Andy P. Abeita
President
Council for Indigenous Arts and Culture
New Mexico

I am a Native American Indian artist and the first American Indian president of the Indian Arts and Crafts Association (IACA), created in 1974, a national trade association recognized as a 501 (c)(6) trade organization under the U.S. Internal Revenue Service codes. Our membership, national and international, totals over 700. The IACA is the only trade association in the U.S. specifically founded to promote, protect, and preserve the Native American Indian arts-and-crafts industry.

I have spent the last ten years working under the aegis of the IACA preserving aboriginal arts and crafts and seeking legal protections for them. Recently, I have created an educational resource organization with a not-for-profit 501 (c)(3) status in order to adequately address a variety of concerns -- government and public-sector, art-and culture-related, legal and educational. The recently created Council for Indigenous Arts and Culture received its federally designated 501 c3 status in 1998 and is the brain child of the research discussed below.

I speak four Indian languages and have worked professionally as an artist for the last fifteen years. I come from a small American Indian community called Isleta Pueblo, located thirteen miles south of Albuquerque, New Mexico.

For centuries, art and handcrafts have played an important role in the religious and social lives of Indigenous peoples all over the world. Throughout our Native American history it has been no different. The images you see in almost all designs used in Native American arts and crafts are religious. Even the hand processes used in creating such works reflect an individual artisan’s relationship with the tools that begin with a beating heart, mind, and spirit. Our ties to this earth and to our Creator are evident in almost all images in the cultural arts of the Native American artisan.