What We Do
Live Oak Consulting’s Director Deana Dartt, PhD (Coastal Chumash and Mestiza) has used her perspective as an anthropologist, museum curator and professional, and Native woman to shape the decolonizing movement at art and cultural institutions over the last twenty years. Dartt and Live Oak, in dialogue with the Native communities represented, develop meaningful collaborations with institutions and design new experiences start to finish to engage the public in new exhibits and stories that subvert the dominate discourse which holds Native people to a past, static, and Eurocentric narrative.
Our Projects
To engage with Live Oak Consulting on a curation, please fill out our contact form or reach out to info@liveoaknative.com.
For a comprehensive list of Dr. Dartt and Live Oak Consulting’s interpretive planning projects, please see Dartt’s CV.
Indigenous Coast Narrative Project
The Indigenous Coast Narrative Project is a partnership between the Wishtoyo Foundation, Live Oak Consulting, and the Autry Museum of the American West that will change the existing narrative about coastal California indigenous histories impacted by missionization and colonization. The project celebrates the connections, resistances, and revitalization of the indigenous peoples of the Greater California Coast through a series of multi-media interventions from the Bay Area to Mexico. It will ultimately culminate in a Native curated museum exhibit at the Autry Museum (2023-2025), a website, digital archive and GPS story map for place-based indigenous narratives, and educational materials for California’s K-12 schools. All of this material will be created by and for Native California communities.
Current funders of the ICNP include the Wishtoyo Foundation, Live Oak Consulting, San Manuel Band of Mission Indians, and the JIB Fund.
Reclaiming El Camino: Native Resistance in the Missions and Beyond
Four years in the making, Dr. Deana Dartt’s exhibit at the Autry Museum of the American West aims to educate visitors about the potency of Native life and the rich history of activism in the California borderlands region. This exhibition repositions (and reclaims) the El Camino Real as the ancient and well-worn trade route for Native people long before the establishment of the Franciscan Missions in Baja and Alta California.
This exhibit is open through 2025.
Reclaiming El Camino is supported by Edison International, The Mildred E. and Harvey S. Mudd Foundation, Caryll and William Mingst, the National Endowment for the Humanities: Sustaining Humanities through the American Rescue Plan in partnership with the Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries, and Museums,* the Paloheimo Foundation, the Sacred Places Institute, and the Wishtoyo Chumash Foundation.
Forest of Dreams: Ainu and Native American Woodcarving
The third in the Garden’s Art in the Garden for the Year of Hokkaido, the Forest of Dreams exhibition at the Portland Japanese Garden brought together the artistry and traditions of indigenous peoples of Japan and the Columbia River Region to celebrate the 60th Anniversary of the Portland-Sapporo Sister City Association. The exhibition included monumental welcome figures and other carved art which honored the cultural aesthetic of the Ainu people of Hokkaido and the Columbia River peoples of Oregon.
This exhibition was planned, researched, designed, and commissioned by Dr. Dartt and made possible with the support of NW Natural, Don Vallaster, Corinne Oishi, and Lindley Morton.
The Chumash of Tecolote Canyon Exhibit
Dr. Dartt collaborated with Tima Link (Chumash) and other Chumash academics, artists, and culture bearers to create a permanent Chumash cultural exhibit and nature walk at the Bacara Resort and Spa in Tecolote Canyon (Hel’apunitse), California. The interactive exhibit invites visitors into the rich history of the Chumash peoples who’s ancestral lands the Bacara Resort is on and brings visitors up through the present day culture and modern living of the Chumash peoples.
Cara Robbins. The Santa Barbara Independent.]