For Zitkála Šá Series (For Heidi Senungetuk)

For Zitkaìla-Šaì—thirteen lithographs based on musical scores Chacon wrote between 2017 and 2020—honors the Yankton Dakota writer, musician, translator, and political activist Zitkála-Šá. Chacon felt compelled to compose for this "artist who demonstrated direct action in all the involuntary spaces where we, as Native people, find ourselves." He utilizes marks, symbols, and geometric shapes drawn from sources that include tribal forms, numerology, and symbology. Each score is dedicated to a contemporary Indigenous woman composer, musician, or sound artist, acting concurrently as portrait and homage. Here, he celebrates Iñupiaq violinist, professor, and scholar of ethnomusicology Heidi Senungetuk, who describes "transposing ideas from wider society into Iñupiat ways of understanding the world." Senungetuk has praised the openness of Chacon’s score and the freedom, creativity, and agency it allows.