Adrienne M. Benjamin (She/Her/Hers) is an Anishinaabe multi-faceted artist, equity advocate, and cultural educator. She utilizes her own vast life experiences as a special needs mother, GBS survivor, and as a modern-day Indigenous woman to create meaningful, current, socially relevant, and culturally significant work that intersects with her Anishinaabe values, history, and lifeways.
Adrienne is passionate about and vibrantly champions social justice and equity initiatives in the arts and education systems in her local Mille Lacs community statewide i and beyond. She is also an accomplished arts administrator, having created and lobbied for two successful arts-based youth initiatives within her tribe, the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe. Adrienne is also an avid art collector, invariably supporting Indigenous and BIPOC artists in the United States and beyond.
Artist statement:
I am a complete being comprised of the small pieces of all that has been passed down to me and through me; all that I continue to learn, and all that I pass forward from myself is only an extension of the infinite knowledge and essence of my ancestors.
I have been taught and I teach. I have learned and I share. I am the wisdom of my elders and the living dream of my ancestors. My vessel exists to further narrative and further truth; my truth, the truth of my people, and the truth of my experiences.
I find my deep Anishinaabe identity in my past, in current times, and dreams of the future where all three places are undoubtedly connected.