At the Southwestern Association for Indian Arts (SWAIA)’s Centennial Santa Fe Indian Market, our partners at IllumiNative and NDN Collective held a weekend-long event, Indigenous Futures, that featured powerful programming that wove together the knowledge and experiences of Natives in the arts with organizers from the movement for Native political power.

Native Organizers Alliance’s Executive Director, Judith Le Blanc, was invited to be on the Visions for the Future: Voting, Organizing & Building Indigenous Power panel alongside Nick Tilsen, CEO of NDN Collective, Holly Cook Macarro of Spirit Rock Consulting LLC, and Crystal Echo Hawk, the Founder and Executive Director of IllumiNative.

As a panel, we discussed how this is the time to build Native grassroots political power for transformational social change and sovereignty through cultural organizing and narrative change. Everything we do must be a part of shifting power back to our communities – from film and art to voting and organizing for sovereignty.