Fort Lewis, Hozhoni Days
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Native American Art News Articles and Updates
American Indian Wisdom Could Help War Vets
Education must prepare Indian students for leadership, citizenship
Prayer walk brings more focus on revered Indian sites
Museum displays new sensitivity to sacred trust
Winners of ISU National Women’s Art Exhibit announced
Fort Lewis welcomes thousands for Hozhoni Days
Event-filled week celebrates American Indian heritage
Legislators push for Native arts amendment
Spokane artist George Flett, well kown for his depictions of ledger art, anouncing forthcoming book "The Ledger Art of George Flett"
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
Current and Online Exhibitions
First Woman - Catawba
But the Catawba have a different tale of those days. When this world was still new, they say, all of it was sharp rocks and steep hills, high cliffs and jagged peaks-except for one small valley hidden deep in the mountains. There, it was always summer. A clear stream ran through its green meadows. The deer and the wolf drank from it side by side. Beavers built a dam to make a pond, and fishes swam in it. Flowers bloomed on the banks and did not die. Trees flowered and bore fruit, and then flowered again. Bluebirds and buntings sang in the branches. Bees hummed. Blackberries, raspberries, and gooseberries, huckleberries, serviceberries, and mulberries ripened all the year round. The little valley was the best of all places.
Once the Great Spirit had made the valley, he shaped a new creature to live in it. He made this new being to stand on two legs, much like himself. He gave it dark hair and eyes and a dress made of large round leaves ofgalax, and set her down in the grassy meadow. "You are First Woman," said the Great Spirit, "and this is your home to live in and to rule." Then, when he had said it, he went away and left her.
First Woman was happy at first. She found a cave to shelter her from the always-summer rains, and made it her home. She ate berries with honey, and pawpaws and persimmons and fish. She swam with the beavers and ran with the deer, and neither she nor her valley grew old. Every day was the same as every other day, until she began to wish that it was not.
One day, as First Woman sat at the opening of her cave, she saw a bright red butterfly flutter by. She had never seen such a thing before, and so she rose and followed it. Down across the valley it flew, and up into a narrow ravine. First Woman climbed after it a long, winding way until it led her to the foot of a waterfall. But then it vanished. First Woman turned back, but took the wrong path, and wandered farther and farther out of her way At nightfall, cold and weary and frightened, she curled up on the ground to sleep. A little before dawn she awoke to find a dark shape bending over her-not a wolf or panther, but a shape much like her own. Yet she was the only human being in this world.
"What are you?" she asked in fear. It was larger than she, its face fiercer. Its shirt and leggings were made of cloud, as if it had just stepped down from the sky.
The Sky Man reached down to help First Woman to her feet. "I was on my way from the evening star to the morning star," he said. "When I looked down, I saw first that you are very beautiful, and then that you were lost. I wish to help you find your way, and so I have come down to your world, even though the Great Spirit will be angered." "Will He be?" First Woman asked fearfully.
"Yes," said the Sky Man, "for He has commanded that the People Above do not come down to this world unless He sends them. His anger is terrible, and I fear it." But he smiled at her. "Indeed, I would rather stay here with you than return to the World Above and His anger." First Woman's heart filled with happiness, for she had been lonely and not known it. "Come," she said, and she took his hand and went with him down to her beautiful valley.
There they lived together as wife and husband, and in time First Woman bore a child. Only then did they begin to think of the times to come. First Woman knew that from their children and their children's children would come a people who would overflow the valley and fill the world. How would they live? The world outside was harsh and bare. Sky Man feared that their children would suffer even more because he had disobeyed the Great Spirit's command, and he was unhappy. Together, they prayed to the Great Spirit for his forgiveness.In the World Above, the Great Spirit heard, and knew that their hearts were good. He lifted his hand, and a great wind rose. He moved his hand, and the great wind pushed mountains closer together and made space for other valleys, and for prairies. And all this world was made beautiful.
When the work was done, the Great Spirit leaned down from the World Above and told First Woman and Sky Man that all this world was theirs. But he told them, too, that because Sky Man had disobeyed him, from that day they must work for their food. He told them that life would no longer be all summer. Now there would be winter, and with it bitter cold. He told them that there would come a time when they would see in the water of the beavers' lake that their hair had grown white. He told them that in time they must grow old, and die. And First Woman and Sky Man looked at the beautiful world, and at their child, and still were glad.
Taken from the book The Wonderful Sky Boat and Other Native American Tales of the Southeast retold by Jane Louise Curry
http://groups.msn.com/KeeperofStories/
Reprinted by permission
Articles by Amerindian Arts
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.
Bibliography of the Zuni Language
Indian Ledger Art-Resources and Information
Books of Interest
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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posted by Amerindian Arts at 7:16 AM
