I'm at a board meeting of the New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA) in Northampton, Mass., where today we focused on the organization's new Native Arts program to support Native American artists in New England and across the country.  I was struck by the role arts and culture have played in preserving the identity of native people through centuries of incredible hardship.  Before dinner, I interviewed Pamela Kingfisher of LarsonAllen, who is working with the Ford Foundation to help create an entirely new national foundation to support native arts.  In this episode, she provides some context and emphasizes the importance of the New England initiative, also supported by the Ford Foundation.

Background music is taken from the live performance before dinner by Thawn Harris and his wife Elanor Dove Harris, members of the Narraganset tribe in Rhode Island.

This evening at the Plus Gallery at 2350 Lawrence St., Denver, three artists gave talks about their work, and afterward I spoke with gallery owner Ivar Zeile about how he groups artists in a show and what he hopes to hear in Artists' Talks.  The artists were Bruce Price, John McEnroe, and Evan Colbert.