A national search is under way for a president to lead a new multimillion-dollar art foundation to promote indigenous art and culture throughout Native America.

The Native American Art and Culture Foundation will be the nation's first permanently endowed foundation devoted exclusively to support tribal art and culture.

"The stars have aligned," said Walter Echo-Hawk, the art foundation board chairman. "You have this foundation now coming on line that has enormous potential to become a powerful funding engine that will redirect the face of private philanthropy and divert huge increases of financial resources directly to our Native artists and tribal communities."

The Native American Art and Culture Foundation board is in the middle of interviewing candidates to lead the organization. An announcement naming the new president is expected within the next two weeks. The location of the organization will be dependent on who gets the job.

The foundation already has collected $6.5 million and committed end-of-year pledges now total $13 million.

"We hope to launch this foundation publicly in September or October. Our doors will be open and we'll start to give out grant awards," said Echo-Hawk, who is based in Denver. "It's going to happen. We've been working quiet …. We're just waiting to get our president hired so we have a warm body out front who can really take this and lift it off the ground."

Echo-Hawk said the foundation was initiated by artists some 20 years ago.

"It's fantastic," said Juanita Growing Thunder, a Northern Plains traditional artist who lives in Sacramento, Calif. "It will be a huge boost to the artist community. We're still all trying to survive. Most of my friends who are artists are all trying to survive. It's tough. We're all committed to keeping our traditions and culture alive. We make big sacrifices to be able to do this."

In 2006, the Ford Foundation paid for a feasibility study to determine the need for a Native art endowment. Several factors have allowed the foundation to become a reality, including the establishment of the National Museum of the American Indian, the Institute of American Indian Arts, plus regional networks and organizations who support Indian artists.

"It all combines to make this a powerful idea whose time has come," said Echo-Hawk. "Those ideas come along very rarely. This is one of those ideas."

Without art and culture, indigenous communities would cease to exist, said Echo-Hawk.

But this cornerstone of sovereignty has been malnourished because most tribal governments have not been able to support their artists because they have been focused on frontline crises, including housing, health care and joblessness.

Many Native American artists have been left alone to preserve traditional songs, dances, stories. Contemporary artists, too, have had little support from federal funding sources or the philanthropic community, said Echo-Hawk.

Today, the foundation is being guided by a five-member board: Echo-Hawk, a Native American Rights Fund attorney; Joy Harjo, a Muscokee-Creek poet and musician; Elizabeth Woody, a writer and cultural specialist from the Warm Springs Reservation in Oregon; Marshall McKay, Rumsey Rancheria (Calif.) tribal chairman; and educator Leticia Chambers.

Other advisers include Della Warrior, JoAnn Chase, and Pamela Kingfisher.

(Reach reporter Jodi Rave at 800-366-7186 or jodi.rave@lee.net.)