Sunday, April 29, 2007

Native American Educational and Cultural Center at Purdue

Andres Quandelacy, Bisbee Cobolt Azurite Buffalo

Native American arts daily news, presented by
amerindianarts.us

Headlines for the past week

(see headline archives for 2004-2006 here)

Smithsonian will celebrate Asian Pacific American Heritage Month

33rd May Fair Arts Festival next weekend

Wilma Mankiller-nationally renowned Indian activist

Harjo on the The Imus story

Renowned Native American fiddler Arvel Bird

Powwows can be stressful, satisfying for American Indian families

Balancing the ledger-Native American ledger art

Purcell, OK -- June Fest Arts Festival

Joseph Firecrow to appear at the Lake Ontario Bird Festival

Native American Educational and Cultural Center at Purdue

Kelvin Sampson Speaks at recognition hearing

Haskell highlights American Indian movies

Kiowa Five made their mark

Preservation Act signed to save native languages

Abenaki still see roadblocks on arts & crafts

The Bruce Museum in Greenwich, CT, features two exhibitions from its own collection. "Weaving a Collection: Native American Baskets from Bruce Museum," through June 10, explores five geographic regions of major Native American basket makers. "New Acquisitions Photography from the Bruce Museum Collection" is on view through August 19.

SOTHEBY’S NEW YORK SALE OF AMERICAN INDIAN ART ON MAY 18, 2007 TO FEATURE THE LEEDE FAMILY COLLECTION OF IMPORTANT PUEBLO POTTERY

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

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)

Native American Artists

Zuni Worldview, Part v, The seventh kiva

The seventh kiva is also representative of the center as a polemic of the inside and outside, which refers to the heart of the individual, as a center, and inner and outer space occurring in the “same place at the same time” in their observance of the six directions, or the center of the pueblo as a center in relation to its periphery. Historical evidence for the physical existence of the seventh kiva is noted by Dutton where the Tiwa had a seventh kiva outside the village walls and its original association was with the scalp society or warrior cult, and the Isleta which had a seventh kiva where scalps and other dangerous things were stored . These kivas were representative of a possible fringe element in opposition to the center and their contents where antithetical to the peaceful center. It was the task of men with religious knowledge (e.g. the kiva) to harness and control natural forms outside the pueblo, an area that the gods ruled, and bring them peaceably to the core. Acts of violence were reconciled and malevolent spirits transformed, for example, in a scalp dance required in the presentation of a scalp by a warrior returning from war, and was reconciliation in a paradoxical tribute to the sanctity of life .

In a like sense, the rock images of the Zuni lie at the periphery of the village and can stand in opposition to the peaceful center. Their peaceful integration to the center is dependent upon a proper interpretation of context that requires an extensive knowledge of Zuni religion and myth. In this it is representative of the dangerous. While an image can be appreciated visually, its power to evoke proper narrative can bring danger in a deviant utterance. Proper interpretation is the pragmatic elimination of individual expression and the proper narrative is reflective of a collective cohesion that is manifest as aesthetic appreciation, and while aesthetics and art find religion as their motive, aesthetic expression cannot be a part of religious dialogue. As Walker noted, expressive language tends to categorize the user and to the Zuni if this act has religious associations it could bring danger to the individual and lack personal accomplishment for it may subsequently bring danger to the collectivity. Bunzel distinguishes between the old and new dances of the Zuni, remarking that only the new dances allow for self-expression but even then the “precision of movement belies a union of the totality” . The exaltation of the religious experience lies in the manifestation of the activities and appreciation of the aesthetic quality that pervades. This compensates for the intensity that is inherent in the personal religious exaltation and subjective satisfaction indicative of the vision quests of all the plains tribes. To the Zuni, the lack of that feeling is the descriptive cohesion of the collective unity .

Because verbal and ostensive definition is related to the present, utterances and showings do not refer or display contextual implications. It is for this reason that contemporary Western logic and anthropological analysis has failed in distinguishing Zuni concepts of being from concepts of becoming . Newman comments that the Zuni language has no specific term for the copula, that function being filled by the term teya, which means “be” or “to live in a place” ; te- meaning terrestrial containment and location (both space and time) , and ya a collectivity(*). Thus, when a Zuni asks you “How you have been living these many days?” (Ko’na to’ tewanan ateyaye), it is asked in the present tense and imperative (-ye), for if you have been living according to observances (teshkwi), then the necessary answer, which may be provided, is Ketsanishi (happily). Zuni logic dictates that the present state necessarily affirms all that has proceeded, much in the same sense that if a prayed for event transpires, then the prayer or ritual was properly performed, akin to Western logic’s ‘affirming the consequence’ (**).

This phenomenon has been approached in analysis and has shown some merit in assuming syllogistic (validity) to be universal and propositional logic (truth) to be culturally sensitive, but appears to have failed in constructing cross-cultural identifiers in assuming that “meaning” structures both validity and truth . For instance, in cases where “kind of” was absent as a semantic universal the probability of idealizing physics would render ineffective any notion of an ideal (syntactic) language cross-culturally. The very nature of semantics is the inherent improbability of idealizing physics. From a Zuni standpoint, the idealization of physics is not improbable, for ritual presupposes that in aRb, R is necessary, and relieves the perspective-taker of substantiating rationality ontologically.

Cushing’s writings are rich with examples of how the Zuni concept of being must conform to the context of form, function, and a pragmatic interpretation of context through ceremony. In a narrative on pottery making he describes how vessels come to be made beings . “The clay which served for their wares was seldom taken from the native quarries without propitiatory offerings” and the transition of the dormant potency of the raw material was by means of coaxing the “treasured source” which is the source of life that accompanies, protects, and preserves whatever it is contained within (***). Through the finishing and decorating of the vessels “no laughing, music, whistling or any other unnecessary noises are indulged in, and conversation was carried on in faint whispers or by signs; for it was feared that the “voice” would enter the vessels, and that when the latter were fired, would escape with a loud noise” thereby shattering the vessel. It is imperative that the “noise made by the pot when struck or when simmering on the fire is supposed to be the voice of its associated being” . It is imperative that the voice of the pot be its true voice and not the voice of a deviant utterance.

Form and function serve to instill meaning to design images. Cushing also describes the making of a canteen, which is formed in the shape of a female mammary gland. It is named me’hetonne, according to both shape and function, where me’hana is the word for a human mammary gland, and ettonne is a word for fetish or ceremonial object. The design images receive their specificity, which is to insure that vessel is always providing the milk of the desert (water), by the context, or function of the canteen. It is an ettonne because it contains the “treasured source” .

Cushing also cited an incidence where he showed a pole that accompanies a theodolite to an old Zuni man and asked him what he thought the name of it was. In response the old man inquired as to the use of the item. After briefly describing the implementation of the device the old man provided a rather lengthy sentence-word that Cushing translated as “heights of the world progressively measuring stick”. The next day Cushing took the pole to the extreme corner of the pueblo and began “to flourish it around” until a middle-aged man relented to curiosity and asked what it was. Cushing then provided the Zuni name he had learned the day before and the man promptly requested, “Can they actually tell how far up and down journeying the world is?” .

When a Zuni is planting his field and performs the ceremonious prayer and ritual of planting prayer sticks, offering cornmeal and reciting to the six directions, changing the words only to correspond to the direction he is facing, it not likely that he is distinguishing between his religion and the agra-science he has learned. Samarin remarked that “as one level of scientia there is knowing how to perform a task or knowing the effects that natural and supernatural forces perform. That is primitive science or- depending on what we are looking at or what our prejudices may be- prescientific thinking” . In this regard there is no distinction between religious and secular language as the logic of scientific language. There does however appear to be an underlying theme where non-verbal expression and the prospect of a deviant utterance distinguishes between the secular and religious in contradistinction to Young’s remark.

(*) Time and space are simultaneously implied in te-, a prefix denoting a terrestrial occurrence or event. Time is circular, corresponding to the seasons and the sun’s (yatokk/a) revolutions. Yato can be a term meaning “day” or “light”, or an intransitive verb meaning to “move over or above”. The suffix kk/a is causative and forms a verb. The Zuni term for a timepiece is yatokk/a, the same as the sun.

(**) Cushing notes this phenomenon where essentially the migration of birds to the south brings the winter; Zuni Breadstuff. Indian Notes and Monographs, 8. 1920. Reprint. New York: Museum of the American Indian, 1974: n20), and Dennis Tedlock notes it as a fallacy citing Aristotelian logic; Tedlock, Dennis. “Pueblo Literature: Style and Verisimilitude”. New Perspectives on the Pueblos. Ed. by Alfonso Ortiz. Pp. 219-242. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1972.

(***) Cushing termed animate matter as “one great system of all conscious and interrelated life” (1883: 9, italics mine), and Bunzel noted that there is “no antithesis of…matter and spirit (1932a: 486). Cushing also remarks that the Zuni perception of the harmony of all things in the universe means that, to the Zuni mind, nature is quite literally endowed with the gift of reason (Cushing, 1920: n20).

Read the Full Article

Fox and Wildcat – Apache / Jicarilla

As soon as his life was restored, Fox went to the Buffalo head, and cut off the long pendent hair, i-yûn-e-pi-ta-ga, beneath its under jaw. Fox took this to a prairie-dog village near at hand, and told the inhabitants that it was the hair of a man, one of that race dreaded by the prairie-dogs because of its attacks upon them, which he had killed. He easily persuaded the prairie-dogs to celebrate his victory with feasting and dancing. With a stone concealed in his hand, he killed all the prairie-dogs as they circled around in the dance. Fox then placed them in a pit, and built a huge fire over them, leaving them to roast while he slept. Nîn-ko-jîn, the Wildcat, came along, and stole all the roasted prairie-dogs while Fox slept, save one at the end of the pit, leaving the tails, which were pulled off. Fox awoke after some time, and flew into a great rage when he found only the tails left; the solitary dog was thrown over his shoulder in his fit of passion. The gnawings of hunger soon induced him to search for the dog he had thrown away. In the stream close by he thought he saw the roasted body; taking off his clothes, he swam for it, but could not grasp it. Again and again he tried, and finally dove for it until he bumped his nose on the stony bottom. Tired out with his efforts, he laid down upon the bank to rest, and, as he glanced upward, saw the body of the prairie-dog lying among the branches which projected over the water. Fox recovered the coveted morsel, ate it, and set off on the trail of the Wildcat. He found Wildcat asleep under a tree, around which he set a fire. With a few quick strokes he shortened the head, body, and tail of Wildcat, and then pulled out the large intestine and roasted it. Fox then awakened Wildcat, and invited him to eat his (Wildcat's) flesh, but to be careful to save a small piece, and put it back in its place, for he would need it. Fox then left him.

Wildcat followed Fox, intent upon revenge. He found Fox asleep, but instead of shortening that animal's members he lengthened them; the ears were only straightened, but the head, body, and tail were elongated as we see them at the present day. The intestine scene was repeated with the Fox as victim.

Frank Russell,. Myths of the Jicarilla Apache

Keeper of Stories
Reprinted by permission

Zuni fetish updates from Amerindian Arts

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
Click here, Stewart Quandelacy, Blue Peruvian Opal Medicine Bear

"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:


Andres Quandelacy, Blue Peruvian Opal Bear with Fish

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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Andres Quandelacy, Bisbee Cobolt Azurite Buffalo
Buffalo Field Campaign
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posted by Amerindian Arts at 5:18 PM 0 Comments