NY | Meet the Artists: Native Comic Creators

Meet the museum's 2026 Comic Creators, see examples of their work, and learn about the state of Native comics and illustration!
Comic artists Jalen DeCoteau (Turtle Mountain band of Chippewa), Jason Garcia/Okuu Pín (Santa Clara Pueblo Tewa) and Jackie Fawn (Washoe, Yurok, and Surigaonon) will be presenting their work accompanied by comic mentors Lee Francis IV (Pueblo of Laguna), Alina Pete (nehiyaw [Cree]), and John Swogger in an informal one-day pop-up. 
 
The museum's Comic Creators Program supports emerging and mid-career artists to successfully prepare for and navigate the professional comics industry. Participants receive industry-related training and mentorship and training in community engagement and produce comics-based work for the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian over an eight-month period.


About our participants:

• Jalen DeCoteau is an illustrator, and comic creator from Belcourt, North Dakota, and is an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians. DeCoteau received his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Studio Art with an emphasis in drawing from the University of North Dakota, where he spent time learning how to make comics. Now DeCoteau is pursuing his Master of Fine Arts in Studio Art with a dual emphasis on Drawing and Printmaking at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, using his work to tell stories that draw from the interpretive nature of the Oral Tradition, influenced by his life growing up on the Turtle Mountain Reservation in North Dakota.
• Jason Garcia’s (Okuu Pín/‘Turtle Mountain’) work documents the ever-changing cultural landscape of his home of K’haPo Owingeh/Santa Clara Pueblo, NM. Garcia’s Tewa cultural ceremonies, traditions, and stories, as well as 21st century popular culture, comic books, and technology, influences his clay and print work. Using traditional materials and traditional Pueblo pottery techniques coupled with various printmaking techniques, this juxtaposition of customary and contemporary materials and techniques connect him to his ancestral past, landscape, and cultural knowledge. His work has been exhibited in many national Museums, institutions and various exhibitions, including the National Museum of the American Indian, Arizona State University, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, the Colby Museum of Art, and the Peabody Essex Museum. Garcia is also the co-curator of the exhibition, "TEWA NANGEH – TEWA COUNTRY" at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, NM. Garcia earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of New Mexico-Albuquerque and his Master of Fine Arts in Printmaking at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Garcia resides and works in his studio located in Santa Clara Pueblo, NM.
• Jackie Fawn is a Washoe, Yurok, and Surigaonon multidisciplinary artist from Klamath, California currently residing with her husband in his ancestral homelands of Akwesasne, Mohawk Territory. In 2020, she opened the doors to Fishbear Studios, a creative art space geared towards cultivating radical and healing arts within her community. Through her studio space she offers an array of workshops on developing the artist’s voice, screen printing, and collaborative community art projects. Her illustrations have been recognized in Indigenous spaces by her vivid depictions of warrior women defending the land and people against modern day colonialism. In recent years, Fawn’s work has circulated in TEK curriculum, and environmental/health campaigns to uplift Indigenous resiliency and healing. She is a self-taught artist that has been greatly influenced by creative resistance tactics taught by Indigenous frontline mentors.
• Dr. Lee Francis IV (Pueblo of Laguna) aka Dr. IndigiNerd is the Founder and Chief Imagination Officer of the Indigenous Imagination Workshop, an organization dedicated to sparking and cultivating the Indigenous Imagination. He is an educator and entrepreneur and the founder of the Indigenous Comic Con, Indigenous Worlds of Wonder, the Indigenous Futurisms Festival, Native Realities and Red Planet Books and Comics. He is also an award-winning writer and editor and has multiple publications from poetry to short stories to comics. He was the host and lead writer for "IndigiGenius" on New Mexico PBS and the co-producer for "Sovereign Innovations" on PBS Digital. He is also the creator of "Sovereignty Gardens," a Native American kids puppetry show that teaches youth about gardening and food sovereignty. He continues to be a strong advocate for Native American youth, especially in the areas of creative entrepreneurship. He lives in North Carolina with his family.
• Alina Pete is an award-winning nehiyaw (Cree) comic artist and author from Little Pine First Nation in Saskatchewan. They blend comic art with traditional storytelling techniques to create engaging, informative comics that engage the broader community. Their work has been published internationally, and examines such topics such as truth and reconciliation, mental health, language reclamation, and ending gender-based violence. Their vision is to carry the flame of learning so that Indigenous youth can build a sustainable future that weaves tradition and technology.
• John Swogger is an archaeological illustrator, and has also been writing and drawing archaeological comics for over twenty years for museums as well as excavation and local history projects in Turkey, the West Indies, South and Central America, Micronesia, the US and the UK. He has worked with Indigenous communities and Native American tribal historians on comics about indigenous archaeology,the impact of climate change on cultural heritage, tribal histories, traditional teachings, and NAGPRA repatriations.

Image: Jeffrey Veregge (Port Gamble S’Klallam, 1974-2024). Detail of a "Celestial" from Jeffrey Veregge’s “Of Gods and Heroes,” 2018. © 2018 Marvel. This work is currently on view at the National Museum of the American Indian in New York, NY.