External links
- projectHOOP, Honoring Our Origins and People
- Native American Women Playwrights Archive
- Hokte Productions
Annette Arkeketa is a writer, poet, and playwright, and a member of the Otoe-Missouria Tribe of Oklahoma. She has conducted professional workshops in these fields, in addition to the creative process, script consulting, and documentary film making. She directed Native American film studies at Comanche Nation College.
Arkeketa also has Muscogee Creek ancestry. Her essay, "Repatriation: Religious Freedom, Equal Protection, Institutional Racism", was published in American Indian Thought (2004), a philosophical reader anthology, edited by Anne Water.
Arkeketa says,
My personal feelings about writing is that it is necessary for our Indian people to write and produce great works about ourselves. It is important to challenge ourselves to write in the genres that we are unfamiliar with. The more we write the better we become as fiction writers, non-fiction writers, playwrights, screenplay writers, journalists, poets, research and essay writers.
My more recent work has been concentrated in the area of media production for feature films and television documentaries. I believe television and the big screen is the most powerful media available to us today.
The importance of our visibility in these areas writing and the media is for our children. They deserve to perform our work on stage and film. Always they seek us on the shelves of libraries, magazine racks, and newspaper stands. They seek us as mentors and role models, let's not disappoint them.
Arkeketa's play Hokti has been produced by the Tulsa Indian Actors' Workshop (1997), Tulsa, Oklahoma [1] [2] and The Thunderbird Theatre (1998), Haskell Indian Nations University, Lawrence, Kansas.
Hokti is published in Stories of Our Way: An Anthology of American Indian Plays, UCLA American Indian Studies Center, 1999. [3]
Her play Ghost Dance has been performed at public readings at the Gilcrease Museum (2001), Tulsa, Oklahoma; Tulsa University (2002); American Indian Community House (2003), New York, New York. It has been performed with acting workshops in Lawton, Oklahoma. [4] In spring 2004 the full-length drama was produced by the Institute of American Indian Arts, Drama Department. Ghost Dance is published in Keepers of the Morning Star: An Anthology of Native Women's Theater, UCLA American Indian Studies Center, 2003.
More recently Arkeketa has worked as a documentary producer and has formed the production company Hokte Productions. Hokte means 'woman' in the Muscogee language. [5]
Her first documentary production was about Jimmy Pena, a visual artist from Corpus Christi: it is titled Intrinsic Spirit: The Artway of Jimmy Pena (2002, approximately 24 minutes). Pena's work is shown through his pieces as visual artist and muralist.
Her next work was Muh-Du Kee: Put Them Back (2004), a 1-hour documentary that follows Jimmy Arterberry, Comanche Nation NAGPRA coordinator, through the consultation process with Colorado state and federal institutions to repatriate the remains of his people. This documentary explores Arterberry's views about the NAGPRA process, archaeologists, policies, and solutions to a controversial human rights issues for Native Americans.
Pahdopony: See how deep the water is (2005) is a 21-minute film about the life of Juanita Pahdopony (Comanche), an artist, educator and activist. [6]
Chief George (2009) examines Rev. George Akeen (Cheyenne/Wichita) and his peacekeeping mission to the Middle East. [7] [8]
Arkeketa is reported to be co-producing a piece titled Being Indian in Oklahoma. She is seeking a producer for a family feature film screenplay A Good Day to Dance. It is a story of dance, familial love, and what it takes to win.
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Comanche County is a county located in the U.S. state of Oklahoma. As of the 2020 census, the population was 121,125, making it the fifth-most populous county in Oklahoma. Its county seat is Lawton. The county was created in 1901 as part of Oklahoma Territory. It was named for the Comanche tribal nation.
White Parker (1887–1956) was a son of Mah-Cheeta-Wookey and Quanah Parker, chief of the Comanches. He married Laura E. Clark (1890-1962), a daughter of Reverend and Mrs. M. A. Clark, a former Methodist missionary to the Comanches. They had at least three children: Patty Bertha, Cynthia Ann Joy, and Milton Quanah (1914-1930).
Jeannette Christine Armstrong is a Canadian author, educator, artist, and activist. She was born and grew up on the Penticton Indian reserve in British Columbia's Okanagan Valley, and fluently speaks both the Syilx and English languages. Armstrong has lived on the Penticton Native Reserve for most of her life and has raised her two children there. In 2013, she was appointed Canada Research Chair in Okanagan Indigenous Knowledge and Philosophy.
Carter Curtis Revard was an American poet, scholar, and writer. He was of European American and self-identified Osage descent, and grew up on the tribal reservation in Oklahoma. He had his early education in a one-room schoolhouse, before winning a Quiz Bowl scholarship for college, subsequently attending University of Tulsa for his BA.
Navarre Scott Momaday is a Kiowa novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet. His novel House Made of Dawn was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1969, and is considered the first major work of the Native American Renaissance. His follow-up work The Way to Rainy Mountain blends folklore with memoir. Momaday received the National Medal of Arts in 2007 for his work's celebration and preservation of indigenous oral and art tradition. He holds 20 honorary degrees from colleges and universities and is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Maurice Frank Kenny was an American poet who identified as Mohawk descent.
Devon Abbott Mihesuah is a Choctaw historian and writer. She is a former editor of American Indian Quarterly and an enrolled citizen of the Choctaw Nation. She is the Cora Lee Beers Price Professor in the Humanities Program at the University of Kansas. She is the second Native woman to receive a named/distinguished professorship. Her lineage is well-documented in multiple tribal records. Her great, great, great grandfather signed the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek. His son, Charles Wilson, served as sheriff and treasurer of Sugar Loaf County in Moshulatubbee District of the Choctaw Nation. His murder in 1884 is documented in Choctaw Crime and Punishment and Roads of my Relations. Her great-grandfather, Thomas Abbott, created the blueprints for the town of McAlester, Oklahoma and his son, Thomas, served as Chief of Police. They are chronicled in "'Gentleman' Tom Abbott: Middleweight Champion of the Southwest," The Chronicles of Oklahoma 68 : 426–437.
Joy Harjo is an American poet, musician, playwright, and author. She served as the 23rd United States Poet Laureate, the first Native American to hold that honor. She was also only the second Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to have served three terms. Harjo is a member of the Muscogee Nation and belongs to Oce Vpofv. She is an important figure in the second wave of the literary Native American Renaissance of the late 20th century. She studied at the Institute of American Indian Arts, completed her undergraduate degree at University of New Mexico in 1976, and earned an MFA degree at the University of Iowa in its creative writing program.
Anna Lee Walters is a Pawnee/Otoe–Missouria author.
Joseph A. Dandurand is a Kwantlen person (Xalatsep) from Kwantlen First Nation in British Columbia. He is a poet, playwright, and archaeologist.
Carol Lee Sanchez was a Native American poet, visual artist, essayist, and teacher.
David Emmett Williams was a Native American painter, who was Kiowa/Tonkawa/Kiowa-Apache from Oklahoma. He studied with Dick West at Bacone College and won numerous national awards for his paintings. He painted in the Flatstyle technique that was taught at Bacone from the 1940s to the 1970s.
Rance Hood is an Oklahoma Native artist who echoes traditional Native American culture in his paintings. A self-taught artist, Hood was raised by his maternal grandparents who exposed him to Comanche Indian ways and values.
Marie C. Cox (1920-2005) was a Comanche activist who worked on legislation for Native American children. She received many accolades for her efforts including the 1974 Indian Leadership Award from the Bureau of Indian Affairs and state recognition that same year as the Outstanding Citizen of Oklahoma from Governor David Hall. She was named as an Outstanding Indian Woman of 1977 by the North American Indian Women's Association, and served on the National Advisory Council on Indian Education from 1983 to 1990. In 1993, she was inducted into the Oklahoma Women's Hall of Fame for her work with foster children and the founding of the North American Indian Women's Association.
Linda LeGarde Grover is an Anishinaabe novelist and short story writer. An enrolled member of the Bois Forte Band of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, she is a professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota Duluth, as well as a columnist for the Duluth News Tribune.
Josephine Myers-Wapp was a Comanche weaver and educator. After completing her education at the Haskell Institute, she attended Santa Fe Indian School, studying weaving, dancing, and cultural arts. After her training, she taught arts and crafts at Chilocco Indian School before joining the faculty of the newly opened Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe. She taught weaving, design, and dance at the institute, and in 1968 was one of the coordinators for a dance exhibit at the Mexican Summer Olympic Games. In 1973, she retired from teaching to focus on her own work, exhibiting throughout the Americas and in Europe and the Middle East. She has work in the permanent collection of the IAIA and has been featured at the Smithsonian Institution. Between 2014 and 2016, she was featured in an exhibition of Native American women artists at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture in Santa Fe.
Jennifer Elise Foerster is a poet, writer, and teacher. She has published three poetry books and served as Associate Editor for When the Light of the World Was Subdued Our Songs Came Through, A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry (2020), and has been published in numerous journal publications and anthologies. Her 2013 book Leaving Tulsa was a finalist for the shortlist of the 2014 PEN/Open Book Award.
Beth Cuthand was born a member of the Little Pine First Nation in Saskatchewan and has lived in the four western provinces of Canada. She is the author of Voices in the Waterfall, a collection of poetry and prose published by Theytus Press in 2008. She is also an editor of Reinventing the Enemy's Language: Contemporary Native Women's Writings of North America and co-author of The Little Duck: Sikihpsis, a Cree/English children's book published in 2007.
Quraysh Ali Lansana is an American poet, book editor, civil rights historian, and professor. He has authored 20 books in poetry, nonfiction and children’s literature. In 2022, he was a Tulsa Artist Fellow and Director of the Center for Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation at Oklahoma State University-Tulsa, where he was also Lecturer in Africana Studies and English. Lansana is also credited as creator and executive producer of "Focus: Black Oklahoma," a monthly radio program on the public radio station KOSU.
Joyce Lee "Doc" Tate Nevaquaya was a Comanche flute player and painter from Apache, Oklahoma. He is known for his contribution to the Native American flute music. His efforts in learning how to make Comanche flutes and play as well as compose contemporary Comanche flute music is considered to have saved the declining art from being lost completely. However, he said he considered himself a painter first, and painting was his primary art throughout his life.
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