Steve Tamayo (Sicangu Lakota)

Traditional Lakota Artist and Educator

2025 NEA National Heritage Fellow
Omaha, Nebraska

Bio

Steven Tamayo (Sicangu Lakota), recipient of the 2025 NEA Bess Lomax Hawes National Heritage Fellowship, has spent 14 years on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota, reclaiming and preserving Lakota culture through his art. As a traditional artist and educator, Tamayo revives stories that were systematically erased by discriminatory laws, the boarding school system, and forced relocation.

After his service in the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division in the late 1980s, Tamayo worked with Umoⁿhoⁿ (Omaha) elder, World War II veteran, and artist Howard Wolf to study a variety of traditional materials and techniques important to the regalia of warrior societies. This included elements such as the pesha, a headdress made from deer tail and the soft guard hair of the porcupine.

His own work with buffalo robes is the culmination of decades of experience and knowledge gathering. Following traditional practice, Tamayo prepared the hides by softening the animal skin and stretching each hide on a frame before painting it with materials he produced by harvesting natural pigments and vegetation. Painted buffalo robes archive the history of Lakota people, tell stories of everyday life, and share culture and tradition with future generations. In 2022, Tamayo was awarded a four-year Creative Capital project grant to design, paint, and adorn 13 traditional buffalo robes for the school at Standing Rock Reservation. Tamayo’s work also includes buffalo robes gifted to Willie Nelson and Neil Young.

As part of the Nebraska Arts Council teaching roster, Tamayo visits schools and communities across the state, including remote communities, sharing his knowledge of art, regalia making, drumming, powwow dancing. In his role as a cultural specialist in Omaha Public Schools' NICE (Native Indigenous Centered Education) program, he helps Indigenous students sustain their cultural identity. To further his education and advocacy efforts, Bluebird Cultural Initiative, a nonprofit organization founded by Tamayo, offers free classes and educational materials on the Rosebud Reservation and nationwide. Several groups established by the organization host regular meetings where participants can deepen their cultural knowledge through traditional activities including Lakota language classes that teach ways of speaking and singing that are vital to cultural preservation and unity.

In 2011, Tamayo earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Sínte Gleska University in Mission, South Dakota, where he later developed and taught the traditional arts program. In 2014, he was awarded the Nebraska Governor’s Heritage Art Award for excellence in cultural artistic expression and for his contributions to Native American culture.