5 Plain Questions

Sylvia Houle is an emerging Anishinaabe contemporary artist residing in Rolette, North Dakota. She is an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa. Born and raised far away from her indigenous roots along the Northern California Coastline, she didn’t have the benefit of the traditional teachings of her father’s people and would often feel out of place but did not understand why until...

Penny Kagigebi, White Earth Ojibwe (1st generation descendant) A lifelong resident of Becker County, Penny has always lived on or adjacent to White Earth Reservation in Northwestern Minnesota. This is where she gathers traditional foods, mashkiki-medicine plants as well as materials for making quillboxes. In 2014, she achieved a tremendous goal to go learn quillwork and quillbox construction from...

Dakota Mace (Diné) is an interdisciplinary artist whose work focuses on translating the language of Diné history and beliefs. Mace received her MA and MFA degrees in Photography and Textile Design at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and her BFA in Photography from the Institute of American Indian Arts. As a Diné (Navajo) artist, her work draws from the history of her Diné heritage, exploring th...

Brad Kahlhamer’s (b. 1956 Tucson, AZ) art lives at the crossroads of real and imaginary worlds. Born to Native parents and adopted by a German-American family, he was raised in Arizona and Wisconsin and spent his early adulthood as a musician living on the road before settling in New York City. Shaped by this nomadic history, Kahlhamer’s work explores the particularities of the American landscape:...

America Meredith (Cherokee Nation) is the publishing editor of First American Art Magazine and an art writer, critic, visual artist, and independent curator, whose curatorial practice spans 28 years. She earned her MFA degree from the San Francisco Art Institute and taught Native art history at the Institute of American Indian Arts, Santa Fe Community College, and Cherokee Humanities Course. North...

Raised on the Standing Rock Sioux Nation, Tyrel is a Hunkpapa Lakota and Ihanktowanna Dakota, with German descent. His upbringing with the strong influence of his Lakota and Dakota ancestry and culture shapes his photography and art. He seeks to raise and empower Indigenous voices across the continent known as North America. He has re-purposed photography, long a tool used to create monolithic car...

Nancy Marie Mithlo (Chiricahua Apache) is a professor of Gender Studies and core faculty with the American Indian Studies Interdepartmental program at the University of California, LosAngeles. Mithlo’s curatorial work has resulted in nine exhibits at the Venice Biennale. A life-long educator, Mithlo has taught at the University of New Mexico, the Institute of American Indian Arts, the Santa Fe Com...

Raven Chacon is a composer, performer and installation artist from Fort Defiance, Navajo Nation. As a solo artist, Chacon has exhibited, performed, or had works performed at LACMA, The Renaissance Society, San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, REDCAT, Vancouver Art Gallery, Ende Tymes Festival, and The Kennedy Center. As a member of Postcommodity from 2009-2018, he co-created artworks presented...

Tessa Sayers grew up in Washington State on a small llama farm. She is a certified Native artist with her tribe, the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa from North Dakota. She has worked within Indian Country for 20 years. While obtaining a B.A. in Sociology with a focus in Native American studies from Western Washington University, she was the Co-Director of the Native American Mentoring Program at...

Dakota Hoska, is citizen of the Oglála Lakȟóta Nation, Pine Ridge (Wounded Knee). She joined Denver Art Museum in 2019 as the Assistant Curator of Native Arts. Previously, she worked as a Curatorial Research Assistant at the Minneapolis Institute of Art for four years and during that time, Dakota completed her MA in Art History, focusing on Native American Art History at the University of St. Thom...

Whitney Fear is an enrolled member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe. She was born and raised on the Pine Ridge reservation, where her family has a small cattle operation. After finishing high school in 2005, Whitney moved to the Fargo-Moorhead community where she discovered a drive to pursue nursing as a career. She worked as a nurse in Emergency Medicine, Mental Health, and Community Health. While worki...

John Isaiah Pepion is an acclaimed artist, muralist and educator who is a citizen of the Blackfeet Nation in northern Montana. His plains graphic art combines traditional design and contemporary illustrations to create a signature look that is instantly recognized throughout the country. John considers his art journey as ceremony because his understanding of his past, family, and culture grows wit...

Neal Ambrose-Smith is a descendant of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation of Montana, is a contemporary Native American painter, sculptor, printmaker, and Professor at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He has also developed an app Artist Ideas with 100 ideas for making art, available for Android and Apple. His work is included in the collections of many nationa...

Whitney, Artist Statement and Bio Thematically I am a narrative artist. Images are appropriated from either the Powwow interlaced with Hollywood or from the indigenous people of Turtle Island and filtered through my point of view to tell the tale of the coming of the Europeans, small pox, and the near annihilation of the people of this region. These historic and grand cultures were all but decimat...

Vincent Schilling, Akwesasne Mohawk, is an enrolled member of the St. Regis Mohawk tribe, is an award-winning author that is currently working on a book commissioned by Random House / Viking about Native American Boarding Schools. He is the founder and editor of Native Viewpoint at www. NativeViewpoint.com. Vincent is also an award-winning producer, journalist and public speaker, in addition to se...

In 2019, Joy Harjo was appointed the 23rd United States Poet Laureate, the first Native American to hold the position and only the second person to serve three terms in the role. Harjo’s nine books of poetry include An American Sunrise, Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings, How We Became Human: New and Selected Poems, and She Had Some Horses. She is also the author of two memoirs, Crazy Brave and P...

Get ready for season 3 of 5 Plain Questions podcast coming in February. With all new guests and a few surprises. You won't want to miss our exciting season with more amazing people doing amazing things for their communities. Be sure to subscribe and give us top ratings where ever you get your podcasts.

A member of the Oglala Lakota tribe, Chef Sean Sherman was born and raised in Pine Ridge, South Dakota. Cooking in kitchens across the United States and Mexico for over 30 years, Chef Sean is renowned nationally and internationally in the culinary movement of Indigenous foods. His primary focus is the revitalization and evolution of Indigenous foods systems throughout North America. His extensive...

Julie buffalohead. She is a citizen of the Ponca Tribe out of Oklahoma, and is a visual artist living in St. Paul Minnesota. Julie received her BFA from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 1995 and her MFA from Cornell University in 2001. Buffalohead creates visual narratives told by animal characters that embody human traits, freewill and individuality. She connects the mythical with the...

Rosy Simas is citizen of the Seneca Nation of Indians. She is a transdisiplinary artist and founder and Artistic Director of Rosy Simas Danse. Active since 1992, her projects merge decolonized physical movement with mixed media, sound and objects for stage and installations. I had first become associated with Ms. Simas from an exhibition here at the Plains in 2019. Her work was unlike any of the o...

John Little, PhD (Standing Rock Dakota), is a scholar, historian, filmmaker, and mentor. His presentations and research focus on Native student retention and success in higher education, decolonizing work in the university, cultural appropriation and Native American-themed mascots, Lakota and Dakota music, and Native American Vietnam veterans, looking at the fact that Native Americans serve in the...

We're off this week but we want to thank everyone for the amazing and overwhelming response to our 5 Scary Questions podcast from last week. This encourages us to keep going and creating great content that you all keep coming back for. Our podcast family is growing and we are looking forward to what is coming next. See you next week!

Join us this week as we celebrate the Halloween season with true life scary stories from our past guests from the 5 Plain Questions podcast. We have a collection of different stories, all very scary and all very true. We thank Dwayne Wilcox, Roy Taylor, Falcon Gott, Vanessa Short Bull, Matt Barse, Gerald Cournoyer, and Arik Williams for sharing these intense and very real experiences. Subscribe to...

Roy Taylor (Pawnee, Choctaw) is with White Eagle Arts, Entertainment & Media out of Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is host of Indigeneity Rising on KFAI Fresh Air Community Radio 90.3 FM. He is a: Stage, Film, Commercial Actor Performance Storyteller Voice Over Narrator Spoken Word Artist Emcee, Moderator, Host Radio Broadcast Journalist Public Speaker, Presenter Spokesman, Representative, Advocat...

Melanie Yazzie is Professor of Art Practices and Head of Printmaking at the University of Colorado in Boulder, Colorado. Her works belong to many collections such as: the Denver Art Museum, Anchorage Museum of History & Art, the Art Museum of Missoula, the Institute of American Indian Arts, the Kennedy Museum of Art and the Rhode Island School of Design Museum. She has exhibited nationally and...