Oscar Howe Legacy Across Four Generations

Born in 1915 at Joe Creek on the Crow Creek Reservation in South Dakota, Oscar Howe (Yanktonai Dakota) would come to be a renowned artist whose work would be seen around the globe by the time he turned 18.

Howe attended the Pierre Indian School before returning home to learn from his grandmother, Shell Face. While there, he spent hours drawing and painting, using anything he could get his hands on as tools for his craft. His grandmother would share the history of their people, telling stories and legends of the generations before them. In 1933, Howe left the Plains for New Mexico and attended the Santa Fe Indian School where he joined the art program established by Dorothy Dunn. Though he could have taken his talents anywhere, Howe chose to return to his roots in South Dakota upon graduating in 1938. Around this time, he joined the South Dakota Works Progress Administration where he completed mural projects in Mitchell and Mobridge.

In 1942, Howe was drafted into the U.S. Army and would return from his time abroad with his wife, Adelheid Hample. The couple had one child, Inge Dawn.

Howe earned his bachelor’s degree from Dakota Wesleyan University and later received his MFA from the University of Oklahoma. In 1957, after teaching at Pierre High School for three years, he became an artist-in-residence and professor of art at the University of South Dakota. Oscar Howe dedicated 23 years of his career to USD. He retired as emeritus professor of art in 1980, leaving behind a legacy that would influence generations of students for decades to come.

Howe exhibited works in New York, London and Paris while he was a student in the 1930s and was later represented by more than 50 solo shows. He was named artist laureate of the Middle Border in 1954 and artist laureate of South Dakota in 1960. He was also the first recipient of the South Dakota Governor’s Award for Creative Achievement in 1973.

Arthur Amiotte (Wanblí Ta Hócoka Washté or Good Eagle Center) is a contemporary Lakota artist, historian, educator, author and lecturer on historical and modern American Indian art. A member of the Oglala Lakota Oyate tribe, he is most well-known for his Lakota tribal collage narratives, printmaking and textiles and has participated in over 100 exhibitions throughout the U.S. and Europe.

Roger Broer has been a fixture in the Northern Plains Native American art scene for over 40 years. As a member of the Oglala Lakota nation, he creates expressive paintings and monotype prints reflecting his Lakota culture and the world he occupies. Broer’s work has been exhibited in more than 50 one-man shows and over 175 group shows, and he has paintings in both national and international collections.

Colleen Cutschall (Sister Wolf) is an Oglala-Sicangu Lakota artist, historian, educator and curator from Pine Ridge, South Dakota. She works in painting, sculpture, photography and installation art, and her work is featured in several permanent collections across the U.S. and Canada.

Donald Montileaux (Yellowbird) is a modern-day storyteller and an enrolled member of the Oglala Lakota Nation. He regards himself as having a mission “to portray the Lakota, the Native Americans, in an honest way.” In the summers of 1964 and 1965, Montileaux attended workshops under Howe at USD. His artwork spans the globe with many artistic awards and commissions to date and is represented in numerous private and public collections.

Gerald Cournoyer is a figurative American Indian artist, educator, lecturer and philanthropist. As a lead instructor for the Director for the Northern Plains Summer Art Institute and member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, he uses painting as a way to reflect on his culture’s past, present and future. Throughout his 30-year career, he has blended his cultural and artistic backgrounds to connect with his students.

Gwen Westerman is an enrolled member of the Sisseton Wahpeton Dakota Oyate and a citizen of the Cherokee Nation. She creates textile art influenced by her life and Indigenous cultures. Her work is in the permanent collections of the Red Cloud Heritage Center Museum, the University Art Galleries at USD, the Great Plains Art Museum and the Minnesota Historical Society.

Dwayne “Chuck” Wilcox is a contemporary Plains ledger artist and is an enrolled member of the Oglala Lakota nation. He focuses on vignettes of Indian life infused with humor and favors depicting powwows, social dances, families and everyday activities. Throughout his career, Wilcox has won numerous prizes and placement ribbons. His work has been exhibited in museums and galleries both nationally and in Europe.

Jim Yellowhawk is an abstract American Indian artist, blending traditional styles of art with modern imagery and concepts. Yellowhawk is an enrolled member of the Itazipco Band of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe and the Onondaga/Iroquois on his mother’s side. He has brought his art to the international community, including being invited to perform Lakota men’s traditional dance at venues worldwide, and his artwork is in public and private collections across the country.

Denton Fast Whirlwind is an Oglala Lakota painter, bead worker, business owner and college instructor. Fast Whirlwind’s work has been collected worldwide and is part of several public and private museum collections, including the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian, Red Cloud Heritage Museum, USD, University of Arkansas and private collectors from France, Norway, England, Japan, Italy and Germany.

Henry Payer is a Ho Chunk artist who works primarily with collage and mixed media. He references the altered landscape through Indigenous cartographic methods of “picture-writing” combined with European modernist models of cubism, spatial distortion and collage. Payer served as an instructor for the Oscar Howe Summer Art Institute (OHSAI) in 2015 and has exhibited his work at locations across the Midwest.

Michael Two Bulls is an Oglala Lakota artist and musician who creates art that focuses on concepts that deal with identity, history and place – often drawing from aspects of his own life, family and experiences. As a core member of Bad Art Studio, Two Bulls has always believed that the true nature of art is not in the medium but is in the artist and their subject.

Dyani White Hawk (Sičáŋu Lakota) is a multimedia artist and independent curator. Through painting, beadwork, installation, performance and curation, her practice challenges the lack of representation of Native people, arts and voices in art movements and beyond. White Hawk’s work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian and the Akta Lakota Museum, among other public and private collections.

Autumn Cavender (Wicanhpi Iyotan Win) is an artist, midwife and activist from Pezihutazizi K’api Makoca (Upper Sioux Community). In 2020 and 2021, Cavender received two Artist Equity Grants from the Southwest Minnesota Arts Council (SMAC). Her generative quillwork has been featured most recently in exhibits at Art Basel-Miami, Miami Art Week and South by Southwest.

Talon Bazille Ducheneaux is a rap artist and poet from the Crow Creek Dakota and Cheyenne River Lakota tribes in South Dakota, part of the Oceti Sakowin (7 Council Fires). Bazille is the head of Wonahun Was’te’ Studios/Records. Bazille is also the co-founder of the website NeverDeadNative.com — a platform which aims to create a celebratory place of discussion for Indigenous peoples who are interested in the realm of horror — alongside Dakota writer Dani Miller.

Terran Last Gun (Piikani) is a visual artist and Piikani citizen, a part of the Blackfeet Nation. Through revealing fragments of time, history and Indigenous Abstraction, Last Gun is creating a new Piikani art form with minimalist and geometric qualities that are rooted in meaning, content and place. In 2022, he was named one of the 12 New Mexico Artists to Know Now in Southwest Contemporary.

Kylie Wanatee, an enrolled member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, is from Rosebud, South Dakota, and is a rising sophomore at USD, pursuing a Bachelor of Fine Arts. She participated in the OHSAI in 2019, 2021 and 2022. Her artistic practice includes painting in acrylics, gouache on paper and oil paints.