DOC TATE NEVAQUAYA

Doc Tate Nevaquaya brought national honor to the state of Oklahoma in 1986, by becoming the first Oklahoman to win the National Heritage Fellowship Award. Given by the National Endowment for the Arts, the award honored Doc as a "flutist and master of traditional arts." He is equally well known for his paintings.

A full-blooded Comanche, Doc was born in 1932 in Apache, Oklahoma. His parents died eight months apart when he was 13 and he spent his teenage years living with his grandparents, listening to the stories of the tribal elders.

Also, his oldest brother, who was working, assumed the role of a motivating parent. He brought home crayons and a tablet for Doc and encouraged him to draw the nearby Wichita Mountains -- "Something my teachers didn't approve of," admits the artist with a smile.

Ironically, at Fort Sill Indian School where Doc was a student, government policies forbidding portrayals of Indian culture as "pagan" had been reversed. Traditional Indian Art was now a part of thr curriculum, and students were discouraged from pursuing other areas like landscape painting.

So Doc avoided taking art classes in school. "I wanted to be free from that, to paint what I felt within, he explains. Whenever he got a chance, he would sketch the rugged Slick Hills by the farm, complete with rocks and cedars and horses which, for him, were part of the landscape.

At the same time, Doc went out of his way to view all the traditional art that he could, and contributed his own artwork to posters and the school yearbook.

After graduating from high school, he began sketching at home. Doc exhibited and sold his first work at Indian City in Anadarko, Oklahoma. During the 1950's he began to concentrate on painting. He has since become and accomplished painter, winning numerous awards for his work. Art critic Ralph Oliver said his works are "characterized by amazing and technical control, exquisite color and a mastery of detail."

It was also during the 1950s that Doc first became interested in Indian flutes. In the 1960s he began researching the Indian flute in earnest. Because none of the Indian music is written, much of it is lost. Doc researched the flute construction and playing techniques at the Library of Congress and Smithsonian Institution collections and has copies of recordings made in the late 1800s by elders of various tribes. He often listens to them while he paints and bases his music on the recordings.

In the 1970s, the Metropolitan Museum of Art came to Apache and did a documentary about Doc and his flutes. Charles Kuralt has visited him for CBS. He has appeared with Roy Clark and Mel Tillis, and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. In 1982 at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., he performed with Loretta Lynn, Wayne Newton and Sammy Davis, Jr. during "A Night of the First Americans." He has appeared at the Smithsonian Institution, as well as in concerts and lectures throughout Europe and the Far East. He has released two important recordings, "Indian Flute Songs from Comanche Land" and "Comanche Flute Music" currently being released under the title of "Legends Are Forever" available on compact disc.

After Doc received the National Heritage Fellowship Award, he received letters of recognition and congratulations from former President Reagan, Oklahoma Senator David Boren and others. The Comanche Tribe of Oklahoma the second Friday in October as Doc Tate Nevaquaya Day. The American Indian Support Society of the Washington D.C. area honored him with a recepition at the Capitol Building and also honored him as their special guest at their annual pow-wow. He has most recently been awarded a honor that only three people in the history of Oklahoma statehood have received, an "Oklahoma Treasure."

Yet suprisingly, these awards and honors have wrought little change in Doc Tate's lifestyle. Up until his passing on Tuesday, March 5, 1996, he painted at home, on a table in his bedroom, and appropriately enough, whenever he suffered from "creative block," he picked up the flute and played.

Doc Tate's paintings remained quite affordable - remarkably so for an artist of his stature - right up to his passing, but he took pride in knowing that they were gragually making their way around the globe. Even to this day over 11 years after his death, his originals can be found from time to time for well below what their true value is.

Doc Tate Nevaquaya was truly a man of many talents. Oklahoma is indeed fortunate to call him a citizen and treasure of our state.