Federal funding cuts to the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts are being felt across the Native art community.

“Some of the cuts have been absolutely devastating, including research centers that we were partnering with at Bard College that were led by artists that completely lost all of their federal support after the grant was awarded, and I’ll also say that this is really unprecedented,” said Candice Hopkins, executive director and chief curator at the Forge Project. Hopkins is Carcross and Tagish First Nation.

The Forge Project is a Native-led organization that cultivates and advances Indigenous leadership in arts and culture. They have worked with hundreds of people through their programs of partnerships, including the Stockbridge–Munsee Community in Wisconsin.

While her nonprofit organization has not been affected by the funding cuts, many of their partners have like Choctaw and Cherokee artist Jeffrey Gibson.

The Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art received a notification in May from the National Endowment for the Arts that the awarded grant for the support of Gibson’s commission “POWER FULL BECAUSE WE’RE DIFFERENT” was terminated.

The museum’s director Kristy Edmunds said the National Endowment for the Arts awarded it during the Biden administration.

“In reading our notification multiple times, I am struck by the words being used, how important they are to absorb, and is why I am sharing them here with you as supporters of MASS MoCA,” Edmunds said in a statement. “The loss of these crucial funding awards for projects at MASS MoCA (pending appeals) is real and will throw us into greater financial strain. As painful as this is financially, what is more so is the diminishment of our revered national agencies and their staff after decades of service in elevating our national creativity, innovation and cultural contributions. These actions in combination with their rhetoric are unnerving, and are but one of many challenges at hand and to come.”

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