RedCan Graffiti Jam

Cheyenne River Youth Project 11th Annual Invitational Graffiti Jam 2025

Join us for this FREE event!

July 9-10, 2025

Mural painting and youth art activities at sites throughout the Eagle Butte community

July 11-12, 2025

Painting, performances, community meals and youth art activities

CRYP’s Waniyetu Wowapi Art Park
101 East Lincoln Street
Eagle Butte, SD 57625

Boy from community painting with spray can with other youth and adults also painting in the background

Held in the heart of the Cheyenne River Lakota Nation, RedCan is the first and only graffiti jam in Indian Country.

For four life-changing days every summer, this award-winning event offers an unprecedented opportunity for the Cheyenne River community to experience humankind’s largest art movement while also strengthening connections with traditional Lakota culture. Along the way, RedCan provides meaningful, lasting inspiration for our young people, who are discovering the profound power of art in finding their own voices, exploring their identities, and expressing themselves.

Graffiti jams are dedicated to introducing graffiti as an art form, bringing together people who exemplify the contemporary graffiti art movement and how it has evolved since its inception more than a half century ago.

Since its 2015 inception, RedCan has been breaking new ground. Not only are our featured artists showcasing a global movement, its relevance, and how to be part of it, they’re connecting the graffiti world with the indigenous one.

Boy from community painting with spray can with other youth and adults also painting in the background
Boy from community painting with spray can with other youth and adults also painting in the background
Graffiti jams are dedicated to introducing graffiti as an art form, bringing together people who exemplify the contemporary graffiti art movement and how it has evolved since its inception more than a half century ago.

Since its 2015 inception, RedCan has been breaking new ground. Not only are our featured artists showcasing a global movement, its relevance, and how to be part of it, they’re connecting the graffiti world with the indigenous one.

Together, we are sharing and revitalizing our stories, our language, our values, and our identities. And through reclaiming our spaces in this way, we are lifting up our community.

Support RedCan

Hosting such a major event with acclaimed artists from across the country is no small task, and RedCan wouldn’t be possible without you. You can make a contribution to support this year’s graffiti jam through Square or PayPal. All proceeds will be used to purchase art supplies, food, and beverages and to help cover the artists’ travel expenses.

For more information: redcan.cryp@gmail.com
For news updates: Subscribe to our email list

Learn more about our new Waniyetu Wowapi (Winter Count) Institute and Art Park Project and how you can help!

Redcan 2025 Artists

Check back soon as more artists are being confirmed!

EAST

A native of Illiana (Illinois-Indiana) now residing in Denver, East graduated from the Chicago Academy of Fine & Performing Arts in 1988. This classically trained scholarship recipient and teacher’s apprentice excelled in the arts of Intaglio printmaking and color theory. His love of technical lines and color spilled over into his passion for urban art, and East became a leading influence in the Illinois underground art scene and is a founder of Midwest graffiti styles. With more than 40 years’ experience, East continues to surge forward — through his consistency and perseverance, he has earned the title “Midwest Master.” East is the lead instructor for CRYP’s Waniyetu Wowapi Lakota Youth Arts & Culture Institute, and he continues to pursue his passion for letters and lettering styles.

CYFI

Rock Martinez is an International Aerosol Artist, with over 20 years experience painting large surfaces, commercial buildings and private spaces. From commissions to relevant public tributes, Rock brings creative solutions to neighborhoods around the United States. Working across cultural boundaries of the challenges communities face today, Rock brightens city streets with his larger than life murals. His skills are known for pushing ideas to extremes and unlocking public art awareness. Rock is based in Minneapolis with studios in the Twin Cities and Tucson, AZ.

www.cyfiart.com

179

179 is a muralist and teaching artist in Seattle, and works with the community on public art projects and workshops. Her goal is to create safe and beautiful spaces for community members by engaging them in mindful installations. She loves working with youth and challenging their brilliant minds to think about their roles within the rapid growth of our city. Her work strives to engage the viewer to be a part of their environment through observation, critique, and participation. She believes community engagement is vital to successful art planning, and art should be accessible to all. Her focus is education and leading by example.

BIAFRA

Biafra Inc. (pronounced bahy-ah-fruh or bee-ah-fruh) is an artist residing in the Twin Cities. He took his name in part from Jello Biafra from the band Dead Kennedys, the first band he got into that had content in their lyrics. His work is a visual retelling of stories that are apart of his life; much of it takes a critical look at “white” culture. Biafra is a multifaceted artist who uses a variety of mediums, including spray paint, screen printing, stencils, stickers and posters. As his work spreads across North America, he continues to work tirelessly to get his imagery out to the public.

“My work is a reflection of the culture around me. I retell stories that I have experienced or been told through my illustrations and large-scale murals.”

www.biafrainc.com

HOKA

Hoka Skenandore is an enrolled member of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin in addition to being Oglala Lakota, La Jolla Band of Luiseño and Chicano. He grew up in a home where he learned to appreciate traditional native art as well as fine art. On his own, he embraced the DIY ethos of punk rock and hip-hop culture, setting him on the path to becoming a style writer. He transitioned from painting graffiti to working on murals in the Albuquerque metro area in the late ’90s. He graduated from the Institute of American Indian Arts with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in studio arts in 2006, and later from the University of Oklahoma in 2020 with a Master of Fine Arts degree in painting. He is currently full-time faculty at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he teaches introductory Painting and Drawing courses.

TAMIJOY

Tammy Joy Granados is an enrolled member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, from the Itazipco and Hunkpapa bands of the Lakota/Dakota people, and she was born and raised in Eagle Butte, South Dakota. She currently resides in the community of LaPlant on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation. She uses the name Tammy Joy Art for her professional work, and TamiJoy for her graffiti and street art.

Tammy’s expressionistic style is honed through years of experimenting with different mediums and styles — primarily acrylic paint, graffiti and street art, graphic art, and paper. She draws inspiration from cultural components and storytelling, as well as from subjects and objects that have great meaning to her.

Tammy has four young children who inspire her daily, and they often can be found in the pieces she creates. She credits her artistic knowledge to her late uncle, Leonard Granados; her pride in her uncle’s creations evolved into a motivation to learn and find an avenue for her own self-expression. She also attributes a great deal of her artistic growth to her years employed with the Cheyenne River Youth Project in Eagle Butte; she learned a variety of artistic techniques and mediums alongside the young people she served.

Tammy sees her artistic development as a lifelong journey, one in which she is constantly fine-tuning her artistic vision and enhancing her skills and techniques. While she works primarily with acrylic on canvas, she also creates large-scale murals as a graffiti and street artist. On a smaller scale, she produces craft items and wood decor. She enjoys video creation as well as graphic arts; she creates logos, publicity pieces, holiday cards, T-shirt designs, and illustrations for children’s books and other publications. For several years, Tammy has participated as an accepted artist in the “Native POP: People of the Plains” art market, and she has consistently placed in CRST’s Labor Day Domestic and Lakota Arts Exhibit. In addition, her work has been displayed at the Journey Museum in Rapid City as well as at the Rapid City Public Library.

WUNDR

Wundr is populating the space we live in with his playful, mischievous and always evolving illustrations. The characters he creates are not meant to represent any specific individual, but are stitched together from pieces of all of us. Wundr is currently producing artwork in multiple mediums, including murals, illustration, toys and fine art. Influenced by traditional graffiti, cartoons and comics, Wundr’s work provides a fresh take on designing characters that are constantly creeping into our known habitat.

www.wundr.org

Redcan 2025 Special Guests

THE SAMPSON BROTHERS

As world-renowned dancers, Lumhe and Samsoche Sampson (Mvskoke Creek/Seneca)—a.k.a. the Sampson Brothers— strive to promote cultural pride, unity, and hope by setting a positive example through art, education, and dance. They hope to give back to their tribe and the Indigenous community as a whole by breaking stereotypes and thus creating opportunities for generations to come. The Sampson Brothers aim to be successful artists, but also use that success to educate others while keeping their culture alive. With perseverance in modern times and tradition in tact, they bridge two worlds to provide positive inspiration as 21st century warriors.

Hoop dance has been the brothers’ passion and instrument of choice since they first learned as young boys. While the Powwow styles of Grass and Fancy dance were their origins when they began to walk, they were always encouraged to “never stop learning” and try more… that’s when they were introduced to and picked up their first hoops. At first, it was simply to inform and share with their peers at school assemblies, yet it quickly became a means of living, and ultimately, a way of life. More than 25 years later, they have since performed in more than half a dozen countries and at hundreds of universities, and they have educated thousands of individuals around the world about their culture and Indigenous Hoop Dancing.

black and white close-up of man's face with Bazille tag written across his eyes
TATÉ WALKER
Taté Walker (they/them) is a Lakota citizen of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe of South Dakota and an award-winning Two Spirit storyteller. Their first full-length poetry book, “The Trickster Riots,” was published in 2022, by Abalone Mountain Press.
 
Taté, a 2022 Pushcart Prize nominee, has written, photographed, and/or edited for various outlets, including The Nation, Yellow Medicine Review, Little Somethings Press, Studies in American Indian Literature, Pipe Wrench, Apartment Therapy, Everyday Feminism, Native Peoples, Indian Country Today, Subaru Drive, and December. They are also featured in several anthologies: “FIERCE: Essays by and about Dauntless Women,” “South Dakota in Poems,” W.W. Norton’s “Everyone’s an Author,” and Good Eats: 32 Writers on Eating Ethically.” Their next book, “Indigenous Voices” is forthcoming in 2025 from The Quarto Group.
 
Taté is a co-founder of the Phoenix Two Spirit Community group, which helps organize the annual Arizona Two Spirit Powwow. They are also a longtime member of—and also serve on the board of directors for—the Oceti Sakowin Writers Society, which has a mission to mentor, empower, and promote Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota literary traditions. Taté is a 2023 ASU Poetry & the Senses Fellow and the 2023 Storyknife Fireweed Fellow. Taté has 20 years of experience in print/digital journalism and advocacy writing, and is a trusted community builder within and for social justice and tribal education spaces. Learn more at www.jtatewalker.com.

Redcan NEWS

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The Cheyenne River Youth Project’s 10th Annual RedCan Invitational Graffiti Jam is in the books. Nine new murals have come to life around Eagle Butte, and the public Waniyetu Wowapi (Winter Count) Art Park is filled to the brim with new pieces from the 14 featured...

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The Cheyenne River Youth Project’s 10th Annual RedCan Invitational Graffiti Jam comes to a close this evening, Saturday, July 13. The 14 featured artists are painting and working with youth artists in CRYP’s 3-acre Waniyetu Wowapi (Winter Count) Art Park, while staff,...

RedCan Painting & Activities Move to Waniyetu Wowapi Art Park on July 12-13

The Cheyenne River Youth Project’s 10th Annual RedCan Invitational Graffiti Jam hit the halfway mark on Thursday evening, July 11. The 14 featured artists wrapped up painting at their nine large-scale mural sites around Eagle Butte, and now the action moves to CRYP’s...

RedCan 2024 is Now Under Way!

The 10th annual RedCan Invitational Graffiti Jam got under way this morning at the Cheyenne River Youth Project’s campus in Eagle Butte. Joining CRYP staff and volunteers this year are 14 featured artists from around the world, including two Maori artists from New...

CRYP Prepares to Welcome Artists, Performers and Guests to 10th Annual RedCan

The 10th annual RedCan Invitational Graffiti Jam is just one week away, and CRYP staff and volunteers are preparing to welcome artists, performers and guests to the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation for four days of art, culture and connection. The first and only event...