism rests at the foundation of Nuwu Um-buh-gah. These illustrations are silent, yet powerful, highlighting flora, fauna, and natural landscapes in the southern Great Basin. The images advocate for the protection of areas of critical concern and encourage stewardship of the land. It is easy for us urban Natives who live in city environments to become disconnected from the land. I hope to reach both our rural and urban communities with the art of Nuwu Um-buh-gah, helping to reconnect people with the plants and animals, along with our Southern Paiute stories. The primary audience is Nuwu people – children, families, and elders. While language fluency is not the goal, maintenance and beginning children on the path to greater language acquisition is possible among the Las Vegas Paiute Tribe and Moapa Band of Paiutes. Nuwu Um-buh-gah: Paiute Language Deck #2 will be used in schools, language symposiums, and in homes on these and other reservations. The visual flashcard decks and coloring pages teach cultural knowledge, allowing young people to gain fluency in not just words, but with establishing a connection to the environment. Artistic images are powerful tools for immersive language instruction, since they allow for communication of ideas and concepts without resorting to English. Teaching with traditional visuals also adds interest, as these tools can be used to teach about the importance of plants and animals in areas of critical concern in the Mojave Desert. This interdisciplinary project uniquely combines the visual arts, material culture, and cultural revitalization efforts. Nuwu Um-buh-gah #2 will help deliver To-veep’s message to the people by growing language speakers, and strengthening Indigenous traditions.