Lance Foster
Artists as Honest Witnesses

About Lance: 

Lance M. Foster (Irogre: Finds What is Sought, Bear Clan), b. 1960, is a member of the Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska, of the Ioway Nation. Raised in Montana, he received a B.A. in Anthropology and Native American studies from University of Montana as well as an M.A. in Anthropology and an M.L.A. in Landscape Architecture from Iowa State University. He’s an alumnus of the Institute of American Indian Arts. He was the Director of the Native Rights, Land and Culture division of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, a Historical Landscape Architect for the National Park Service, and an archaeologist for the U.S. Forest Service. He taught at the University of Montana -Helena College of Technology.

Lance currently serves his tribe as THPO (Tribal Historic Preservation Officer), consulting for the tribe on environmental and cultural compliance, founded the tribal museum, is an Ioway language advocate, and NAGPRA officer. He serves on the Indian Advisory Council of Iowa’s Office of the State Archaeologist. He is the author of The Indians of Iowa (University of Iowa Press, 2009), and has appeared in the documentaries America’s Lost Landscape: The Tallgrass Prairie (2006), Lost Nation: The Ioway series (2007, 2013), and Life Before Fairfield (2017). An artist and educator, he resides with his wife in White Cloud, Kansas. He was elected Vice Chairman of the Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska in the fall of 2019. He led the effort in establishing Ioway Tribal National Park (Baxoje Mowotanani) in Kansas-Nebraska and the return of our tribal boarding school, the Presbyterian Mission in Kansas, both of which were achieved. He is on the board of NATHPO as Southern Plains member, and on the board of the Nebraska Chapter of The Nature Conservancy.

Connect with Lance and find out more about his work

(and check out some samples of his work in the gallery on this page):