David Dragonfly, who passed away in October 2024, was an accomplished artist whose practice incorporates a variety of techniques, from ledger drawing to printmaking, hide painting to woodwork. He attended the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he studied jewelry making and stone carving. He later enrolled at the University of Montana, worked with Don Bunse and James Todd, and graduated in 1988 with a BFA in Painting. Although Dragonfly’s family roots were Assiniboine, he was raised on the Blackfeet Reservation in Browning, Montana. He began painting and drawing at a very young age and developed an interest in pictographic art—the historic imagery recorded by many Plains Indian tribes on rock walls, buffalo hides and, later, ledger papers, to document personal achievements and cultural life, to tell stories and record visions. That pictographic style, often adorned with bold coloring and expressionistic embellishments, became central to Dragonfly’s art for the majority of his career. His work often depicts hunters and warriors, camp life, trains and automobiles, Blackfeet culture past and present. Starting in the late 1990s Dragonfly worked at the Museum of the Plains Indian in Browning, Montana, first as an aide and years later as the museum's acting curator. He was a featured artist at the Northern Plains Tribal Art Show in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and participated in the Colorado Indian Market in Denver, the Heard Museum Indian Fair in Phoenix, the Helena Indian Market in Helena, and the Great Falls Native American Art Show in Great Falls.