Sat., Nov. 6, 2004

native american arts daily news, presented by
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Reaching out to Native Americans
Kentucky.com - Lexington,KY,USA
... industries such as an orchard, an arts and crafts ... has the blessing of the North American Institute for ... work to connect Christianity with Native American culture ...

THE FLINT JOURNAL FIRST EDITION
Flint Journal - Flint,MI,USA
... Arab Heritage Council and the Greater Flint Arts Council, with ... REG PETTIBONE'S AUTHENTIC NATIVE AMERICAN DANCE AND CULTURAL PROGRAM, demonstrating Native ...

Japanese Senior Center in good hands under volunteer leader
Arizona Republic - Phoenix,AZ,USA
... of the American Indian in Washington, DC, and an acclaimed Native American beadwork artist ... and Bead museums and the Scottsdale Center for the Arts, Emil will be ...

Bentley's McCallum Graduate School of Business Receives ...
Emediawire (press release) - Ferndale,WA,USA
... s Asian-American, Latino, African-American, Native American, and Multiracial ... and the Boston Hispanic American Chamber of ... and Black Liberal Arts students to ...

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"Honor Your Spirit, Protect The Children"
Winter & Christmas 2004 - Request for Donations
http://www.geocities.com/honoryourspirit/home.html

If you wish to make a difference and help children and elders through the harsh winter months in Montana, please take the time to read our request. On behalf of reliable Northern Cheyenne contacts from Lame Deer, we are once again collecting donations for those in need on the Northern Cheyenne reservation.
There is a large need especially for new and good quality used warm items, as well as toys.
List of useful donations :
- warm clothing such as knitted items for children of all ages from babies to teenagers, and for elders - jeans and T-shirts, all sizes - socks, gloves, boots, hats and scarves - blankets - toys for Christmas
Donations should be sent to the following address:
Honor Your Spirit - Protect the Children
% Sue Buck
PO Box 901
Great Falls, MT 59403-0901 (USA)
Please contact suemontana@mcn.net for mailing information other than regular US Mail service. (Also please include your name and address if you would like for us to acknowledge/confirm receipt of your donations.)
The toys will be distributed during the Christmas give away but the warm clothes and blankets will be distributed right away. During Montana winters, the temperature can drop to 30 or 40 degrees below zero so warm winter clothing and blankets can be lifesaving.
Our goal is to help the children, the elders, the single parent families, or families unable to make ends meet due to the high unemployment rate, the difficult conditions and the extreme poverty on the reservation.The children need all the help and encouragement they can get!
Other items that would also be appreciated: grooming supplies like toothpaste, tooth brushes,soaps and shampoos, combs, hair brushes, hair barrettes, rubber bands or other types of hair or pony tail holders. Last but not least : pampers diapers or pull-ups.
Thank you for being a part of this project and supporting it."
Respectfully,
Manuel Redwoman,
Northern Cheyenne/Lakota/Arapaho
Our heartfelt thanks to everyone for your support !

Haidu Language Project
Did you know that before Christopher Columbus arrived in the new world, the "Indians" in North America spoke over 300 indigenous languages? Today, roughly 20 of these languages have speakers of all ages. Unfortunately, the Haida language of Kasaan, Alaska is not among them.
Currently, only seven Kasaan Haidas speak the Kasaan Haida dialect with varying degrees of fluency--all elders over the age of 75. I know this because my dad grew up in Kasaan, 25 miles from my birthplace of Ketchikan, Alaska. We belong to the Haida tribe. This summer, I urged the Kasaan Haida Heritage Foundation (KHHF) to allow me to utilize the foundation's nonprofit status to seek funding and conduct projects that preserve our elders' knowledge.
In September, we created the position of Media Specialist in which I intend to raise money and interview our elders, especially in regards to the Haida language. I will produce, direct, and coordinate a video documentary to raise awareness and archive the language. I plan to make the results available in digital formats on the KHHF website.
If given the chance, I believe people would rally to this cause. We need to get the word out. So, I call on friends like you to get the ball rolling and join "The Grassroots Founders Campaign" Grassroots because the idea is to reach out to many individuals on a personal level; Founders because you will underwrite the beginning of our preservation effort.
Donations received from now until December 31, 2004 will earn the donor a Grassroots Founder designation. I ask for a relatively small gift of 25 to 100 dollars. Donor's names will appear in the KHHF newsletter and donations will be eligible for a tax deduction for this year. Grassroots Founders get special on-screen mention in the documentary.
Please send checks (payable to "KHHF") to:
Kasaan Haida Heritage Foundation
600 University Street, Suite 3010
Seattle, WA 98101-1129
Write in the memo area on your check or include a note designating funds for "Media Specialist/Projects".
Very importantly, SPREAD THE WORD. Please pass this on to 5 to 10 friends, or more. You will multiply your donation exponentially and play a vital role in preserving the Haida language for future generations. We appreciate anything you can do to help us preserve our language and heritage.
Sincerely,
Frederick Olsen, Jr.

For more information, email me or go to
http://kavilco.com/pages/
aboutkhhf.html

KHHF is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization (EIN 92-0169568).

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Excerpt:The Zuni World View

 Cushing gives an account of the division of the summer and winter people in a myth telling “how soon after the emergence from the under world Yanauluha carried a staff among the plumes of which appeared four round things, seeds or eggs, two blue like the sky or turquoise, two dun-red like the earth. Yanauluha told the people to choose.  From one pair would issue beings of beautiful plumage, and where they flew would be everlasting summer; from the other would come evil beings, ‘uncolored, black, piebald with white’, and where these flew, and the people should follow, winter would strive with summer, and food would be obtainable only by labor. The people choose blue eggs, and the strongest seized them.  Worms issued from this pair of eggs, which grew into ravens.  But the other eggs held by Yanauluha and by the fewer and weaker but wiser people who waited with him, grew into macaws, who flew to the summer land of the south”.  Yanauluha became the “speaker to and of the Sun-father”.  In this myth there seems to be an implied moral prescribing aesthetics should be informed by qualities of a more immanent nature for there is an inherent danger in the aesthetic (quote cited from Kroeber , 1919: 94-95.  Kroeber, Alfred L.  “Zuni Kin and Clan”.  Anthropological Papers of the Museum of Natural History, 18.  1919: 39-204.  Reprint, AMS Press.).

by Chet Staley, read more...
Essay on the Zuni World View

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Alabama History

Perhaps connected with the native word "albina," meaning "to camp," or alba amo, "weed gatherer," referring to the black drink. Also called: Ma'-mo an-ya -di, or Ma'-mo han-ya, by the Biloxi. Oke-choy-atte, given by Schoolcraft (1851-57), the name of an Alabama town, Oktcaiutci. Connections. The Alabama language belonged to the southern division of the Muskhogean stock, and was perhaps connected with the tongues of the Muklasa and Tuskegee, which have not been preserved. It was closely related to Koasati and more remotely to Hitchiti and Choctaw. Location. The principal historic seat of this tribe was on the upper course of Alabama River. (See also Florida, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas.) Subdivisions. The Tawasa and Pawokti, which later formed two Alabama towns, were originally independent tribes (see under Florida), though the former, at least, was not properly Alabama. The same may have been true of some other Alabama towns, though we have no proof of the fact.VillagesBesides the above:Autauga, on the north bank of Alabama River about the mouth of Autauga Creek in Autauga County.Kantcati, on Alabama River about 3 miles above Montgomery and on the sameside.Nitahauritz, on the north side of Alabama River west of the confluence of the Alabama and Cahawba Rivers in Dallas County.Okchayutci, in Benjamin Hawkins' time (about 1800) on the east bank of Coosa River between Tuskegee and the Muskogee town of Otciapofa. (See Hawkins, 1848, 1916.)Wetumpka, a branch village reported in 1761. History. Native tradition assigns the origin of the Alabama to a point at the confluence of Alabama and Tombigbee Rivers, but we seem to hear of the tribe first historically in what is now northern Mississippi west of the Chickasaw country. This is in the narratives of De Soto's chroniclers, which, however, do not altogether agree, since one writer speaks of a province of the name, two others bestow the designation upon a small village, and only Garcilaso (1723), the least reliable, gives the title Fort Alibamo to a stockade-west of the village above mentioned, where the Spaniards had a severe combat. While this stockade was probably held by Alabama Indians, there is no certainty that it was. The next we bear of the tribe it is in its historic seats above given. After the French had established themselves at Mobile they became embroiled in some small affrays between the Alabama and Mobile Indians, but peace was presently established and thereafter the French and Alabama remained good friends as long as French rule continued. This friendship was cemented in 1717 by the establishment of Fort Toulouse in the Alabama country and the admission among them of one, or probably two, refugee tribes, the Tawasa and Pawokti. (See Florida.) About 1763 a movement toward the west began on the part of those Indians who had become accustomed to French rule. Some Alabama joined the Seminole in Florida. Others accompanied the Koasati to Tombigbee River but soon returned to their own country. Still another body went to Louisiana and settled on the banks of the Mississippi River, where they were probably joined from time to time by more. Later they advanced further toward the west and some are still scattered in St. Landry and Calcasieu Parishes, but the greatest single body finally reached Polk County, Tex., where they occupy a piece of land set aside for them by the State. Those who remained behind took a very prominent part in the Creek-American War and lost all their land by the treaty of Fort Jackson, 1814, being obliged to make new settlements between the Coosa and Tallapoosa. They accompanied the rest of the Creeks to Oklahoma, and their descendants are to be found there today, principally about a little station bearing the name just south of Weleetka. Population. In 1702 Iberville (in Margry, 1875-86, vol. 4, p. 514) estimated that there were 400 families of Alabama in two villages, and the English census of 1715 gives 214 men and a total population of 770 in four villages. These figures must have been exclusive of the Tawasa and Pawokti, which subsequent estimates include. About 1730-40 there is an estimate of 400 men in six towns. In 1792 the number of Alabama men is given as 60, exclusive of 60 Tawasa, but as this last included Kantcati the actual proportion of true Alabama was considerably greater. Hawkins, in 1799, estimated 80 gunmen in four Alabama towns, including Tawasa and Pawokti, but he does not include the population of Okchaiyutci. (See Hawkins, 1848.) In 1832 only two towns are entered which may be safely set down as Alabama, Tawasa and Autauga, and these had a population of 321 besides 21 slaves. The later figures given above do not include those Alabama who had moved to Louisiana. In 1805 Sibley (1832) states there were two villages in Louisiana with 70 men; in 1817 Morse (1822) gives 160 Alabama all told in Texas, but this is probably short of the truth. In 1882 the United States Indian Office reported 290 Alabama, Koasati, and Muskogee in Texas, the larger number of whom were probably Alabama. In 1900 the figure is raised to 470. In 1910 a special agent from the Indian Office reported 192 Alabama alone. The census of 1910 gave 187 in Texas and 111 in Louisiana, a total of 298. The 176 "Creek" Indians returned from Polk County, Tex., in 1930, were mainly Alabama. The number of Alabama in Oklahoma has never been separately reported. Connection in which they have become noted. The Alabama attained early literary fame from Garcilaso de la Vega's (1723) description of the storming of "Fort Alibamo." Their later notoriety has rested upon the fact that their name became attached to Alabama River, and still more from its subsequent adoption by the State of Alabama. A railroad station in Oklahoma is named after them, and the term has been applied to places in Genesee County, N. Y., and in Polk County, Wis. There is an Alabama City in Etowah County, Ala., and Alabam in Madison County, Ark.
The Indian Tribes of North America (1910) ~ John R. Swanton
From Blue Panther Keeper of Stories.

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Fire Thunder Wins (API)

Cecelia Fire Thunder is the first female tribal president of the Oglala Lakota Sioux Tribe. She easily defeated Russell Means who was the top vote getter in the election primary. Fire Thunder takes over the helm from outgoing president John Steele who was soundly beaten in the primaries. A variety of factors may have attributed to the Fire Thunder victory over the well-known American Indian activist Means, but the main reason may be the immense change that was anticipated with a Means victory. Generally, most people fear the unknown or any significant change which might affect their daily lives. Means continual reference to international recognition, supreme law Treaties, and a more nationalistic platform than the other candidates may have been the most significant reason for a Fire Thunder victory. Many also may have felt that Means might work internally to undermine or abolish the Indian Reorganization Act (IRA), male-dominating system, which has greatly hampered true democracy for the Oglala Nation since its illegal, Treaty-violating creation in 1934. The IRA, often referred to as a "puppet government" undermines the ancient, female-inclusive "Oyate Omniciye" or "Circle Meetings of The People" manner of governing practiced by Lakota communities for millions of years. Also, the "fear factor" which enveloped the national campaigns of American politicians may have permeated upon many of the Lakota people, resulting in the "safe" selection of Fire Thunder. Although she is the first woman president to rule over the Oglala, Fire Thunder has worked long and hard in her community to educate her people with regard to methods of well-being and healing. She has often been in the forefront of important nationalistic issue and has spoken on behalf of the Oglala on many occasions. Fire Thunder is a fine representative for her struggling Nation and should serve to advance the cause of the traditional Lakota people.
From: Treaty1851@aol.com