Cannupahanska’s story is the story of his people. They are the same.

Born Cannupa Hanska Luger in Fort Yates, N. Dak., on the Standing Rock Reservation - home to the Hunkpapa Lakota - his first name was broken up to fit the birth certificate, and he inherited the last name Luger. He is an enrolled member of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation, known as the Three Affiliated Tribes, located on the upper Missouri River, and his family owns land and participates in the community in an area known as Lucky Mound. His lineage is Norwegian, German, Lakota, MHA Nation, possibly even French and Italian on his father’s side, and he has lived in Phoenix; Olympia, Wash.; Seattle and Santa Fe.

He has been a slam poet, an MC and a street artist. Among other young and innovative Native artists in Santa Fe, the 33-year-old is one of the more outspoken about the limitations of what Southwestern Association for Indian Arts’ outgoing executive director Bruce Bernstein refers to as the “Native box,” or the tendency to group all Native artists together under a set of formal and cultural obligations­—from the materials and methods used to make art to the corresponding themes and narratives.

As a side note and perhaps to explain his decision to let his actors use their own voices in the Santa Fe Shakespeare Society production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, director Jerry Ferraccio says t

Amy Franceschini wants to build a land bridge between art and activism. As a founder of the artist collective Futurefarmers spoke at Tipton Hall on the Santa Fe University of Art and Design campus Monday night, she explained that the more interactive site installations she creates to draw attention to issues surrounding farms and farming practice, the more the procedures of the art world seem to slow her down.

Director Ron Bloomberg leans over to me at a recent rehearsal for the Santa Fe Playhouse production of Other People’s Money, and says, “This is one of the first plays to address vulture capitalism

Arcos Dance artistic director Curtis Uhlemann describes the scene for “46 Thousand,” a piece he choreographed with his co-director Erica Gionfriddo: The scaffolds are black, the dancers wear black (their hair down) and musician Andy Primm sits above them with his drum kit, playing a piece inspired by the John Bonham solo “Bonzo’s Montreux.”

From the street-side of The Peñasco Theatre, where a folksy mural tells of people building their community together, the theatre’s owner Alessandra Ogren walks me to the north side of the building where a new mural by Rebeka Tarín and Amaryllis de Jesus Moleski offers a meta-response to images on the front, mixing folk iconography with urban-contemporary references.

This column is a plea for the art communities of Santa Fe to begin a dialogue that furthers artistic practice—which naturally includes conversations about the notion of artistic practice and our understanding of community—inspired by a one-week exhibition at Santa Fe Complex.

A priest who escaped from Nazi Germany, Father John accepts an assignment to travel to Santa Fe around the time of his grandmother’s death, which symbolizes the loss of everything he knows and loves. However, tragedy is not the focus of Gil Sanchez’ Viva Cristo Rey, and neither is history. Instead, the book offers a sentimental view of the conception of the Cristo Rey Church, the largest adobe structure in the northern hemisphere.

SITE Santa Fe embarks on quite possibly its most ambitions venture since its founding for More Real? Art in the Age of Truthiness, a collaborative biennial with the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. Open July-January 2013 at SITE before heading over to MIA, the exhibition features more than 25 international and up-and-coming artists, including Ai Weiwei, Seung Woo Back, Zoe Beloff, Cao Fei, Thomas Demand, Mark Dion, Sharon Lockhart, Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, Vik Muniz, Eve Sussman, Mary Temple and Yes Men, among many others. With many of the pieces in production (even as you read), SITE curator Irene Hofmann takes a few minutes to tell us what to expect. Then you have to decide if she’s fo real.

Love & Emma Goldman: A Rock Opera is about the enduring human voice. The original production by Sarah-Jane Moody and Jeremy Bleich (aka the experimental pop duo GoGoSnapRadio) is also about taking action for one’s beliefs. It’s about violence, justice, freedom and love. It’s about Emma Goldman, the turn-of-the-century anarchist who spoke up, was deported and disappeared into history.