America Meredith

In 2019, she co-curated with Jean Merz-Edwards Stories from the Land: Indigenous Voices Connecting within the Great Plains at the Birger Sandzén Memorial Gallery, and co-curated with Callie Chunestudy (Cherokee Nation) Earth Shakers: The Influence of Cherokee Women at the Cherokee Heritage Center.

Northeastern State University named Meredith its 2018 Sequoyah Fellow. In 2006, Meredith tied for SF Weekly's Best Painter award. She was awarded with a Cultural Equity Individual Artist Grant from the San Francisco Arts Commission, and she participated in the National Museum of the American Indian visiting artist fellowship. She has received numerous awards in juried art shows at the Cherokee Heritage Center, SWAIA's Santa Fe Indian Market, the Heard Museum, and others, including the 2007 IAIA Distinguished Alumni Award - For Excellence in Contemporary Native American Arts.

In addition to her studio practice, Meredith curates shows such as Frybread and Roses: Art of Native American Labor (2006) and Freedom of Information: The FBI, Indian Country, and Surveillance, which she co-curated with Ishkoten Dougi (Jicarilla Apache) in 2010. At Ahalenia Studios in Santa Fe, Meredith and other Native American artists, such as Melissa Melero-Moose (Northern Paiute/Modoc) and Sam Haozous (Chiricahua Apache), curate shows "too edgy, too silly, or otherwise inappropriate for other local galleries."

Meredith earned her AA at City College of San Francisco; her BFA in painting from the University of Oklahoma in Norman, Oklahoma; and her MFA in painting from the San Francisco Art Institute in San Francisco, California in 1995. She also attended the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma in Chickasha and the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

During much of the 1990s, Meredith worked as a bike messenger in San Francisco, California, where she was active in the International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 6's organizing campaign of the Bay Area urgent delivery industry.

America Meredith was born in 1972 to Howard Meredith, a Cherokee author and American Indian Studies professor, and Mary Ellen Meredith, a Cherokee museum director and curator. Meredith's maternal grandfather was William Thomas Milam, a Cherokee photographer and aeronautical engineer from Oklahoma. Both of her grandmothers were Swedish-American. W. T. Milam's uncle was J. B. Milam, the Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation, and his great-uncle was Will Rogers, a Cherokee humorist, actor, and movie producer.