At Rise and Thrive, Indigenous artists celebrate resiliency and community amid political climate

President Donald Trump signed a new proclamation ahead of this coming holiday weekend celebrating Italian explorer Christopher Columbus. Monday is Columbus Day, which has become controversial of late.

Some cities — including several here in the Valley — have instead adopted Indigenous Peoples Day. Some celebrate both.

For the last several years in downtown Phoenix, Indigenous Peoples Day celebrations have taken over entire blocks. But, this year, amid DEI-centered funding cuts and fear in the community, they’re scaling back. But they’re not going away.

Eunique Yazzie is the person behind many of these plans. She’s a designer and artist and the co-founder of Cahokia, an Indigenous and woman-owned creative platform in downtown Phoenix.

The Show sat down with her before the president’s Columbus Day proclamation to talk more about what to expect this Sunday and Monday at the Arizona Center — and what it feels like to celebrate Indigeneity in this political environment.

Full conversation

EUNIQUE YAZZIE: I am a part of a movement of creatives that are really trying to reimagine what Indigenous spaces look like, especially when you bring in the cultural aspects, the art, the contemporary and the modern stuff, but then also like bringing together community in urban places.

And so really Indigenous Peoples Day is that time for us to come together and celebrate who we are as Indigenous people, as the, you know, original peoples of this land, being able to share our history and our stories, in music in, you know, ceremony, in prayer, in coming together.

Because I feel like when our people come together, something magical happens. I don't know what that is, but it definitely, you can feel it, you can, you can breathe it. It's definitely something that we need to keep going.

LAUREN GILGER: OK so this, in the last several years, and you've spearheaded these plans, has been a big shutdown the street, kind of multiday event. It's a little scaled back this year, right?

YAZZIE: Yeah, it's a little scaled back. We had experienced some significant blows in funding at the beginning of the year, which really pivoted a lot of our brain power, manpower, just, you know, coming together and figuring out like how we were going to be resilient through all of the changes that are affecting our Indigenous communities, but also our Black and brown communities.

So we, we started practicing with some smaller events at the Arizona Center to see if scale it back, to see what we could do. And it turned out that the community came through and they're like, we're gonna make it happen. Let's do it. And so I was like, OK, let's do it.

GILGER: But it sounded like you kind of needed to, right? Because you heard from people in the community, especially on the reservations, that they needed this.

YAZZIE: Yeah, this is definitely something that I think people look forward to, especially our Indigenous people who make products, who make things to sell, handcrafted things. And it sort of added to the market lineup that comes out when the calendar gets released. And I didn't realize that it had so much impact like that and that it affected the economy in that way.

And I didn't want to let it go. You know, after all the funding, the budgets and all that stuff kind of hit us. I really feel like being a place of celebration would still be able to bring people together and people would be able to participate.

And so we aren't shutting down any streets. We aren't going to be doing, like, these huge stages, but we're just gonna take it back to the community, we're going to take it back and scale it and just make it about what it really means to us, which is us coming together and celebrating.

GILGER: You're calling it Rise and Thrive this year?

YAZZIE: Yes, Rise and Thrive. I think that is a sentiment that is resonating among Indigenous communities because the things that are happening in the funding world of DEI and Black and brown communities, they, I would say this has happened to us before. We have been through this where, you know, suppression of culture and suppression of people's voices are hitting us pretty hard.

But it's something that we live through, through our art and through the way that we create music and the way that we share spaces. And so we want to be able to show people that we can come back to that and we can like be together.

GILGER: Is it a tough moment for organizations like yours, given the kind of national context that we're in right now? You mentioned DEI and kind of an exhaustion, it sounds like, in the community.

YAZZIE: It is very exhausting because we don't know why we're being attacked. And I feel like we are being attacked. And I definitely feel the fear of voicing yourself in that way. Whether it is, you know, where you come from or the languages that you speak or the color of your skin, these are things that are now being attacked within our communities.

I'm a brown woman walking around and not sure if I'm ever gonna get pulled over or if I'm going to be pulled to the side and separated out and being questioned in that way. So, again, the fear is there, but I also think that that fear, I don't wanna say it's familiar, but it's something that we heard of through our grandparents and through our parents and what they have lived through.

And so really, we're the ones that it's our turn to be resilient, and it's our turn to kind of share our, in the way that we are allowed to. Like, I mean, obviously, in downtown Phoenix, in an urban space, being able to highlight Indigeneity and our contributions to society and our contributions to America are big things. So we want to be able to talk about those things.

GILGER: It sounds like you want to focus on the positive here, which is a lot. There's a lot of positive.

YAZZIE: There's a lot of positive. I think it's just hard when you start going down the path of what it means for communities to live in fear and to not be able to, I would say, have a place, a visible place, because, again, there was a moment in time where Native people had to hide their culture.

We had to hide our languages, we couldn't speak in public. You know, we had to blend in. And that is sort of scary because I didn't think we lived in a world like that. We're trying to prove that we're supposed to be here. And I just feel like we're past that.

Like, we're doing cool things and we're innovating and we're coming together and inviting people into, you know, our stories and our, how we're sharing our art. And so why can't we do more of that? Like, why do. Why do we have to keep everything separate?

GILGER: So it sounds like a lot of this will manifest itself in the Indigenous Peoples Day celebrations that you're putting on this year. Talk a little bit about what's on the docket, what you got planned.

YAZZIE: Yeah, so we're excited to bring together two nights of a market environment. It's gonna be an incredible showcase of Indigenous entrepreneurs, artists, designers. I feel like this year we're really just trying to uplift the visibility of art, creativity and design. And so we're gonna have a special installation, which will be hosted by Fervor and Homeland.

And they will be bringing together, I would say, about five or six different design streetwear companies, Indigenous fashion, and they're going to put on a live screen printing event in that space.

GILGER: You've got some performers. I wanted to ask you about one, because this looks really cool. Tell us about the Apache Crown Dancers.

YAZZIE: Yeah, so we have cultural performers and live performers. Our Apache Crown Dancers are coming from Cibecue, and they will be bringing a women's group and a male's group. And so the cool thing about that is there's definitely different types of dancing. Usually we bring out the Crown Dancers, but it's gonna really cool to see the female aspect of Apache dancers.

GILGER: Yeah. What does it feel like to put this together, especially in this environment in which you said you're just kind of nervous about being a person of color in the community right now.

What does it feel like to put this on and celebrate it and be open?

YAZZIE: I really feel like we're stepping into a moment that allows us to show people what it means to be beautiful and, you know, strong and I would say just resilient. And I think we're just gonna step into that. I think all of us are gonna step into that and shine. It's gonna be a beautiful moment.

And these moments always are, I think, because they are all about community. So I'm happy about that.

If you go

What: Indigenous Peoples Day Phx Fest | Rise + Thrive Nite Market.

Where: Arizona Center, 455 N. Third St. Phoenix, AZ 85004.

When: 6-10 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 12, and Monday, Oct. 13, 2025.

Cost: Free admission.