Sunday, Nov. 7, 2004

native american arts daily news, presented by
amerindianarts.us

Powwow dispels myths
The Republican - Springfield,MA,USA
... was conducted in the Museum of Fine Arts, vendors displayed arts and crafts in ... to draw attention to the ongoing renovations of the Native American exhibit, and ...
See all stories on this topic

Racine Community Bulletin Board
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel - Milwaukee,WI,USA
... Oneida actress and playwright Carol O. Smart portrays the life of her Native American grandmother, Dr. Rosa Minoka, the ... 28 in the Communication Arts Room D118. ...

Hearing from the talking leaves
Fort Worth Star Telegram (subscription) - Fort Worth,TX,USA
... that white society would accept Indians groomed in "the arts of civilization.". ... the Cherokee Advocate arose in 1844 as the first Native American newspaper in ...

Chemawa powwow honors veterans
Salem Statesman Journal - Salem,OR,USA
... more than 12,000 served in World War I. There are an estimated 383,000 Native American veterans, according to an American Indian Heritage Month fact sheet. ...
See all stories on this topic

At the colleges: At the colleges
Providence Journal (subscription) - Providence,RI,USA
... A Native American musical group, Darkfeather will perform selections from its debut album ... 1 pm in Sapinsley Hall in the Nazarian Center for the Performing Arts. ...

ART CALENDAR
Richmond Times Dispatch - Richmond,VA,USA
... THE CULTURAL ARTS CENTER AT GLEN ALLEN (2880 Mountain Road; 261-6200): "Continuum: A Look at Native American Life - Past and Present" (mixture of historical ...

Minorities Grab Fundraisers' Notice
Washington Post - Washington,DC,USA
... Native American tribes have given a total of $35 ... of the recently opened Museum of the American Indian ... of millions of dollars to arts organizations (although ...

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Web Sites:
Indigenous Peoples Literature

Notices:

"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).

"what has happened to him is outrageous" Dr. Noam Chomsky, speaking of Kevin Annett, August 7, 2002 Read Kevin's personal story of uncovering Genocide in Canada, and the price he has paid for doing so: Order "Love and Death in the Valley" by Kevin Annett through First Books at: www.1stBooks.com/bookview/11639

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Excerpt:The Zuni World View

In a unique language such as Zuni where multireferential names and metaphoric symbolism are prevalent it is certain that much would be lost in translation to a universal syntax.  Modal language is ineffective as well, for there are no possible worlds for the Zuni.  Epistemic fulfillment is found and absorbed in the aesthetic.  As Ruth Bunzel noted in her study of Zuni ceremonialism, a final statement of the Zuni worldview would be “The world then is as it is and man’s plan in it is what it is”[67].  Necessity has absorbed the possible in the logic of ritual where the failure of prayer is attributed to a deviant utterance or a ‘bad heart’.  Potential is everywhere in animate matter, but its manifestation is the actualization of form and function in cognition[68].  Potential is what it is when it is not thought about, and when thought about it is for the most part restricted to the non-verbal.  In the Zuni language the word for “I think” is the same word for “maybe”, or “perhaps” (hinik)[69].

[67] Op. cit. Bunzel, 1932:a486.

[68] Images for water are not put on water vessels, but on bowls for holding cornmeal; hence, the desire for increase (Bunzel   1929: 23-24, 69-71).

[69] Bunzel, Ruth L.  Zuni Texts. Publications of the American Ethnological Society, 15. New York: G.E. Steckert & Co., 1933, and Newman, Stanley.  Zuni Dictionary. Indiana University Research Center Publication Six. Bloomington: Indiana University, 1958.

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

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Aleut History

Aleut - Arctic Language Family: Eskaleut Lifeways: Sea Hunting and Fishing Their Own Name: Unangan [The People] Aleut [ulOOt', al'EOOt"] Aleut , native inhabitant of the Aleutian Islands and W Alaska. Like the Eskimo, the Aleuts are racially similar to Siberian peoples. Their language is a member of the Eskimo-Aleut family. When they were first noted by Vitus Jonassen Bering in 1741, their estimated population was between 20,000 and 25,000. Because of their skill in hunting sea mammals, the Aleuts were exploited by Russian fur traders throughout the coastal waters of the Gulf of Alaska, sometimes as far south as California. The ruthless policies of the traders and conflict with the fierce mainland natives reduced their population by the end of the 18th cent. to one tenth its former size. However, by 1990 their numbers had increased to almost 24,000 in the United States. They continue to live in relative isolation; most are members of the Russian Orthodox Church. Aleut The Aleuts' name derives from the Chukchi word *aliat*, meaning "island" or "islanders". They call themselves Unung'un, the People. The Aleuts are a branch of the Inuit family, with whom they share common ancestors and also vocabulary. They occupy the chain of islands forming the "bridge" between Siberia and Alaska over which, it is believed, man first came to the Western Hemisphere tens of thousands of years ago. The Aleuts fish and hunt in kayaks.
From Blue Panther Keeper of Stories

Dwarf Human Ancestors Lived on Pacific Island Three-Foot-Tall Hunters Existed 18,000 Years Ago By Guy Gugliotta Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, October 28, 2004; Page A03 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2141-2004Oct27.html Scientists have discovered a tiny species of ancient human that lived 18,000 years ago on an isolated island east of the Java Sea -- a prehistoric hunter in a "lost world" of giant lizards and miniature elephants. These "little people" stood about three feet tall and had heads the size of grapefruit. They coexisted with modern humans for thousands of years yet appear to be more closely akin to a long-extinct human ancestor. Homo floresiensis lived on Flores Island and will be featured in a National Geographic Channel program that will air early 2005. Researchers suspect the earlier ancestor may have migrated to the island and evolved into a smaller dwarf species as it adapted to the island's limited resources. This phenomenon, which scientists have come to call the "island rule," is common in the animal world but had never been seen in human evolution. "Not even in primates," said paleoanthropologist Peter Brown, of Australia's University of New England, a member of the multinational team reporting on the find today in the journal Nature. "But even though we have evidence of intelligence [in the new species], they were clearly subject to isolation and dwarfing." Colleagues marveled at the find as an evolutionary aberration -- an archaic human that survived to a time when Neanderthals -- which had been thought to be the last pre-modern species to share the planet with modern humans -- had probably been extinct for more than 10,000 years. "This is a great fossil find that speaks mounds about evolutionary experiments and the variation they caused," said paleoanthropologist Ken Mowbray, of the American Museum of Natural History. "We have to step back and reevaluate everything we have. It's really cool." The research team discovered the new species in a limestone cave on Flores Island, in the Indonesian archipelago east of Java. They described the remains -- a fairly complete skull, the jawbone and much of the skeleton -- as those of a 30-year-old woman. The team named her Homo floresiensis. The team also found a tooth and a few bones from two other skeletons, and Brown said subsequent excavations had brought the team the remains of between five and seven people in all. "They're all tiny," Brown said in a telephone interview from Australia. "No big people." The new find is certain to influence a flourishing debate over the human presence both in Indonesia and on Flores, which lies immediately east of the so-called Wallace Line dividing islands that were once connected to Australia or Asia, and those, such as Flores, that have been surrounded by water for the last 2.6 million years. Generally speaking, islands west of the Wallace Line, such as Java, display a full range of mainland animals. On the isolated, ecologically limited eastern islands, however, animals often evolved in conformity with the island rule: those smaller than rabbits got larger; those larger than rabbits got smaller. Flores, with a limited food supply and no predators, was a prime example of this mechanism. At the time the Flores woman lived, the island was host to both Komodo dragons three feet long and a dwarf variation of stegodon, a prehistoric elephant. In 1998, Flores project leader Michael J. Morwood, a University of New England archaeologist, reported discovering stone tools on Flores that were 840,000 years old, a controversial find that did not immediately win broad acceptance. That site had no human remains. Even more controversial is a dispute over bones found in Java. Some scientists say they are 300,000 years old, but others date them as recently as 27,000 years ago. The later date now "seems more plausible" in light of the new discovery, said Rick Potts, director of the Smithsonian Institution's Human Origins program, because Flores's little people may be an evolutionary offshoot of the earlier species. These earlier human ancestors, known as Homo erectus, arose in Africa about 2 million years ago and spread throughout Eurasia, beginning a bit less than 1 million years ago. Despite the disputed 27,000-year- old date of the Java find, the preponderance of evidence suggests that Homo erectus went extinct perhaps 200,000 years ago. Modern humans arose in Africa about 150,000 years ago, reaching Australia and Indonesia around 50,000 years ago. The Flores woman has virtually nothing in common with modern humans, and while some traits -- such as her small stature -- pointed toward other, extremely early species, Brown said she most closely resembles a reduced-size Homo erectus with a grapefruit-size brain -- 23.2 cubic inches. The most plausible explanation for the small size is that the Flores people, like the animals with whom they lived, succumbed to the island rule. "You had limited availability of food and no predators," Brown said. Short people had a better chance to survive. The small brain, however, "is a big surprise," Potts said, and a major departure from the general evolutionary trend -- that the human brain grew over time. A full-size Homo erectus had a brain volume between 54.9 and 73.2 cubic inches, while modern human brains can reach 85.4 cubic inches. Still, the evidence shows that the Flores people were far from stupid. Morwood, in a second Nature article, said the team found stone flakes, points and barbs indicating that the cave's inhabitants hunted young stegodons. These artifacts were found in levels of excavation extending as far back as 95,000 years ago. "How did they do it? The answer is to not look at brain size," Brown said. "We don't have many more neurons than chimps do, but we use them differently. I think the crucial thing was probably the brain's internal organization." On the question of how the little people got to Flores Island, the team had no answers. The stegodons "were good swimmers, but the humans couldn't have swum," Brown said. "The popular notion is that they or their ancestors either intentionally or accidentally rafted in."
Glenn Welker Editor, List Manager, and Web Master for Indigenous Peoples Literature and all related web sites under these domains