Annette Arkeketa is an enrolled member of the Otoe-Missouria Tribe of Oklahoma. She is also Muscogee Creek. She conducts professional workshops in poetry, playwriting, the creative process, script consultant, and documentary film making.
Arkeketa's play Hokti has been produced by the Tulsa Indian Actors' Workshop, Tulsa Oklahoma (1997) and The Thunderbird Theatre, Haskell Indian Nations University, Lawrence Kansas, (1998). Hokti is published in Stories of Our Way: An Anthology of American Indian Plays, UCLA American Indian Studies Center 1999.
Her play Ghost Dance has been performed at public readings at the Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, Okahoma (2001); Tulsa University, Tulsa, Oklahoma (2002); American Indian Community House, New York, New York (2003). This spring the full length drama will be produced by the Institute of American Indian Arts, Drama Department, April 30, May 1-2, 2004. Ghost Dance is published by Keepers of the Morning Star: An Anthology of Native Women's Theater, UCLA American Indian Studies Center 2003.
These days Arkeketa is devoted to her work as a documentary producer and has formed her production company Hokte Productions. Hokte means woman in the Muscogee language.
Her first documentary production is about Corpus Christi native visual artist Jimmy Pena, entitled Intrinisc Spirit: The Artway of Jimmy Pena. (2002, approximately 24 minutes). Pena's work reveals the natural talent he has developed as a successful visual artist and muralist.
Her most recent project is titled Put Them Back, a documentary that follows Comanche Nation NAGPRA coordinator, Jimmy Arterberry, through the consultation process with Colorado state and federal institutions to repatriate the remains of his people. This documentary expresses the views of graves protection/repatriation advocate Arterberry with biting opinions regarding the NAGPRA process, archaeologists, policies, and solutions to one of the most controversial human rights issues Native Americans face today. (2004, approximately 1 hour)
She is also looking for a producer for her family feature film screenplay A Good Day to Dance. This a story of dance, family love, and what it takes to win.
Arkeketa's essay, Repatriation: Religious Freedom, Equal Protection, Institutional Racism, has recently been published in a philosophical reader anthology, edited by Anne Water, titled American Indian Thought (2004).
Annette continues, "My personal feelings about writing is that it is necessary for our Indian people to write and produce great works about ourselves. It is important to challenge ourselves to write in the genres that we are unfamiliar with. The more we write the better we become as fiction writers, non-fiction writers, playwrights, screenplay writers, journalists, poets, research and essay writers."
My more recent work has been concentrated in the area of media production for feature films and television documentaries. I believe television and the big screen is the most powerful media available to us today.
The importance of our visibility in these areas writing and the media is for our children. They deserve to perform our work on stage and film. Always they seek us on the shelves of libraries, magazine racks, and newspaper stands. They seek us as mentors and role models, let's not disappoint them.
In 2000, Annette was named Mentor of the Year by the Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers.
Annette was awarded the Writer of the Year for Playwriting in 1998 for her play Hokti by the Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers.
This is an "official" site in that this page was constructed with the assistance and active collaboration of the poet, Annette Arkeketa. The website "author" is Karen M. Strom
© 1997 - 2009 Annette Arkeketa and Karen Strom.
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