John Willis Collection of Lakota Art

John Willis is a documentary photographer and emeritus professor of photography at Marlboro College in Marlboro, Vermont. His monographs include Recycled Realities, co-authored with Tom Young (Center for American Places, 2002), Views from the Reservation (Center for American Places, 2010), and Mni Wiconi - Water Is Life Honoring the Water Protectors at Standing Rock and Everywhere in the Ongoing Struggle for Indigenous Sovereignty (Staunton, Virginia: George F. Thompson Publishing, 2019). Willis has photographs in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, among others. He is also a co-founder with Bill Ledger of the In-Sight Photography Project, a photography outreach project to youth in Brattleboro, Vermont.

Gilbert Andrew Kills Pretty Enemy, Ill, is a Hunkpapa Lakota artist from the Standing Rock Reservation. His artwork includes drawing, graphic art, silk screening, tattooing, tribal art, wood burning and painting. He earned two associate degrees from United Tribes Technical College including art marketing in 2001 and small business management in 2005. He is the founder of Chameleon Horse Art & Design at McLaughlin, South Dakota.

Quinton Jack Whiting Maldonado is an Oglala and Sicangu artist. As a child, he lived on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation with his maternal grandparents Margaret Chips Jack Maldonado (1914-1987) and Manuel Vasquez Maldonado (1922-1989). He has created art since childhood, and after viewing the work of Donald F. Montileaux (born 1948) while in high school, Maldonado has studied and created ledger drawings.

Patrick Joel Pulliam, also known as Akicita Tokahe (First Soldier/ Warrior), is an Oglala Lakota artist born at Pine Ridge, South Dakota, and raised in the Oglala Lakota Nation at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. After service in the United States Army, in 2003 Pulliam began in-depth studies of his Lakota heritage and focused on ledger drawing after an introduction by artist Daniel Long Soldier (born 1949).

Dwayne "Chuck" Wilcox is an Oglala Lakota artist born at Kadoka, South Dakota, and raised at Wanblee on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. He served in the United States military. A self-taught artist, Wilcox created his first commissioned artwork in 1974 and transitioned to a fulltime art career in 1987 with an emphasis on ledger drawings. Example of his work are collected in Visual/Language: The Ledger Drawings of Dwayne Wilcox (Staunton, Virginia: George F. Thompson Publishing, 2021), edited by Karen Miller Nearburg.

Ledger drawings are traditionally representational drawings of scenes from the lives of nineteenth century Plains Indians, with an emphasis on martial accomplishments. Ledger drawings were so named for the ruled ledger books in which they were often executed which the creators obtained from soldiers or traders. Many twentieth century and twenty-first century Native American artists have also integrated ledgers in their work.