IFAM, the Indigenous Fine Art Movement, has turned heads in recent years by splintering off from the giant SWAIA operation and establishing an Indian arts market that overlaps annual with the SWAIA annual Indian Market in Santa Fe. Reviews have been mixed about this development, but the hundreds of artists who are part of this new group represent serious talent and drive. Many people wonder if such a group will harm the annual Indian Market over time. It’s early days for that yet, but IFAM has shone a new and very different light on Native artistic thinking. This is the core idea that the work all Native peoples produce now is most definitely fine art in all senses of the term. Writers like myself have been waiting for Native artists to begin claiming labels they alone have devised.

Fact: Native artists have already brought forward one new term for their contemporary explorations and that is “Native Style.”