Amerindian Arts Native American News & Information: Monroe Tsatoke and the Art of the Kiowa Five; Southwest Indian Art Fair

Native American arts daily news, presented by
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Headlines, exhibits, powwows listed below: (access past headline archives for 2004-2006 here)

The Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of the American Indian virtual gallery

The Museum is posting its 800,000 piece collection on the web. The project is expected to take four years

Tsatoke of The Kiowa Five

NORMAN — "Monroe Tsatoke and the Art of the Kiowa Five", continuing through March 29, 2009 at the Jacobson House Native Art Center at the University of Oklahoma. The exhibition features the artwork of Kiowa painter Monroe Tsatoke (1904-1937), as well as photographs chronicling the short life of this gifted artist who was also an accomplished beadworker and singer.

For additional details, visit www.jacobsonhouse.com or call 405-366-1667.

‘TALES OF AN URBAN INDIAN’

Opens on March 1. This semi-autobiographical solo show by the Canadian actor and comedian Darrell Dennis returns to the Public Theater after a successful run in the Native Theater Festival. Public Theater, 425 Lafayette Street, at Astor Place, East Village, NY, (212) 967-7555.

For additional details, call (212) 967-7555.

Traditional Native Art Materials: Decoding Wildlife and Migratory Bird Laws

Alaska Native artists who use traditional art materials in their handicrafts got some help decoding wildlife and migratory bird laws at a recent summit held in Anchorage.
See full article here

Judge rules that a federal ban on the possession of eagle feathers by non-Indians is too restrictive

U.S. District Judge said making non-tribal members ineligible to apply for feathers at a national repository and subjecting them to possible criminal prosecution puts a burden on the free exercise of religion.
See full article here

Southwest Indian Art Fair

The 15th annual show, Feb. 21-22, will present more than 200 renowned Native artists. Arizona State Museum in Tucson
See full notice here

Mount Taylor may be returned to the spiritual care of New Mexico’s Native American community.

Last June, in a 4-2 decision, the state’s Cultural Properties Review Committee granted an emergency one-year listing to Mount Taylor above 8,000 feet as a Traditional Cultural Property. This June the four Pueblos and the Navajo Nation will seek to make that status permanent.
See full article here

Heard Museum Guild Indian Fair and Market

Arizona's largest indian market, Saturday and Sunday, March 7-8 from 9:30 a.m. until 5 p.m. at the Heard Museum located at 2301 N. Central Ave. in Phoenix
*"Through the Lens -- Past and Present," features the traveling exhibition "Peoples of the Plateau: The Indian Photographs of Lee Moorhouse, 1898-1915," and current photographs by Heritage University students Kim Agiak, Nicole George, Kendall Mansfield, Brian Pinkham, Michael Sekaquaptewa and Mallorie Yates. Presented in conjunction with the citywide "Yakima Honors Peoples o Plateau" exhibition. Through March 7.

To obtain current information

See full article here

Saint Louis Art Museum, Plains Indian Artwork from the Donald Danforth Jr. Collection

The collection will be on view in Gallery 120 from February 27 through September 7, 2009

Saint Louis Art Museum

Rhonda LeValdo-the challenges of being a Native American journalist

A graduate student who is from the Pueblo of Acoma appeared on “Close Up at the Newseum” on C-SPAN2 Friday.

See full article

New Mexico gets $1 million art collection

The state Department of Cultural Affairs has received a gift of 171 artworks valued at $1 million. The collection includes works by more than 100 artists, including Dan Namingha, Glenna Goodacre, Gregory Lomayesva, Kevin Red Star, R.C. Gorman, Ford Ruthling and Melissa Zink, and will be distributed among the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, the New Mexico Museum of Art and the Museum of International Folk Art.

See full article

Michael Horse

Native American actor, artist and activist

A Man Called Horse

Utah Museum of Fine Arts"Splendid Heritage: Perspectives on American Indian Art"

Exhibit features 145 objects from the private collection of John and Marva Warnock, including such things as war shirts, dresses, moccasins, beaded tobacco bags, weapons, cradle boards, dolls and more. The exhibit will remain on display at UMFA through Jan. 3, 2010. It will then go to the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyo., before embarking on a national tour.

See full article

The Story of Miracle Hill, Cabot Yerxa's Pueblo Museum

Built by Yerxa between 1941 and 1963, the museum houses Cabot’s collection of Native American pottery, early 20th century photographs and artifacts from his Alaskan adventures. The museum also houses a Pueblo Art Gallery, a bookstore, and the famed sculpture “Waokiye,” a 43-foot-tall Indian monument carved from a 750-year-old Sequoia Redwood

Cabot’s Pueblo Museum

American Indian Ballerinas

Rosella Hightower, Yvonne Chouteau, Maria Tallchief, Marjorie Tallchief and Moscelyne Larkin, known as the "American Indian ballerinas," five Oklahoma natives of American Indian descent who rose to prominence in the ballet world from the 1940s through the 1960s.

Recalling the 'American Indian Ballerinas'

In 1991, artist Mike Larsen was commissioned to paint a permanent mural for the Oklahoma State Capitol that was a tribute to the American Indian Ballerinas. It is entitled "Flight of Spirit"

The lives of the Native American Ballerinas is chronicled in "American Indian Ballerinas", a book by Lili Cockerille Livingston

A Rattlesnake Kills the Chief’s Daughter

A Rip Van Winkle Story
A Red Man’s View of Evolution

ONE time, while we were camped on the Washita, said the agency farmer, we were visited by an old Kiowa, a dignified and serious old man.

I was introduced to him as the “white father,” out there to help the red men work and to show them the white man’s road.

The old man said, “Aye, is that so!” but didn’t seem very much impressed. After a moment’s silence he got out his buffalo-horn tinder-box, and, after carefully examining the punk with which it was filled, began pecking with his flint in an effort to light his tinder-box.

I watched him pecking away for a while, sometimes hitting the flint, oftener barking his leathery fingers, and at last I said to a Cheyenne: “Why doesn’t he use a match and done with it, not sit there pecking away all night?”

This being translated to the old Kiowa, he began to speak, but never for a moment interrupted his play with the flint, and this is what he said:

“You white men think you are very wise [peck, peck]. You have made little fire-sticks, and you think the red men can’t get along without them [peck, peck]. I will tell you, we didn’t have so much trouble in the good old days as we do now [peck, peck. The old man's stroke grew a little vicious.] Before the red man had the white man’s fire-stick, we didn’t have so many fires and we didn’t have to move every few days on account of the prairie burning black.” At this point he struck out his spark and hurriedly lighted his pipe. After puffing vigorously a few times, he continued calmly: “Now the red man uses the white man’s fire-stick; he lights his pipe, he throws away the end: the grass blazes up, and then the ponies grow hungry. It is all bad business.”

The old man smoked in silence for a few moments, but at last resumed: “Yes, these white men think they are very clever, but they are really very foolish; they are very ridiculous [ puff, puff]. They think they are men, but look at them [ puff], see the hair on their faces; they are not men, they are only hair-covered animals.”

At this everybody in the teepee cried out with delight, and I, in self-defense, joined in the laughter, but the old man remained as grave as a bronze image. Reaching up with his forefinger, he outlined the beard upon my face and said slowly, hopefully, as if to be gently encouraging: “But they are changing. You see, the hair is wearing away — in spots.” Then settling back, he blew out a great cloud of smoke, and with patient paternal benignity concluded: “They’ll be men by and by.”

A Red Man’s View of Evolution” (Century Magazine 68 [1904]: 328-329). From the Univ. of Virginia E-Text Center. and is now in the public domain.

Tags: Great Plains, Kiowa, North America

Keeper of Stories

DVD- American Experience: Last Stand at Little Big Horn (2005)

Narrated by Pulitzer Prize-winning Native American writer Scott Momaday, "Last Stand at Little Big Horn" is an examination of Custer's last stand from the viewpoints of the Lakota Sioux and the white settlers. The film is a collaboration of Native American novelist James Welch (Winter in the Blood, The Indian Lawyer) and white filmmaker Paul Stekler (Eyes on the Prize).

Order American Experience: Last Stand at Little Big Horn

Recent Books of Interest

''Canyon Gardens: The Ancient Pueblo Landscapes of the American Southwest (University of New Mexico Press: 2006). Editors V.B. Price and Baker H. Morrow have assembled 15 essays on the millennium-old Puebloan landscape.

"Being Lakota", Book by Larissa Petrillo

"American Indian Nations: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow", Book by George Horse Capture

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

Po'pay, Leader of the First American Revolution, Clear Light Publishing, 2006, new book by Herman Agoyo (Ohkay Owingeh)

Zuni fetish updates from Amerindian Arts