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Relics of earl's Wild West trip blaze trail at auction

Ypsilanti High drops Indian logo but teams still `Braves'

American Indians celebrate everything good between humans and the universe

Colleges Seek More American Indian Nurses

Cultural Center at the Wakpa Sica Reconciliation Place will not accomplish its mission without more support

The making of ''Trespassing''

The Cain Collection of Baskets Draws Record Prices

Museum digs deep to acquire native artifacts

American Indian population faces pervasive cultural stereotypes, declining college admissions

Kupchella: All name options on table

Fighting Back in South Dakota

At Powwow, Friends Mourn Death of Respected Campus Leader

Asetoyer's platform based on women's and family rights

Institute of American Indian Arts: Powwow Pride

The Real Thing - Imitations hurting American Indian arts and crafts industry

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July 21-22, 2007

American Indian Intertribal Cultural Festival, July 21-22, 2007, Hampton, Va. -- Festival highlighting the contributions and cultures of Virginia Indians, with native foods, dances, traditional stories, arts and crafts and music

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Now through May 20

Natrona County School District No. 1 schools will be hosting performances by Red Feather Woman, a Native American storyteller, singer, songwriter and author. There will also be a special public show at the Nicolaysen Art Museum, 400 E. Collins Dr., May 20, at 1 p.m., and then she will be at The Indians in Market Square, 232 East Second St., No. 104 at 3 p.m. for a CD signing. Info: 237-4228 or 261-6837 or visit www.thenic.org or{M3 www.redfeatherwoman.com

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OCT. 5-6

Virginia Indian Symposium -- Williamsburg Hosted by Virginia's Indian tribes, the "400 Years of Survival" symposium will feature nationally known Native American speakers on topics such as sovereignty, federal recognition, health care, repatriation and education.

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Museum of Indian Arts and Culture: "Elements of Earth and Fire: New Directions in Native American Ceramic Art: Color," second of three four-month installations, each focusing on one element of pottery-making. "Color" runs through June 18; series continues through Oct. 8. "Wondrous Works: Contemporary Art by Native American Women, through Jan. 14, 2007. 708 Camino Lejo, Santa Fe. Admission and hours: (505) 476-1250.

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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 art market is a celebration of the contemporary and traditional Native American arts and culture. Activities include Hopi and Navajo dancers and performances by singer James Bilagody and flute player Aldean Ketchum. Food, pottery, arts, crafts and jewelry are available for purchase. For more information, please call 435-678-2238.

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A Katcina Race Contest between the Walpi and the Oraibi – Hopi

Halíksai! In Wálpi the people were living, but at the place where the old village stood before the people had moved on the mesa. And in Oraíbi the people were also living. The Wálpi always had races west of the village in the valley for practice. When they had become strong, they said: ''Let us go to Oraíbi and race there, because they are not strong and nimble." One time they had a Katcina race in Wálpi again, as they used to have frequently. One of the Oraíbi youths who had a friend in Wálpi went to visit his friend on that day, though he had not heard about there being a race there. As the Katcinas were coming towards evening his friend said to the Oraíbi youth, that he should stay all night and see the Katcinas, and then go home in the morning. So the Oraíbi youth remained for the Katcina race.

They did not come until towards evening. When they had arrived on the plaza the Kóyemsis challenged the young men of the village to come and race with the Katcinas. The Oraíbi youth enjoyed seeing the race, but he was somewhat timid and afraid to participate in the race. When the race was over the young men of the village had long races yet down in the valley, but they said to one another, that no one should tell the Oraíbi youth that they intended to go there and race with the Oraíbi. In the evening, however, the friend of this young man told him that the Wálpi had been practicing and that they intended to come to Oraíbi and race with the Oraíbi youths. He added that they should also practice in Oraíbi for this coming contest, and said that these Wálpi were braggarts and not so strong as they said they were. When he had told him this they retired for the night.

Early the next morning, before he had eaten a morning meal, the Oraíbi youth returned to his village, running very fast. When he arrived there he told the crier to make an announcement. The latter announced that the youths of the village should assemble on the plaza, as a certain youth had something to communicate to them. Hereupon the young men assembled on the plaza and asked the young man what he had to tell them. He said that he had been in Wálpi, that they had Katcina races there and practiced running, and that they were going to come over here to race with them, so they should now go and practice running and thus become strong. "Let us race here north of the village," he added. "They were going to come here without informing us, but my friend there told me about it."

So they assembled at Hohóyahki, north of the village, and there had two races. "Let us stop now," they said to each other; "if we race too long one gets tired and does not recover from his fatigue." Thus they practiced for four days. On the fifth day the Wálpi came. They did not know, however, that the Oraíbi had heard about their coming. When the Wálpi arrived at the spring K'eqö'chmovi, east of Oraíbi, where there were then no houses, they dressed up at that spring so that the Oraíbi should not find out so soon, but the Oraíbi had noticed them. When they had dressed up they ran towards the village, following a trail straight up towards the Katcínkihu Kuwáwaima. Here they gathered and Stopped for a little while and then ran towards the village.

The people of the village, though they had known of their coming, acted as if they had not seen them. Two of the Katcinas were Kóyemsis who carried gifts in the form of comíviki, roasted sweet corn ears, etc. When they had arrived at the plaza one of the older Oraíbi went to them and asked: "Have you come? Have you arrived?" "Yes," the Kóyemsis replied. "On what account did you come?" they were asked. "Yes," the Kóyemsis said, "we have come to contend with your young men in a race." Hereupon the old man asked the Oraíbi youths to descend from the houses and race with these Katcinas. Immediately a large number of the young men came down, laid off their clothes, and raced with the Katcinas. As so many entered the race the Katcinas were soon tired. They did not capture one Oraíbi racer, did not even get near enough to strike him with their yucca leaf whips.

When they were through racing they had not caught a single Oraíbi youth, and the Oraíbi had won from them all the presents. The Katcinas were very tired. The man who had received them on the plaza gave them at least some prayer-meal, whereupon they returned to the Katcina house south of the village, where they laid off their costumes. They then again met the Oraíbi men to race with them west of the village. "You have beaten us," they said to the Oraíbi, "if we do not win in this race then we shall indeed be very much dejected." They then descended from the village on the west side, ran towards Mûmû'shvavi, from there south-westward, then south around the mesa point, and ascended the mesa from the east side, thus describing a very large circle.

The Wálpi again could not overtake the Oraíbi and when they got to K'eqö'chmovi, the Wálpi were very tired and gave up the race. The two Kóyemsis who were a little older than the others and were not quite so tired went up to the Katcina house and got the costumes of the Wálpi, whereupon the Wálpi all returned, very much in despair. They went very slowly and were very quiet. "The Oraíbi," they said among themselves, "are very strong." It was early in the morning when one after the other arrived at Wálpi, some of them being so tired that they had fallen far behind. They agreed that they should not go and race with the Oraíbi again.

Field Columbian Museum Publication 96 ,Anthropological Series Vol. Viii

The Traditions Of The Hopi,
By H. R. Voth, March, 1905
and is now in the public domain

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

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Books and Articles

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.

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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

THE FOURTH WORLD
W. Tussinger has written his first novel which was released in December, 2004.
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.
To Order this book

An Overview of Pacific Northwest Native Indian Art
Free downloadable e-book

American Indian Women's Activism in the 1960s and 1970s
by Donna Hightower Langston
Complete article

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."

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

Hero, Hawk, and Open Hand, The Book
Early tribal artifacts put in spotlight at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History

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

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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.