Native American Art News: American Indian artist honored for his work

Museum to hold American Indian art market later this month MASHANTUCKET — The Mashantucket Pequot Museum will have more than three dozen American Indian artists from the Northeast display their skills and sell handmade creations at the Winter Moon Holiday Market from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., Nov. 24-26. The event will be held in the Gathering Space of the museum and no admission is required. Visitors can watch as the artists make their crafts and interact with them to learn more about the techniques and cultures.

A GATHERING: The 25th Indio Powwow and Native American Festival hosts hundreds of American Indians from across the United States and Canada, who come together to trade, socialize and honor feats of bravery and achievement. Fall gatherings celebrated the successful harvest and allowed people to come together to feast, dance, sing and hold ceremonies. Grand entries, 8 p.m. Fantasy Springs Resort Casino, 84245 Indio Springs Parkway, Indio. $4 adults; $3 seniors; free for children ages 12 and under. 238-5770 or www.cabazonindians-nsn.gov

Chris Eyre: Award-winning filmmaker and UA alum Chris Eyre will be at UA on Friday, Nov. 17. Eyre, a Cheyenne-Arapaho filmmaker (Smoke Signals, Edge of America), will participate in a discussion on his career as a groundbreaking Native American filmmaker with Patrick Roddy, producer-in-residence at UA's Department of Media Arts. The free event starts at 5:30 p.m., at the Center for Creative Photography auditorium.

MONTCLAIR, NJ.- The Montclair Art Museum presents Jaune Quick-to See-Smith: Made in America, on view through January 15, 2007 at its Judy and Josh Weston Exhibition Gallery. Jaune Quick-to-See Smith uses humor and satire to examine myths, stereotypes, and the paradox of American Indian life in contrast to the consumerism of American society.

Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian Celebrates American Indian and Alaska Native Heritage Month

Film: "Stolen Spirits of Haida Gwaii" will be screened in the Rasmuson Theater Friday, Nov. 24, at 7 p.m. and Saturday, Nov. 25, at 1:30 p.m.

All programs are subject to change, for a complete schedule of public programs, visit http://www.AmericanIndian.si.edu .

PORTLAND, IN -- The artistic talents of Native Americans will be on display at Arts Place Nov. 4-Dec. 23.

The show is titled "Out of Tradition: The artwork of the tradition bearers for National Center for Great Lakes Native American Culture."

Museum of New Mexico/Museum of Indian Arts & Culture
Current and Online Exhibitions

Zuni Ontology-Plurality and Substance

The term "substance" in Western metaphysics is commonly used to indicate the permanence of a substratum, whether extended or non-extended, which underlies and constitutes reality. Its extension is manifest in the appearances of the physical world, and its non-extension may refer to its coming to be and passing out of existence, i.e. the concept of change. Other terms which may be intimated in a discussion of substance may include but not be limited to "matter", "time", "space", "being", "cause and effect", etc. This synopsis of substance may seem to be overly generalized (actually, it is), but is intended here simply to illustrate a dichotomy in Western thought which is not intrinsically appropriate to the study of the Native Americans, except perhaps by contrast, and more particularly to the study of Native American languages, which have no means of expressing the distinction between, for lack of better terms, "spiritual" and "non-spiritual" matter

In the Zuni language, the noun /a means "stone" or "rock" (the "/" represents a glottal stop). As a transitive verb, /a refers to "being depressions in rocks", but as Newman noted, /a belongs to a class of verbs "which are statics referring to the existence of an entity or quality" and "English translation fails to demonstrate convincingly that a verb of this type is transitive". Thus, "being depressions in rocks" could be translated as "a depression is", or "there is a depression", or "it has a depression". This may predispose one to interpret an apparent confusion of the substantive and predicative (Cushing noted this in Zuni Fetishes). As an intransitive verb the meaning of /a is a demonstrative "be prone", or "be laying", indicating location, and belongs to the same class of verbs denoting static entities where the direct object of the verb becomes indefinitized.

The term /a has also been translated as "stone" when it appears as a prefix in the transitive verb -po/ya, a term which means "to cover". In Zuni Ceremonialism Bunzel translates /a -po/yanne as "stone cover" (meaning "sky"), a term which Newman translates as simply "sky". The suffix -nne means singularity.

This same term was translated by Cushing as a verb meaning "all covering" in reference to Apoyan Tatcu, which means "Father Sky". Cushing's intention was "all-covering Father". This later use is in accord with the presence of /a in the form of the inflectional prefix /a.w-, a verbal pronominal prefix for a plural absolutive, where .w- is dropped when appearing before a consonant. This use of inflection is also correct in referring to nominal particles indicating kinship terms, names of animals, demonstratives, numbers, and indefinites, and the presense of /a in this use is that of a word, not a syllable. /A -po/yanne would not be a particle, whereas /a -po/yan tatcu would be.

However, this use of inflection in a particle is in contrast to the translation of such particles as A pila shiwani, which means "bow priests". The correct inflection of pi/la is pi/la we/, but in the compound of the particle the inflection is denoted by the prefix /a which is a word meaning plurality of an indefinite number. As Miner notes, this is a rare use and the inflection is generally affixed to the head term, as in tehli-ya-ka /a-shiwani (night priests), or tehli-ya-ka /a-tatcu (night father, notice the convergence of plurality and singularity, i.e. there is but one night father and he exhausts a class).

One might interpret Bunzel's translation as being influenced by her considerable contact with Zuni folklore, and Cushing's translation due to his membership with the /A -pi/la shiwani and considerable knowledge of Zuni mythology. Bunzel had criticized Cushing's translations as "metaphysical glossing", but the accuracy of that claim in regard to /A pi/la shiwani remains unseen. It should be noted that Bunzel's translation of /a te-ona in Zuni Ceremonialism as "beings" is tantamount to translating it as "all (/a) those whom are (ona) terrestrial (te)", and was intended to exhaust the class, just as Cushing's translation of /A po/yan Tatcu was intended to exhaust the class (there can be only one father sky). It should also be noted that Cushing may have confounded (or compounded) his usage of the plural absolutive with the separate, derivational use of /a which pluralizes particles referring to persons (/a hoi).

In conclusion, the common usage and multi-referentiality of the word /a lends ambiquity to the interpretation of many words and may possibly represent preconceptions which semantically transcend any dichotomy of spiritual and non-spiritual matter.

Coyote and Fox Get Food - Nez Perce

Coyote was a wise man, and Fox was slow-witted. Coyote said to Fox, "Now we shall have to get up some scheme to procure food. You are slow-witted, just like your father. My father was not that way: he was wise. I have taken after my father."

They were in their camp; and Coyote said to Fox, "If you keep perfectly still and do not move, we shall get some food." Then Coyote began thus: "I wish that I and my friend could hear the sound of five packs of food falling at the door!" Then they heard five sounds: "tlitluk, tlitluk, tlitluk, tlitluk, tlitluk!" Coyote jumped up and ran out, and there he saw five packs lying at the door. He took the three largest ones for his share, and left the two smallest ones for Fox. The large packs that Coyote got were all dry meat without any fat, but the two little packs contained fine meat. In three days Coyote had eaten all his poor meat; while Fox had a great deal left, because his was so very rich. On the fourth morning Coyote was hungry, and kept his eye on Fox to see if he had eaten all his share. Now, Fox had eaten only one of his packs, so Coyote jumped over and took the other. Then he said to Fox, "You are a fine fellow never to divide up with your friend!"

Five times they repeated the magic act and got food, but the sixth time Coyote wanted to see who brought them the meat. So he said to Fox, "I am going to see the man who gives us meat." Fox replied, "You had better not try to do that, because this is the only way we can get food." But Coyote was determined to see. He stood at the door, and cut a peep-hole so that he could look out with one eye. Then he repeated the wish; and when the packs fell, he saw a man going up over the ridge who wore long hair in a wig. This man was Deer Tick (piskyeye). Coyote shouted after him, "Oh, you man with the wig! you go over the mountain!" Think you they got food again from the man Coyote had shamed? [When this rhetorical question is asked, the chorus is "No!"]

Nez Perce Tales, By Herbert J. Spinden, 1907

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Coyote – Shoshoni

The coyote, like his brother the wolf, was a spiritual being.

In the beginning the coyote left his homeland in the Americas and traveled eastward across the ocean in the direction of the rising sun.

In distant lands, he acquired a bride and with her had a great number of children.These children were Indians, the forefathers of the great tribes that were to inhabit the North and South American continents.

Preparing to return home, the coyote put them all in a wosa, a woven willow basket jug with a cork. Before his journey, he was instructed not to open the jug until he reached his country in the Rockies and the Great Basin. Being a sly and curious person, and hearing singing and the beating of drums within the wosa, the coyote thought it would not hurt to take a peek when he arrived back on the eastern coast of the American continent.

But when he opened the jug, the children inside jumped out and scattered in all directions across North and South America.

By the time he got the cap back on, the only two persons who remained in the wosa were the western Shoshone and the Paiute. These he brought home with him.

When he reached the Great Basin, he opened the jug, and out fell the last two children. They, at once, began to fight. The coyote kicked them apart and said to them, "You two are my children. Even though the rest got away, you two will be able to fight against the best and beat them."

Thus, the western Shoshone and Paiutes, or the Newe and Numa peoples, who now live in California, Nevada, Idaho, Utah, and Oregon, began as allies and populated the Great Basin.

Source : A History of the Shoshone-Paiutes of the Duck Valley Indian Reservation, by Whitney McKinney, the Institute of the American West and Howe Brothers, 1983

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Reprinted from this site by permission

Articles by Amerindian Arts

Note on Zuni substance

Concept of the Sublime

Dorothy Dunn On Primitive Art
(Excerpt)Quoting Alice Corbin Henderson, Dunn states that in an Indian society, art is "possessed in common" and "totally lacking in individualistic concept." Thus, objectivity is enjoined with intentionality as personal accomplishment without a reference to the individual. This would satisfy a pedagogic sense of rationality in that in an Indian society "the surest way to make a prayer effective is to symbolize the matter prayed for" (Bandelier). If the prayer (the art of rhetoric) was effective, then it was handed down from generation to generation and its success justified its rationality.

Essay on the Zuni World View

Bibliography of the Zuni Language

Indian Ledger Art-Resources and Information

Books of Interest

Navajo Spaceships

Classic Hopi And Zuni Kachina Figures

MESA VERDE NATIONAL PARK: THE FIRST 100 YEARS

Fine Indian Jewelry: The Millicent Rogers Museum Collection

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

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."
To Order this book

Literature on Native America

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

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.

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.

Web Sites:

Native American Links Page
Indigenous Peoples Literature
Native Voice
Wisdom of the Old People
By David Whitney

National Association of Tribal Historic Preservation
Inuit film to tell story of last great shaman
My Two Beads Worth: Indigenous News Online
Northern California Indian Development Council
Native Village
Smudge Ceremony

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