As a child growing up in Fort Worth, Lindy Vasquez-Gordineer’s family rarely spoke of their Indigenous heritage. “We were supposed to be hidden about it. It was easier to claim Mexican … because people made fun in school,” she remembered.
But once a year, her father would take her to the local powwow in the small town of Grand Prairie, just east of Fort Worth, and they’d watch the dances together. “It was almost magical,” Vasquez-Gordineer reflected. “I’ve been to many powwows since I was a child, but I was never in the circle. I wanted to be in the circle. I wanted to dance.”
Today, Vasquez-Gordineer is part of the Austin Native American Cultural Center’s performance group, which dances at the Austin Powwow the center holds every November. She remembers the first time her father came to watch her perform as a jingle dancer. “It was very emotional,” she recalled. “My dad’s a quiet person. Doesn’t talk to anyone. And he actually came out on the dance floor and danced with me.”
“I almost cried,” she remembered, smiling. “It was a really, really proud moment.”
Late into the evening on Jan. 14, at the center’s first weekly Sew Indigenous workshop of the year, Vasquez-Gordineer sat wrapping white yarn around a long piece of cardboard, using it to measure and cut equal strips. She was making grass dance regalia for her son, she said.
“I know what the stories are, what the colors mean now … I’m trying to learn everything, so my future generations don’t lose their culture again,” she emphasized. “My sons know how to make fry bread now. My youngest knows how to dance.”
The Sew Indigenous workshops, where community members hunch over sewing machines and brightly colored ribbon and cloth, began taking place every Wednesday almost a year ago. But for now, a permanent home for the sessions is less certain.
Moving House
Over a decade ago, a group of Indigenous Austinites began to meet at the rented office space north of the University of Texas campus. But the room was windowless and small. They couldn’t hang anything on the walls. They knew they would need a larger space to truly open a cultural center for the public to use.
Last April, the newly dubbed “Native American Cultural Center” was able to move into the empty Brooke Elementary, which Austin ISD closed down back in 2020. In two large classrooms, the walls are now papered with art. Belongings are stowed away in cubbies. Community members ranging from elders to stumbling toddlers fill the space.
The weekly Sew Indigenous workshops swelled after their move to the Brooke campus, the organization’s executive director, Skye Howell, said. “It was like a dam being removed from a river – it really opened it up for us to be able to grow as a community. We never know how many people are going to show up.”
But now, the center faces yet another move: In early December, Austin ISD announced their plan to sell the Brooke property and close a deal by August 2026, citing the district’s nearly $20 million budget deficit at a Dec. 10 community meeting.
“We thought we’d be here longer,” Howell reflected. “It’s bittersweet. But we grow where we’re planted, right?”
In part, the center provides a place to plan and create regalia for the Austin Powwow, and this year will be the 33rd in its history. The massive festival attracts about 15,000 people and generates $300,000 in tourism and hospitality for the city, Howell said.
And yet, over three decades after that first powwow, Austin’s Indigenous community still doesn’t have a permanent cultural center to call home. “We are the only group that does not have a cultural center designated,” Howell told the Chronicle. “Why do we not? … If you look across Austin planning, we’re invisibilized.”
But beyond the annual powwow, Nan Blassingame, an accomplished Native fashion designer and the organization’s creative director, had long imagined these weekly gatherings when the community could craft and share time together year-round.
“I dreamt of this. I wanted this for our community, [a workshop] where we could teach sewing and beading,” Blassingame said. “Ten years of dreams rolled out last year and hit us like a wave.”
Blassingame remembers learning how to sew as a child growing up in the small town of Hammon, Oklahoma, within the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribal nations. “We started classes at 9 years old,” she remembered. “This is really therapeutic to me. I just love to sew and bead … and sometimes I feel it helps with anxiety and depression.”
As the workshops continued to outgrow even the Brooke campus, a future Native American Cultural Center in Austin would ideally be larger, Howell emphasized. With Austin ISD’s assurance to find the organization a new home, one option they have is to move to an active school campus.
At the same time, Howell and other community leaders are still trying to work with City Council and Travis County to designate them a fully resourced cultural center. “For us to be the first people of this land and region, and that not to be a priority in a place as progressive as Austin … We want to be recognized,” Howell said.
And the organization aims to take on new initiatives, like creating college and career readiness programs for Native AISD students. They want to host art markets, “so folks can create a livelihood from being here and being a part of these classes,” Howell said.
“In Austin, it’s a challenge to find a space that’s affordable, that’s accessible, that’s on the bus line, and again, truly a space where you feel like you belong. Especially for BIPOC organizations, and especially in the current political climate,” Howell added.
“But I know that because of the community that we have, and the support that we have, we’re gonna find something that’s even better.”
An Anchor
While living in our state’s current political reality, Indigenous students in both AISD and local state universities have found a home in the Native American Cultural Center.
When Senate Bill 17 took effect Jan. 1, 2024, UT-Austin prohibited all “diversity, inclusion, and equity activities.” The Native American Indigenous Collective, an Indigenous student-run organization where Raven Price-Smith found friends and community, was told to pack up its shared office space.
“And just like that, we felt that all of the support was just ripped from us,” Price-Smith recalled. “It felt like being abandoned.”
Price-Smith kept the group’s art, unable to pay for a storage unit and unwilling to throw it out. She would need to take a semester off from school for her mental health. Moreover, the students had just hosted their first on-campus student powwow the year SB 17 passed, and given the new law’s restrictions, it would be the last.
“But we weren’t gonna cancel anything. We just kept going,” Price-Smith said. The students soon found the Native American Cultural Center, which has helped them put on every student powwow since. “It was a good feeling, knowing that our community will always have our back,” Price-Smith continued.
Price-Smith is now one of the organization’s student interns. She remembers that when she first found the Native American Cultural Center, Blassingame had taught her how to sew a skirt. “And then she taught me how to make a jingle dress, and I started dancing,” Price-Smith remembered fondly. “I hadn’t danced for like, 10 years … And I started dancing again.”
This article appears in January 23 • 2026.