Culture bearers and folk arts practitioners are deeply rooted in the practice and preservation of cultural traditions through craft, storytelling, dance, performance, visual arts, language preservation, foodways, and more. Cultural identities may include geographic communities, occupational groups, or family traditions.  

Folk arts and culture bearer practices are often connected to cultural communities and prioritize sharing knowledge with the next generation. Some of the titles they may use are culture bearer, folk artist, taproot artist, traditional artist, elder artist, and ancestral knowledge bearer. 

• WHAT: The 2025 Midwest Culture Bearers Award is a $5,000 unrestricted, non-matching award. It honors and amplifies the work of nine Midwestern culture bearers each year. 
• WHO: If you have a folk arts or traditional cultural practice that you have engaged in for at least 10 years and prioritizes the next generation of practitioners, you may apply.
• WHEN: Applications close at 11:59 pm CST on July 21, 2025. Awards will be made in September–October 2025.
• WHERE: You must live in the Arts Midwest region. This includes Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, Wisconsin, and the Native Nations that share this geography. 

You may get help from someone else to complete your application. Or, you can nominate someone with their permission. 

About the Midwest Culture Bearers Award

The Midwest Culture Bearers Award will honor and amplify the work of nine Midwestern folk arts and culture practitioners each year. This award seeks to financially support folk arts and culture practitioners, as well as create opportunities for further recognition and relationship-building across the region. 

Selected individuals will each receive a $5,000 unrestricted, non-matching award. Additionally, we will offer professional development and networking opportunities, and stories featuring awardees and their work.  

Read the Application Guidelines

Learn more about the 2025 Midwest Culture Bearers Award, eligibility requirements, and how to upload and submit your application.

Learn More and Apply

Photo Credit: Mia Beach / African American Arts Institute

The post Now Accepting Applications: 2025 Midwest Culture Bearers Award appeared first on Arts Midwest.

When he turned 30 years old, though, Red Eagle decided he was going to change his life. “I got sick and tired of being sick and tired. For me, the way to change my life was through my culture.” That’s the guiding force behind Red Eagle’s bow-making work today.

In 2014, he and his wife left Montana for South Dakota’s Lake Traverse Reservation so Red Eagle could reconnect with his Dakota roots by learning the language. “The more we reclaim who we are—our language, our way of life, our history, everything that happened to us both good and bad—it grounds us and gives us a sense of identity,” he says.

At his wife’s suggestion, he looked into a Dakota language teaching certificate program at Sisseton Wahpeton College. “I enrolled, and the rest is history,” Red Eagle says. The college offered traditional arts workshops, and Red Eagle took all of them. Having always been interested in archery, once he got to bow-making, the craft spoke to him.

He spent years supplementing his formal training by speaking to elders and learning about the long traditions of bow-making from around the world. “I’m really big on not staying stuck in the past, but using it as a foundation to move us forward. That’s why I do everything in my power to learn how we did things a long time ago, but also acknowledging that we live in a different time and not being afraid to adapt and adjust,” Red Eagle says.

Not only are the bow and arrow tied to Dakota creation stories, “to me, the bow and arrow symbolize being able to provide and also protecting your people. There’s a spiritual significance to them.”

Building on a background running a youth program in Montana, today Red Eagle works with Native American communities of all kinds to revive culture through bow-making and other crafts, but delights in working with Indigenous young men specifically. “I help our young men reconnect with their roles and responsibilities in our community because that was stripped of them through boarding schools.”

Photo Credit: Jeremy Red Eagle

Photo Credit: Jeremy Red Eagle

Photo Credit: Dustina Gill

Red Eagle’s holistic approach to bow-making is customized to the needs of the community he’s working with. This means his classes can include everything from responsibly sourcing the necessary wood to the intricate beadwork and quillwork that embellishes the final product. Others swap traditional, natural materials like bone and animal sinew with modern materials like metal for accessibility.

For Red Eagle, receiving the 2024 Midwest Culture Bearers Award gives him the ability to focus on bow-making amid his broader art practice. “Starting this spring, my goal is to bring back horseback archery.” Plus, “my grandson is two. I want him to grow up with a bow in his hand.”

Jeremy Red Eagle is a 2024 recipient of the Midwest Culture Bearers Award, which celebrates and financially supports the work of Midwest culture bearers and folk arts practitioners.

The Midwest Culture Bearers Award is supported by Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies with additional support from the National Endowment for the Arts for project management.

The post Meet Jeremy Red Eagle, The Bow-Maker Teaching Dakota Traditions appeared first on Arts Midwest.

Photo Credit: Rachelle Baker

“Why am I studying Chinese art if I don’t know anything about Korean art?” she realized. “How can I study Korean art if I had rejected my Koreanness?”

Until then, the 19-year-old Lee had insisted on speaking English to her parents. But she decided to speak Korean again, and traveled to Korea to refresh her skills. On subsequent travels, she encountered the artisans behind Korean paper, or hanji, hand-made from the bark of the paper mulberry plant.

Lee’s “lightbulb moment” led her to continue studying visual art, and she fell in love with bookmaking and papermaking. When she discovered there was very little research about hanji in English, she applied for her first Fulbright—that Fulbright year in Korea “made it very clear that this would be my life path,” she says.

It was difficult to get training in a discipline typically performed by men in rural communities. But Lee says once she found a teacher–after six months of searching!–“all these doors that felt slammed in my face started to open.” She studied with a basketmaker, a natural dyer, a calligrapher–artists who worked with the hanji she was learning to make.

Lee developed lectures and workshops to share what she’d learned. She worked with the Morgan Conservatory in Cleveland to build the first North American hanji studio. Rather than big cities like New York that “already had so much,” she felt she could make a greater impact in the Midwest. She published Hanji Unfurled, the first English-language book about hanji. She now has dozens of residencies, exhibitions, publications, and awards to her name. But she was still surprised to hear a student say, “You’ve influenced every Asian American papermaker.”

“When I grew up, it was totally uncool to do work based on your lineage,” says Lee. “It’s so heartening to see that it’s now a point of pride.”

Photo Credit: Stefan Hagen

Photo Credit: Stefan Hagen

Photo Credit: Stefan Hagen

Photo Credit: Gus Chan

Lee creates artist books, woven baskets, animals, even garments with hanji. Some she buys from Korean papermakers, whom she is proud to support. Some she makes herself–a laborious process of cultivating the plants, stripping away layers of bark, boiling, beating by hand, pressing, and drying… before letting the paper rest for a year or more. She uses plants native to her Ohio home, such as milkweed, which creates a “super-hybrid hanji very reflective of [her Korean-American] identity.”

Lee says the Midwest Culture Bearers Award has made her feel “seen for the heart of my work… in a way that the contemporary art world isn’t always equipped to understand.” The connection between artist, art, and the community around both is crucial for Lee. “Connecting my heritage from my family line with my place of birth with my skills and interests is how I embody a living tradition that will always feed my studio and community practice,” she says. “I think that connection is why art is so powerful.”

Aimee Lee is a 2024 recipient of the Midwest Culture Bearers Award, which celebrates and financially supports the work of Midwest culture bearers and folk arts practitioners.

The Midwest Culture Bearers Award is supported by Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies with additional support from the National Endowment for the Arts for project management.

The post Meet Aimee Lee, an Artist-Educator Expanding the Legacy of Korean Papermaking appeared first on Arts Midwest.

Founded in 1868, the town’s Bethel AME church long served as a central pillar of its Black community until 2020 when it was unable to survive the pandemic.

Photo Credit: Rachelle Baker

When Jetter was growing up, her parents had the means to ensure that their eight children were exposed to diverse artistic and cultural activities elsewhere, despite the slow decline of Black culture in Clinton.

“The town’s population has actually gone down over the years, so it was tough for me to find things to do. But my family created those opportunities for us,” she says. “It was about education. It was talking about Black historical moments, the Black museums that were around.”

Although Jetter now lives in the Chicago metro area, she continues her family’s legacy by serving as a community connector in her hometown two and a half hours away.

Today she’s the program director of the Vince Jetter Community Center in Clinton, named after her uncle, that has stepped up to fill the void left by the closure of Bethel AME.

“People always knew they could go to Bethel for any type of resources, so that’s how we want the community center to be, for it to continue to create opportunities for these kids to have experiences they wouldn’t normally have,” Jetter says.

Through the community center and beyond, she works broadly across cultural genres, from dance and music to language and crafts, to provide programming anchored in both Clinton’s rich Black history and the broader vibrancy of Black history as a whole. Her work is open to all community members, but is often focused on youth in particular.

One example of her vast programming is the summer event the community center holds each year to promote nonviolence among Clinton’s youth. “This August will be our 32nd year,” Jetter says. “It’s a back to school event for the kids. They’re fed, there’s games, and they’re given school supplies.”

Ultimately, Jetter sees her work as a natural extension of her family history.

“My grandfather owned a business. He would help his employees obtain housing and vehicles. Our holiday family gatherings would always have employees there, they were like family,” she recalls.

Photo Credit: Tara Dohrn Photography

Photo Credit: Tara Dohrn Photography

Photo Credit: Tara Dohrn Photography

Photo Credit: Tara Dohrn Photography

It’s her family’s legacy that she’s able to further extend thanks to the Midwest Culture Bearers Award. “We’ll be purchasing djembe drums and incorporating them into our programming. We’re also looking to build up our African dance [offerings],” she notes. She’s also buying easels, looking to bring in guest artists, and planning to host poetry events.

“Some of Clinton’s Black families have completely moved out just because of a lack of access to activities that represent their culture and interests,” she says. “So we want to create those activities and opportunities for the youth—and not just for Black youth, but for all the youth.”

Tamra Jetter is a 2024 recipient of the Midwest Culture Bearers Award, which celebrates and financially supports the work of Midwest culture bearers and folk arts practitioners.

The Midwest Culture Bearers Award is supported by Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies with additional support from the National Endowment for the Arts for project management.

The post Meet Tamra Jetter, a Community Connector for Iowa Youth appeared first on Arts Midwest.

Buche finds a niche, however, in traditional copper bowl-making.

Photo Credit: Rachelle Baker

The tradition she draws from is her own Potawatomi ancestry—for centuries, Indigenous communities of the Great Lakes have cultivated rich artistic and toolmaking practices thanks to the region’s natural copper deposits. “We are so blessed in the upper Midwest to have this beautiful vein of Lake Superior copper that is 99% pure,” says Buche. “The Creator gives you what you need.”

With copper so pure, no smelting is required. Beautiful bowls can be hammered out with stones found along the shores of the very same lake.

“I love talking to people about the wonderful Indigenous wisdom of knowing millennia ago that copper is antibacterial and antimicrobial and purifies water,” says Buche. “That’s why it’s used in our water ceremony.”

Buche’s relationship to her Potawatomi heritage grew while working with the military, when she connected with Indigenous soldiers. When she returned from Germany, she took her children to powwows and handmade their dance costumes. From there, her artistry blossomed.

“I have always been an artist, and drawn to natural materials, so I found it a very natural transition,” she says. “I love metal—copper in particular—so when I discovered this traditional bowl-making practice using stone tools, I just fell in love.”

Now, Buche teaches at folk schools like the Driftless Folk School in Viroqua, Wisconsin, where her students range from middle schoolers to retirees. Some are Indigenous; many are not. Some travel from across the United States to make a copper bowl, and she’s since tripled the number of classes she offers. She starts each lesson with a greeting in the Potawatomi language before delving into the history, the process, and metallurgy.

“You have to be in relationship with the copper,” she explains. “You have to make sure you are listening when it speaks to you, that you’re paying attention to the relationship between you and how it’s changing with your interaction.”

She reminds students to be kind to themselves. “Everybody goes through what I call the dark night of the bowl,” she says. “There can be a frustrating part in there because you’re using a new set of muscles and a new kind of tool. But I haven’t lost one yet. I believe everybody can make a bowl, and they do.”

Photo Credit: Hanna Agar

Photo Credit: Hanna Agar

Photo Credit: Hanna Agar

Photo Credit: Hanna Agar

Photo Credit: Hanna Agar

Photo Credit: Hanna Agar

Buche was “flabbergasted” to receive the Midwest Culture Bearers Award. “I have been an artist for fifty years. To be acknowledged as somebody worth taking a look at is amazing,” she says. And although teaching has been a cherished part of her career, she looks forward to dedicating more time to her own artmaking.

“Often working with others inspires one’s own imagination, so it’s been a wonderful blessing,” she says. And, “I’m getting to the point now that I don’t have endless amounts of time. I should probably get to it!”

Martha Buche is a 2024 recipient of the Midwest Culture Bearers Award, which celebrates and financially supports the work of Midwest culture bearers and folk arts practitioners.

The Midwest Culture Bearers Award is supported by Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies with additional support from the National Endowment for the Arts for project management.

The post Meet Martha Buche, a Potawatomi Artist Teaching Traditional Copper Bowl-Making appeared first on Arts Midwest.

Photo Credit: Rachelle Baker

Bloomquist has dedicated her life to two traditional Swedish folk art painting practices, dalmålning and bonadsmålning. Along the way, she has found a way to blend these historic techniques with contemporary stories to create something all her own.

What makes Swedish folk painting unique, Bloomquist explains, is its narrative quality. While the tradition of Norwegian rosemaling focuses on decorative floral and scrollwork, Swedish styles incorporate storytelling, often showing Bible stories or other meaningful events.

In 18th-century Sweden, traveling artists painted scenes on cloth to decorate wooden farmhouses. These paintings weren’t just art—they were personal and functional, often marking important moments in people’s lives.

It’s the storytelling aspect of dalmålning and bonadsmålning that Bloomquist loves most. After working as an oncology nurse for years, she has spent much of her life listening to people’s stories and helping them through difficult times. Art became a way to manage stress and express her thoughts.

Blooomquist’s artistic journey was shaped by mentors Karen Jenson and Judith Kjenstad, two master folk artists known for their work in Norwegian and Swedish folk art traditions. They passed on the technical skills of the craft, inspiring Bloomquist to learn to make handmade paint, flour-based gesso, and stretched linen canvases.

But Bloomquist’s work didn’t stop with tradition—it evolved to include modern narratives. Her paintings show scenes like elders sipping coffee at a local Cenex, children climbing apple trees, or a North Dakota community rallying to move a church. Each piece bridges the past and present.

“I want the original paintings to be valued as tools that have allowed us to tell our stories,” Bloomquist explains. “But I’m very careful not to romanticize those old paintings. I recognize this tradition needs to stay relevant.”

Photo Credit: Pieper Bloomquist, scan by Arts District Imageworks

Photo Credit: Pieper Bloomquist

Photo Credit: Pieper Bloomquist, scan by Arts District Imageworks

Photo Credit: Pieper Bloomquist

One of her most meaningful projects involves working with elders in nursing homes to create community paintings. Bloomquist interviews residents to gather personal stories, sketches their stories onto a large canvas, and holds open painting sessions where participants contribute to the artwork. In the end, the finished piece reflects residents’ lives and hangs in their home—a lasting tribute to their stories.

Bloomquist also shares the history of dalmålning and bonadsmålning through teaching, both in the United States and in Sweden. “I want people to know about this tradition. I’ve been vocal to make sure it’s not forgotten,” she explains.

Through her work, Bloomquist ensures Swedish folk painting remains a living, evolving tradition—rooted in history but reflecting today’s world. “If something I’ve done has touched someone,” she reflects, “that’s my legacy.”

Pieper Bloomquist is a 2024 recipient of the Midwest Culture Bearers Award, which celebrates and financially supports the work of Midwest culture bearers and folk arts practitioners.

The Midwest Culture Bearers Award is supported by Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies with additional support from the National Endowment for the Arts for project management.

The post Meet Pieper Bloomquist, a Painter Bringing Swedish Folk Art to the People appeared first on Arts Midwest.

“I am a descendant of two really important African dance progenitors in the United States: Mama Kariamu Welsh and Baba Chuck Davis,” says Berry. “They taught me and allowed me to experience much of what I know now and much of what I am a caretaker of.” 

Photo Credit: Rachelle Baker

As professor of practice and director of the legendary African American Dance Company at Indiana University Bloomington, Berry passes this legacy on to his students.

“African dance accepts you the way you are,” says Berry, known as “Baba Stafford.” “You don’t have to have studied ballet, tap, and jazz since you were four…you don’t have to know what to do in a dance studio.”

Berry’s introduction to dance came from childhood, when his mother played soul music during Saturday morning chores. “That was my earliest memory of embodied practice: we would dance!”

His life changed when he took his first West African dance classes at the Community Education Center in West Phila and studied the Umfundalai Technique with Dr. Welsh.

“I didn’t know that performance, that storytelling, that sharing aspects of very old and very ancient culture, was possible in the ways that she did it,” says Berry. Shortly thereafter, he joined her dance company. He spent 14 years with Chuck Davis’s iconic African American Dance Ensemble, during which he served as associate director. He also taught for eight years at Denison University in Ohio.

Berry describes himself as “an Africanist who does embodied practice.” This includes African dance, choreography, and cultural aesthetics spread throughout its diaspora. “I have a concern and interest in the wellbeing of Black and otherwise marginalized folk,” says Berry. “It is via my practice that I engage, that I advocate for, that I tell stories about, and that I share Africanist aesthetics for the wellbeing of those folk.”

“We have forgotten as a larger culture that the first and most immediate way we learn about the world is through our embodied engagement,” Berry continues. “It is a very, very viable way for us to learn. African dance taught me this. It’s holistic; it utilizes all the parts of the world around us and all the parts of our bodies. It doesn’t throw them away and only focus on beauty; it focuses on everything. Everything is important and affects the dance.”

Photo Credit: Dayton Contemporary Dance Company

Photo Credit: Mia Beach / African American Arts Institute

Photo Credit: Jeremy Hogan / African American Arts Institute

Photo Credit: Jeremy Hogan / Indiana University Contemporary Dance

Receiving the Midwest Culture Bearers Award was a rewarding surprise. “I knew my work was valuable,” he says, “but I didn’t think granting organizations would see it as valued.” 

This year, the Dance Company is celebrating its fiftieth anniversary, which brings Berry back to the idea of legacy. “We get to teach and share with people the legacy that’s associated with this dance company. I’m watching the students slowly, moment by moment, day by day, performance by performance, walk in that knowing. I’m watching their light sparking a bit brighter than when they first arrived.”

Stafford Berry is a 2024 recipient of the Midwest Culture Bearers Award, which celebrates and financially supports the work of Midwest culture bearers and folk arts practitioners.

The Midwest Culture Bearers Award is supported by Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies with additional support from the National Endowment for the Arts for project management.

The post Meet Stafford C. Berry, Jr., an Artist-Scholar Teaching Embodiment Through African Dance appeared first on Arts Midwest.

Photo Credit: Rachelle Baker

Rubén Pachas is an indigenous Peruvian dancer and the Illinois recipient of Arts Midwest’s inaugural Midwest Culture Bearers Award. Pachas’ wife, Jessica Loyaga, walks beside him in his work. The duo performed with a dance company and taught school kids in Lima before relocating to Chicago in 2005.

They worked as guest teachers with the National Louis University program in Chicago Public Schools before starting their own organization, the Peruvian Folk Dance Center, which eventually became today’s Center of Peruvian Arts. Across his work in Peru and the United States, Pachas is committed to promoting indigenous Peruvian culture through dance.

“In Peru we pass the knowledge down to the next generations using indigenous techniques,” Pachas says. That is his life’s work, which he carries out not only in schools doing cultural festivals, but also in museums, libraries, and more in Chicago and beyond. “Each institution has different ways that they want the classes or the workshops done. Sometimes they want to include a specific topic,” he adds. “One year, the topic was recycling. Another year it was African heritage around the world.”

Whatever the topic or format, Pachas relies on indigenous techniques to tell indigenous stories. Circular dances represent the full moon and Mother Earth. Linear dances speak to rows of seeds, or canals that flow with the water they need to thrive. “We even do dances [about] the water, the lake and lagoons like Lake Michigan. We have the privilege of having this kind of god—we consider the lake to be a god because it provides us with everything related to the water cycle,” he says.

Other dances speak to the collective, community efforts needed to raise the roof of a home or erect a rope bridge. While students might not be building roofs or bridges, they’re learning about the importance of community cohesion and collective effort. They’re learning lessons that still matter today, perhaps even more so in an increasingly fractured country.

Photo Credit: El Vacilon Photography

Photo Credit: Rubén Pachas

Photo Credit: El Vacilon Photography

“We’re not living in our original place,” Pachas says. “So we try to continue to be traditionalist and costumbrist because we are in a place where we can spread this kind of knowledge.” In his tireless effort to pass down indigenous wisdom and values to generations tasked with caring for a planet in the throes of climate change, the culture bearers award means a lot.

“It’s very significant because no one has given me a prize like that”—one that’s from a regional entity beyond Chicago or even Illinois. “The recognition encourages me to continue with the mission of transmitting indigenous knowledge to the next generation and continuing to preserve those values.”

The post Meet Rubén Pachas, The Dancer Spreading Indigenous Peruvian Traditions appeared first on Arts Midwest.

Photo Credit: Rachelle Baker

“I consider myself a culture practitioner, because I’m always learning new things,” he says. To him, the master artists who have been his gateway into Philippine indigenous music are true culture bearers. Now ten years into his own practice, Almendras is a teacher too, passing on all he continues to learn about this art form—in particular, kulintang.

Kulintang is both an instrument and a music tradition practiced by several indigenous communities of the Philippines, notably the Maguindanao, Marao, and Sama-Taūsug. The instrument itself consists of eight pitched gongs. A kulintang ensemble also includes a drum called a dabakan and two bass gongs called agongs. Some Maguindanao music features an additional set of four gongs called the gandingan.

Learning kulintang has been “a means of self-discovery” for Almendras. “I’ve been able to uncover a lot more about my ancestral heritage [by] diving deeper into my own indigeneity and pushing past the influences of outside cultures.”

Almendras began his practice as a teenager in Ann Arbor, Michigan, when the Philippine Arts & Culture Ensemble of Michigan (PACE-MI), which he co-founded with his mother, began hosting workshops. Among the invited artists were teachers of kulintang. Through them, Almendras learned not just an instrument, but a new way of approaching music: oral tradition.

“It’s very different than classical training, which is largely relegated to studying a page of notation we’re meant to play back exactly,” says Almendras. “Oral tradition is a living tradition, so each iteration of what’s taught changes from person to person. It’s always evolving.”

Today, Almendras teaches through PACE-MI and at his alma mater, the University of Michigan. His students there range from music majors to young Filipino Americans looking to connect with their culture.

Almendras has spent time in the Philippines cultivating relationships with indigenous music practitioners. He has experienced the kulintang in action in community life, including ceremonies. “As an outsider looking in, these indigenous practitioners were so welcoming because we were so interested in learning more. It gave them a sense of validation and pride,” Almendras shares. “When I got to see the practice of kulintang in the context of indigenous culture itself, it builds bridges of community between groups of people.”

Photo Credit: Philippine Arts & Culture Ensemble of Michigan (PACE-MI)

Photo Credit: Philippine Arts & Culture Ensemble of Michigan (PACE-MI)

Receiving the Midwest Culture Bearers Award had a similar impact for him. “It was like what I said about [indigenous practitioners] feeling validated by our interest,” he says. “My own practice was validated.”

His next goal is to branch into scholarship, studying the music of smaller Philippine indigenous groups. He encourages individuals and organizations interested in his work to reach out.

“No matter what your traditional practice may be, it’s always of value,” he says. “There are times you might ask yourself: Is what I’m doing worth all the laborious hours, effort, and stress? As long as your heart’s in it, and you have a vision and a mission, keep going.”

Gean Vincent Almendras is a 2024 recipient of the Midwest Culture Bearers Award, which celebrates and financially supports the work of Midwest culture bearers and folk arts practitioners.

The Midwest Culture Bearers Award is supported by Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies with additional support from the National Endowment for the Arts for project management.

The post Meet Gean Vincent Almendras, a Michigan Teacher-Practitioner of Traditional Philippine Music appeared first on Arts Midwest.

Photo Credit: Rachelle Baker

In 1993, he reunited with family from South Dakota’s Lower Brule Sioux Tribe. It was then that Summers’ music practice clicked into place with what would become his life’s mission: crafting a contemporary version of Native American music, tugging at the strings of reconciliation in the process.

“I was in a lull musically,” he says of that time. Afterwards, “the floodgates opened back up. I stepped back into the world of music with a vengeance.” He named his Native American cultural rock group Brulé after his tribe, and got to work.

Over the course of 30 years, what started as a one-man show blossomed into a cast of contributors, from lighting designers to sound engineers. Brulé dancers have included all three of Summers’ granddaughters as well as cousins, nieces, and nephews. However, it’s Summers’ daughter, Nicole, a flutist, and his son, Shane, who taught himself guitar in college, who form Brulé’s core group.

“I learned along the way that there were two ways to go,” Summers says. “We could have gone big-time hard rock… because there were a lot of agents out there who wanted to take what we had started and exploit it commercially.”

But Summers took the advice of his elders to heart. They gave him their blessings to take their musical traditions into the modern world but cautioned him that if he broke his spiritual connection, his journey would be without the spirits’ assistance. Summers took the less lucrative high road. “We knew it was going to be more difficult, and it has been,” he says. “But following the path that we did, we have been able to influence the younger generations,” which is why he undertook the work of performing for Worthington’s school district in May 2023.

There’s no circuit for performing for school kids—“no booking agents, no managers, there’s not much money in it,” he says. “You have to do it yourself,” which he did. Summers and company wrangled grant funding and worked with leaders across the district to orchestrate the two-day event.

Not only did the performance highlight the value of cultural heritage to a diverse audience, but Brulé’s work overall “falls under the category of reconciliation and the healing process that our country still has not gone through,” Summers says. As an Indigenous person who grew up in a white world, “I am a part of both sides and would like to see a peaceful resolution to where we are today.” Plus, he says, “the kids pick up on it almost more than grownups do.”

Photo Credit: Kathy Summers

Photo Credit: Kathy Summers

Photo Credit: Kathy Summers

Photo Credit: Kathy Summers

Photo Credit: Kathy Summers

Paul Summers is a 2024 recipient of the Midwest Culture Bearers Award, which celebrates and financially supports the work of Midwest culture bearers and folk arts practitioners.

The Midwest Culture Bearers Award is supported by Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies with additional support from the National Endowment for the Arts for project management.

The post Meet Paul Summers, The Native Musician Putting Mission Over Money appeared first on Arts Midwest.