The Native American Arts Center produces and hosts the annual Native American Arts Festival Week, designed to enhance and add depth to the Summer Program workshop experience. The week-long festival provides a provocative learning experience by bringing together distinguished artists, scholars, and cultural specialists to present performances, demonstrations, films, exhibitions, showcases, and the popular Michael Kabotie Lecture Series. All events are free and open to the public!

Schedule of Events:

12:00pm - Michael Kabotie Lecture Series: Ossie from PAMYUA

The Native American Arts Festival Week presents its annual Michael Kabotie Lecture Series. This year’s guest lecturers are Indigenous folks who are making positive change in their communities and beyond in their fields that are outside of visual arts.

Aassanaaq "Ossie" Kairaiuak (Yup’ik) from Yup’ik Soul/Funk Band PAMYUA activates his life work utilizing music and art to save lives, to keep Yup’ik culture alive, and give young people something they can look up to and see themselves in. Ossie’s unique and fun approach connects him to the work and all his relatives worldwide. In this series segment, we will learn, listen, and join Ossie on a journey of joy.

Location: IAF Campus: Krone Library

7:00pm - Staged Reading of "We Were There When Jazz Was Invented" by U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo, Featuring Jazz Trumpeter Delbert Anderson

This headlining event of the 2025 Native American Arts Festival Week is an intimate staged reading of Joy Harjo’s latest play, "We Were There When Jazz Was Invented," with the musical accompaniment of Diné Trumpeter, Delbert Anderson. This is the very first time the two renowned Jazz Musicians will hit the stage together. 

Joy Harjo is an internationally renowned performer and writer of the Muscogee Nation. She served three terms as the 23rd Poet Laureate of the United States from 2019-2022 and is winner of the Poetry Society of America’s 2024 Frost Medal, Yale’s 2023 Bollingen Prize for American Poetry, and was recently honored with a National Humanities Medal.

Delbert Anderson, a Diné jazz trumpet artist, composer, and educator, stands at the forefront of a vibrant Native American jazz scene. His work, deeply rooted in his Diné heritage, seamlessly integrates Navajo "spinning songs" of love, healing, and courtship with jazz and funk, thus marking him as a community-minded Indigenous individualist.

Location: Bowman IAF Theater