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Canku Ota |
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(Many Paths) |
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An Online Newsletter Celebrating Native America |
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November 15, 2003 - Issue 100 |
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"Tatsgwiik" |
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The Haida Greeting |
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Welcome here is the place of honor for you |
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"TEPGAN P'A" |
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GEESE-GOING MOON |
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KIOWA |
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"Somewhere a good
man must rise from the young ones among us." |
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We
Salute Four faces hovered over literature books Monday in surroundings seemingly too quiet for a high school class. The students said the quiet at the Pala Learning Center on the Pala Indian Reservation helps them make up credits they fell behind on while attending Fallbrook High School. Teacher Greg Fleming and the Pala Band of Mission Indians are now in their sixth year of providing high school education on the reservation through the Fallbrook Union High School District. |
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Our Featured Artist: |
Health and Wellness |
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Ollie Napesni "Salt Camp: HerStory, Lakota Living Treasure Ollie Napesni" is the personal memoir of Ollie Napesni, Lakota. In a series of 13 tape-recorded interviews between April 17, 2001 and Oct. 30, 2001, Napesni recounted her life story to Dianna Torson. The result is an astonishing record of the remarkable life of this respected and revered elder. Napesni was born at St. Francis, S.D. in 1917. She lived her early life at Salt Camp, an area north of Rosebud, S.D., with her parents. She recounts her life and the world beginning in 1918 through the events of Sept. 11 into the present world. Her life is a lesson in history and Lakota culture as she describes the conditions throughout the Depression, Dust Bowl, and World War II up to the present day. Her memory is astounding as she remembers even the smallest events in colorful and vivid detail. |
Facing the Windigo On dark winter nights filled with raging black clouds, and howling winds, my Grandmother would tell tales of the Windigo. Huge, terrifying, the Windigo lived at the edge of the community and would devour the body and soul of anyone who wandered into its reach. As I grew older, she told me that the Windigo stories she knew had emerged from times of famine when some people had resorted to cannibalism to stay alive. For their acts, they were sent away to the depths of the forest to spend their time alone satisfying their craving for human flesh and blood. But even as a child, I came to realize that the Windigo did not live so very far removed from the people. It was among us.. It took its victims piece-by-piece, starting with the toes then moving upward, to the feet, then the lower leg, upper leg, until family and Elders died of things like gangrene, kidney failure, heart attack, and stroke. The Windigo was very real, only it went by another name, Diabetes. |
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Thunderhawk - Our Featured Story: |
Northwestern Wisconsin First Person History: |
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Thunderhawk
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Nay-na-ong-gay-bee
Speech and other info It may be remembered that the payment to the Chippewa Indians at La Pointe, in August and September of 1855 necessarily deferred during several weeks, awaiting for the more remote bands to come in. The Department had sent the express and timely orders to persons at La Pointe, to have the Indians gathered, and to be in waiting for the Commissioner or Agent, with goods and money for the payment, as per treaty, when arrived. The persons failed to carry out the orders. |
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The information here will include items of interest for and about Native American schools. If you have news to share, please let us know! I can be reached by emailing: Vlockard@aol.com |
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Living Traditions |
Living Traditions |
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Teaching
About Thanksgiving This is a particularly difficult introduction to write. I have been a public schools teacher for twelve years, and I am also a historian and have written several books on American and Native American history. I also just happen to be Quebeque French, Metis, Ojibwa, and Iroquois. Because my Indian ancestors were on both sides of the struggle between the Puritans and the New England Indians and I am well versed in my cultural heritage and history both as an Anishnabeg (Algokin) and Hodenosione (Iroquois), it was felt that I could bring a unique insight to the project. |
Morongo Tribe Brings Thanksgiving Early to Fire Evacuees Thanksgiving is coming early
this year to fire-ravaged Southern California as leaders and members of
the Morongo Band of Mission Indians deliver thousands of hot turkey dinners
to evacueesat one of the largest Red Cross shelters in the region.
The gift of food by tribal members is only the beginning. Morongo Tribal Chairman Maurice Lyons also announced that the tribe is donating one million dollars to the Riverside County Chapter of the American Red Cross. It is the largest contribution in the tribe's history. |
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Education News |
Education News |
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Miccosukee School Helps Preserve Culture, Heritage for Children Miles from exhaust fumes, past kitschy road signs of alligators with gaping mouths, in a sunny, two-story school surrounded by the still Everglades, a dozen students pore over books and worksheets in the Miccosukee language while others perfect the art of sewing intricate patchwork. Across the hall, students tackle math problems. Their presence at the Miccosukee Indian School is evidence that more families are confident the tribe will preserve their culture and at the same time give Miccosukee children a formal education in the same type of mainstream school that once worked to strip them of their heritage. |
Tah-Ah-Dun Magnet School Extends Program to Adults Del Norte County's Tah-Ah-Dun Magnet School made its K-12 program accessible to adult students this fall when it moved its offices under the umbrella of Castle Rock Charter School. Founded in 2000, Tah-Ah-Dun was formerly part of the Independent Studies Program. Like Castle Rock Charter School, Tah-Ah-Dun is a self-paced independent program designed to meet or exceed the state's academic standards. In addition, the school incorporates the Tolowa language and tribal cultural traditions. Teacher Loren Bommelyn and his wife, Lena Bommelyn, who is the instructional assistant of the school, form the staff for the entire program. |
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Living Traditions |
Living Traditions |
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Elders' stories - Abe Okpik
Can you tell
us a story about when you were growing up? Once I remembered people coming for Christmas. It was at Shingle Point. That's when I first seen Santa Claus. While we were having Church, I been falling asleep, and by a noise, I awoke, and saw a Inuk man with a white face, all white, that's all I saw first, and it was Santa Claus. |
Kenaitze Director Keeps Heritage Alive
When asked to explain the red T-shirt she was wearing while addressing the Soldotna Chamber of Commerce on Tuesday, the cultural heritage and youth director for the Kenaitze Indian Tribe IRA translated the word printed on the shirt and described its importance among Native youth athletes. "Ggugguyni means raven. The Dena'ina are raven clan," said Amber Glenzel, who also serves the Kenai Peninsula tribe as its resident anthropologist. |
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Education News |
Education News |
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NASA Develops Tribal College Engineering Programs None of the 34 Native American tribal colleges scattered across 12 states offers a Bachelor of Science degree in engineering. Lee Snapp of NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston is working hard to change that. Snapp is beginning the second year of a two-year assignment to the Salish Kootenai College at Pablo, Mont., on the Flathead Indian Reservation. He is working with tribal colleges, government agencies, engineering societies and others toward establishing a common effort and goals to foster technical education, particularly engineering. |
Still strong & 'Running Brave' The feeling was unmistakable—intense pride in every native student and adult in the audience who attended one of three separate presentation sessions at Tuba City High’s Warrior Pavilion on Oct. 28. This American Indian pride was generated in the body and Red Ribbon Week presentations of Billy Mills, the only American to ever win the gold medal. His came in the 10 K race at the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games. The fact that Mills is not just American but American Indian, a Lakota tribal member who has remained alcohol and drug free his entire life, added to the awe and inspiration for the students. Tuba City School District hosted the event, but other schools were bused in for Mills’ special school presentation. |
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Entertainment News |
Health and Wellness | |
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Kids TV Show Puts Focus on American Indian Kids Whether climbing rocks in Monument Valley, grass dancing at Crow Agency or playing a pickup game of basketball in the land of Chief Joseph, to thousands of American Indian children, the reservation is home. Journalist Linda Ellerbee traveled to three Indian reservations this summer to interview dozens of kids, ages 11 to 15, for a 30-minute news program for the cable network Nickelodeon. "They have a great sense of humor based, I think, on a recognition of the absurdities of the world," Ellerbee said in a Monday phone interview from her office in New York City. |
Native Cure A gray-haired woman stood by a trailer piled high with watermelon, squash and cantaloupe and sang harvest songs from her childhood. About 60 people savored traditional dishes of roasted corn gruel, sautéed cholla buds and beef stewed with tepary beans. They drank mesquite juice and lemonade flavored with prickly pear fruit. For this sliver of the 28,000-strong Tohono O'odham community, the first October harvest from this 18-acre farm 120 miles west of Tucson was more than a nostalgic return to a farming tradition that died out in the 1950s. It was a serious attempt to fight a modern scourge: diabetes. |
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Preserving Languages |
Living Traditions |
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Keeping Their Word There's a small school in the far north of New York where English is a foreign language. The tongue taught here is Mohawk. And though the 64 students at the Akwesasne Freedom School learn math and history and reading, their real purpose is their people's cultural survival. "My grandmothers and aunts got spanked if they talked Mohawk at school. That's how we lost our language," said a 12-year-old pupil, whose name is a thicket of letters -- Tehrenhniserakhas, pronounced De Lon Ni Zeh Lakas -- that means "He Puts Two Days into One." |
Flags Proclaim Tribal Identities When a New Jersey sixth-grader threw together a paper on the flags of French-speaking countries, he flunked the homework assignment, but never lost interest in the flags. "Every flag has a story. It's sort of a snapshot of what people want to say about themselves," said Donald Healy, who was that boy and who now, as an adult, works as a computer specialist designing databases for the state of New Jersey. Healy is a past president of a North American association of vexillologists, "flag geeks" who spend their spare time studying flags and their symbolism. "Vexillology" comes from the word "vexillum," a square flag of the ancient Roman cavalry. |
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Living Traditions |
Living Traditions |
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Let Your Voice Be Heard In exactly one year, we will head to the polls to decide who will lead our country for the next four years. This next election will be crucial to the future of our democracy, our Nations, and our mother earth. If you're not registered to vote, now is the time to do so. It can be done online with just a few clicks of the mouse (http://www.yourvotematters.org) But you mustn't stop there. We need people like you to get actively involved in educating voters, registering voters, and mobilizing voters to get to the polls on November 4, 2004. Not sure where to start? Well, keep on reading. |
Iroquois Salute Treaty; See Freedom For non-Native Americans, the treaties that were signed with the original occupants of North America are a fascinating part of history. For the Haudenosaunee people, they're the foundation of cultural freedom. "Our boundaries, our land rights — all our rights are based on these treaties," said Tadodaho, a member of the Onondaga Nation and leader of the Haudenosaunee. |
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About This Issue's Greeting - "Tatsgwiik" |
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There
are numerous people, mostly elders that still actively speak the language
and in both Massett and Skidegate. |
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This Date In History |
Recipe: It's Cranberry Time |
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Story: How Fox Saved The People |
What is this: Caribou |
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Craft Project: Thankful Wreath |
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Opportunities |
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"OPPORTUNITIES" is gathered from sources distributed nationally and includes scholarships, grants, internships, fellowships, and career opportunities as well as announcements for conferences, workshops and symposia. |
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| Canku Ota is a free Newsletter celebrating Native America, its traditions and accomplishments . We do not provide subscriber or visitor names to anyone. Some articles presented in Canku Ota may contain copyright material. We have received appropriate permissions for republishing any articles. Material appearing here is distributed without profit or monetary gain to those who have expressed an interest. This is in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107. | ||
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Canku Ota is a copyright © 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003 of Vicki Lockard and Paul Barry. |
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The "Canku Ota - A Newsletter Celebrating Native America" web site and its design is the |
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Copyright © 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003 of Paul C. Barry. |
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All Rights Reserved. |
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