In 2015, Heyman traveled to North Dakota to chronicle the stories of those living within the state’s tribal nations. Ganje, a letterpress artist who grew up on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation in South Dakota, invited Heyman to meet with members of four nations: the Spirit Lake Tribe; the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians; the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation; and the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.

Heyman and Ganje are not Native American, but they worked in close collaboration with each nation’s tribal college, conducting extensive portrait sittings and interviews with 12 individuals selected by the colleges, which Heyman used as the basis of a series of woodcut portraits. In turn, Ganje created letterpress prints comprised of quotes from each interview recounting aspects of the sitter’s personal histories, values, and cultures. Collectively titled In Our Own Words, the collaborative project, printed by Kim Fink, provides first-person testimony that Indigenous cultures remain unique, rich, and very much alive.

—Text taken from the Carter Handbook (2023)