250 Years: Native American Art and Cultural Resilience

Join the (AICD) and for a panel discussion on Native American Art and cultural resilience, with artists Maize Black (Akwesasne Mohawk), Victoria Grace Canby (Diné), and Andrew (Drew) Valencia (Pomo), and moderated by Sharaya Souza (Taos Pueblo, Ute, Kiowa), co-founder and Executive Director, AICD.

This discussion brings together artists participating in AICD’s newest public art project, comprising a series of large-scale installations at the 16th Street BART Plaza and Fort Mason Center for Arts & Center, and in Haines’ exhibition 250 Years, Indigenous Futures. As the United States marks its 250th anniversary, these presentations reframe commemoration by foregrounding Native sovereignty and resilience, creativity and cultural revitalization, and healing.

Maize Black Mountain (Akwesasne Mohawk) is an Indigenous activist, multimedia artist, fabricator, and musician from Six Nations, Quebec, Ontario, and Upstate New York. Actively involved with the AICD and the American Indian and First Nations community, he has completed several public art projects, including a ceramic tile mural honoring Latino leader Carmen Tirado Rosario in San Francisco, as well as multiple installations at Joshua Tree National Park.

Victoria Grace Canby (Diné) is a Bay Area artist and educator whose multidisciplinary practice explores Indigenous identity, ancestral histories, land, and relationships with the natural world. Drawing on Diné teachings and her connections to California Native communities, Canby frequently centers plants as sources of medicine, knowledge, resilience, and intertribal connection. Her recent work considers how Indigenous ecological knowledge can offer pathways toward cultural healing, collective care, and environmental stewardship.

Andrew (Drew) Valencia (Pomo) is a San Francisco-based artist whose practice is grounded in Indigenous cultural knowledge, storytelling, and public art traditions that are historically rooted in Native cultural expression. Working primarily in public art and murals, his recent projects include The People’s District and The Prophecy, public artworks commissioned by the American Indian Cultural District, and collaborative murals throughout San Francisco.

Sharaya Souza (Taos Pueblo, Ute, Kiowa) is the co-founder and Executive Director of the American Indian Cultural District of San Francisco. Her work advances Native visibility, representation, and equitable access to resources while protecting and preserving American Indian cultural resources throughout the Bay Area. Souza has extensive experience in tribal consultation, cultural resource protection, environmental justice, land use, public policy, and initiatives connecting Native communities with land and place.

• Learn more about AICD's and .
• Learn more about Haines' exhibition .

Images: Installation view of Drew Valencia, The People's District, 2026; Victoria Grace Canby, We Grow Our Own Medicine - Interdimensional and Intertribal Healing - Plant Studies: Three Sisters - Squash, Beans, and Corn, 2026. Photo by Shaun Roberts.