Indigenous Identities

Indigenous Identities opened at the S'edav Va'aki Museum on October 8 and runs through July 2027, so you've got plenty of time to catch it. It's a group show featuring ten Native artists, and rather than sticking to one shared style, it lets each of them work in their own way—painting, digital print, and sculpture all sit side by side.

Curator Caitlin Dichter frames the whole thing around how cultural identity shapes how we see ourselves, how we understand other people, and how we move through the world. She notes that many of the artists draw on their own culture, their memories, and their life experiences to build their work. From there, the themes branch out into ancestral lands, kinship, and sovereignty, and over to commodity and the right to cultural expression in public spaces. It reads survival and resilience through the work itself.

One of the things that makes this particular show stick is where it's being held. The S'edav Va'aki Museum is built on a 1,500-year-old archaeological site once inhabited by the Ancestral Sonoran Desert People. It's a National Historic Landmark and a Phoenix Point of Pride, and you can still see the platform mound, the ballcourt, and the irrigation canals on the grounds. Having an exhibition about identity and belonging inside a place with that kind of history adds a layer that would be missing anywhere else.

If you're planning a visit, the museum is at 4619 East Washington Street in Phoenix. The show runs from October 8, 2026, through July 2027, so there's no rush to get there this weekend.