Idyllwild Arts Native Arts Festival Week Enrollment Extended
By Emily Clarke
Every year, the Idyllwild Arts Native American Arts Center hosts their annual Native American Arts Festival Week; a week of Native Arts workshops, themed programming, community events, food tastings, and more. This year, with a theme of “Humor, Comedy and Joy in Indigenous Artistic Expression,” the Native Arts Center is planning programming centered around Indigenous laughter and happiness; something many institutions do not consider when it comes to Native education and survivance. Festival Week begins Sunday, June 18th, with the annual Welcoming Home the Birds event which will feature traditional Cahuilla Bird Singing, hands-on cultural activities, demonstrations, and Native arts vendors. The fun continues June 19th-June 23rd with Native Arts Workshops and open-to-the-public programming including the Michael Kabotie Lunchtime Lecture Series and a Good Medicine Comedy Showcase.
Although Festival Week is lively, busy, and full of fun things to do, the Native Arts Center offers Native Arts workshops for two additional weeks throughout the summer. Although many of the workshops are full, registration is being extended for one last week for the workshops that still have openings. New Native Kitchen with Navajo Chef Freddie Bitsui is happening from June 17th-18th; a perfect weekend where you will also have the opportunity to attend the Welcoming Home the Birds event after class. If cooking isn’t your thing, but perhaps pottery is, try Mojave-style Effigy Pottery with Tony Soares June 12th-16th. June 26th-30th, the week after Festival Week, has three workshops available: Hopi Jewelry: Silver Overlay, Porcupine Quill Workshop, and Finding Form: Encaustic in the Third Dimension. Not only will you learn a new artform in these workshops, you will also have the privilege of joining a close Native Arts community. The Native Arts Center also offers scholarships for Native students with the proof of a tribal ID who demonstrate scholarship need as well as for teachers and graduate students studying and working in the Inland Empire.
Regardless of whether or not you decide to enroll in one of the fascinating workshops listed above, the Idyllwild Arts native Arts Center hopes to see you attend one of their many scheduled free programs during Festival Week and encourages you to join the discussion of Native comedy and joy. I have had the privilege of working as a consultant for the program this year alongside our editor, Terria Smith (Cahuilla), and the Executive Director of the Native Arts Center, Shaliyah Ben (Navajo). This is the first year in which three Native women have worked together to plan the programming and we are ecstatic to offer the culmination of our hard work to you. If there’s one thing that comes to mind when I think of Native people (and Native women, more specifically) it is the fact that we are really, truly hilarious. Despite everything we have been through as a people, we are one of the funniest, most joyful communities around. It’s time we celebrate this humor, this survivance, and it’s time we express ourselves in a way that exemplifies our joy as a form of resistance.
