Elexa Dawson | 2021 Native Launchpad Artist

ARTIST WEBSITE

Tribal Affiliation: Citizen Potawatomi Nation

Artistic Discipline: Music

Hometown: Emporia, KS

Born on the Citizen Potawatomi Nation in 1979, Elexa's early life was filled with music. Her professional career began in the Oklahoma City area, when she organized her first band. Elexa moved to Kansas in 2006, and has been active in the music community ever since. 

Elexa is a founding member of original acoustic roots band, Weda Skirts, whose first full-length album, Many Moons, was released in 2016, followed by Mother in 2018. Both albums present songs influenced by Elexa’s Potawatomi identity, nature, family, love and loss.

Elexa also performs with Heyleon, a cross-pollination of established Kansas musicians. Their albums Friends & Family and Fiddle Road were both released by Elexa's burgeoning record label, Turns Out Records.

As a rural artist, Elexa values community. For twelve years, she produced the Chase County Earth Day Celebration. She’s on the Kansas Creative Arts Industries Commission Touring Roster and serves on the Matfield Green Works Advisory Council.

In 2019, Elexa was awarded the Artist in Business Leadership Fellowship from First Peoples Fund and was granted funding for her debut solo album, Music is Medicine (2019, Lost Cowgirl Records)—a concept album relating to her experience of being a Potawatomi woman removed from her ancestral homeland. Single High Place charted at #6 on Sirius XM’s Indigenous Music Countdown.

Elexa is currently a student of sustainable agriculture, and dreams of hosting a rural art-farm-camp in the Flint Hills in the coming years.