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American arts daily news, presented by
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American Indian traditions helped by Scovill Zoo eagles
For Senecas, return to Buffalo Creek helps right an old wrong
Born to Drum Women's Drum Camp
American Indian dancers show off pride
Indian museum reopens in new Ventura location
Jeweler paying for inept meddling by U.S. Congress
An Indian hoop-de-do
Covering Indian Country
Saturday, June 10, 2006, Nashville, TN
Native American drums and songs will once again echo across Middle Tennessee this weekend at the Native American Festival and Pow Wow, benefiting Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt. The festival includes arts and crafts, frybread, music and authentic dancing. Saturday and Sunday, 9 a.m.-6 p.m., Bottom View Farm, 185 Wilderson Lane, Portland. $6 adults, $3 children ages five-12, and free for children under five
Sunday, June 11, 2006Nashville, TN
Legends and Sacred Dreams Concert features Grammy winners David Frizzell and Bill Miller, as well as Ricky Lynn Gregg. Proceeds benefit the building of the Native American Indian Association’s “Circle of Life” Cultural Center and Library. 8 p.m., Wildhorse Saloon, 120 Second Ave. S., 902-8200. $30
The mission of Born to Drum Women's Drum Camp is to provide a positive environment for women to learn, to teach, and to perform drumming arts from diverse cultures.
Our goal is the empowerment of women, who for centuries were forbidden access to the drum based on their gender.
What: Born to Drum Women's Drum Camp
When: July 21, 22, and 23
Where: Point Bonita YMCA Conference Center, in the beautiful Marin Headlands, 15 minutes from the Golden Gate Bridge
For more information: See borntodrum.net or call 510-464-5902
Contact: Carolyn Brandy, 510-464-5902
Jackie Thomason, 510-332-5998
Taos Art Museum: "The Stark Legacy," paintings by members of the Taos Society of Artists. Through July 23. 227 Paseo del Pueblo Norte, Taos. Admission and hours: (505) 758-2690.
The art market is a celebration of the contemporary and traditional Native American arts and culture. Activities include Hopi and Navajo dancers and performances by singer James Bilagody and flute player Aldean Ketchum. Food, pottery, arts, crafts and jewelry are available for purchase. For more information, please call 435-678-2238.
July 21-22, 2007
American Indian Intertribal Cultural Festival, July 21-22, 2007, Hampton, Va. -- Festival highlighting the contributions and cultures of Virginia Indians, with native foods, dances, traditional stories, arts and crafts and music
August 25-27—PowWow Native American Festival: Intertribal gathering of Native American dancers, drummers, artists, and craftspeople, Friday noon-8 p.m., Saturday 10 a.m.-9 p.m. and Sunday 10 a.m.-6 p.m., Patterson Park at Linwood and Eastern avenues, 410-675-3535, baic.org.
OCT. 5-6
Virginia Indian Symposium -- Williamsburg Hosted by Virginia's Indian tribes, the "400 Years of Survival" symposium will feature nationally known Native American speakers on topics such as sovereignty, federal recognition, health care, repatriation and education.
Museum of Indian Arts and Culture: "Elements of Earth and Fire: New Directions in Native American Ceramic Art: Color," second of three four-month installations, each focusing on one element of pottery-making. "Color" runs through June 18; series continues through Oct. 8. "Wondrous Works: Contemporary Art by Native American Women, through Jan. 14, 2007. 708 Camino Lejo, Santa Fe. Admission and hours: (505) 476-1250.
A Dakota Legend of Creation - Dakota
GODS:
Wakantanka -- the Chief God, the Great Spirit, the Creator, and the Executive.
The Superior Gods:
Inyan-the Rock--ancestor of all gods and all things; patron of the arts.
Maka-the Earth--mother of all living things.
Skan-the Sky--source of force and power; judge of gods and spirits.
Wi -the Sun--all-powerful Great God, ranked first; defender of bravery, fortitude, generosity and fidelity.
The Associate Gods:
Hanwi-the Moon--wife of the Sun; sets the time for important undertakings.
Tate-the Wind--serving the Sky (Skan); controls the seasons; admits the spirits to the Spirit Trail (Milky Way).
Whope--the associate of the Earth, daughter of the Sun and Moon; known as the Beautiful One. She is the Great Mediator, the patron of harmony and pleasure.
The Subordinate Gods:
Buffalo, Bear, Four Winds, and the Whirlwind.
The Gods-Like:
The Spirit, the Ghost, the Spirit-Like and the Potency.
Stars--the people of the Sky.
Buffalo--the people of the Sun.
The Evil Gods:
Iya - chief of all evil; personified in the cyclone.
Iktomi - first son of Rock (Inyan); known as the Trickster; a deposed god similar to Satan.
Waziya - the Old Man--lived beneath the earth with his wife.
Wakanka - the Witch
Anung-Ite - daughter of Waziya and Wakanka; the Double-faced Woman.
The creation story began long, long ago when Waziya, the Old Man, lived beneath the earth with his wife, Wakanka. Their daughter, Ite, grew to be the most beautiful of women, thereby captivating the attention of one of the associate Gods, Tate, the Wind. Though not a Goddess, Ite became the wife of Tate who lived at the entrance of the Spirit Trail. She bore Tate four sons, quadruplets--the North, West, East and South Winds. The first son became cruel and hard to get along with, so Tate took his position as first son and gave it to his boisterous second son, West Wind. Thus, the order of the Winds became West, North, East and South.
Because of the association with the influential good and helpful Gods through the marriage of Ite to Tate, Waziya became dissatisfied and yearned to have the power of the true Gods.
Iktomi, the Trickster, always anxious to further discontentment and promote ridicule, bargained with Waziya and Wakanka and Ite, promising them great power and further beauty for Ite if they would assist him in making others ridiculous. He even promised Ite that her enhanced beauty would rival that of the Goddess Hanwi, the Moon, who was the pledged wife of the great Sun God, Wi. So Waziya, Wakanka and Ite agreed to Iktomi's bargain.
Possessed of a charm given her by Iktomi, Ite became more and more conscious of her beauty and less and less devoted to the welfare of her four sons, the Four Winds. At this time, Sun saw Ite and, struck by her incredible beauty, invited Ite to sit beside him at the feast of the Gods. When the time for the feast arrived, Ite came early. Finding the place next to the Sun vacant, she took it. Sun was pleased. When Moon finally arrived, she saw her seat had been taken, and she was so ashamed that she hid her face from the laughing people, covering it with a robe. And Iktomi, the planner of this event out laughed everyone.
After the feast, Skan, the Sky God and judge of all the Gods, called a Council. He asked for the stories of Wi, the Sun, who had forsaken his wife; of Ite, who dared take the place of a Goddess; and of Wakanka and Waziya who had wished for godlike powers; and Iktomi, the schemer. Then Skan passed Judgement.
Sun was to lose the comfort of his wife, Moon. He was to rule only in the day, allowing Moon to rule at night. Whenever they were together, Moon would always cover her face in shame. Ite's sentence was severe because of her vanity and negligence of motherly and wifely duties. She would give premature birth to her next son, who would be unlike all other children, and her children would not live with her but with their father, Tate. She was, furthermore, instructed to return to the world and live without friends. Still more, she would remain the most beautiful of women, but only half of her would be so. The other half would be so horribly ugly that people would be terrified at the sight of her. Henceforth, she would be called Anung-Ite, the Double-faced Woman.
Wakanka and Waziya were banished to the edge of the world until they could learn to do good for young children and old people. They too were renamed for their misconduct, becoming known as the Witch and the Old Man, or Wizard.
Iktomi was also banished to the edge of the world where he was to remain forever friendless. He accepted his judgement with his usual smugness, reminding Skan that he still had the birds and the animals with whom he could live and upon whom he could continue to play pranks.
Tate, who was also judged for marrying Ite, was instructed to raise his children properly and to do a woman's work. Thus he lived along with his four sons, the Winds, and his fifth son, little Yumni, the Whirlwind, in their home beyond the pines in the land of the ghosts. Each day his sons travel over the world according to his instructions.
One day, as the Four Winds were on their tours away from home, a shining object appeared outside of Tate's tipi. Tate looked out and saw a lovely young woman, beautifully dressed. Tate asked her who she was and where she came from. She replied that she came from the Star People, that her father was Sun and her mother, Moon, and that she had been sent to the world to find friends. She also told him that her name was Whope.
When the Four Winds and Whirlwind returned home, they were surprised to find that their father had taken a woman. But after Whope had prepared for each of them, her favorite meal, and no matter how much they ate, their plates remained full, they realized that she was supernaturally endowed. They learned that their father treated her, not as a wife, but as a daughter. They welcomed her into their lodge.
Soon, each brother wanted Whope as his woman and competed with one another in showing her favors. Tate decided to hold a feast, to which all the Gods should be invited. At this feast Tate honored his guests with presents. Many told stories of their power and there was much dancing. Then the Gods asked Tate how they might please him. He told them that if they honored his daughter, Whope, he himself would be pleased. Then they asked Whope what she wanted. Whope arose and stood by Okaga, the South Wind, who folded his robe around her. "I want a tipi for Okaga and myself, a place for him and his brothers." So her wish was granted and Whope became Okaga's wife. And then, as a present for the couple, the Gods made them the world and all there is in it.
The banished Waziya and his family were also involved in the story. In the beginning, the Wizard. the Witch, their daughter, the Double-faced Woman, and Iktomi, the Trickster, were the only people on earth. Iktomi grew tired of playing pranks on birds and animal's. He had fun doing it, but they never showed any shame over their misfortunes. So he, again, went to Anung-Ite, asking her what she most desired. She told him that if she would tell him, he should never resort to tricks and pranks again. She explained that if her people tasted meat and learned about clothes and tipis, they would want such things and come to where they could be had. With these instructions, Iktomi then went to the wolves, seeking their aid in bringing mankind to earth. Again, in return for help, Iktomi swore to abandon his pranks. The wolves agreed to this and Iktomi instructed them to drive moose, deer and bears to Anung-Ite's tipi, where she would prepare food, clothing and tipis to entice mankind.
Then Iktomi gave to one of the wolves a packet, which Anung-Ite had prepared containing tasty meat and fancy clothing for the man and woman. He then directed the animal to take the packet to the entrance of the cave which opened into the world. The wolf did as instructed and when it saw a brave young man apart from the others., it presented the packet, telling the young man to taste the meat and advising him and his wife to wear the clothing. The wolf told the young man that the people also should be allowed to taste the meat and see the clothing, and that there were many such things as these on earth. The young man, Tokahe, the First One, was pleased to do this, for now he would be considered a leader. When the people tasted the meat and saw the clothes Tokahe and his wife wore, they were envious and asked how they too might obtain such things. The old man of the group then directed that three brave men accompany Tokahe to find out where such good things came from and to prove that Tokahe was truthful.
The four young men set out and, led by the wolf, they entered the world from the cave. They were led to a lake where Anung-Ite had pitched her tipi. She appeared to Tokahe and his companions as a beautiful young woman. Iktomi appeared as a handsome young man. The four young men were shown much game which Iktomi had previously arranged with the wolves to have driven past. Anung-Ite gave them many tasty foods and many presents of fine clothing for them and for their people. Iktomi told them that he and his wife were really very old, but by eating this earthly food they remained young and attractive.
When the four young men returned through the cave to their people, they described what they had seen. But an old woman, doubted such wonders, cautioned them to be wary. The people argued some wishing to go with Tokahe, others saying that he was a wizard. When Tokahe offered to lead any who wished to follow him up to the earth, the chief warned them that whoever ventured through the cave to the earth would never find the way back. Nonetheless, six men and their wives and children joined Tokahe, and they left the underworld guided by the wolf. When they reached the earth it was strange. They became lost and tired, hungry and thirsty. Their children cried. Anung-Ite appeared and tried to comfort them, but they saw the horrible side of her face and ran in terror. Iktomi appeared in his true form and laughed at their misery. Their leader, Tokahe, was ashamed. The revelation of Iktomi's falsity and Anung-Ite's ugliness was then removed by the appearance of the Old Man and the Witch, who, according to the prophecy at the time of their banishment, had come to understand the qualities of mercy and tenderness. They appeared to Tokahe and his followers, bringing food and drink. They lead the disheartened group to the land of the pines, to the world of the Ghosts. They showed them how to live as men now do. Thus Tokahe and his followers were the first people on earth.
Their descendants are the Dakota.
Old Indian legends,retold by Zitkala-Sa;
Boston, London : Ginn & Company, 1901.
and is now in the public domain.
http://groups.msn.com/KeeperofStories/
Reprinted from this site by permission
Books and Articles
Dorothy Dunn On Primitive Art
Excerpt
Anthropologists use the term "primitive" as a general category to describe cultures which had not achieved a certain standard (define modernity). For Dunn, a primitive was not a certain type of culture, but described individuals and objects indigenous to any, every, culture. The primitive subject was that gifted individual, or "seer" whom was able to discern the primitive objects relevant to their culture. These objects were also primitives, and represented the signs, icons, or symbols of a culture. Thus, for Dunn, primitive art was the one to one relationship between the seer and the perceived set of primitive objects of their culture. Primitive was not a certain type of culture, but a certain set of variables occurring in every culture, and primitive art was an event that portrayed the values, or what was of importance in that culture. Thus, Dunn encouraged her students to carry on the tradition into the Modernist era.
Essay on the Zuni World View
Excerpt(Complete article is available in PDF)
In Signs from the Ancestors, a study of Zuni cultural symbolism and perceptions in rock art, M. Jane Young cites the "dialectics of the beautiful and the dangerous" noted by Barbara Tedlock and states that "Tedlock posits an underlying aesthetic framework that informs cosmology, whereas I posit an underlying cosmological principle that informs aesthetics". From the perspective of this paper and its conclusions it would appear that Young is perhaps partially correct in her ascertainment although the confluence of the two principles makes it difficult to discern logical priority in either the beautiful (tso’ya) or the dangerous (attanni), for the multireferential finds manifestation of beauty in the "aesthetic of accumulation, an elaborate redundancy of symbolism in Zuni sacred and secular environments" and informs cosmological principles of the preconditions of the rational, while aesthetic license premises pragmatics where proper interpretation of context ensures that rational thought of the "perspective-taker" attains objectivity as a "personal accomplishment" in the success of "reciprocal public intentions". This is because the principle of the “base metaphor” cited by Young is inclusive of a body of conceptual presuppositions which include the notion of an interrelatedness of all things, which is seen here as a cosmological precept akin to notions of identity and individuation, and the notion of a predetermined harmony as indicative of the aesthetic. Young notes that the “very generality of the metaphor lends its ambiguity--an ambiguity quite characteristic of the Zuni view of the world. Zuni ritual symbols, whether expressed verbally or visually, are frequently multivalent or multireferential, standing for both themselves and something else at the same time; yet all of the meanings are bound together, so that the Zunis say, as do the Mescalero Apache: "They’re all the same thing".
Bibliography of the Zuni Language
Excerpt
The Zuni, or Shiwi language, is now generally considered a language isolate. The Encyclopedia Britannica categorizes it as a Penutian language, and Bertha Dutton once posed the hypothetical that according to the Swadesh list, "If the Zuni language is a member of the Penutian language family, then it is a distant relative of the Tanoan languages (Tewi)." The Penutian hypothesis was advanced by Alfred Kroeber and Roland B. Dixon, and later refined by Edward Sapir, and was an attempt to reduce the number of unrelated language families in a culturally diverse area that was centered in California's central coast. While this theory was plausible for some of the languages, the problem of verification of this theory was that to find any evidence of any cognates between the California languages and Zuni, one would possibly have to trace the languages' lineage by as much as 3000-5000 years or more.
Indian Ledger Art-Resources and Information
Excerpt
Ledger art is traditionally a male American Indian pictographic art form, and historically has been characterized as such by researchers. Chronologically its stylistic development belongs to the Proto-Modern era of the Native American Fine Arts Movement and was a major influence, through trade routes and the patronage of white art collectors, on Modern Indian Art as its elements diffused to the schools of New Mexico, Oklahoma, and the Northwest Coast. Its more explicit expression, however, yielded to the styles that developed in these schools and culminated in the early 1960's during a period of the Movement referred to as the First Generation Modernists. Only recently have the researchers of Ledger art recognized Virginia Stroud as the Native American Woman artist who, as a Second Generation Modernist and a member of the so-called "New Indian Art Movement", revitalized a traditionally male form of art expression with her pictographic images in the late 1960's to the early 1980's. Influence on Stroud's stylistic achievements can be attributed to her Kiowa upbringing centered in Oklahoma, which is the major geographic center of the Southern Plains school, and her attendance at Bacone under the direction and influence of Dr. Richard West.
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
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
THE WOMEN/Edward S. Curtis
"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."
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.
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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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.
