Lily Painter

Lily Painter (she/her), known also by her Kiowa name – Brings Water – is a Kiowa and Winnebago writer, poet, advocate and storyteller. She is from KCA Land Reservation in Anadarko, Oklahoma. She is a proud alumni of CNAY’s inaugural Remembering Our Sisters Fellowship and was CNAY’s Columbia University Scholar in 2020. She was named a Teen Vogue 21 Under 21, is a Yahoo! Changemaker and was a member of UNITY’s 25 Under 25 class (2021). She was also the 2023 Miss Indian Oklahoma and the first Native American to intern in the White House’s Domestic Policy Council.

Her multidisciplinary work focuses on how creation, education, community movements and art can detail and address critical contemporary Native issues. She is the founder of Matriarch Medicine – a digital collective for art and writing born out of combatting the MMIWG2S+ epidemic – and is the co-coordinator for NDN Girls Book Club – a literary arts organization for Native youth, girls and people. She is working to complete her Bachelor’s Degree at the University of Oklahoma.