Native American Art News: "The Ledger Art of George Flett", forthcoming book

Native American arts daily news, presented by
amerindianarts.us

Five Civilized Tribes Museum of Muskogee honored with gifts from generous members

CD "American Indian Story" by Jana

West Winsor Arts Council Presents Thunderbird Dancers

American Indians Urge Oklahoma State Lawmakers to Oppose 'English Only'

Kaufman Clark Gallery in Sedona, Arizona, Presents Native American Artist Fritz Scholder

Indian dancer Casper Mallory dies

Ottawa Indian tribe Storyteller Nikki Simon

President Bush's Proposed Budget Would Eliminate Funding for Some American Indian Health Programs

UA Web portal starting free program for tribal leaders

First encounters with bison surprised, frustrated Spaniards

Native American Pre-Law Day and Native American Justice Powwow

Indigenous Women's Political Caucus seeks to strengthen political voice

Healing magic in New Mexico

Natives have their day at legislature

'Indian Pride': Coming to a public television station near you

American Indian Journalism Institute accepting applications for summer 2007. The Freedom Forum is accepting applications until March 31 for the seventh American Indian Journalism Institute, the premier journalism training and summer internship program for Native American college students, June 3-22, 2007.

Students attend AIJI for free and receive other financial assistance. Applications are welcome from any Native American college student hoping to become a journalist. In its first six years, 143 students completed the program. Instructions and application forms are available from Janine Harris at jharris@freedomforum.org or 605/677-5424.

Spokane artist George Flett, well kown for his depictions of ledger art, announcing forthcoming book "The Ledger Art of George Flett"

Embroidery works from the Winnebago, Ojibwa and Cree tribes, which is now part of "Selections From the Native North American Art Collection" on display through March 4 in the Mestrovic Studio Gallery, University of Notre Dame's Snite Museum of Art.

Jaune Quick-To-See Smith, Contemporary Native American Paintings. Feb. 10-April 8. Muscarelle Museum of Art, Williamsburg.

American Indian bags as works of art

The exhibit, “Heritage of Design: American Indian and First Nation Treasures from the Maryhill Museum,” will run until June 10 and will feature hand-woven artifacts from tribes in the Plateau region of the Northwest, which includes British Columbia, Washington, Idaho, Montana and Oregon.

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

Coyote's Sad Song to the Moon – Pueblos

Long ago, when the world was young, the sky was very dark at night. The Creator Spirit that had made the world had made the sun to ride across the sky by day, but the night sky was empty. The Creator Spirit heard the prayers of the People and the animals who wanted to be able to see at night. He called on Coyote to come to him and serve him.

Coyote came and waited respectfully, looking down as the Creator Spirit gave him a deerskin pouch tied with a piece of sinew. The Creator Spirit told Coyote to walk a certain path and to open the bag when he came to the highest point on the trail. Coyote was not to open the bag any sooner than the highest point The Creator Spirit told Coyote that the trail would be long, and he would go many days and nights without rest. He told Coyote to be strong.

Coyote took the pouch and went on the path he had been given.

Coyote was not highly regarded by the People and other animals, and he was proud to have been chosen to take the pouch to the highest point on the trail. At first he walked proudly, the pouch hanging from his mouth, along the path he had been given. As the day wore into night, and the night became day again, Coyote walked less proudly. He grew tired and hungry, and cared less about the great honor that had been given to him. As another night came and went, the spit from Coyote's mouth soaked into the dried deer sinew, and it began to soften, and tasted liked meat.

Before he knew what he was doing. Coyote was chewing on the sinew, just as a hunter on a long hunt will chew on dried meat. Soon the sinew was chewed in two, and the pouch fell out of Coyote's mouth.

Coyote was only half-way up the great mountain when the pouch fell. The pouch hit the ground and came open.

Out of the pouch flew thousands of pieces of shiny mica; they flew like the butterflies up into the sky and settled against the blanket of night to become the stars. Out of the pouch rolled a ball of mica, and it rolled up the trail and into the sky to become the moon.

But Coyote was not at the highest point of the trail when the pouch came open, and the moon did not climb into the sky on its proper path. Instead of riding only across the night sky, the moon sometimes comes up at night, and sometimes comes up by day. And it turns this way and that, like a hunter who is lost, looking for the proper path to follow.

Because he did not live up to the trust the Creator Spirit had placed in him, Coyote hung his head in shame. Then he looked up to the moon and sang sadly his apology to the moon for his lack of courage.

To this day, Coyote is He-who-hangs-his-head, and he only lifts his head when he sees the moon. He lifts his head and sings his sad song of apology to the moon for not carrying the pouch to the highest point of the trail.

A story of the People of the Eight Northern Pueblos along the Rio Grande in New Mexico
[Told by a curio shop owner in alburquerque, New Mexico, in the summer of 1967.]

http://groups.msn.com/KeeperofStories/
Reprinted by permission

Crane And Geese – Cochiti

The Geese were living at Goose Village (up north). The Cranes lived lower down the river. When the Geese flew down the river they would meet the Crane at his house. One of the Goose Girls said to herself, "I wonder what this Crane always does. I'd like to live here, too." She flew down and met the Crane. "Hello!" "Hello!" "What are you doing down here?" "I am fishing." "So you always stay here?" "Yes." "All right. Would you like to marry me?" "Of course." (Goose:) "All right. When we get married I will take you to my home." "I don't know your home." "That won't matter. I'll take you there." (Crane:) "Let's stay four days here and when those days are up you can take me to your home." So they were married.

The Crane fished and he got great big fish out of the river and they had lots for breakfast, dinner, and supper. The Goose Girl said, "I never did like fish. But now we are married I'm getting used to eating them." "What is the food you eat?" "When we go down the river we fly to Cochiti and in their fields we pick up the scattered corn. But sometimes we have trouble. Some of our people get killed down in that pueblo."

The four days were up and the Goose took the Crane to her house. It was way to the north where all geese come from. As they saw them coming one of the goose women went running to the goose mother's and father's house. "Come out and see! Your daughter is bringing somebody home. He has the longest legs and the longest neck and the longest bill you ever saw." The Goose Girl brought him to her house. She said, "There's my house." She went in first, and said to her father and mother, "I am bringing you a son-in-law, for I am married. Please receive him with all your hearts." Crane went in. They greeted him and gave him a stool to sit on. Goose Mother said to her daughter, "What can we do? We can't do anything for you any more for you are married. You didn't even let us know." "As I went down past where Crane lives I got acquainted with him and I married him and we had a good time. We never have seen Cranes like him around here." His mother-in-law said, "Whatever you used to do down there, here he is to go out and hunt." Crane said, "All right, I shall go hunting. The river is far away, but I can be back soon." Next morning Crane said, "I'll go hunting now." Goose Girl said, "I'll go with you." They both went. The people began to make fun of her; "What a long-leg, long-neck, long-bill she has going along with her. What a long-leg, long-neck, long-bill, but a little tiny belly!"

In the afternoon they came home. As they got to the top of the roof they threw down lots of fish. The Goose people came out to watch and see the great feast they had brought. They all began to sing, "What ugly creatures they did bring." They had not known fish before. They took them in and gave the fish to her mother, and the Goose Girl said, "This is the food I eat when I'm down below at the river." As she put them down her mother was frightened. "Horrors! How would I ever eat such stuff as this!" Her daughter said, "Don't say that, mother. I'll do the work to get them ready." Crane began to cut off the fishes' heads. As he cut them up, Goose Girl put the big pot over the fire, and poured water in, and when it was boiling she dropped in the fish. When it was cooked she poured them into four bowls and set them on the floor. She called her father and mother and they began to eat. Her mother said: "Oh, my, how they smell!" Her daughter said. "Don't say that, just keep on eating." Her father held up the skin of a fish and looked and looked at it. He couldn't make out what it was. He took all the skin off and then the mother began to eat the white meat of the fish. She liked it. She said to her husband, "Just keep on eating, old man, you'll soon get to like them. It tastes quite good and it's very tender meat." So they both got to like the fish meat. The mother-in-law said to her son-in-law, "You must go out hunting to-morrow again." The Goose Girl said, "We'll both go hunting along the river again. We'll bring more yet next time." (Mother) "But how does he kill them?" (Goose Girl) "He goes into the river and all day he stays there fishing."

They came home with more fish than the day before. The Geese said, "I wonder what creatures they are that they bring home such lots of." Whenever they boiled or broiled them in the coals the Goose Village smelled them cooking, Crane said, "All right, father and mother. We better go back to my home. This is so far from the river. If you will come down there I'll wait there for you." "All right," said the father and mother. "You are both married now. Go to your home and stay there in your house. Perhaps sometimes we'll go down and see you both."

They went back to the river where the Crane lived. They had a little crane baby. When it had grown to be bigger his father said, "You must go to your grandfather and grandmother and take them some fish." His father went to the river and got a great many fish. He put them on his little crane son's back. "Fly off until you come to your grandfather's and grandmother's. "When you get to their house, tell them, 'I am your grandson'." So he came to the house, peeped in through the door, and called, "Grandmother!" "Who is that calling in for me?" He went in and said, "I brought you fish, my father and mother sent me over. I am their child." His grandmother said, "Oh, are you their child? Thank you that you have grown up." "Yes; I am your Goose daughter's child. Grandmother, I am going home this evening." "All right. You must be very careful on the way." He came back to his father and mother and lived with them always.

Tales of the Cochiti Indians, by Ruth Benedict; U.S. Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin no. 98; US Government Printing Office; [1931] and is now in the public domain

http://groups.msn.com/KeeperofStories/
Reprinted 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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