Photo by Christopher Lacher Numpshunka.blogspot.com

We Salute
Maya Torralba

Maya Torralba is the proud mother of Chado and twins Matthias and Kateri. She is also the founder of the Community Esteem Project in Anadarko, Oklahoma and a 2008 Young People For fellow at the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma. In this interview, she talks about the importance of community esteem, the power of traditions and how other YP4 fellows have inspired her.

Our Featured Artist:

Honoring Students

Gordon Van Wert Gives Back

“Art is a healing thing,” said sculptor Gordon Van Wert. Sculpting carried the 56-year-old member of the Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians through his tedious recovery from a paralyzing stroke. Forty years earlier, the chance to take art classes had whisked him off the South Minneapolis streets that were leading to a dead end.

Now the four-foot carving that took shape during his stroke rehabilitation, “Medicine Bag” is an inspirational centerpiece at North Country Health Services in Bemidji, Minn.

Schenectady man wins top award from American Indian Science and Engineering Society

Cummings, who turned 30 last May, is a member of the Lumbee and Coharie tribes of North Carolina. He is also a semiconductor development engineer, with a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from Princeton University and was recently named the American Indian Science and Engineering Society’s 2008 Professional of the Year.

Our Featured Story:

Northwestern Wisconsin First Person History:

All American

Last fall, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, the group that hands out the Nobel Prize in Literature, disparaged American letters, saying our fiction was “too isolated, too insular” and “too sensitive to trends” in our own “mass culture” (in short, too American) to matter much to the wider world. But it’s the very Americanness of our literature — the hybrid nature of our national makeup, the variety and breadth of our landscape, our mania for self-invention and reinvention — that captured the international imagination at a time when most readers could never visit the country they dreamed about. It still does today.

The Indian Priest
Father Philip B. Gordon
1885-1948

Chapter 1 - The Indian Priest Reminisces

New Oklahoma laws on the plate for '09

The tags are the result of legislation passed last year, House Bill 3326, which takes effect today. The design is from the late Oklahoma artist Allan Houser’s "Sacred Rain Arrow” sculpture at the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa. It depicts an American Indian, framed against a sky, preparing to shoot an arrow.

Exhibit displays American Indian works created in Oklahoma in 1930s, '40s Murals

An exhibit of American Indian murals is not only offering visitors a chance to see the works of famed Oklahoma artists, it is encouraging them to take a road trip to view even more paintings.

Runners Pay Tribute To Ancestors

Considering they are 11 years old, some might think that Jonathan American Horse, Keynen Red Hat and Roy Fighting Bear see their current field trip as a good way to get out of classes. It is, they say, for reasons other than play.

Diné Fare
For Blue Corn Mush, Technique Is Everything

As Char Kruger slowly adds corn meal to the blue corn
mush on the stove, stirring it clockwise, people begin asking questions. Should they roast corn meal before making the blue corn mush? Do they add sugar? How long should it cook?

Crow ready to ride in D.C.

Carl Venne, Crow tribal chairman, is one of 24 Crow riders who will take part in today's inaugural parade.

"I think this is a once-in-a-lifetime experience for us," Venne said Monday from Washington, D.C.

Native American Family To See Adopted Son Sworn In

Back home in Lodge Grass, Mont., they keep talking about Hartford Black Eagle's luck.

"People around here, even the white people, say, 'You're the luckiest the person in the world. You adopted the president of the United States!' " he said.

Tribe gives $2M toward Native American Center at NAU

A Southern California Indian tribe has donated $2 million toward a Native American cultural center at Northern Arizona University's Mountain Campus.

The gift from the San Manuel Band of Serrano Mission Indians, the indigenous people of the San Bernardino mountains and valleys, is the first major contribution to NAU's Native Roots, Native Futures fundraising campaign.

Take The Last Ride Home

Sterlin Harjo vividly remembers riding in an ambulance with his grandmother, of thinking that she might not live much longer, of her stuffing a note into his hand that begged, Don't let them hook me up to any machines, I want to die at home.

For the young Tulsa filmmaker, whose work embraces the concepts of home, family and the American Indian experience in Oklahoma, this emergency was the life experience Harjo needed to finish writing his script for "Barking Water."

Growing Up and Getting by in the Land of the Nine-Month Winter

Among the traditional delicacies of the native Inupiaq people in Alaska is something called utniq — pickled walrus flipper. It’s not a simple thing to prepare.

You need to first coat the flippers with the animal’s blubber. Then you wrap them in the walrus’s own skin, turned inside out. This package is stored in a cool, dry place for as long as a year. Meanwhile, the fermenting process works its strange magic.

Artist hopes to present unusual portrait to Obama

Nearly 90 hours hunched over a pine board. Almost as many waiting for the weather to be just right. Thousands of tiny burned dots. A handful of magnifying glasses, one brush and the sun.

That's what it took for Jon Beartusk to create what he hopes will be a personal gift to president-elect Barack Obama.

Retelling Of Indian Tales Can Conflict With Culture

Minerva Allen tells a story about Inkdomi, the Assiniboine trickster god, and the day he discovered red berries floating in the water.

Being powerful and prideful, Inkdomi grabbed for the berries, only to see them vanish. He got soaking wet trying to get the berries out of the stream, but no luck.

Long-ago Lessons Echo Among Crow

Montana is the only state in the nation with a constitution commanding respect for its American Indian heritage in its public schools.

Yet, for decades after that goal was drafted, little was done to introduce its tribal nations to mainstream culture. That changed two years ago, when education leaders launched the Montana Tribal History Project.

Lac du Flambeau Tribal Historic Preservation Officer wins prestigious award

Tribal Historic Preservation Officer for the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians, Kelly Jackson was presented with the first Secretary of the Interior Historic Preservation Award.

Program Teaches Indian Youth 'Horse Sense'

Sunka wakan ah-ku, “Holy Horse Coming Back,” is the name of a program or maybe I should say a way of life that’s budding on the Spirit Lake Indian Reservation in North Dakota.

It’s not a new concept but is new to this Dakota nation. It’s a revival of the horse culture, a culture that dominated the Plains tribes for many years.

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