Please join the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) for the 2024 Commencement Ceremony on Saturday, May 11, 2024, at 10 am (MDT), which will take place in the Performing Arts and Fitness Center on the IAIA campus, followed by the 2024 Spring IAIA Graduation Powwow in the Dance Circle at the center of campus. Both events are free and open to the public.

This year’s program will feature keynote speaker Dyani White Hawk (Sičangu Lakota) ’08, who has been selected to give the commencement address and will be awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Humanities degree during the ceremony. The 2024 Commencement Ceremony will also include speeches from the class Valedictorian DeMar C. Galloway (Shoshone-Bannock Tribes), IAIA President Dr. Robert Martin (Cherokee Nation), and IAIA Board of Trustees Chair Beverly Wright Morris (Aleut), among other speakers.

Previous recipients of the IAIA Honorary Doctorate of Humanities degree have included Jeffrey Gibson (a member of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and of Cherokee descent), W. Richard “Rick” West Jr. (Cheyenne and Arapaho), Charlene Teters (Spokane) ’86, Roxanne Swentzell (Santa Clara Pueblo), George Rivera (Pojoaque Pueblo) ’84, Linda Lomahaftewa (Hopi and Choctaw) ’65, Dan Namingha (Hopi-Tewa) ’69, Kevin Red Star (Crow), Suzan Shown Harjo (Cheyenne and Hodulgee Muscogee), James Luna (Luiseño), N. Scott Momaday (Kiowa), Tony Abeyta (Navajo) ’86, Dave Warren (Santa Clara Pueblo), and David Bradley (Minnesota Chippewa Tribe) ’79.

After the Commencement Ceremony, lunch will be available on campus at Café Bon Appétit in the Center for Lifelong Education building. A livestream of the Commencement Ceremony will also be available on this web page.

About Dyani White Hawk

White Hawk is a multidisciplinary visual artist and independent curator based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She earned an MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2011 from the School of Education’s Art Department, a BFA in Studio Arts from IAIA in 2008, and an Associate of Arts degree from Haskell Indian Nations University in 2003. Her work is in the collections of the Guggenheim Museum, Brooklyn Museum, Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Walker Art Center, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts Museum, Denver Art Museum, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, Tweed Museum of Art, IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, and Akta Lakota Museum, among other public and private collections.

Support for White Hawk’s work has included the 2024 Creative Capital grant, 2023 MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, 2021 Anonymous Was a Woman Award, Academy of Arts and Letters Award, 2021 and 2013 McKnight Foundation Fellowship, 2020 Carolyn Glasoe Bailey Foundation Minnesota Art Prize, 2019 United States Artists Fellowship in Visual Art, Eiteljorg Fellowship for Contemporary Art, Jerome Hill Artists Fellowship, Forecast for Public Art Mid-Career Development Grant, 2018 Nancy Graves Grant for Visual Artists, 2017 and 2015 Native Arts and Cultures Foundation Fellowships and 2014 Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant. She has participated in residencies in Australia, Russia, and Germany. She served as Gallery Director and Curator for the All My Relations Gallery in Minneapolis from 2011–2015.