Frank Waln is an award-winning Sicangu Lakota Hip Hop artist and music producer from the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota.
Join Frank Waln in a conversation with Professor Philip Deloria as part of the Native Cultures of The Americas seminar, a forum for the interdisciplinary study of the indigenous peoples and cultures of the Americas hosted by the Mahindra Humanities Center.
A recipient of the Gates Millennium Scholarship, Frank Waln attended Columbia College Chicago, receiving a BA in Audio Arts and Acoustics. Waln’s awards include three Native American Music Awards, the National Center for American Indian Enterprise Development 2014 Native American 40 Under 40, the 2014 Chicago Mayor’s Award for Civic Engagement, and the 2016 3Arts Grant for Chicago Artists. He has been featured in Buzzfeed, The Fader, Playboy, Vibe, NPR, ESPN, and MTV’s Rebel Music Native America. Waln has written for various publications, including Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education, and Society and The Guardian. Frank Waln travels the world telling his story through performance and doing workshops focusing on self-empowerment and expression of truth. Frank Waln performed last at the Harvard ArtLab in March,2022.
Native Cultures of The Americas is a forum for the interdisciplinary study of the indigenous peoples and cultures of the Americas. The seminar features scholarship on topics both pre- and post-contact, from deep archaeology to contemporary politics and culture, as well as the implications of such work for law, education, environmental policy, and public memory. The Native Cultures of The Americas seminar is organized by Philip Deloria and Dylan Nelson with the Mahindra Humanities Center.