ARTIST BIO

Dean Curtis Bear Claw is an enrolled member of the Crow Indian Nation of Montana where he was born and raised and is an award-winning film director. A graduate of Eastern Montana College, in the mid-1990s he received an M.A. in Visual Arts and Performance at New York University in New York City. Dean has also taught Native American Studies and History of the Civil Rights Movement at UC Berkeley.

Bear Claw is also a writer and collaborated on a University of New Mexico Publication titled "Richard Throssell: Crow Indian Photographer" (1996), among others. A leading figure in the world of indigenous media and aesthetics, he has appeared in prominent publications like Film Comment, Southwest Art, Native Peoples, The New Yorker, and, American Indian Journal, and, Indigenous Aesthetics, among others. In 1994, he was a Smithsonian Research Fellow at the National Museum of the American Indian, and, in 1995, a recipient of the United Nations Environmental Media Programmer Award, among others. He is also a screenwriter and is completing a dramatic screenplay titled Buffalo-boy. The story of the film is about an emotionally wounded Crow Indian protagonist’s spiritual journey toward healing, rediscovery and adventure in modern-day Crow reservation.

In 1991, he wrote, directed and co-edited, "Warrior Chiefs in a New Age," a documentary on the spiritual and cultural legacies of two early 20th Century transitional Crow leaders who lead their people into the new age of modernity. "Warrior Chiefs" has won a total of five national and international film awards including the 1991 Andris Slapinsh Memorial Prize with traveling camera, and, the Best Native Film Director prize at the Parnu International Film Festival in the former Soviet Republic of Estonia, among others. It was screened at the 1991 Sundance Film Festival with additional screenings in cities like Vienna, Paris, and, Rome. In addition, it was screened at the Museum of Modern Art, and, the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, National Gallery of Art, Palace of Fine Arts, and, the National Museum of the American Indian, among others. Bear Claw served as a consultant/advisor to film production projects like "Sesame Street," and, "Smoke Signals," among others. Bear Claw resides on the Crow Indian reservation with members of his family, friends and relatives.

Bear Claw is also a board member of the Montana Governor's Film Advisory Board, whose mission is to bring major film productions to the state of Montana and its six Indian reservations. 

FILMS:

"Warrior of the Large Beaked Bird" (Documentary in progress)
"Warrior Chiefs in a New Age" (1991)

Film Awards:

* Best Short Documentary Prize, American Indian Film and Video Festival, the Palace of Fine Arts, San Francisco, California, 1992
* Kaplan Penthouse Award, Wind and Glacier Film and Video Festival, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, New York, New York, 1992
* Best Native Filmmaker Prize, Parnu International Film Festival, Parnu, Estonia USSR, 1991
* Best of the New Visionaries, Two Rivers Film and Video Festival, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1991
* Andris Slapinsh Memorial Prize, Parnu International Film Festival, Parnu, Estonia USSR, 1991

Artistic Honors & Awards:

1999 - Individual Artists Award, New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA)
1998 - Gifted Media makers Category, Rockefeller Foundation, (nominee)
1995 - First Americans in the Arts Scholarship
1989-90 - Native Voice Public Television Workshop Production Grant

Education:

1996- Doctoral Candidate, Ethnic Studies, University of California, Berkeley, California
Dissertation: "Collecting Culture: George Heye, Crow Indian Society, and New York City during the Roaring Twenties"
1994-1996 - Graduate Work in Film and Performing Arts, New York University, New York, New York
1984-1988 - B. A., Communication Arts, Eastern Montana College, Billings, Montana

Publications:

"The Problem of Economic Colonialism on the Crow Indian Reservation and Its Proposed Solutions: A Study" (unpublished) 1998
Richard Throssell: Crow Indian Photographer, University of New Mexico Press, 1997
(co-authored with Peggy Albright, Dr. Barney Old Coyote and Mardell Plain Feather)
The Sacred Circle, Turtle Quarterly, Niagara Falls, New York 1994

Languages:

Native Crow Indian Speaker & Traditional sign language

References: Available Upon Request