Native American Art News: Native American Indian Musicians Make Many Kinds of Music

The Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian opened Return to a Native Place: Algonquian Peoples of the Chesapeake Monday, Nov. 13. The new, permanent exhibition highlights the continued Native presence in what are now Washington, D.C., Maryland, Virginia and Delaware.

RAPID CITY — Four American Indian artists will be honored in December with the Jennifer Easton Community Spirit Awards presented at The Journey Museum and the Central High School theater.

“Individuals like these remind us of who we are, and this thing we call community spirit is one individual’s willingness to reach out a hand and pass on these traditions,” Pourier said. “They remind us of the spirit of sharing and giving to others.”

There are more than 500 American Indian languages, and Pourier said none has a translation for the word “art.” “These are people who carry on the traditions of their community,” she said.

The artists receiving the 2007 Community Spirit Award are Sadie Buck, a Tonawanda Seneca from Ohsweken, Ontario, Susan “Tweet” Burdick, a Yurok from Salyer, Calif., Delia Cook, a Akwesasne Mohawk from Akwesasne, N.Y. and Ronald J. Paquin, a Chippewa from Sault Sainte Marie, Mich.

The four artists who received the 2006 Community Spirit Award also will have works on display at The Journey throughout December. Those artists are Nellie Two Bulls, an Oglala Lakota from Pine Ridge, S.D., Lois Chichinoff Thadei, an Aleut from Olympia, Wash., Apolonia Susana Santos, a Tygh and Yakama from Warm Springs, Ore., and David Moses Bridges, a Passamaquoddy and Wabanaki from Perry, Maine.

As part of the event, Rapid City Mayor Jim Shaw has proclaimed Saturday, Dec. 2, as Community Spirit Day in Rapid City.

The Community Spirit Award ceremony will be Dec. 2 at 7 p.m. at the Central High School theater. Tickets are $15.

A special banquet will be at the Journey before the award ceremony beginning at 5:30 p.m. Tickets for that are $65, which goes to the First Peoples Fund. American Indian a capella group Ulali will perform at the banquet.

Pourier said tickets are selling quickly. They can be bought by calling the First Peoples Fund in Rapid City at 348-0324.

The artists’ work will be on display at The Journey Museum through Dec. 29.

Also featured will be a special exhibit by Arthur Shortbull called “Wounded Knee,” which commemorates the 116th anniversary of the Wounded Knee Massacre.

Contact Katie Brown at 394-8318 or katie.brown@rapidcityjournal.com

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.

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 the Fawns - Sia

One day when he was traveling around, Coyote met a deer with two fawns. The fawns were beautifully spotted, and he said to the deer, "How did you paint your children? They are so beautiful!"

Deer replied, "I painted them with fire from the cedar."

"And how did you do the work?" asked Coyote.

"I put my children into a cave and built a fire of cedar in front of it.

Every time a spark flew from the fire it struck my children, making a beautiful spot."

"Oh," said Coyote, "I will do the same thing. Then I will make my children beautiful."

He hurried to his house and put his children in a cave. Then he built a fire of cedar in front of it and stood off to watch the fire. But the children cried because the fire was very hot. Coyote kept calling to them not to cry because they would be beautiful like the deer.

After a time the crying ceased and Coyote was pleased. But when the fire died down, he found they were burned to death. Coyote expected to find them beautiful, but instead they were dead.

Then he was enraged with the deer and ran away to hunt her, but he could not find her anywhere. He was much distressed to think the deer had fooled him so easily.

Myths and Legends of California and the Old Southwest Compiled and Edited by Katharine Berry Judson, 1912 ,, (New Mexico)

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Reprinted from this site by permission

Coyote and the Friendly Dogs – Yaqui

A Coyote who was very hungry was walking about the outskirts of a field. He was discovered by a few dogs who were taking care of the crops. With the dogs were some little quail. This was in the time when animals talked like people and all of them understood one another.

The dogs talked to the coyote in such a way as not to frighten him, saying, "Brother, come along with us. It looks as if you are quite hungry."

"Poor little coyote," said the quail, with voices which showed their pity. "It is obvious that you are very hungry."

The coyote, thinking that they were going to give him something to eat, went with them. He walked along surrounded with dogs, for there were many dogs, and the quail followed behind him singing:

’ama mele wo'i
wo'i taka ’ama mele.

Thus the little quail sang to the coyote. But he did not like it, this song.

"Why do you sing this ’ama mele wo'i?" the coyote asked,"Oh, don't worry about that," said the dogs, "that is just a song." But the words of the song meant, "For the last time you are a coyote." This they sang because they were taking him off to kill him.

Before they arrived at the houses the dogs set up a great noise and barking. Men came out of the houses, but the coyote couldn't run because he was surrounded by dogs. The men took him off to where they lit a great fire, and into it they threw the poor coyote. Here ends the story.

Yaqui Myths and Legends, by Ruth Warner Giddings; Illustrated by Laurie Cook; University of Arizona Press, Tucson, AZ (Univ. Ariz. Anthropological Paper No. 2) [1959] [1959, Copyright not registered or renewed] and is now in the public domain.

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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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