Amikogaabawiikwe indizhinikaaz. Adrienne Benjamin indigoo. Awaazisii indoodem. Misizaaga’iganing indoonjibaa. Chiminising indaa. Niizh nindaanisag indayaawag, Bagwajikwe naa Zhaawanigiizhigookwe.
Adrienne M. Benjamin (She/Her/Hers) is an Anishinaabe multi-faceted artist, equity advocate, and cultural educator. She utilizes her own vast life experiences as a special needs mother, GBS survivor, and as a modern day Indigenous woman to create meaningful, current, socially relevant, and culturally significant work that intersects with her Anishinaabe values, history, and life ways.
Adrienne is passionate about and vibrantly champions social justice and equity initiatives in the arts and education systems in her local community of Mille Lacs, statewide in Minnesota, and beyond. Adrienne is also an accomplished arts administrator, having created and lobbied two successful arts based youth initiatives within her tribe; the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe. Adrienne is also an avid art collector, invariably supporting Indigenous and BIPOC artists in the United States and beyond.
Since 2019, Adrienne has worked as Minnetonka Moccasin’s Reconciliation Advisor. She was instrumental in the company’s public acknowledgement of harm to Native communities and their public apology for appropriation. Since then, the company has launched and redesigned products with Native artists receiving design fees, charitable donations, and lifelong product royalties. She was critical in the push of the long overdue redesign of the company’s most egregious appropriation, the iconic Thunderbird; which is now designed and trademark owned by Red Lake Anishinaabe artist Lucie Skjefte.
