by Jim Huddle
©James P. Huddle

The focus on Louis Charlo, when there's a focus at all, is how he helped raise the first flag on Iwo Jima and how he died there.

Reel Injun: on the trail of the Hollywood Indian, Neil Diamond's wonderful new documentary about how aboriginal people in North America, primarily the U.S., have been portrayed by the movie industry.

More than 1,500 years before Christopher Columbus and his crew sailed to the New World, Native Americans had already domesticated turkeys twice.

It was an e-mail to her teacher, the typical class assignment one would expect to see for most third-graders, recounting what she had done while the teacher was away for a few days.

But with each keystroke, a once-dying language grew a little bit stronger.

More than 139 years after its construction, the Cherokee National Capitol still stands and operates as a symbolic landmark for the Cherokee people. Now, through a unique grant sponsored by the National Park Service, Cherokee Nation has received $150,000 to help preserve the 1870-built Capitol for future generations.

Here, alongside the muddy main road, stand more than 20 weathered totem poles, the carved crests and lineage of families who have lived here for centuries. While it's impressive to see these stark sentinels in any setting – whether in a museum, art gallery or urban park – the chance to view the poles in situ, in the First Nations community where they belong, is both wonderful and humbling.

One’s contemporary, one’s traditional. One’s brilliantly colored, the other more subtle. Two very different pictures—both handling the same subject matter—but from two very different men who will display their work together for the first time and present a taste of the yin and yang of Native American art.

He had never seen this lake before. He traveled to Mille Lacs County from Nebraska, where he lives on a reservation along the Missouri River as a member of the Santee Dakota Tribe. But Minnesota, and this lake in particular, was, to him, home.

Sales are brisk at these Olympic Games for all things First Nations: cedar carvings, Salish weaving, Kwakwaka'wakw silver and masks, drums and high-end Haida clothing.

Their undulating forms evoke British Columbia’s mountains, ocean and snow. Their faces are drawn from West Coast First Nations artwork depicting the orca and raven. Each is unique. And their substantial size gives them a significant presence.

"We're still in a struggle, a battle, really," said Sandy Sunrising Osawa, who shot a documentary on ballerina Maria Tallchief set to screen in Victoria on Monday.

Consider the variety and nature of Native American artistic expression in Minnesota. In a study we have just completed, we found a remarkable array of high-quality, unique artwork produced by Minnesota Natives.

Why doesn't Minnesota honor its Native artists?