Weds., Nov. 3, 2004

native american arts daily news, presented by
amerindianarts.us

Totems to Turqoise:Native North American Jewelry
Art Daily - USA
... Arts of the Northwest and Southwest, a landmark exhibition that celebrates the beauty, power, and symbolism of modern Native American jewelry arts, opens at ...

Student named to national office
Casa Grande Valley Newspapers - Casa Grande,AZ,USA
Dwayne Lopez, an associate of arts candidate at the Signal Peak Campus ... this office, Lopez is the past president of Central's Native American Student Association ...

Book details history of Native Americans in America's pastime
Tulsa Native American Times - Tulsa,OK,USA
... been welcomed or respected, and Native athletes have ... Research (SABR), has nominated The American Indian Integration ... was awarded a bachelor of arts with highest ...

Federal panel to revisit artifacts dispute
Honolulu Star-Bulletin - Honolulu,HI,USA
... the committee that oversees the Native American Graves and ... that museum representatives and native Hawaiian groups ... Hawaiian Academy of Traditional Arts, one of ...
See all stories on this topic

VISUAL ARTS CALENDAR
Seattle Weekly - Seattle,WA,USA
... Delight Hamilton "Sacred Arts: Haitian Vodou" displays papier-mâché dolls, serpent ... Northwest" presents modern-day variations on the Native American and First ...

Community Calendar
El Defensor Chieftain - Socorro,NM,USA
... Socorro Arts Show -- Macey Center Exhibition Gallery ... Bliss, was the first American Indian servicewoman ... is in observance of Native American Month, sponsored by ...

Juneau schools mark National American Indian Month
Juneau Empire - Juneau,AK,USA
... program that integrates science, language arts and math ... in achievement between Alaska Native and other ... in the celebration of National American Indian Heritage ...

Ofelia Zepeda coming home
Casa Grande Valley Newspapers - Casa Grande,AZ,USA
She received an associate of arts degree from ... annual summer institute for American Indian Teachers. ... to maintaining and preserving Native American languages and ...

Stoneham notes
Stoneham Sun - Concord,MA,United States
... includes African, Caribbean, Irish, Native American and African ... of a recent survey by the American College of ... leading other successful arts organizations, White ...

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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 !

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

In Signs from the Ancestors, a study of Zuni cultural symbolism and perceptions in rock art, M. Jane Young cites the "dialectics of the beautiful and the dangerous" noted by Barbara Tedlock[1] and states that "Tedlock posits an underlying aesthetic framework that informs cosmology, whereas I posit an underlying cosmological principle that informs aesthetics"[2].  From the perspective of this paper and its conclusions it would appear that Young is perhaps partially correct in her ascertainment although the confluence of the two principles makes it difficult to discern logical priority in either the beautiful (tso’ya) or the dangerous (attanni), for the multireferential finds manifestation of beauty in the "aesthetic of accumulation, an elaborate redundancy of symbolism in Zuni sacred and secular environments"[3] and informs cosmological principles of the preconditions of the rational, while aesthetic license premises pragmatics where proper interpretation of context ensures that rational thought of the "perspective-taker" attains objectivity as a "personal accomplishment" in the success of "reciprocal public intentions”.[4] This is because the principle of the "base metaphor" cited by Young is inclusive of a body of conceptual presuppositions which include the notion of an interrelatedness of all things, which is seen here as a cosmological precept akin to notions of identity and individuation, and the notion of a predetermined harmony as indicative of the aesthetic.  Young notes that the "very generality of the metaphor lends its ambiguity--an ambiguity quite characteristic of the Zuni view of the world.  Zuni ritual symbols, whether expressed verbally or visually, are frequently multivalent or multireferential, standing for both themselves and something else at the same time; yet all of the meanings are bound together, so that the Zunis say, as do the Mescalero Apache: ‘They’re all the same thing’ "[5].

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

[1]  Tedlock, Barbara.  "Beautiful and the Dangerous: Zuni Ritual and Cosmology as an Aesthetic System". Conjunctions: Biannual Volumes of New Writing.  6: 246-265, 1984.

[2]  Young, M. Jane.  Signs from the Ancestors: Zuni Cultural Symbolism and Perceptions in Rock Art.  Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1988: 264, n.3.

[3]  Ibid, 106-107.

[4]  These terms are Willard’s, Pp. 160-163, 1989.

[5]  Op. cit. Young, 1988: 105-106.

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A Warrior Cared for by Wolves - Seneca

AMONG the Senecas there was a war chief named GANOGWIOEOn. Once, with ten men, he went on the warpath to the Cherokee country. They found the Cherokees on the watch and could do nothing. Then the chief said to his men, "I'll go alone to their village." And after dark, leaving his men in the woods, he went to the Cherokee village. In the first cabin he came to, he found an old woman and her granddaughter. They didn't see him. He crept into a little place where they kept wood. After dark the old woman said to her granddaughter, "Maybe GANOGWIOEOn is around here. I'll shut the door," and she spoke a word of warning to ODJÚ, her granddaughter. The chief heard this. After a while the girl said, "It is time to sleep." The chief heard this also and heard the girl going up the ladder to sleep above, meanwhile talking with her grandmother, who was below. The old woman fastened the door of the little wood house, with bark strings and fastened the chief in, leaving the door to the cabin unfastened. After waiting till the old woman was asleep, the chief went into the cabin. The fire had burned down to coals but he could see the ladder that the girl had climbed. He went up. The girl was not asleep and was about to scream when he said, "If you scream I'll cut off your head. The chief of this village has a daughter. If you will get her to come into the woods with you I will spare your life." ODJÚ said, "In the morning, as soon as the grass is dry, I will go to the chief's house and ask his daughter to come with me to gather wood." Threatening to come back and kill the girl if she failed to do as planned the chief left the cabin. Early the next morning, ODJÚ went to the chief's house and said to his daughter, "Come with me and gather wood." (This was the custom in those days.) The chief's daughter was willing to go and they started. As soon as they came to the forest the Seneca sprang out of his hiding place and ran toward them. ODJÚ stood still, but the chief's daughter screamed and ran toward home. GANOGWIOEOn caught her, scalped her, and then, giving a war whoop, ran away. Men rushed out of their cabins and pursued him. The Seneca saw that among the men following him there was one good runner. He hid in a ravine and when the runner came to the entrance of the ravine he shot him with an arrow and pulling off the man's scalp held it up before the people who were following. When the Seneca came to a second ravine another runner was ahead of the rest. He aimed at the man, but his bowstring broke. The pursuer saw this and rushed into the ravine. The Seneca ran swiftly, but the Cherokee overtook and closed with him. A second and a third man came, then others; they bound GANOGWIOEOn, led him to the village and summoned the people to assemble. Among the Cherokees there were two women who were looked upon as the head women of the tribe. Each woman had two snakes tattooed on her lips--the upper jaws of the snakes were on the woman's upper lip, and opposite each other, the lower jaws on the lower lip in the same way. When the woman opened her mouth, the snakes seemed to open theirs. These women said, "This is the way to torment him; tie him near a fire and burn the soles of his feet till they are blistered, then let the water out of the blisters, put kernels of corn inside the skin, and chase him with clubs till he dies." When GANOGWIOEOn's feet were blistered, the women stripped him and tied a bark rope around his waist. One old man said, "I want to hold the rope." The people stood in two lines and at the end of each line were many people. The Seneca had to run between the lines. He ran so fast that he pulled the rope out of the old man's hand, then plunging to one side, he broke through the line and ran with all his strength toward the place where he had left his men. When running he thought he was going to die, for he was naked and unarmed, far from home, and his feet were raw, but he evaded his enemies and, when night came, crept into a hollow log. In the night he heard steps on the dry leaves, and thought the Cherokees had discovered his hiding place. Whoever it was came up to the tree and said to someone who was with him, "This man is our friend." Then he called to GANOGWIOEOn, "You think that you are going to die, but you will not. We will take care of you. Stick out your feet." The chief put out his feet and right away he felt someone licking them. After a while one of the strangers said, "We have licked his feet enough. Now we must get him warm, we will go into the tree and one of us lie down on each side of him." It was very dark in the hollow log, but the man felt someone lie down on either side of him, and soon he was so warm and comfortable that he fell asleep. Just before daylight the strangers crept out of the log and told the man to stick out his feet. They licked them again, and then said, "We have done all we can now. You will go on till you come to a place where you put a piece of bark. Raise the bark up, you will find something under it." When the man came out of the log, he found that his feet were better, he could walk comfortably. At midday he came to four posts holding up a bark roof. On the ground, under the roof, was a large piece of bark. He raised the bark and found a piece of flint, a knife and an awl, then he remembered that his men had put those things there a couple of years before, when on the warpath. He took them and went on. When it began to grow dark he looked for a hollow tree, found one and crawled into it. In the night he heard steps on the dry leaves and a voice said, "Our friend is here. Then someone said, "Put your feet out." He did so and again they were licked. Then the stranger said, "That is enough, we will lie near our friend and keep him warm." They went into the tree and lay down, but before daylight they crept out, and, after licking the man's feet again, said, "About midday you will find food." The man went on till he found a bear that apparently had been killed only a few minutes before; it was still warm. When he had skinned the bear and cut out some of the meat, he saw, not far away, a smouldering fire, he blew it and it blazed up. He cut meat into small pieces and roasted it on sticks. When night came he lay down, and soon he heard steps on the leaves as he had the preceding nights, then a voice said, "Our friend is lying down; he isn't going to die; he has plenty to eat. We'll lick his feet." When they finished, they said to him, "Nothing will happen to you now, you will reach home in safety." And they went away. The next morning the man, taking some of the meat, went on toward home. That night his friends came again. They said, "Your feet are well, but you will be cold," and they lay down one on each side of him. Before daylight, when going away, they said, "At midday you will find something to eat and to wear." The man traveled on till toward midday, then found two young bears, just killed. He skinned the bears, cooked some of the meat, tanned the skins and lay down, very tired. The next morning he made leggings of the skins, took what meat he wanted and went on. That night the friends came to him, and said, "To-morrow you will find something to wear on your feet." About midday the man came upon two fawns, just killed. He tanned the skins and made moccasins. When night came, he made a fire, cooked meat, ate, and then lay down. Soon he heard a voice say, "Our friend, you will reach home to-morrow. Now we will tell you why we healed your feet and cared for you. Always when you have been off in the woods hunting and have killed game, you have given the best part of the animal to us, and kept the smallest part for yourself; we are thankful. In the morning you will see us and know who we are." When daylight came the chief saw two men, as he thought. As soon as he stood up the men took leave of him and started off. Wanting to see his friends as long as he could he turned to look at them and in the twinkle of an eye he saw that one of them was a white and the other a black wolf. The chief reached home as his friends, the wolves, said he would.
Seneca Indian Myths by Jeremiah Curtin 1922
From Blue Panther Keeper of Stories.

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