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Canku Ota

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(Many Paths)

An Online Newsletter Celebrating Native America

 

July 31, 2004 - Issue 118

 
 

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"LaXayfN nayka shiks"

 
 

The Chinuk-wawa Greeting

 
 

Hello my friend

 
 

 
 

 

 
 
Month When the BUffalo Bellow
 
 

Omaha

 
 

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"A Warrior is challenged to assume responsibility, practice humility, and display the power of giving, and then center his or her life around a core of spirituality. I challenge today's youth to live like a warrior."
~Billy Mills~

 

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We Salute
Marjorie Thomas

For 11 years Grandma Marjorie Thomas, 73, has led an annual walk from Chinle to Window Rock to raise money to build a youth center in the Central Navajo Agency.

"We're trying to solicit funds," Thomas said on Monday while taking a lunch break along U.S. Highway 191 on the first day of the event. "It's a good way to fund-raise."

Thomas started the walk in 1993 and so far has raised about $85,000. "We need to take the kids off of the streets," she said, "and they need to be in a place where they congregate and have fun.

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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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Our Featured Artist:

Health and Wellness

Medicine Dream

The Alaska Native Heritage Center (ANHC) proudly presents Medicine Dream in concert on August 8th at 7:30pm. With their unique blend of contemporary and Native American music, the Anchorage-based band has achieved local, national and international recognition. Weather permitting, the concert will be held outside at ANHC.

Canyon Records recording artists Medicine Dream are an Intertribal First Nations band that performs contemporary Native American music. The group has been together since 1996 and is based out of Anchorage Alaska. Their first International release, "Mawio'mi", received three nominations at the Native American Music Awards in 2000.

 

Return to Traditional Ways, Urge Conference Speakers

"The Creator gave you a way of life. He wants you to be alive, he wants you to be well. A certain way of life was given to us by the Creator. It's up to us to find a way to get that back," said speaker Barb Turenne from Sioux Valley, Manitoba, Canada. Barb joined her longtime companion, Glenn Wasicuna, as the keynote speakers for the second day of the Northern Plains Native American Heart and Diabetes Conference at Mystic Lake Casino Hotel. More than 400 participants gathered for this year's event. "We have to have balance in our lives," she said.

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Our Featured Story:

Northwestern Wisconsin First Person History:

The Eagle and the Snake – Redman Speaks – Part 12
by Geoff Hampton

 

The Indian Priest
Father Philip B. Gordon

submitted by Timm Severud (Ondamitag)

 

Chapter 9 - Indian Allotments

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Living Traditions

Living Traditions

Ancient Tradition Lives on in Forest County

With quick flicks of a short carved knife, Marvin DeFoe tapers an end of a white cedar rib, one of 40 that will soon strengthen the birch bark canoe (wiigwassi-jiimaan) that lies in a bed of sand at his feet.

The cedar (gizhik) strips first soak, ironically enough, in a modern fiberglass canoe filled with water. After they absorb water, the strips are steamed so they can be shaped as ribs to fit the inside of the canoe.

 

Suquamish and S'Klallam Tribes Test of Strength

Call a Native American canoe a "boat" and you will get a quick reprimand.

"We say anyone who calls it that gets thrown in the water,' said Port Gamble S'Klallam Tribe member Mary Trevathan, with a smile.

To simply call it a "boat" does seem a clunky description. The long, low, smooth vessels are used by canoe nations around the Pacific Northwest and Canada to connect tribes and their business.

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Living Traditions

  Living Traditions

Fur, Cloth, Skin and Family Ties go into Native Regalia

It's not just DNA that defines family.

Familial ties were evident in the beautiful display of skin, fur and cloth clothing proudly exhibited in the Native Regalia Contest Friday afternoon at the World Eskimo-Indian Olympics.

Family threadlines ran throughout each model's outfit from the handiwork of a 93-year-old great-great-grandmother who fashioned fancy boots for her 18-month-old grandson, to many grandmothers who sewed skins or painstakingly pieced black and white calfskin into geometric trim for parkas and mukluks.

 

Storytellers impart Native Wisdom, Humor

When Christian Tagiuq Analoak tells the story of two polar bears, he swings his arms and sways his torso like the great white ruler of the north, the Inupiaq hunter's most daunting quarry.

One day, Analoak wants to slay a polar bear of his own, but for now, the 32-year-old storyteller recounts a King Island hunting story for visitors at the Alaska Native Heritage Center.

Everyone at the center's cultural sites tells stories, but Analoak and a handful of others share theirs onstage four times a day.

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Art News

Art News

Native American Exhibit Makes It's Mark In Hollywood

It's a funny thing in Hollywood scores of actors have played the part of American Indians in big budget films, and yet the real Indians are hardly ever seen. Actor Roscoe Pond revealed to the public the true Indians in the film industry in his new exhibit, "Natives In Hollywood: How Far Have We Come?" this past weekend.

So exactly how far have the American Indians come in Hollywood? According to Pond, not very far at all. "A lot of Indians are really angry about being portrayed as just savages and evil people,"

 

Hopi Show in Flagstaff marks 71st year

The Museum of Northern Arizona, in existence since 1928, held its 71st annual Hopi Show celebrating Hopi art July 2-4.

This year yielded the best of Hopi jewelry, pottery, textiles, fiber art, Tihu carving and multi-media work from more than 50 Hopi participants at the Flagstaff show. In addition, Verma Nequatewa-Sonwai of Hotevilla Village (Badger Clan) was the featured Master Artist this year, selected by Bob Lomadafki, Hopi Show-Heritage Series coordinator and the current MNA Board of Trustees. Nequatewa showcased what she creates in her Third Mesa studio for her private collectors and museum institutions from around the world.

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Student News

  Student News

NASA Grant Helps Teach Kids from Tribal Schools About Space and Science

Jubilee Vanderburg watched her model rocket shoot high in the sky over Montana State University on Tuesday, to the cheers of her friends at a NASA space camp for American Indian teens.

"I was kind of surprised it went that far, that high," said Vanderburg, 14, a Ronan High School freshman.

About 50 students attending the two-week camp got to launch rockets from the MSU athletic practice fields on South Seventh Avenue.

 

Success Story

Ella Jones started her freshman year at East High School feeling overwhelmed, as many freshman do.

But for Jones, it was intensified. She had just moved to Anchorage from Kotzebue, the regional hub community of Northwest Alaska with about 3,000 people, mostly Inupiat. Her new school in Anchorage seemed huge, she said, with about 2,000 students and mazes of crowded hallways.

"When I moved here, I was like, 'Whoa,' " said Jones, now a 17-year-old, soon-to-be senior. "It was really different, especially coming from a village. You're used to being with other people like yourself."

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Art News

  Preserving Language

Art of the American Indian Postage Stamps

Captivating expressions of Native American art will be commemorated August 21 in Santa Fe, NM, when the U.S. Postal Service issues ten, 37-cent Art of the American Indian commemorative postage stamps and a booklet of twenty, 23-cent stamped postal cards depicting the beauty, richness and diversity of talent by artists from several Native American tribes.

The first-day-of-issue stamp dedication ceremony will take place at 11 a.m. (Mountain Time) on the Plaza Stage during the Santa Fe Indian Market. This annual event, sponsored by the Southwestern Association for Indian Arts (SWAIA), draws some 1,200 Indian artists who market their creations to 100,000 visitors (http://swaia.org/).

 

Study of Ancient Local Languages Seeing Revival in North County

Palomar College teacher Linda Locklear became a student again this summer, enrolling in a class in Luiseno, a language indigenous to San Diego County and believed to be the first spoken here.

It's the second summer she's studied the language in a formal Palomar course, a course the 30-year veteran American Indian studies professor lobbied for years to get in the regular curriculum for credit. A unanimous vote of the Palomar board of trustees in December 2001 put Luiseno, a language spoken in North County for centuries before Europeans arrived, into the catalogue.

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Student News

  Living Traditions

Graci Horne goes to Baghdad to pray for peace

I grew up in Minnesota and I'll be a freshman at Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia this fall. Both places are a long way from the Middle East, but when my dad, Chief Arvol Looking Horse got a chance to go to Iraq, I immediately wanted to join him. Beloved Community, an educational church group organized a trip for spiritual leaders to go to Baghdad and asked my dad to be the Native American representative. He invited me to accompany him on behalf of the youth (I'm Lakota/Dakota). Before we left, I went to a local drugstore where I'd applied for a job, to let the manager know I'd have to postpone my interview. She said, "I think they should blow up Iraq and start all over." That gave me even more drive to go, to educate myself and others about Iraqi People and culture.

 

Honoring Native American Heroes

Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, Americans are united today in concern for the safety and well-being of our men and women in uniform--especially those who are serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, risking their lives to advance human freedom.

This morning, I would like to speak about the extraordinary service of a group of soldiers from two earlier wars.

We know these men today as "the code talkers.''

They were Native American soldiers who used the languages of their tribes to send strategic military communications during World Wars I and II. Their impenetrable codes saved the lives of countless American troops in Europe and throughout the Pacific.

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In Every Issue Banner

About This Issue's Greeting - "LaXayfN nayka shiks"

Until recently, the Chinuk Wawa or Chinook Jargon language was in jeopardy of being lost forever.

"This language was used everywhere in the Northwest, from Northern California to British Columbia.; The one place in the world where it survived and probably the place it is finest in terms of impressibility and where it's really used is in Grand Ronde."

This Date In History

 

Recipe: Fun Summer Cakes

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Story: Bishinik, The Little Chahta News Bird

 

What is this: Downy Woodpecker

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Craft Project: Nature T-Shirts

 
This Issue's Web sites

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Opportunities

 

"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.  
 

Canku Ota is a copyright © 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 of Vicki Barry and Paul Barry.

 

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