Oscar Howe was born on the Crow Creek Indian Reservation in South Dakota. His formal art education began at the Santa Fe Indian School, but he later began to abandon the Santa Fe style in favor of a more abstract style of painting. In a 1958 letter to the Philbrook Ark Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, he famously challenged the limited defintion of Native art, and is credited with opening museums to a greater range of styles and expressions by Native artists. Cunka Wakan is Dakota for horse. A literal translation would be "dog god"....