Somewhere on Steven Paul Judd’s new Nike collection, a smiley face made of arrows appears, with arrowheads for eyes and a bent arrow for a mouth. Longtime fans will recognize it instantly. The arrow smiley is Judd’s signature, a mark he keeps coming back to, and now it’s riding on a pair of Nikes.
Judd, a Kiowa and Choctaw polymath, designed Nike’s Holiday 2026 N7 collection, which drops November 7 exclusively at Hibbett and Nike. He’s said people sometimes assume Native art is supposed to be serious and historical. He sees his communities differently. “We laugh a lot, we tease each other,” he said in a statement released with the collection.
N7 is Nike’s long-running line for Native and Indigenous communities, and for the holidays it’s handing the whole season to one artist. The lineup pairs a G.T. Cut 4 basketball shoe and an Air Force 1 with a hoodie-and-pants set, two graphic tees, and a basketball jersey with shorts. Judd’s fingerprints are on every piece, from the graphics to the colors and materials, and his sense of humor comes along for the ride.
If you know Judd’s name, you’re probably already wearing it. His limited-edition tees for The NTVS, the Native-owned brand that started selling at Midwest powwows in 2014, are where many folks first meet his style: old-school Native imagery crashing into the pop culture we all grew up on, usually with a wink. The drops tend to sell out fast.
The tees are only one corner of what he does, though. Judd’s a filmmaker, director, screenwriter, and fiction writer, a Writers Guild of America member, and a former staff writer on Disney XD’s comedy series “Zeke and Luther.” His films, including “Ronnie BoDean” and “Indian and the Tourist,” look at Native life from the inside and use humor to bring non-Native audiences along. United States Artists, which counts him among its fellows, notes that his filmography has earned a long list of honors and plenty of love from Native viewers who want him to keep going.
Away from the camera, he paints, makes prints and posters, and shoots photographs. In 2015, he created the album art and merch for A Tribe Called Red, and his mural “War Paint” still stands in Indian Alley, the downtown Los Angeles alley known for its Native murals.
For N7, he started close to home. The palette draws on Oklahoma sunsets, buckskin that’s faded naturally over the years, and traditional hand-dyed clothing. Warm neutrals mix with golds, reds, and blues taken from natural dyes and the colors of the land, while nubuck, hairy suede, and chenille give the shoes texture you’ll want to run your hand over.
“I created this N7 collection to celebrate the beauty and meaning of Indigenous designs, translating them into Nike footwear and apparel that’s recognizably Native from the jump,” says Judd. “I was very intentional in every design choice, with each detail holding a deeper purpose and reflection of our communities.”
The G.T. Cut 4 is the performance pair, and it’s where the collection’s message shows up most clearly. A spiral motif inspired by Choctaw visual culture runs alongside a patch reading “Still Here.” On the court, the phrase is about staying in the game and pushing through. Off the court, it’s about Indigenous people and cultures persevering and refusing to disappear.
The Air Force 1 is the pair you’ll see on sidewalks, bringing the same motifs into everyday wear. It’s also where Judd’s arrow smiley turns up, right on the heel. Taking one of America’s most familiar symbols and rebuilding it from arrowheads is about as Judd as it gets. He’s said humor has carried Native communities through some brutal stretches of history, and he wants the face to remind people the culture holds strength and joy at the same time.
The campaign features three Native basketball players: Alissa Pili, who’s Iñupiaq and Samoan; Sydney Benally, who’s Navajo; and Keonte Greybear of the Standing Rock Sioux Nation.
Like every N7 release, Judd’s collection is backed by Nike’s N7 Fund. The fund gives grants to nonprofits serving Indigenous communities across North America, and Nike says it’s put $625,000 a year into it since 2022. Including the company’s other grants, Nike has given $15.2 million to 324 organizations since 2009. The drop also falls during Native American Heritage Month.
The grant money goes to the programs. The shoes do something harder to measure. Some kid in Oklahoma will lace up a pair of Nikes this winter, designed by a Native artist from just down the road, take pride in it, and even feel inspired and motivated by it. N7 has worked for years to normalize these kinds of collaborations, and for those of us who grew up never seeing ourselves represented in the brands we loved, it’s a big deal.
Judd’s spent his whole career making Native art people can laugh with and see themselves in reimagined, indigenized pop culture. Now, he’s bringing his artistry and humor to N7, and we’re impatiently waiting to get our hands on these goodies.
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