Oscar Howe

Yanktonai Dakota · artists

Oscar Howe (1915–1983), whose Dakota name was Mazuha Hokshina ("Trader Boy"), was a revolutionary Yanktonai Dakota artist from the Crow Creek Reservation in South Dakota. He transformed Native American art by blending traditional Dakota imagery with modernist techniques, including Cubism and abstract expressionism. When the Philbrook Museum rejected his work as "not Indian enough," Howe wrote a powerful letter declaring Native artists free to explore any style — a pivotal moment in the Indian art world. He served as Artist Laureate of South Dakota and taught at the University of South Dakota for decades. His dynamic, geometric paintings of Sun Dances, buffalo hunts, and Dakota life remain among the most important works in Native American art history.