As the Institute of American Indian Arts approaches its 40th anniversary, it gives me much pleasure to announce our newest educational initiative - the Native Eyes Project. This innovative curriculum addresses some of our community's most urgent educational needs. The courses offered, both in the classroom and in our anticipated distance education program, will allow us to fully explore core native values such as our relationship to the land, cultural aspects of human seeing and representation, and our committment to interrogating history. As the only higher education institute in the country devoted to the arts of Native North America, IAIA is uniquely qualified to lead this renewed interest in the culture, history and dynamism of native communities. Please join me in welcoming this most ambitious interdisciplinary endeavor to our school's legacy of artistic experimentation and accomplishment. Della Warrior (Otoe-Missouria) President, Institute of American Indian Arts It is axiomatic that Native Americans stand on a chasm of change greater today than at any time in their history. Accordingly, it will fall to the arts -- more than ever before -- to evolve new cultural symbols which will reflect, interpret, and help to shape those accelerating changes. Artists, in this cultural role, will need to search their traditions for those truths that can be brought forward to enhance the field of human experience in the society at large while guaranteeing the ongoingness of Native American identity. It is also axiomatic that any organism that does not adapt to its changing environment eventually withers and dies. Art not only reflects cultural change but helps to guide its course into the future. It seems to me that this reciprocal relationship between art and culture lies at the heart of the new curriculum proposed by the Native Eyes Project, and I am pleased to support it. Lloyd Kiva New (Cherokee) President Emeritus, IAIA