New Mexico, the Land of Enchantment and Santa Fe, a city of art and wonder, offered more than just business at the NIGA Mid-Year Membership meeting held at the Buffalo Thunder Resort and Casino.

Of the many highlights, the performance of Jana Mashonee and her accompanist, Stephan Galfas, will be remembered most.

Jana, who describes herself as urban-Indian, is a singer, songwriter and actress who has performed to sold-out audiences in the U.S. and abroad, including the Aboriginal Achievement Awards show in Toronto, and the Luxembourg Military Tattoo, a charity event that raised more than $2.5 million for children’s cancer research.

She is a seven-time Native American Music Award winner; she was named Female Artist of the Year, and has won for Single of the Year and Record of the Year, as well as being two-time Best Pop Recording Star of the Year and getting the award for Best Producer for “American Indian Christmas” and Best Music Video. As a young philanthropist, she is founder of Jana’s Kids Native American Youth Motivation and Scholarship Program.

During her performance she introduced the co-founders of The International Museum of 21st Century Arts, (TIMOTCA) Ed Solomon and Maryann Del Pizzo and announced her acceptance as Goodwill Ambassador for TIMOTCA, offering her support for its American Indian Founding Circle of Angels Membership Campaign.

Adding her name to TIMOTCA’s Goodwill Ambassadors, including former artist, actor and activist, Floyd “Red Crow” Westerman and Emmy award-winning actress Shohreh Aghdashloo, Jana hopes to raise awareness and increase membership in TIMOTCA’s American Indian Circle of Angels.

The museum is an international nonprofit corporation founded in 1980 to foster peace and cultural understanding through the Universal Language of Art and to establish the world’s first global cultural center representing the visual and performing arts of some 300 countries and cultures of the world.

To date, officials representing more than 60 countries and cultures have signed TIMOTCA’s Artist Nomination Document nominating their most renowned living artists – one of whom has been selected to represent his or her country in TIMOTCA. Each artist has contributed an original painting for TIMOTCA’s permanent collection.

American Indian artist Dan Namingha was among five celebrated Native artists nominated by R. Richard West, founding director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian and has accepted TIMOTCA’s invitation to represent the American Indians of the U.S. in the TIMOTCA Project, contributing one of his original paintings “Passage & Symbolism XI” to the permanent collection. “Passage & Symbolism XI” has been included in TIMOTCA’s traveling exhibition, “Art Beyond Borders” which premiered at United Nations headquarters under the sponsorship of UNESCO and has been exhibited at UNESCO headquarters, Paris and World Expo, Lisbon.

Currently, the “Art Beyond Borders” exhibition – in a new panel format – is being offered through Teachers Discovery to schools and libraries across the United States, giving an opportunity for American Indian art and culture to be exposed to students everywhere.

Namingho was born in Keams Canyon, Ariz. in 1950. He studied at the University of Kansas, Institute of American Indian Arts, Santa Fe, N.M. and the American Academy of Art in Chicago, Ill. Most recently, he was selected to receive an honorary doctorate from IAIA. The ceremony took place on the campus May 15. His works are in private collections around the world and in TIMOTCA’s permanent collection.

Only 300 ambassador members of TIMOTCA’s Circle of Angels will receive a limited edition fine art print on canvas of Namingho’s “Passage & Symbolism XI,” and only the first 150 charter members will receive their limited edition hand-embellished by the artist and receive a VIP invitation to meet the artist at a gala concert and dinner given in his honor. As “Passage & Symbolism Xl” is the image representing the American Indians of the United States in an unprecedented global cultural event it is destined to be one of his most important works.

A generous portion of ambassador Circle of Angels memberships will be donated to a children’s charity in each country represented in TIMOTCA and Jana’s Kids will be the recipient of TIMOTCA’s American Indian Founding Circle of Angels Membership campaign.