Piper - Leigh Daniels
Mixed Blood ( Lenape/Delaware and Cherokee)
Piper - Leigh Daniels was born in Maryland.
A graduate of The Baltimore School for the Arts (1986) and Boston University (1990 BFA). She currently teaches in the TWIGS department at the Baltimore School for the Arts and was the Artistic Project Director at Project PLASE; exposing the arts to the homeless in Baltimore. Her journey and influence at PLASE led to the making of a documentary, The Art of Recovering, that was submitted and shown at AFI/The American Film Institute's Documentary Challenge in 2007.
She has been in plays, tv and movies throughout the country, working with names such as: John Trudell, Heather Rae, Spike Lee, Mario Van Peebles and Charles Dutton.
Her last play (Kick - a one woman show about the Native, deformation and cultural offense of American Indian mascots) was under Equity contract was opened at Los Angeles' Mark Taper Auditorium. Kick was under production by the NCCJ/The National Conference for Community and Justice; and her understudy was the acclaimed American Indian actor, Wes Studi's niece: Delanna Studi.
She was a shorts programmer, for Robert Redford's Sundance Film Institute.
Piper was also featured/back up singer on John Trudell's Bone Days CD (Angelina Jolie as Executive Producer) and Madness and the Moremes; appeared in the Something About You video which aired on VH1. Trudell was spokesman for Indian of All Tribes occupation of Alcatraz Island and Chairman of the American Indian Movement (AIM).
Piper continue to help the community by being on the Native American LifeLines Board and visiting, supporting and participating in the Native cultural community on the Rosebud Reservation South Dakota.