Review and connect with our TPHC 2026 Call for Artists winners!
TPHC 2026 Art Contest Winners
We are proud to recognize the talented artists selected as winners of our Call for Artists for TPHC 2026. Their work reflects creativity, culture, and powerful storytelling; capturing the spirit of community wellness, resilience, and hope. Each piece offers a unique perspective on our theme, “The Vision for Generational Healing, Health, and Wellness” and the impact it has on individuals, families, and communities across our region.
We invite you to explore and celebrate the inspiring artwork that helps bring our conference theme to life.
Grand Prize Winner
Featured Artist: Kevin Tushka – Moore, Oklahoma
Title: “Dance On My Shoulders”
It depicts a young father giving a piggy-back ride to his son who is dressed in Choctaw young men’s regalia, with their grandmother ensuring his hat doesn’t fall. The subtle background is of a elder warrior’s gaze and woman carrying water. Social dancing for Chahtas harkens back to a time of healing, prayer, and sharing stories of love, war, and hope. Elders guide us with the vision of correctness and reverence to keep traditions alive, healthy, and fulfilling.
Top 9 Winners
Bridgette Hoshont'omba
This piece is titled “Generational Visions”. This is a special piece representing various parts of my family and culture in the details like that, or with the Choctaw diamond, and Southeastern inchunwa and Hopi tattoos. The vision I had for this was that the grandmother would be imagining a future for her grandkids – one where culture wasn’t illegal or forgotten.
Notice, she is wearing jewelry but does not have tattoos like some of her family. The girl in the front, in purple, is the little girl the grandmother is had this vision for. This girl is remembering a memory of playing stickball. So the grandmother’s vision for the future becomes the granddaughter’s memory of her past, connecting the generations. This is the healing.
Nicholas A. Blanchard
My inspiration for this piece serves as a powerful tool for generational healing, offering a way to process pain, reclaim identity, and pass on stories. I’ve seen family drink, fight, get arrested, split families, and shadow our lives from our culture.
I, myself have experienced and lived this life. I started following the crowd and got lost in the streets and gang life. I’ve learned how to except my faults and break the chains of suffering, now I inspire my peers to break theirs.
Cody Cottrell
This artwork captures the bond between a mother and child, honoring the unbroken connection of Indigenous love, resilience, and cultural continuity. The mother lifts her child toward the sky, a gesture that symbolizes not only joy and nurture but also the act of raising the next generation into strength, identity, and belonging. Her long braid extends outward, merging with the star blanket behind her — a sacred symbol of protection, guidance, and the interwoven fabric of community.
The star pattern, composed of soft purples, greens, and blues, reflects both the land and the spirit world. Each color represents a living thread in the larger story of Indigenous peoples — the balance of earth, water, sky, and spirit. The star quilt itself carries deep meaning across many Indigenous nations: it is often a gift of honor, love, and remembrance. Here, it serves as both background and foundation — suggesting that every act of care, every moment of teaching, is rooted in ancestral memory.
The figures’ flowing garments and the mother’s grounded stance connect them to the earth, while their upward movement embodies hope. The mother’s braid — a symbol of identity, strength, and connection to lineage — encircles the child, forming a protective and unending link between past, present, and future.
This piece speaks to Indigenous motherhood not only as an act of love, but as resistance and renewal. The image reclaims tenderness and strength as sacred. It asserts that cultural survival is sustained through everyday acts of care.
Ultimately, this image honors the continuum of life and the power of matrilineal strength. It reminds us that every generation is lifted by those before them — that in the embrace between mother and child lies the promise that the land, language, and spirit will remember, endure, and thrive.
Shana Yellow Calf
The inspiration for Thunderbird Dancer came from my granddaughter, who bridges two worlds through her passion for both ballet and fancy dance. Watching her perform revealed a sense of harmony between tradition and modern expression, discipline and freedom, and storytelling through movement. Ballet, with its refined precision, conveys emotion through grace and control. Fancy dance, vibrant and rhythmic, embodies energy, strength, and cultural pride. Though their origins differ, both forms share a purpose, to tell stories and connect the dancer’s spirit with the audience.
Thunderbird Dancer reflects this connection, illustrating how two distinct traditions can coexist beautifully. The artwork’s vivid colors, fluid forms, and layered textures mirror the regalia and costumes of both dance styles. Each brushstroke captures motion and rhythm, a visual story of balance, culture, and transformation.
The Thunderbird, central to this piece, holds deep meaning in Native teachings. It is a powerful protector and sacred guardian of balance in nature. The Thunderbird represents change, renewal, and the cycles of life. It creates thunder and rain, elements essential for growth and survival. Its rain nourishes the land, its winds shape the climate, and its fire rejuvenates the earth. As a bringer of both storms and life, the Thunderbird symbolizes transformation and the harmony found between creation and renewal.
In Thunderbird Dancer, this spirit parallels the dancer’s movement, strength within grace, tradition within evolution. The Thunderbird’s energy protects and empowers, much like cultural teachings that guide and sustain future generations.
Ultimately, Thunderbird Dancer is a celebration of balance, storytelling, and heritage. It honors the connection between nature and spirit, old and new, discipline and freedom, a reminder that through balance, life and culture continue to thrive.
Alisa Esparza
This piece’s name is “The Child Who Remembered”.
This piece speaks to the inheritance of pain — and the sacred choice to transform it. It carries the faces of those who came before me, whose grief, endurance, and love shaped the bones of who I am. The furrowed brows, the quiet defiance, the lines etched into her face — they are not only sorrow, they are history. Every mark, every shadow is a whisper from the ones who refused to disappear.
I wanted to capture what generational healing feels like: the ache of remembering, the trembling balance between mourning and mending. Healing isn’t gentle — it’s brave. It’s facing what tried to silence us, and choosing softness anyway. The black and white palette reflects that duality — the weight of what we carry, and the clarity that comes from finally seeing it.
This portrait isn’t just one person; it’s every ancestor who endured enough for me to exist and to heal. I chose a child to hold the emotional gravity of our history — the bloodshed, the resilience, the living hope. Through them, I wanted to show that even when we inherit pain, we also inherit the power to rewrite it.
I hope this piece invites conversation — about survival, about justice, about the future our children deserve. It’s a reminder that we are still here, still healing, still becoming. This work is a heartbeat for the generations: a prayer to remember, to honor, and to rise.
My mediums for this piece consist of Graphite, Charcoal, Black Ink, and Acrylic Paint on Plywood.
Angel Johnson
This piece celebrates the love and strength carried by each generation. It honors those who laid the groundwork and built the foundation for their people. Through this work, I wanted to reflect on where it all begins—the roots that create something monumental and beautiful. Our people have endured so much: forced removal, cultural assimilation, boarding schools, and more. Yet, despite it all, we are still here—thriving once again.
Although we have triumphed in many ways, many Native Americans today continue to face struggles. I believe health is not only physical, but also mental and spiritual. For me, generational healing involves tending to both the body and the mind. Our people have faced such deep hardships that survival often takes precedence over truly living. And once they emerge from that darkness, many forget to heal. My piece reflects the growth and renewal that each generation experiences as we move toward becoming a healthier, stronger Native community.
This work connects deeply with the theme of generational healing, health, and wellness because it acknowledges that without our foundation—without the strength and example of those who came before us—we would not be where we are today.
Allyson Stumpf-Roberson
This piece, entitled “Medicine,” represents the pieces of the whole in tribal health and wellness. The young woman in regalia represents dance. Dancing in ceremony is an important medicine. Ceremony brings members together and provides nourishment in communities. In her long hair holds time, knowledge, and experience. Her life experience is medicine to herself and her community.
The tiny woman figure in her hair represents being active in walking, running, nature, and general exercise. This movement nourishes her body and clears her mind. The glass of water holds the body of life; her body is mostly water. By drinking water, she is replenishing her body. The bison, persimmon and at the end of her hair, a yonka pin symbolize foods used to feed the bodies of her tribe for hundreds of years. She is sustained by their nutritional properties. The bowl of cedar is a medicine that helps her to regulate and restore balance. The feather is to initiate smudging.
The figures pictured in the turquoise circle are cooking together, connected over shared responsibility of feeding their community. To be active in the community is being a part of the continuous never ending circle of reciprocation and care. In the orange circle, there is knowledge being passed from elder to youth in order to pass down stories, language, traditions and ways. These customs are kept alive through generations. This is the medicine for spirit and well being.
The circles throughout this piece represent the cycles of life that continue through generations. Thinking and becoming well for future generations to continue is medicine. Like cycles, medicines of wellness are carried through time and are needed repeatedly. The young woman’s hair growing long dually represents the everlasting cycle of returning to these medicines of wellness to nourish herself and her community.
Martin James Wind
I wanted this Chicken Dancer to be set where plains meet rocky mountains. I really like the surrealistic look of the night time background and how it contrasts the golden plains field.
Chase Jackson
This piece was submitted without an accompanying description and stands as the artist’s personal interpretation of our conference theme, The Vision for Generational Healing, Health, and Wellness. Through its imagery and expression, the artwork reflects themes of connection, resilience, and renewal across generations.
We honor the artist’s unique perspective and invite viewers to engage with the piece in their own way—reflecting on how healing, health, and wellness are carried forward within families, communities, and future generations.
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