An Indigenous comic book makers’ meet-up/fashion show/pow wow mashup that attracted more than 2,000 people last year resumes this weekend — and you don’t have to be Native to be a part of it.
This year’s áyA Con — Colorado’s Indigenous comic and arts festival — includes a pow wow, comic book displays and a showcase of native fashion, as well as several panels that link native forms of entertainment with culture. There’s one on Indigenous innovation, another on fandom as a way to deal with mental health issues and another about crafting stories around shape-shifting characters common in Native lore.
"It's a Venn diagram of nerds and natives — when you go to áyA Con, you’ll run into people doing new art based on what they grow up hearing,” said Tom Myer, a traditional and contemporary Native digital artist who will have a booth at the event. The festival is held Oct. 3-5 at Truss House in the RINO Art Park.
The word áyA (pronounced EYE-uh) is Lakota and means to change into or become. Fitting, because co-organizer Kristina Maldonado Bad Hand said she and her husband, who launched the event together in 2023, have made a few changes so the event can become even bigger.
Last year, the event was indoors at the McNichols Civic Center Building. This year, however, it’s become an indoor/outdoor event, which allows for components they didn’t have in the past.
“We actually have a skate park area,” she said, “And we have an art station where people can actually help create an art float for the Broadway Halloween parade that we started taking part in last year.”
She said it’s not specifically for Native Americans.
“The way we look at it is that everybody’s Indigenous from somewhere,” she said. “We look at áyA Con as being a celebration of indigeneity that is hosted by North American Indigenous people.”
Afro-Indigenous and Black people participated in last year’s displays of fashion alongside Native models and competitors, some of them children. The first year, about 900 people showed up, and last year that number nearly tripled to 2,500, she said.
Among the highlights she’s in the process of getting reading for this weekend: a fashion show with a Two-spirit drag performance, a pow wow children participate in, and two cosplay contests — one for adults, the other for pets.
“We centralize a lot of Indigenous voices,” she said, “but we have vendors and participants and attendees from all over the place.”
