Native arts and humanities grants aid ‘cultural healing’
“A large percentage of Hopis make their income from art sales ...” Monica Nuvamsa, executive director of the Hopi Foundation
Faces adorn the soaring block walls of Zarco Guerrero’s Mesa studio. The lovingly handcrafted masks, many painted in bright colors and others sporting jewelry and headdresses, appear almost lifelike.
A full-body sculpture of MexicanAmerican farmworker-activist Cesar Chavez holds down one corner, while a nearly 10-foot-tall work in progress dominates the far wall. It’s the life-size model for a sculpture that will be placed in Phoenix at Baseline Road and Central Avenue, at the extension of the light rail line, Guerrero said.
Guerrero and his wife, Carmen, a fellow artist and teacher, create their own art and also manage several arts events, including Dia de Los Muertos, Mask Alive! and other events that support established and emerging Indigenous and Hispanic artists.
But everything related to the arts came to a dead halt around the middle of March when the COVID-19 lockdowns started. Fortunately, the Guerreros were in good shape to ride out the storm.
“I had a number of commissions lined up for the next few years,” including light rail art, Zarco said.
Other artists across the state weren’t so fortunate. As venues and galleries closed, events were canceled and practice spaces dried up.
But help is at hand, as state and national organizations have stepped up to support Native arts and humanities in Arizona with nearly $300,000 in grants over the past several weeks.
Arizona Humanities, the Arizona affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, gave $47,000 to five groups with tribal ties, including the Kaibab Paiute Tribe and the Fort Apache Heritage Foundation, to help keep the lights on and paychecks coming. One national Native philanthropic fund gave $250,000 to the Hopi Foundation to support families in need.
Coalition supports other artists
Zarco Guerrero, who’s a member of the Acjachemen Tribe from Southern California and who is also connected to the Pascua Yaqui Tribe, and Carmen, who’s Brazilian, formed the Cultural Coalition to support Indigenous and Latino artists.
“We want to serve the artists, compensate them financially, support them so that they can, in turn, give their services to the community,” Zarco said.
The coalition seeks out grassroots and community artists who aren’t necessarily professional artists to give them a venue. It also works with youth groups, and Carmen works with an after-school program at a Mesa affordable housing complex.
“We’ve been very successful at that for the last 40 years,” Zarco said.
The COVID-19 pandemic put the brakes on the coalition’s work.
“We’re not allowed into the public spaces that we normally use,” Zarco said, “and that’s a huge blow for us.”
The Guerreros don’t have a brick and mortar venue and have little overhead. But that’s not the case for other artists, Zarco said.
“All of our groups are performance artists, and now have no places to perform, and therefore don’t have any kind of income,” Zarco said. He said those artists are questioning their viability and their future, which creates stress.
The Cultural Coalition’s solution: Go virtual, with online events where the public can donate or tip the artists. The Arizona Humanities grant will enable more such events and keep artists paid, the Guerreros said. They’re also looking at ways to promote the artisans who sold their art at coalition events.
Visitor center softens blow
The Phoenix Indian School Visitor Center, in the refurbished band building at the former Phoenix Indian School, is usually a bustling place. The center, which opened in October 2017, educates visitors about the Indian boarding school, which operated from 1891 to 1990, and the thousands of Native American children who passed through its classrooms. It is also a community center, with meeting spaces, a gallery and a commercial kitchen.
“We were going very strong even through the first two months of 2020,” said Rosalie Talahongva, the center’s curator. The center hosted gatherings and receptions, business meetings, Indigenous cooking demonstrations and other events. “Then everything just stopped in March.”
Talahongva, a citizen of the Hopi Tribe, said the center lost all its business through July. And though the center has reopened with safety protocols, Talahongva said, almost nobody peeks their head through the doors.
“We just had a group cancel last week and go to an online format,” she said.
The Phoenix Indian School Visitor Center received a $10,000 grant to keep the lights on while it pivots to a new business model. Talahongva said the center will be offering smaller meetings to allow for social distancing, online demonstrations and both small group and online gallery visits.
Foundation to aid 500 families
The Hopi Foundation has been at the forefront of COVID-19 response since the pandemic first hit. The foundation’s pandemic relief efforts are under the umbrella of the already-existing Hopi Emergency Assistance Fund, said Monica Nuvamsa, the foundation’s executive director.
“This fund had been used for things like home-heating fuel grants to provide wood for Hopi villages and communities,” she said.
The foundation accepted financial and in-kind donations to assist in the effort since Nuvamsa and her staff realized that the Hopi communities would soon experience shortages of necessities. The foundation also established a relief team to handle the distribution of food, sanitation supplies and other necessities to the 12 villages on Hopi lands.
The foundation deals with pandemic response on top of its usual work to support a variety of initiatives in support of culture, farming, youth and other aspects of Hopi culture.
Two of the northern Arizona tribe’s major economic drivers – tourism and art – have taken severe hits from the pandemic.
“A large percentage of Hopis make their income from art sales and are reliant on art shows, tourism, vendor booths and door-to-door sales,” said Nuvamsa, a Hopi tribal member.
Art and tourism have become more important since the November closure of the Navajo Generating Station and the nearby coal mines that fueled the plant. That closure put many Hopi and Navajo citizens out of work.
One Native philanthropy executive took note of the situation and stepped forward to help. Edgar Villanueva, an enrolled member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina, is the board president of Native Americans in Philanthropy. He’s also worked with some of the U.S.’s top foundations and is the author of the book “Decolonizing Wealth,” which lays out a road map for philanthropic organizations to better serve communities of color.
“This is a massive national giving circle with folks who give monthly and also some foundation support,” said Villanueva, who also created the Liberated Capital Fund.
“When COVID hit in March, I begin to hear from Native colleagues around the country who are being really impacted. So we launched an emergency rapid response line related to COVID that we called the Native American Community Response Fund.”
The fund, created in partnership with the Oklahoma Native Assets Coalition, initially supported urban Indian nonprofits, he said.
In a short time, Villanueva raised about $1 million to support tribes across the U.S. and helped direct $250,000 to Hopi to distribute directly to 500 families in need.
“I really wanted to support artists, because art is such a critical part of sustaining our culture,” he said.
Coverage of Indigenous issues at the intersection of climate, culture and commerce is supported by the Catena Foundation and the Water Funder Initiative.