(soft music)
- When we started out as Americans
we started with nothing you know.
You know, we lost our land,
we lost our hunting way of life, we lost our agriculture
and for us it was a, it was our apocalypse.
Anybody thinks about native people,
they think of the way we look, the way we dress,
the way we sing.
We're always depicted in a really two dimensional way.
I've always been compelled
to create art that captures our story today.
Our art as indigenous people like the bead work that we had,
the quill work all the design elements on our regalia.
At one point it was a cutting edge modern art
and it talked about our relationship to place
and our relationship to the cosmos.
(metal beads rattling)
(ball thudding)
- We need literally for the American people
to see us as contemporary human beings.
You really look at the way that this invisibility,
these stereotypes and these tropes
are very much institutionalized within the culture today
to the point that when you Google
95% of the images that come up are pre 1900.
And that's why the art of Bunky is so powerful.
- In a lot of ways I see other artists
you know, replicating what was once contemporary art
and now it's to me just like when I see it it's beautiful
but it's like a beautiful replica.
This image right here is inspired by the fracking operations
that we see that are running rampantly through
not only through Oklahoma
but all the way up through North Dakota you know.
It seems like anywhere there's an Indian lands you know,
there's fracking around it.
(sings in foreign language)
(car honking)
I use our you know foundational colors
like from our medicine wheel
and so let's start with the red.
It's red, white, yellow, and black
and for us represents our medicine wheel
represents the four directions the four races of mankind,
the four seasons and it represents the four stages of life.
So I try to use these colors
and the meanings that are associated with each color
in my art.
I don't personally follow Christianity
but I respect people, spiritual people, their beliefs
and their way of praying.
- We have a lot of challenges and aspirations
in Indian country that are not covered by the public media
and we need spokespersons in all of the mediums you know,
to tell our own stories here in native America.
And so I hope he continues on that pathway.
- Every facet of our life is molded
by treaties and broken treaties by laws and broken laws.
And the reality that we live in today, I mean
I don't think you can separate the politics
from the beauty of a culture.
- Do you look like American Gothic?
He's pretty affirmed in his identity
and so that's something that I continuously look up to
and see like how it affects our family.
- Sure, I think he's Pawnee.
- No.
(child mumbles)
- That's good he has a dinosaur kind of shape
but look he has a ponytail.
I believe that you know, our ancestors, you know,
had a way of living
that was good enough for them from the beginning of time
until a hundred years ago or a couple of generations ago
and I think that there's something to that, you know.
(chuckles)
- You know Bunky and other artists
really began to use things like hip hop
and contemporary art and other kinds of ways through culture
to really start you know, a very different conversation
about who we are as Indian people today.
- I was approached by Nike and seven division, you know
that really blew me away you know.
I was a native employee within Nike that you know,
started off kind of you know, I think in the warehouses
you know had this idea and they they allowed him to
to develop it and they supported him
and they believed in it.
Nike and Seven Collection it's native managed.
There are native people staffing
the collection and the native people
designing the collections.
But then also the sales you know, from those collections
go into the end seven fund
which is the you know the charitable arm
and gets redistributed back into Indian country
to fund youth programming.
I've always been drawn to that that feeling of creation
and I feel like that ties me back
to the very creation of humanity
I would hate to drift by my whole life
you know creating art that just perpetuated the myth
that we are a people of the past.
(soft music)
You can take a manufactured non-native cigarette
and empty it and it still has the tobacco.
You know traditional tobacco
and this is a spiritual currency,
you know for a lot of tribes
use this kind of as an offering.
I have a lot of love and respect, you know, for our people.
This is where my last name comes from.
It's from this man that's beneath my feet right here.
(speaks in foreign language)
This name and the name Echo Hawk
was translated from his,
one of his names that he had for a good part of his life
and it was the Hawk whose deeds are echoed before him.
The big, big people the really influential, positive people
are the ones that we still sing about today
and the ones that we still talk about today
where their names are fresh on our tongues
and people still know about how amazing
these individuals were.
And so that's my goal.
You know when I'm long gone
you know I still want people to sing a song about me
to you know and the dancers to dance
and to know that this is a song about me
and what I did with my life
you know, that's how I wanna live forever.
(soft music)