Explore Native American heritage at the Yanaguana Indian Arts Festival in San Antonio with vibrant performances, crafts, storytelling, and free museum exhibits.
SAN ANTONIO — Native American art, music, dancing and storytelling will take center stage in downtown San Antonio as the Briscoe Western Art Museum prepares for its annual Yanaguana Indian Arts Festival.
The free, family-friendly festival is set for Saturday, Nov. 14, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the museum and its River Walk campus.
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The event celebrates Native American heritage and living cultural traditions with live performances, drum circles, demonstrations, hands-on crafts and storytelling. Dona Kika’s food truck will also be on-site, with food available for purchase. Admission to the festival and museum are free. Registration for the festival is available online.
The festival opens with a blessing and drum circle, followed by performances from United San Antonio Pow Wow with Enemy Horse Drumming. Visitors can also learn about Native American traditions and participate with the dancers.
In the afternoon, the Hithla Dance Troupe will share the songs and stomp dancing of Southeastern Native American cultures. The group includes members representing Chickasaw, Choctaw, Seminole and Creek communities.
Featured artists include Diné/Navajo jewelry maker Shane Hendren; flute and jewelry maker Tim Blueflint Ramel, an enrolled member of the Bad River Band of the Lake Superior Chippewa; Southern Cheyenne ledger artist George Curtis Levi; Caddo pottery artist Chase Kahwinhut Earles; and Hopi/Navajo katsina carver Kevin Horace Quannie.
Indigenous storytellers Joyous Windrider and Rosie Torres will share stories through a program that concludes along the San Antonio River. Tejano re-enactor Charles Lara will portray a Texas Delaware blanket trader from the 1820s through the 1850s.
Free museum admission includes special exhibitions
Beyond the festival activities, visitors can explore the Briscoe’s exhibitions at no cost.
Among them is “Tejano Legacy: Another American Origin Story,” which explores nearly 400 years of Tejano history, culture and identity, including the Indigenous peoples who inhabited the region and their interactions with Tejano communities.
Visitors can also see “Selena Forever / Siempre Selena,” featuring large-scale photographs of Selena Quintanilla-Pérez by John Dyer, and “Kathy Sosa Revolutionary Women of Texas and Mexico,” an exhibition highlighting women’s roles in shaping the region through paintings, mixed-media works and sculptures.
The museum’s new Valerie Urschel Guenther Four Pillars Gallery features “Beyond the Frontier: Four Pillars of Western Art.” The 14-minute cinematic experience combines 85 works of art with animations, images, music and narration to explore four themes: wildlife and the land, Native people of the Americas, Tejanos and Spanish heritage, and cowboys and the American frontier.
The Yanaguana Indian Arts Festival is held annually and is named for the Payaya people’s word for what is now known as the San Antonio River.
For more information about the festival or the Briscoe Western Art Museum, click here.