Native American Art News: Annual First Americans in the Arts awards held

Deaf and hard-of-hearing African-American, Latino American, or Native American students who are entering 7th, 8th, or 9th grade can attend Steps to Success, a career exploration mini-camp August 4 – 6 at Rochester Institute of Technology.

Through hands-on experiences and information sessions, students can explore career options through hands-on activities—using computers, working with robots, doing science experiments in labs, and more. They also can make new friends to share experiences with as they finish high school and make decisions about what to do after graduation.

The cost is $50, and limited scholarships are available based on financial need. Experienced counselors and instructors use both English and sign language. The camp is certified by the New York State Health Department.

To apply online , go to www.rit.edu/NTID/StepsToSuccessNR For more information, call 585-475-6723 (voice/TTY) or send e-mail to StepToSuccess@ntid.rit.edu. The application deadline is May 31.

Complete article , "State's volcanoes remain active subjects of study"

Joe Aragon, a member of Acoma Pueblo who teaches science and math at Laguna-Acoma High School and appears in the documentary, said his people have long passed down a story of what happened to make those lava flows near his home.

The story starts with an unkind spirit who killed people and took their property because he was an expert gambler, Aragon said.

Twin warrior spirits decided to fight him by learning his gambling tricks and using them against him, Aragon continued.

"He gambled away all of his power to hurt the people," Aragon said. "In the end he lost his eyes, and lost the right to do what he was doing."

However, the unkind spirit was still mad, so he boiled pine sap to throw at the people of Acoma Pueblo, Aragon said.

"But because he was blind, he spilled it," forming the lava flows, Aragon said.

Acoma, Zuni, Navajo and other tribes all consider those lava flows sacred. They are dotted with ruins of shrines, Aragon said.

May 19-21, Baton Rouge

ANNUAL TUNICA-BILOXI POW WOW: Chief Joseph A. Pierite Pow Wow Grounds, Hwy. 1, Marksville. American Indian singers, dancers and craftspeople will perform and display their wares. Singing and dancing competitions will be held. Featured performances by Annie Humphrey, Cannes Brulée, Hawk (flutist), and Jackie Crow (legend keeper). (318) 253-2034.

Associated Press

A proposal to develop an American Indian cultural and educational center in a vacant federal building in Wausau is moving forward.

A marketing firm is being paid $35,000 to study the idea. Supporters say the center would help improve relations between Wisconsin's tribes and non-tribal communities and attract tourists to the Wausau area.

The tribes would run the center. Organizers say the center would help preserve Indian culture and languages, feature tribal history and make tribal education more accessible.

From the Free New Mexican

Zuni Pueblo junior wins recitation contest

Santa Fe Indian School student Fantasia Lonjose, a junior from Zuni Pueblo, won the inaugural New Mexico state finals in the Poetry Out Loud: National Recitation contest on Saturday.

She received $200 and a chaperoned trip to Washington, D.C., to represent New Mexico in the national finals May 16. Santa Fe Indian School received a $500 stipend to purchase poetry books for the school library.

The event is sponsored by New Mexico Arts, a division of the state Department of Cultural Affairs. Poetry Out Loud is a new national program of the National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation.

Lonjose recited "The Pow-wow at the End of the World" by Sherman Alexie.

The runner-up was Jade McLellan, a senior at Capital High School in Santa Fe who recited "The Owl and the Pussycat" by Edward Lear. McLellan received $100 and Capital High School got a $200 stipend to purchase poetry books for the school library.

American Indian Women's Activism in the 1960s and 1970s-Donna Hightower Langston

Complete article

Taos Art Museum: "The Stark Legacy," paintings by members of the Taos Society of Artists. Through July 23. 227 Paseo del Pueblo Norte, Taos. Admission and hours: (505) 758-2690.

THE WOMEN/Edward S. Curtis

"THE WOMEN/Edward S. Curtis," by Christopher Cardozo; foreword by Louise Erdrich (Bulfinch Press, $35) — Cardozo, who lives in Minneapolis, is the world's foremost expert on, and collector of, photos of American Indians taken by turn-of-the-century photographer Edward S. Curtis. Cardozo went through 1,000 photos to find the 100 sepia-toned images in this book, which show the daily lives of American Indian women at a time when most were already on reservations. Minneapolis novelist and poet Erdrich discusses women's work in her foreword: " … although Edward Curtis believed that he was documenting a vanishing culture, it is in these humble arts that the strength of Native culture lives on."

Gopher's Revenge - Klamath

Young Gopher and his little sister Cottontail were orphans. They had no father to teach them where to find the tenderest grass and sweetest roots, and no mother to teach them how to dig a dry, snug burrow. But they lived with their Grandmother Brush Rabbit, who was old and wise and had the answers to many questions. And so they learned these things, and many more.

But the first question little Gopher asked was, "Where is my father, Grandmother?"

And Cottontail, his sister, asked, "Where is my mother. Grandmother?"

"Ask me again when you are grown," said their grandmother with a shake of her head and a sigh.

So when summer's green leaves turned yellow in autumn, little Gopher asked once again, "Where is my father. Grandmother?"

And Cottontail, his sister, asked again, "Where is my mother. Grandmother?"

And once again their Grandmother Brush Rabbit shook her head and sighed. "Ask me again when you are grown."

So it went as each season passed, and always their grandmother gave the same answer. "Ask me again when you are grown."

When a year had passed and at last they were grown. Gopher asked once more, "Oh, Grandmother, where is my father?"

And Cottontail asked as before, "Oh, Grandmother, where is my mother?"

"Your father was killed when you were kits," said the old Brush Rabbit, "And your mother with him."

Gopher sat up straight. "Who killed them?" asked he.

Grandmother Brush Rabbit shivered. "The great Hagfish who lives in the river that flows by the hill," said she. "The Hagfish stung them dead with her dreadful sting. And of all the folk who went to find them, none came back again."

Gopher said nothing, but when he went out to dig roots, he went instead to a secret place he knew. There, a hole in the hillside led to a tunnel that led to the place where the river ran by the hill. At the tunnel's end he looked down and spied, sleeping in the shallow water in the shadows, the horrible Hagfish. Her eyes bulged out, her scales were hairy, and her teeth were shiny and sharp. The sting in her tail was long like a whip. Gopher looked and looked, and then turned home again.

"Teach me to make arrows, my Grandmother,' said he.

"I will," said Grandmother Brush Rabbit, but her heart was heavy. She knew what he hoped to do, and feared he too would never come home.

She showed him how to use an arrow flaker to shape arrowheads from stone, and how best to feather a shaft. Six times Gopher chipped away flakes from obsidian until what was left was an arrowhead. Then he trimmed and feathered six shafts. And when he had finished and gone, old Grandmother Brush Rabbit watched the river path and worried.

But Gopher left the path and went by the tunnel as he had done before. At the far end he looked out from the hole in the hill to spy the horrible Hagfish below. Then he put an arrow to his bowstring and shot. He shot again. And again and again until all of his arrows were gone, stuck in the ugly Hagfish. She roared and wriggled, tossed and thrashed, and lashed the stones in the stream with her terrible sting. At last she died. And when Gopher went down to the river's rim he saw a sight both sad and grim, for the stream was as full of bones as of stones. At home, his sister Cottontail and Grandmother Brush Rabbit were weeping by the cookfire when Gopher appeared.

"Gopher!" they cried, and ran to meet him.

"Grandmother," said Gopher. "I have been to the river that runs by the hill, and killed the old Hagfish who lived there." And he told of the river as full of bones as of stones.

The news went out that the terrible Hagfish was dead, and when the animal people heard, they came from near and far to give Gopher gifts. They brought shells and beads and feathers and seeds, and everything good to eat. And everyone danced and was glad.

And everyone still is glad, for it is thanks to Gopher that there is no Hagfish in the World today.

Back in the Beforetime: Tales of the California Indians [the Klamath River region in the north to the inland desert mountains and the southern coastlands] Retold by Jane Louise Curry, 1987

From the Archives of Blue Panther Keeper of Stories
http://groups.msn.com/KeeperofStories/
Reprinted by permission

Home of NAMAPAHH First People's Radio
Host/Producer Robin Carneen
Thurs 7-8pm Sun 4-5pm PST
New group: (my photo album location)
http://spaces.msn.com/members/NativeRadio4all/

Linguists Find the Words, and Pocahontas Speaks Again
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD

Dorothy Dunn On Primitive Art
Excerpt
Anthropologists use the term "primitive" as a general category to describe cultures which had not achieved a certain standard (define modernity). For Dunn, a primitive was not a certain type of culture, but described individuals and objects indigenous to any, every, culture. The primitive subject was that gifted individual, or "seer" whom was able to discern the primitive objects relevant to their culture. These objects were also primitives, and represented the signs, icons, or symbols of a culture. Thus, for Dunn, primitive art was the one to one relationship between the seer and the perceived set of primitive objects of their culture. Primitive was not a certain type of culture, but a certain set of variables occurring in every culture, and primitive art was an event that portrayed the values, or what was of importance in that culture. Thus, Dunn encouraged her students to carry on the tradition into the Modernist era.

Essay on the Zuni World View
Excerpt(Complete article is available in PDF)
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 and states that "Tedlock posits an underlying aesthetic framework that informs cosmology, whereas I posit an underlying cosmological principle that informs aesthetics". 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" 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". 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".

Bibliography of the Zuni Language
Excerpt
The Zuni, or Shiwi language, is now generally considered a language isolate. The Encyclopedia Britannica categorizes it as a Penutian language, and Bertha Dutton once posed the hypothetical that according to the Swadesh list, "If the Zuni language is a member of the Penutian language family, then it is a distant relative of the Tanoan languages (Tewi)." The Penutian hypothesis was advanced by Alfred Kroeber and Roland B. Dixon, and later refined by Edward Sapir, and was an attempt to reduce the number of unrelated language families in a culturally diverse area that was centered in California's central coast. While this theory was plausible for some of the languages, the problem of verification of this theory was that to find any evidence of any cognates between the California languages and Zuni, one would possibly have to trace the languages' lineage by as much as 3000-5000 years or more.

Indian Ledger Art-Resources and Information
Excerpt
Ledger art is traditionally a male American Indian pictographic art form, and historically has been characterized as such by researchers. Chronologically its stylistic development belongs to the Proto-Modern era of the Native American Fine Arts Movement and was a major influence, through trade routes and the patronage of white art collectors, on Modern Indian Art as its elements diffused to the schools of New Mexico, Oklahoma, and the Northwest Coast. Its more explicit expression, however, yielded to the styles that developed in these schools and culminated in the early 1960's during a period of the Movement referred to as the First Generation Modernists. Only recently have the researchers of Ledger art recognized Virginia Stroud as the Native American Woman artist who, as a Second Generation Modernist and a member of the so-called "New Indian Art Movement", revitalized a traditionally male form of art expression with her pictographic images in the late 1960's to the early 1980's. Influence on Stroud's stylistic achievements can be attributed to her Kiowa upbringing centered in Oklahoma, which is the major geographic center of the Southern Plains school, and her attendance at Bacone under the direction and influence of Dr. Richard West.

AEQ Book Review of Making Dictionaries: Preserving Indigenous Languages of the Americas .
Frawley, William, Kenneth C. Hill, and Pamela Munro, eds. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. 450 pp. ISBN 0520229967, $34.95.
© 2004 American Anthropological Association Book Review of Making Dictionaries: Preserving Indigenous Languages of the Americas .
Reviewed for the Anthropology & Education Quarterly by Catherine S. Fowler
University of Nevada
csfowler@unr.nevada.edu
To Order this book

W. Tussinger has written his first novel which was released in December, 2004. The title of the book is THE FOURTH WORLD.
W. Tussinger is a member of the Wyandotte Nation of Oklahoma and has lived on several reservations including the Yuroks of Northern California and the Yakamas of Washington State where he attended college.
THE FOURTH WORLD

Click here, Stewart Quandelacy, Blue Peruvian Opal Medicine Bear

"Communing with Bears"

By Sara Wright

Communing with Bears is the story of a joyful encounter between one woman and a black bear.

Web Sites:
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Hero, Hawk, and Open Hand
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Early tribal artifacts put in spotlight at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History
National Association of Tribal Historic Preservation
Inuit film to tell story of last great shaman
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Literacy in Indigenous Communities by L. David van Broekhuizen, Ph.D. (2000)
HTML Format (70K)
PDF Format(117K)

Literacy in first languages in indigenous communities is a complex topic that generates lively discussion. This research synthesis explores the notions of national, mother-tongue, multiple, and biliteracies. It presents important information pertaining to threatened languages, language shift, and language loss. Examples of culturally relevant uses of literacy in indigenous communities and issues related to first-language literacy instruction are also provided.

Native American Art News

Saturday, April 15, 2006

Annual First Americans in the Arts awards held

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