ST. GEORGE, Utah (ABC4) — A Utah father has been arrested for allegedly sexually abusing and raping his juvenile daughter in their home.

The 55-year-old man, who ABC4.com is not naming to protect the identity of the victim, has been arrested on 11 counts of sodomy on a child (first-degree felony), six counts of rape of a child (first-degree felony), three counts of aggravated sexual abuse of a child (first-degree felony), and one count of rape of a child (first-degree felony),

According to court documents, on May 5, officers with the St. George Police Department received a Division of Child and Family Services referral regarding a sex offense. The referral claimed that the 55-year-old man was sexually abusing his juvenile daughter in their home.

The victim was taken to the Children’s Justice Center for a forensic interview. She reported that her father would perform sexual acts on her, as well as force her to perform sexual acts on him.

During an interview with police, the father admitted to sexually abusing and raping his juvenile daughter. He was then arrested and transported to the Washington County Jail where he is being held without bail.

A father-and-son duo of Blackfeet artists are visiting Riverton and Jackson this week to share their unique takes on ledger art. The events are part of Central Wyoming College’s week-long Native Voices celebration.

Terrance Guardipee and Terran Last Gun will share their work and perspectives during “Behind Linear Narratives: Indigenous Plains Ledger Art,” at the Intertribal Center at CWC’s Riverton campus on May 6 starting at 5:30 p.m.

The two also have an exhibition opening at the Jackson Hole History Museum on May 7, which will be part of an art walk featuring Native artists and Indigenous-inspired food tastings taking place that same evening.

Plains Indian communities lost one of their main canvases when the U.S. government and white settlers started eradicating bison in the mid-1800s. That’s how ledger art was born: Instead of documenting significant events on hides, people would find ways to acquire and draw on filled-out accounting books as a way to keep telling their stories.

Terrance Guardipee was introduced to the visual storytelling style by his mentor George Flett in the late 1990s. Flett gave Guardipee eight sheets of ledger paper to try it out.

“ He was a huge influence on me and guided me through my art career,” said Guardipee. “I went to the Institute of American Indian Arts and so did he. We had that connection.”

Flett, Guardipee and a collection of other artists worked together to revitalize and elevate the art form, and eventually succeeded in getting it recognized as its own competitive category at the Sante Fe Indian Market in 2009.

“ All of us had our own role in what we were doing and none of us looked the same,” he said. “Our art didn’t look the same. We were all individual people.”

Over time, Guardipee developed his own unique ledger art style, moving from a more traditional single-page approach to mixed-media collages that include old documents and antique maps – the more coffee-stained and marked-up, the better.

“ I grabbed stock certificates, checks, receipts, music paper, anything I thought my ancestors, if they came across it and they were doing this kind of work, they would’ve used,” he said. “ Each document wasn’t just a random document to me. They all went with the piece.”

The art form, in its many different iterations, has now grown far beyond its Plains roots, expanding all over Indian Country and among women artists, according to Guardipee. But he said his advice to people curious about the form is to create from their own cultural experiences, rather than replicate the symbols or imagery used by other artists.

Terran Last Gun

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Central Wyoming College

“ Get maps of where you’re from. That’s your homeland. Your ancestors are there,” he said. “Their blood’s been there [for] thousands of years. Draw on those. Represents where you’re from.”

Guardipee’s son, Terran Last Gun, is an acclaimed visual artist in his own right and also attended the Institute of American Indian Arts in Sante Fe, New Mexico. He took up a version of ledger art, but with his own more contemporary twist grounded in geometric shapes and bright colors.

Terrance Guardipee

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Instagram

“ Our ancestors evolved. We evolve. Ledger art evolves,” said Guardipee. “You go to my son, doing very abstract-looking ledger art, but it still connects to our culture. It still has to do with who we are, just in a different way of telling the story.”

The duo have both come away with top prizes at the Santa Fe Indian Market in recent years. For Guardipee, watching the ledger art movement grow and then seeing his son find his own path with the form is “the icing on the cake.”

CWC’s Native Voices event also includes screenings of the documentary “Free Leonard Peltier” in Riverton on May 5 and in Jackson on May 6. Film producer Jhane Meyers, who also worked on the 2022 film “Prey” in the “Predator” franchise, will be at both screenings for a post-showing discussion.

The celebration will wrap up on May 9 with the free sixth annual Teton Powwow at the Snow King Event Center in Jackson. The events are free and open to all.