WAR CLUB: NATIVE ART AND ACTIVISM CONVENING
Saturday, September 13, 2025
9:15am – 12:00pm (Philbrook Museum of Art) 2:30pm – 6:30pm (Tulsa Artist Fellowship Studios)
Philbrook Museum of Art, 2727 S Rockford Rd, Tulsa, OK 74114
Tulsa Artist Fellowship Studios, 109 M.L.K. Jr Blvd, Tulsa, OK 74103
Join us as we gather together to mark the closing of the exhibition, WAR CLUB: Native Art & Activism. The WAR CLUB convening begins at the Philbrook Museum of Art and includes a tour of the exhibition with the artists, Yatika Starr Fields and Anita Fields, a keynote address by New Red Order artist and activist Zack Khalil, and a panel discussion featuring Indigenous artists, activists, and scholars. In the afternoon, the convening continues at Tulsa Artist Fellowship Studios with a wheatpasting workshop led by Ernesto Yerena, a video screening by New Red Order, and a closing rooftop happy hour. Free with registration in partnership with Philbrook Museum of Art.
PHILBROOK MUSEUM OF ART
9:15am-9:45am | Tour of WAR CLUB: Native Art & Activism
10am-10:45am | Keynote with Zack Khalil of New Red Order
11am-12:15pm | Panel Discussion with Zack Khalil (New Red Order), Jordan Poorman (Crystal Bridges), Jim Gray (Former Chief of Osage Nation), facilitated by Yatika and Anita Fields (War Club)
12:15-2:30 | BREAK
TULSA ARTIST FELLOWSHIP STUDIOS
2:30pm-4:30pm | Wheatpasting workshop with Ernesto Yerena
4:30-6:30pm | Video Screening and Rooftop Happy Hour
New Red Order installation shot from Speculations on the InfraRed, © EFA Project Space/Yann Chashanovski, 2021.
Ernesto Yerena in studio. Photo by Rafael Cardenas.
ABOUT THE PARTICIPANTS
Yatika Fields (Facilitating artist, Moderator)
Yatika Starr Fields (Cherokee, Creek, Osage) is a multi-disciplinary artist from Oklahoma, the co-founder of WAR CLUB, alongside his mother, Anita Fields, and a Tulsa Artist Fellowship alum. Fields studied landscape painting at the University of Oklahoma’s Sienna, Italy summer program before enrolling at the Art Institute of Boston from 2001 to 2004. The artist combines traditional painting techniques with street art aesthetic, an interest developed while living on the East Coast, and aesthetics of protest that became especially integral following Field’s time at Standing Rock during the Dakota Access Pipeline protests in 2017. His work blurs the boundaries between political polemic and abstraction, between distress, resistance, and hope. Fields work has been exhibited in over 43 exhibtions across the U.S. and Europe, and his work is featured in numerous colelctions including the Heard Museum (Phoenix, AZ), the Sam Noble Museum (Norman, OK), and Peabody Essex Museum (Salem, MA), amongst others.
Anita Fields (Facilitating artist, Moderator)
Anita Fields (Osage, Muscogee) is a multi-disciplinary artist from Oklahoma, the co-founder of WAR CLUB, alongside her son, Yatika Fields, and a Tulsa Artist Fellowship alum. Fields attended the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she was exposed to different media including sculpture and clay. She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Oklahoma State University. In 2021, Fields was honored as an NEA National Heritage Fellow for her contributions to our nation’s traditional arts heritage. Her work has been exhibited in numerous institutions, including the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art (Bentonville, AR), the National Museum of the American Indian (Washington, D.C.), and the National Museum of Women in the Arts (Washington, D.C.).
Zack Khalil (Keynote speaker, Panelist)
Zack Khalil (Ojibway) is a filmmaker and artist from Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, currently based in Brooklyn, New York. His work centers indigenous narratives in the present — and looks towards the future — through the use of innovative nonfiction forms. His films and installations have been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, Lincoln Center, the Whitney Museum of American Art, Walker Arts Center, and the Sundance Film Festival among other institutions.
New Red Order (NRO) is a public secret society facilitated by core contributors Jackson Polys, Adam Khalil, and Zack Khalil. New Red Order (NRO) works with networks of informants and accomplices to create grounds for Indigenous futures. NRO emerges in contradistinction to an older, extant secret society dubbed “The Improved Order of the Red Men,” an American organization, revived in 1934 as a whites-only fraternity, whose redface rituals and regalia are inspired by the country’s most famous, foundational act of Indigenous appropriation: the donning of Mohawk disguises by the Sons of Liberty during the Boston Tea Party. If the foundation of settler society rests both on desires for indigeneity and the violent displacement of Indigenous land and life, NRO asks how those desires could be channeled toward productive and sustainable ends.
Jim Gray (Panelist)
Jim Roan Gray (Osage) is the former principal chief of the Osage Nation (2002-2010) and former publisher of the Native American Times Newspaper (1996-2002) Today he’s a consultant working in Indian country. He was the youngest chief in the history of the Osage Nation and during his term, Chief Gray led the Osage Nation through a comprehensive restoration of Osage sovereignty, the right to determine their own citizens and form their own government. This effort led to enrollment of thousands of Osages who had been left off the rolls for nearly 100 years and a referendum vote that adopted a constitutional form of government for the first time in generations. This effort gave all Osages over the age 18 the right to vote in tribal elections.
From 2002-2010, Chief Gray has served as both vice chairman and chairman of the Inter-Tribal Monitoring Association consulting with the Department of Interior’s management of Native American trust funds. He was elected as chairman of the board of the Council of Energy Resource Tribes, served as co-chair of the National Budget Advisory Council, which sets the priorities for the Bureau of Indian Affair’s $2.3 billion budget. Chief Gray has accepted appointments to the Office of the Special Trustee Board of Advisors, Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Native American Rights Foundation, and Intertribal Economic Alliance and President of the Indian Country Renewable Energy Consortium.
From 1996 to 2002, he was also a distinguished journalist and publisher of one the largest independently owned Indian Newspapers in America, the Native American Times. He guided the newspaper’s growth over the years to become the leading Native American media group in Oklahoma. During his time at the Native American Times, Jim helped pace public debate on issues important to Native Americans in Oklahoma and across the Nation.
Jordan Poorman Cocker (Panelist)
Jordan Poorman Cocker (Kiowa, Tonga) Jordan Poorman Cocker is a curator, artist, and an enrolled member of the Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma. Cocker’s artistic and intellectual kinship is rooted in her Toyebo and Dohausan family legacies of Kiowa beadwork. Her curatorial practice centers on Indigenous research methodologies prioritizing reciprocity, sustained collaboration, and tribal sovereignty. She holds a Master of Museum and Heritage Practice from Victoria University of Wellington and a Bachelor of Design from Auckland University of Technology in New Zealand. She currently serves as the Curator of Indigenous Art at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. Before her appointment, Cocker served as the 2020 –2022 Henry Luce Foundation Curatorial Scholar of Indigenous Art at the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She is the 2021–25 Terra Foundation guest co-curator of Indigenous Art at the Block Museum of Art. She is an artist mentor for the Institute of American Indian Art’s Master of Fine Arts in Studio Arts program.
Ernesto Yerena (Workshop Facilitator)
Ernesto Yerena Montejano was born in El Centro, CA, a mid- sized farming town bordering Mexicali, BC, MX. Fueled by his cross-national upbringing, his art practice reflects his observations of the views and interactions between the Mexican communities living on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. The artist shares narratives of his conflicts of identity that he feels are kindred to what many Chicanos of these communities experience. Although Yerena identifies as Chicano he also strongly identifies as Native/Indigenous to this continent which is often seen in his work. His work depicts his frustrations with the oppression in his community as well as creating work in solidarity with the community in the defense of human dignity and rights. Through his brazen imagery, the artist brings political concerns to light with subject matter that depicts cultural icons, rebels and everyday people voicing their stance against oppression. Highly recognized for his activism, Yerena is the founder and curator of the Alto Arizona Art campaign (2010) as well as a founding member of the We Are Human campaign (2009). Yerena has collaborated on many thought provoking projects which include artists Zack de la Rocha, Shepard Fairey, Manu Chao, Ana Tijoux, Philip Lumbang, Jaque Fragua, Diane Ovalle, Chuck D, and Mochilla.