Indigenous Art Refuses the Past Tense

At the century-old market, younger Indigenous artists prove that tradition isn't preservation—it's evolution.

The brilliance of the Santa Fe Indian Market lies not only in the Plaza crowds or desert light—it's in the emergence of generations of Indigenous artists who refuse to treat culture as something to be preserved unchanged. Instead, they wield tradition as a living force, using ancestral knowledge to speak directly to the present moment.

For more than a century, the Santa Fe Indian Market—organized by the Southwestern Association for Indian Arts (SWAIA)—has been the largest stage for Indigenous art in the United States. This marketplace exists within a broader ecosystem that has made Santa Fe a vital center for Native American art: the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA), founded in 1962, has trained countless Indigenous artists who have gone on to reshape contemporary Native art, while institutions like the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts provide platforms for experimental work that pushes beyond traditional market categories.

Together, these institutions have created something unprecedented: a space where Indigenous artists can engage both traditional and contemporary art worlds on their own terms. As a judge for two-dimensional works—paintings, drawings, and works on paper—what I and my fellow judges consistently find isn't just mastery of medium, but something rarer: vision. At a time when Indigenous artists face mounting pressures—from appropriation battles and shrinking cultural funding to market demands that pit "authenticity" against innovation—the artists working within this ecosystem make clear that the most radical move is to insist on both.

Indian Market is usually described in terms of scale: hundreds of artists, tens of thousands of visitors, millions in sales. But what strikes me isn't size. It's the undercurrent of imagination, community, and insistence on future-making. Beyond booths and prizes, the week unfolds through conversations and connections—dinners, late-night debates, and panels that explore Indigenous perspectives on art, humor, and resistance. Artists like Nicholas Galanin remind audiences of satire and irony's power as critique—how it can lower defenses and provoke insight, even when harder truths remain. Kent Monkman speaks about irony as strategy—recontextualizing colonial narratives through his alter ego Miss Chief Eagle Testickle to flip the gaze of art history back on itself. Chemehuevi photographer Cara Romero unpacks work like her First American Girl series—portraits staged within life-sized "doll boxes" that reclaim Indigenous women's identities from flattening stereotypes.

Santa Fe in mid-August becomes more than a marketplace; it's a summit where Indigenous artists redefine what survival and success mean.

Emerging Voices: Three Case Studies

Among the emerging artists working within this ecosystem, three exemplify different approaches to cultural continuity: painter and potter Santiago Romero (Cochiti Pueblo), Diné weaver Tyrell Tapaha, and textile artist Maggie Thompson (Fond du Lac Ojibwe). Each embodies a refusal to choose between tradition and experimentation, grounding their work in cultural knowledge while using it to engage contemporary life.

Santiago Romero: Culture as Living Inheritance

Santiago Romero's work demonstrates how cultural inheritance extends rather than simply preserves tradition. The son of potter Diego Romero and nephew of painter Mateo Romero, he builds upon his family's artistic foundation while developing his own distinctive voice.

Trained in both pottery and painting, Romero moves fluidly between clay and canvas. His oils of the Sangre de Cristo mountains don't simply render familiar landscapes—they transform them, with thick impasto strokes that acknowledge his uncle Mateo's influence while moving toward something distinctly contemporary. Evening light catches in subtle pinks, suggesting not only desert glow but emotional resonance—a landscape refracted through memory and possibility. Where early 20th-century Taos painters mythologized these mountains as untouched vistas for outsider eyes, Romero reclaims them as lived landscape—familiar yet charged with Indigenous memory and presence.

In a city long shaped by outsider painters of the Southwest, Romero evolves the tradition from within, pushing past nostalgia to stake a contemporary claim. His canvases are neither artifacts nor homages, but living expressions of cultural continuity in motion.

Tyrell Tapaha: Ancestral Methods, Contemporary Voice

If Romero extends cultural inheritance through new mediums, Tyrell Tapaha demonstrates how traditional practices can carry urgent contemporary messages. A sheep herder as well as an artist, Tapaha brings political urgency to his weaving practice, championing LGBTQ+ rights while addressing ecological and cultural issues. He raises the Churro sheep whose wool he weaves, dyes it with plants from his own land, and builds textiles that read as both ancestral and insurgent.

Works like "Fresh Outta Ceremony, Holy as Fuck" capture this duality perfectly—deeply rooted in ceremonial life yet unapologetically contemporary. Other pieces confront colonization, identity, and contemporary Indigenous experience. Tapaha's textiles are technically impeccable, but their power lies in proving that traditional weaving can be a contemporary language for current struggles.

In a marketplace where buyers often seek "traditional" weavings, Tapaha's activist textiles represent both artistic and financial risk, potentially alienating collectors who prefer textiles without politics. Yet this willingness to prioritize message over marketability positions his work within broader contemporary art conversations. His textiles belong in dialogue with artists like Marie Watt or Jeffrey Gibson, who also reimagine traditional practices for contemporary expression.

Maggie Thompson: Tradition as Contemporary Language

Maggie Thompson transforms weaving and beadwork into contemporary language for current social issues. Her exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts incorporates community collaboration and personal narrative. Projects like the Hospital Gown feature patchwork garments with swatches beaded by individuals impacted by addiction within their families and communities, creating powerful objects of collective reflection and solidarity. Other works transform fabric from COVID masks bearing social justice messages into fancy shawls, expressing Native solidarity with broader movements for change.

Thompson's work resonates not just within Native art but in global conversations about social justice and Indigenous expression. Her practice positions textile arts as a conceptual language equal to painting or sculpture—a reminder that the most traditional mediums can also be the most contemporary when wielded by artists who understand culture as living practice.

The Institutional Foundation

The emergence of artists like Romero, Tapaha, and Thompson reflects the success of institutions that have supported Indigenous art for decades. IAIA's experimental approach to art education has produced generations of artists who seamlessly blend traditional knowledge with contemporary techniques. SWAIA's careful curation of Indian Market has created a space where both traditional and innovative work can find audiences. The Museum of Contemporary Native Arts provides exhibition opportunities that position Native art within broader contemporary art conversations.

This institutional ecosystem has created something unique: a space where Indigenous artists can define their practice on their own terms, using cultural knowledge as a foundation for contemporary expression rather than a constraint. The result is work that speaks to Indigenous communities while engaging broader art world conversations about tradition, innovation, and cultural survival.

Culture in Motion

Together, these artists and institutions demonstrate that Indigenous culture isn't something to be preserved unchanged but evolved with intention. They ground themselves in cultural specificity while using that foundation to engage contemporary life. None allows tradition to limit creative vision; instead, they prove that deep cultural knowledge can be the most powerful platform for contemporary expression.

What unites them isn't consensus but commitment—a collective demonstration that Indigenous culture remains vital precisely because it continues to grow and respond.

Why This Matters

The pressures on Native artists are real: underfunded institutions, uneven markets, and the ongoing commodification of culture. Those forces shape what gets made and what gets seen. But what emerges from Santa Fe's Indigenous art ecosystem is something more powerful than resistance—it's cultural vitality in action.

The Santa Fe Indian Market, supported by SWAIA and complemented by institutions like IAIA and MoCNA, proves that Indigenous art is not artifact but argument—alive, contested, and in motion. Artists like Romero, Tapaha, and Thompson—among many other emerging artists at the market—define their practices on their own terms, using cultural knowledge as springboard rather than constraint. Santa Fe's Indigenous art ecosystem serves as a vital nucleus, nurturing artists who then engage contemporary art conversations far beyond the Southwest.

The market's century-long evolution reflects broader changes in how Indigenous art is understood, valued, and supported. What began as a venue for preserving traditional crafts has become a platform for cultural innovation—a place where the most experimental work often emerges from the deepest traditional knowledge. In this transformation, Santa Fe's Indigenous art ecosystem offers a model for how cultural institutions can support both preservation and evolution, creating space for artists to honor ancestral knowledge while speaking urgently to the present.

Written By Reid Walker, Walker Youngbird Founder