Thurs., Nov. 4, 2004

native american arts daily news, presented by
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Events celebrate Native American Heritage Month
goTriad.com - Greensboro,NC,United States
In celebration of Native American Heritage Month, Guilford College Art Gallery presents the ... Organized by the State Arts Council of Oklahoma, the exhibit opens ...

"Rising star" set to showcase art work
Tulsa Native American Times - Tulsa,OK,USA
One of the rising stars of contemporary Native American art will be featured in a one-artist exhibition at Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe. ...

Home, Land, Security at Intermedia Arts
Pulse of the Twin Cities - Minneapolis,MN,USA
... In its second installment of Immigrant Status, Intermedia Arts bravely surveys ... Native-American, Mexican- American, African-American and Hmong-American artists ...
See all stories on this topic

DC book festival to teach children about other cultures
Baltimore Sun (subscription) - Baltimore,MD,United States
... historical books, biographies, novels, performing arts books and ... the African, African-American, Indian, Asian-American, Latino and Native American people ...

Powwow to mark restored museum exhibit
The Republican - Springfield,MA,USA
... be held indoors in the Davis Auditorium of the Museum of Fine Arts. ... Accompanied by her puppets, LaConte will present Native American stories and songs at 11:30 ...

Mark Cote Set to Perform Top Winning Song
Emediawire (press release) - Ferndale,WA,USA
... born singer-songwriter Mark Cote will perform his award-winning song that addresses the human rights issues of the Native American Indian at the Call To Arts! ...

A/E: Entertainment calendar (part 3)
Las Vegas Mercury - Las Vegas,NV,USA
... Contemporary Arts Collective: "Our Daily Bread: Edible Routine, Habit and Ritual," Victoria ... Enterprise Library: "Native American Portraits" by Jane Marquez. ...

Normandale Community College slates third Culture Fest
Richfield Sun Current - Richfield,MN,USA
... from northern Wisconsin, Miller won five awards from the Native American Music Association ... Arts, crafts and gifts will include handmade items from Brazil, Costa ...

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Web Sites:
Indigenous Peoples Literature

Notices:

Native Americans

"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

Bunzel in contrast noted, “At Zuni, where the style is generally uniform, individual differences are shown mainly in the mastery of technique"[15] in the more professional artisans but was "unable to find any noticeable difference in style"[16].  While Bunzel did find design names that evoked an image such as the "deer", most design names could not evoke an image.  From this she concluded that there is no design terminology at Zuni.  Bunzel also pursued this to the point of stating that the lack of linguistic designation would indicate that the image was experienced as sensual rather than intellectually and that an experience for which there is no linguistic expression cannot be the object of rational thought[17].  Bunzel states that the importance the Zuni attach to the purely aesthetic aspects of pottery design is greater than assumed[18].  Principles of design are clearly recognized, for religious ideas are clearly associated with designs, but this does not strengthen the intellectual aspect at the "expense of the more purely aesthetic"[19].  In this remark in is evident that aesthetics informs Zuni cosmology but it also displays tentativeness on Bunzel’s behalf to relegate the phenomenon to the rational.

Young reiterates religious associations in regard to the analysis of "clusters" (image groupings by individuals) which displayed an "inclination to relate rock art to "the important concerns of daily life"[20] and to the "various facets of their religious practice and/or to the myths describing the emergence of the Zuni people into this world"[21], but Young also indicated the rational aspect of a polemic relation between the "strictly memorized texts of ritual prayers" and the identification of rock art images characterized by "the organization of diversity"[22].  Examples of organization is where human figures were grouped according to form (round, stick, etc.) but were included in the unknown groupings, while known images were grouped by their content[23].  Here Young is positing a formal, conceptual basis of presuppositions that appears to inform individual interpretation where referential distinction is made in relation to function yet inhibited in regard to specific terms.

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

[15] Bunzel, Ruth L. The Pueblo Potter: A Study of Creative Imagination in Primitive Art. New York: Dover, 1929: 68.

[16] Ibid, 65.

[17] Ibid, 54.

[18] Ibid, 51.

[19] Ibid, 53.

[20] Op. cit. Young, 1988: 90.

[21] Ibid, 92

[22] Ibid, 128-129.

[23] Ibid, 92.

Essay on the Zuni World View

Book Review

Subject: Book Review: A Way of Life that Does Not Exist: Canada and the Extinguishment of the Innu Sender: Samson, Colin. A Way of Life that Does Not Exist: Canada and the Extinguishment of the Innu. London: Verso, 2003. 388 pp. ISBN 1859845258, ’Ç$16.00 (US $27.00). Reviewed for the Anthropology & Education Quarterly by Larry Innes Innu Nation linnes@innu.ca The Innu (also known as Montagnais-Naskapi Indians, not to be confused with their neighbors the Inuit) live, hunt and travel in a vast territory that they know as Nitassinan (literally "our land") stretching from the St. Lawrence River north to Ungava Bay and east to the coast of Labrador. Samson's book is concerned with the people of Sheshatshiu and Utshimassit, two villages established in Labrador by Canadian authorities in the 1950s and 1960s in order to settle the nomadic Innu. Over the past half-century since settlement, the Innu of these two communities have endured a transition to a sedentary life and the imposition of state and state-sponsored institutions. These changes precipitated a rapid transformation of almost every aspect of Innu existence, with devastating effects on both individual and collective well-being. While this reoccurring pattern of social disintegration is all too prevalent among indigenous communities in Canada and elsewhere, the Innu have been uniquely successful in drawing international attention to their situation. Since the mid-1980s, when a sustained and spirited resistance by the Innu against low-level NATO fighter jet training over their territory gained public attention, the Innu struggle has become a cause celebr?© for an international network of supporters. A Way of Life that Does Not Exist is an exploration of the author's encounters with "the Innu and their colonizers" during his intermittent visits to the Innu communities over the past decade. Although a sociologist by training and vocation, Samson disavows a disciplinary approach, and writes from the perspective of an advocate, weaving together an account drawn from various historical and contemporary sources as well as his own observations. The resulting narrative is a passionate and highly personalized account in which Samson's skills as a writer are as unmistakable as his desire for justice for a people who have so clearly been wronged by the state. The book is organized by chapter as a series of essays, each addressing a different aspect of the Innu relationship with the institutions of the Canadian state. Samson gives us many rich descriptions of Innu and Euro-Canadian encounters in contexts ranging from high-powered political negotiations to the everyday events in the schooling, health care and justice systems imposed on the communities. However, readers expecting a nuanced analysis of how Innu and Euro-Canadian identities and power relationships figure in such encounters will be disappointed, as it quickly becomes apparent that Samson is making a case, not conducting an investigation. While Samson clearly identifies many of the problems that are inherent in relations between the Innu and Euro-Canadians, his analysis and solutions seem predetermined. Reflecting both a romantic fascination with Innu hunting culture and a justifiable outrage at the treatment the Innu have received at the hands of the Canadian state, Samson's consistent and reoccurring message is that in order to maintain a distinctive identity as a people, to prevent "all from being lost", Innu must categorically reject everything that is not inherently and authentically Innu, including village life, as manifestations of colonialism. The only valid political and personal choice that Innu can make is to live a hunting way of life, because Innu are hunters by nature. It is Samson's commitment to this essentialist prescription, together with his barely contained contempt for the suggestion that there may be a number of authentic possibilities for "being Innu," which may explain his simplistic representations of situations that other observers understand to be complex and conflicted. While there is no doubt that many Innu clearly value their hunting way of life and continue to resist the many colonial impositions in their lives, there are a range of differing strategies, dissonant opinions, and inconvenient facts that are simply omitted from Samson's account. Samson locates his Innu protagonists firmly in the supposed moral certainties of Innu hunting practices and traditions, and has them speak with a single voice. In contrast, the Euro-Canadian antagonists he describes are almost without exception portrayed as misguided and often venal neo-colonialists bent on assimilation. Apparently, the only outsider who understands Innu on their own terms is Samson himself, while a number of characters, including "the anthropologist" who has been an advocate for Innu for nearly twenty years, are subjected to ad hominem attacks. The stage thus configured, the conclusions that Samson draws from the stock characters and semi-fictional encounters he narrates are for the most part as predictable as a medieval morality play. A Way of Life that Does Not Exist will likely find receptive audiences among those who have come to expect "authentic" indigenous people to be single-minded in their commitment to the land and to traditional ways of life, as well as among readers who will take heart in what is undeniably a strong and sustained resistance on the part of the Innu to the forces of colonialism. Readers who appreciate that indigenous realities are more nuanced, complex, and contradictory than what Samson is prepared to admit will find many challenging arguments in this book, but may note a certain irony in the title. As an Innu leader recently observed: "This book isn't so much about who we are or the way we live as how he wants us to be." ¬© 2004 American Anthropological Association. This review will appear on the web site http://www.aaanet.org/cae/aeq/br/index.htm, will be cited in the June 2004 issue (35.2) of the Anthropology & Education Quarterly, and will be indexed in the December 2004 issue (35.4).

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About Rope - Wintu

You have rope there already, tangled up. You untangle it. You untangle it and tie knots. You tie knots and tie it together. You pull it toward yourself and tie it tight. You pull out more rope and tie it together twice so it won't come untied. You untie it, and if you cannot untie it, you cut the rope. And you bring it toward you, fix it, and tie another knot. You tie it together where it was cut. You tie it together with a know and when you are finished, you wind it around between fingers and elbow and put it down. Then you make a new rope. You make another strong one. You twist the rope on your knee, twisting wild riri for rope. And you make a long rope. It will be a very strong rope that nothing can break. A deer caught in it cannot break it. It will now break. That rope is really strong. And with that rope you can set a trap. With that rope you can trap deer. When a deer is caught in the rope, it hangs itself. You tie down a sugar pine or a fir and set a trap that way. When a deer is driven into it, it is caught in the rope. The tree flips up and hangs the deer. It dies there, choking to death in the rope. The Indians would take the rope home and take good care of it, not letting it get wet. In the summer they did not put it out in the sun. The hung it in the shade. They took care of that rope. And for birds, too, they made a small, thin rope, and made the bird peck it to trap it. This time a long willow branch is fixed so it flips up. The ends are tied with a string and bent down to trap the bird. Acorns are put down, and when the bird pecks at them, it is caught in that little string as if hung. That is how the Indians trapped a long tome ago. They trapped mountain quail, Steller's jays, and towhees. They ate them in the winter. You cannot catch gray squirrels, though, because they quickly cut themselves loose. When a gray squirrel is caught in a rope, it cuts it. Gray squirrels are strong. They hold on to the rope, hanging sideways, pull themselves up with one of their paws, and cut the rope. You cannot catch gray squirrels. That is all.
In My Own Words. Stories, songs and memories of Grace Mckibbin, Wintu [1884-1987]. by Alice Shepherd, 1997.
From Blue Panther Keeper of Stories.

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