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Canku Ota

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(Many Paths)
An Online Newsletter Celebrating Native America
 
November 1, 2009 - Volume 7 Number 11
 
 
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"Neenjit dagoonch'uu"
 
 
Gwich'in
 
 
"How Are You?"
 
 


Black-billed Magpie

 
 
"Cauyarvik"
 
 
Time of Drumming Moon
 
 
Inuit (Bristol Bay)
 
 
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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
Cinnamon Spear

Cinnamon Spear knows the value of a good education. The recent Dartmouth College graduate grew up on the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation in the small community of Lame Deer. The list of her accomplishments in high school and college is as long and diverse as her interests – science, dancing, filmmaking, community activities and ultimately, service to her people in Montana.

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Our Featured Artist: Honoring Students
Brian Jungen:
Strange Comfort

The Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian presents a major exhibition of the critically acclaimed works of Brian Jungen (b. 1970), one of the leading contemporary artists of his generation. On view from Oct. 16 through Aug. 8, 2010, “Brian Jungen: Strange Comfort” features new pieces never seen before in the United States.

 
Navajo Girl Shares Family's Dramatic Heritage

In 1864, a young Navajo woman living in Black Mesa, Ariz., fought to protect her family from the efforts of the U.S. Army and scout Kit Carson to remove them from their land and send them to Ft. Sumner, N.M.

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Our Featured Story: Northwestern Wisconsin First Person History:
We Don't Surrender Until We Have To

A few years back, in a not-unusual state of panic in my personal life and hubris in my professional one, I spent several winter months in Wyoming. More specifically, my job as a journalist required me to sit at a battered kitchen table in the middle of the Wind River Indian Reservation, swapping stories with a quadriplegic Northern Arapaho horse gentler and traditional healer named Stanford Addison. I went home with nothing particularly resolved, but happier than I'd been in years.

 
The Indian Priest
Father Philip B. Gordon
1885-1948
Chapter 10 - Ordination and More Problems
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Education News Education News
Senior Helps Develop New Course Material To Teach, Revitalize Ojibwe Language

When his mother took senior Paul Ganas to his very first powwow as a toddler, she said he immediately got involved, dancing and swaying to the beat of the drums.

Now that he's older, Ganas, 25, is involved with American Indian culture in a more intimate way - learning to speak Ojibwe and teaching it to others, in turn breathing new life into an endangered language.

 
Panel of American Indian Professors Examines Nationwide Meaning of Columbus Day

For high school students, it's a day to sleep in. For some Americans, it means a parade. But for American Indians, many of which surround the Syracuse University Hill, Columbus Day is a time to mourn their losses.

The symposium, titled "What Columbus Day Really Means to Indigenous People," featured three American Indian scholars.

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Education News Preserving Language
Two Native Artists Receive Bush’s Enduring Visions Award

Musician Kevin Locke (Lakota/ Anishinaabe) and storyteller Mary Louise Defender (Dakotah/Hidatsa) have each been awarded The Bush Foundation’s $100,000 Enduring Vision Award. A total of three artists received the award this year, with funds to be distributed over the next three to five years.

The Enduring Vision Awards are given to established artists to be an example for present and future generations in their fields, according to a Bush Foundation press release.

 
Felix Aripa
Coeur d'Alene Elder, Language Historian

Rows of tables laden with food filled the Rose Creek Longhouse and approximately 300 people gathered to wish Coeur d'Alene tribal elder Felix Aripa a happy 86th birthday. Aripa is well-known, referred to often as "uncle," and well-respected throughout the Coeur d'Alene Reservation.

Tribal council members and friends took turns at the microphone recognizing Aripa and his value to the community. The council decided to name the new fisheries building, the Felix Aripa Building, "for his commitment to culture, the language, the history, the natural resources of these lands including the fish, wildlife, and timber," council member Dave Matheson said.

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Honoring Students Living Traditions
Expression The Diné Way

For nearly two centuries, Native Americans have been the subjects of photographs. But when a prominent Western museum called Navajo Nation Museum exhibit curator Clarenda Begay and asked for the names of some Navajo photographers, "the only one I could think of was Leroy Dejolie," she said.

That got Begay thinking. If even Navajos don't know their own photographers, what hope do they have of getting discovered by the rest of the world?

 
Weaving With Wood

You might think that making Athabascan split willow root trays and baskets would be in Daisy Demientieff's blood. After all she was born in a fish camp on the Yukon River, grew up in a log cabin speaking the local Deg Xinag dialect, had ample opportunity to watch the traditional craft work at which her mother and grandmother excelled.

She thought the same thing, she said. And she was wrong.

In a recent documentary, "A Beautiful Journey," Demientieff shows the right way to do it -- and the process is not for the faint of heart.

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Living Traditions Living Traditions
Ricing Time at Nett Lake

Marybelle Isham fed more wood to the fire crackling beneath a long, flat pan as Francis Littlewolf and Martina Isham used canoe paddles to stir the rice filling the eight-foot pan. Country music sang out of a boom box placed on a metal folding chair.

“It’s almost ready,” declared Marybelle, waving away the smoke rising from the fire as she inspected the rice.

The hand-parching operation, which began last week, is a new twist to this year’s ricing season at Nett Lake, according to Bois Forte Reservation biologist Chris Holm.

 
Masks Reveal The Maker's Inner Self

Louis David Valenzuela is seated on an old kitchen chair in a favored spot in his home art studio — a corner of his backyard shaded by trees and screened for privacy with palm fronds woven through the chain-link fence.

With no hesitation, he chooses a block of wood about 10 inches tall to carve into a Yoeme pascola mask, the kind for which he is becoming so well-known among art collectors.

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Living Traditions Living Traditions
NAMMY 2009 Winners Announced

On Saturday October 3, 2009 the Eleventh Annual Native American Music Awards (N.A.M.A.) was held at the Seneca Niagara Hotel & Casino in Niagara Falls infront of a packed house that featured consistently outstanding live music performances along with an emotionally charged Hall of Fame induction in honor of the late Ritchie Valenz.

Jan Michael Looking Wolf for Artist of the Year, Joanne Shenandoah & Michael Bucher's Bitter Tears Sacred Ground for Best Compilation, Jana's rendition of A Change Is Gonna Come for Song/Single of the Year, Kevin Locke's Earth Gift for Record of the Year, and American Idol Semi-finalist Charly Lowry for Best Video Among Those Honored

 
"Horse Nation" Exhibition Premieres Nov. 14 in New York City

The enduring relationship between Native people and the horse will be illustrated through vivid personal accounts and a spectacular array of objects in "A Song for the Horse Nation," opening Saturday, Nov. 14, at the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian in New York, the George Gustav Heye Center. Starting with the return of the horse to the Americas in 15th century, the exhibition traces how Native people adapted the horse into their cultural and spiritual lives and integrated it into their geographic expansion, warfare and defense.

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Living Traditions Living Traditions
Smallest Cowboys Become Woolley Riders At Navajo Fair

The number 92, pinned to the back of Cauy Betony's shirt, flapped recklessly as the boy clung to a sheep, grimacing as he endured six long seconds atop the animal.

But the sheep didn't stop.

Instead, Cauy found himself careening around the rodeo arena Friday at the Shiprock Navajo Fair's junior rodeo, a bullfighter in full pursuit.

 
Pipestone: A Spiritual Place

In the southwest corner of Minnesota, thousands of visitors each year take in the Pipestone National Monument's untouched prairie and its famous red rock.

The Pipestone National Monument is a compact park, about 300 acres, loaded with history. Bordering the city of Pipestone, it's mostly open prairie that looks much like it did before European settlers arrived.

For centuries, Native Americans have placed great religious significance on the pipestone found here. They've quarried and carved the stone into pipes and other objects, and the practice continues today.

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Honoring   Honoring
Retired Arizona Nurse Among 10 Americans Chosen To Receive National Award

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) today announced its selection of Frances Stout, a retired registered nurse and chairperson of the Tohono O'odham Nursing Care Authority (TONCA) in Sells, Ariz., to receive a Community Health Leaders Award. She is one of 10 extraordinary Americans who will receive the RWJF honor for 2009 at a ceremony this evening at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C.

 
National Trust For Historic Preservation Presents Awards To Cheyenne, Arapaho Tribes

The National Trust for Historic Preservation has presented its Preservation Honor Award to the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Montana, Wyoming and Oklahoma.

The award to the tribes was one of 23 bestowed by the National Trust during its 2009 National Preservation Conference in Nashville, Tenn.

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In Every Issue Banner
About This Issue's Greeting - "Neenjit dagoonch'uu"
The Gwich'in Athapaskan language has also been known as Loucheux, Kutchin and Tukudh. It is used in Northern Yukon, Northeast Alaska and Northeast N.W.T. The people of the Gwich'in community of Old Crow call themselves the Van Tat-Gwich'in, or people
who live among the lakes (ie., Crow Flats)" (The language is referred to as Kutchin, or Tukudh.)
Nature's Beauty : Black-billed Magpie
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, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 of Vicki Lockard and Paul Barry.
 

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