Kewanyama was born at Shungopavi Village, Second Mesa, on the Hopi Reservation on October 14, 1922. As an adult, he moved to Winslow, Arizona, where he made a career of carving Katsina dolls and painting images of Katsina dances. He also made jewelry in the Hopi silver overlay style. He served in the U. S. Navy during World War II.

Works by Kewanyama are in the Museum of the American Indian Heye Foundation in New York; Museum of Northern Arizona in Flagstaff;  Museum of New Mexico in Santa Fe; and in the National Park Service, Department of Interior in Washington, DC.  Exhibits of his art have been featured at the Arizona State Museum of the University of Arizona in Tucson; Hastings College Art Center in Hastings, Nebraska; the Museum of the American Indian in New York; the Philbrook Art Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma; and the Peabody Museum at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  These collections and exhibits of his work are testimony to his importance as an early Hopi artist.