Indigenous Artist

Vickie Ramirez (Tuscarora) is a playwright, director, and filmmaker from Six Nations of the Grand River. Her work explores Indigenous identity, sovereignty, and survival in contemporary North America, helping redefine the visibility of Native voices in theatre and film. She co-founded Chukalokoi Native Theater Ensemble with Cochise Anderson, Irene Bedard, and Steve Elm, and in 2009 became the first Indigenous playwright to join the Public Theater’s Emerging Writers Group. In 2018, she became the first enrolled Native playwright in residence at New Dramatists.
Her plays (including Standoff at Hwy #37, Pure Native, Yuchewahkénh (Bitter), and Glenburn 12 WP,)have been produced and/or developed at The Public Theater, Geva Theatre, Native Voices at the Autry, and Pershing Square Signature Center. The Los Angeles Times praised Standoff at Hwy #37 for its “pointed and witty” script that “probes the ambiguous political landscape between Native and non-Native territories,” while BroadwayWorld said of Pure Native; “Ramirez’s script dares the audience to sit with discomfort, to see the tension between preservation and progress not as a binary but as a heartbreaking, sometimes unbridgeable gulf.” Both plays received honorable mentions from The Kilroys, with Pure Native also a semi-finalist at the Eugene O’Neill and Bay Area Playwrights Conferences. Ramirez received the NNPN Smith Prize for Political Theater in 2020 for Yuchewahkénh (Bitter).
After her one-act Glenburn 12 WP was lauded by Time Out New York’s Raven Snook as “smart and moving,” Vickie partnered with TDEP productions to adapted it into the short film Glen Reige 20 WP, which premiered at the Red Nation Film Festival in 2025, and will make its broadcast debut on PBS in 2026. She is working again with TDEP to adapt Standoff at Hwy #37 into a feature film and Pure Native into a television series. She also previously consulted on Amazon’s Outer Range.
Her writing appears in Monologues for Actors of Color, Contemporary Plays by Women of Color, TRW’s Short Plays, and Smoke (Broadway Publishing). A member of the Playwright’s Guild of Canada, The Dramatists Guild, and PEN USA, Ramirez continues to expand the reach and resonance of Indigenous storytelling across stage and screen.

INDIGENOUS ANCESTRY

First Nations

SELF-IDENTIFICATION

Tuscarora, Six Nations of the Grand