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Nathan Young

He // Him // His

Artist, Scholar, Curator, and Composer

Tahlequah, Oklahoma

A man with medium-length black hair and a full beard with some gray standing against a dark background. He’s wearing a light blue denim button-down shirt with pearl snaps and two chest pockets. His expression is calm and direct, facing the camera head-on.

Photo courtesy of the artist.

“I explore how Indigenous spirituality, politics, aesthetics, and cultural narratives endure and evolve, using contemporary forms such as installation, curation, and sound to reframe and complicate these traditions through a modern lens.”

Nathan Young is an artist, scholar, and curator whose work engages Indigenous spirituality, memory, and the sonic. Young is a citizen of the Delaware Tribe of Indians and the Cherokee Nation and a direct descendant of the Kiowa and Pawnee tribes. His life and practice are grounded in the legacies of his Southern Plains upbringing and his connection to Lenapehoking, the ancestral homeland of the Delaware people.

His creative and scholarly work centers on the concept of Indigenous Sonic Agency — the ways sound and listening operate as forms of sovereignty, resistance, and remembrance. His broader practice includes installation, curation, and research that interrogate how Indigenous histories are carried forward through material, ritual, and narrative. His project Activation / Transformation, first exhibited at the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian, engaged the museum’s collection of horse tack and jewelry to explore the relationships between material culture and spiritual life. Its successor, Activation / Transformation II, drew from his own family collection to consider Pawnee rodeo and the lived experiences of American Indian cowboying.

He is a founding member of the interdisciplinary art collective Postcommodity and the curator of the Intertribal Noise Symposium, a series of site-specific gatherings exploring the role of sound in Indigenous art and community. He recently curated the Ch'íná'itíh (Chinati) Intertribal Noise Symposium in Marfa, Texas, and is organizing the next iteration at Idyllwild Arts in California.

Young is pursuing a Ph.D. in Art History at the University of Oklahoma and lives and works between Oklahoma and New York.

Donor -This award was generously supported by Annette and Paul Smith.

This artist page was last updated on: 01.14.2026

Media
A large rectangular wooden table glows under focused lighting in an otherwise dark room. Spread neatly across its surface is an expansive arrangement of silver and metal objects — bits, bridles, conchos, belt buckles, spurs, bolo ties, jewelry, and small adornments — each meticulously placed in ordered rows radiating from the center. At the table’s core, several upright bridles and horse tack stand mounted on black supports, their worn leather and metal fittings casting soft shadows on the pale wood. The surrounding darkness isolates the display, giving the scene the gravity of an archaeological or ceremonial site. The presentation evokes both museum taxonomy and spiritual offering, turning these equestrian and ornamental objects into vessels of memory and transformation.

Installation view of Activation/Transformation by Nathan Young, 2021, Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian, Santa Fe.

Photo by Addison Doty.

A brightly lit gallery installation features vivid color and strong geometry. The back wall is painted in intersecting red and blue triangles, forming a bold central axis. Hanging from the ceiling are seven large flags in red, orange, blue, turquoise, white, black, and gold — each with abstract Indigenous-inspired symbols, including stylized birds, teardrops, crescents, crosses, and eyes. The central red flag reads “NDN MEDICINE” in yellow letters. On the floor below, a green motocross bike marked with Native motifs stands beside a draped red-and-blue fabric form, which sits like a shrouded monument. The concrete floor is empty except for these two focal points, creating a powerful balance between sacred and mechanical elements. Daylight enters from tall windows on the left, softening the saturated scene. The overall atmosphere is ceremonial, charged with energy and reverence, blending Indigenous symbology, color field abstraction, and contemporary subculture.

Nathan Young: Tune It Or Die! exhibition at Art Omni, 2024.

Photo by Gregory Carideo; courtesy of the artist.

A wooden cedar box sits open against a plain white background, its interior lid displaying two old photographs with the faces of the subjects blacked out. A string of red and silver prayer beads drapes across the box’s front. Arranged neatly before it is a collection of ceremonial and personal objects: eagle and hawk feathers bound in beaded handles, two hand rattles made from gourds, small bundles of sage, a cloth embroidered with a Native Church emblem, a yellow case, carved wooden sticks, a small pistol, and other ritual tools. The arrangement suggests both reverence and intimacy — objects of prayer, protection, and identity laid out like an altar or offering. The composition balances ethnographic precision with a sense of personal narrative and secrecy, reflecting the intersection of ceremony, memory, and survival.

Peyote Box by Nathan Young.

Photo courtesy of the artist.