Honeybee

Spirit Lake Youngster Heading to Perform in Washington DC

Kurtis Kelly's life took a new and better direction once he heard Savage Family.

That's the music group - a collective movement, really - that uses hip-hop and other art forms to express the challenges, heritage and pride of American Indians.

"Their CD changed our lives" Kelly said, referring to himself and his rap-music partner Sindick Bura, a cousin.

April Yazzie is at home in an unexpected place. She is a Gates Millennium Scholar at the University of Michigan. The Native woman found the diverse population of Ann Arbor enabled her to blend into the community. Most people think she is Asian and are surprised to learn she is Diné. At the University of Michigan Yazzie is the only Native American and the only woman studying aerospace engineering, a field populated mostly by male students.

Los Matachines is one of the more colorful ethnic dances of Northern New Mexico, and it is one of the least understood.

Often it is performed around Christmas time at Indian Pueblos, but its origin is quite old and comes to the region via Spain.

A Cherokee Nation citizen, Jackie Eagle, of Gore, Okla., has been named Indian Student of the Year by the Oklahoma Council for Indian Education. This is the second year in a row the honor has gone to a Cherokee student.

Although living in large urban areas offers an individual many activities, Lori Smith always longed for the more quiet, outdoors type of life. That may surprise a few, since Smith, a new pediatrician in Cherokee Nation's health system, grew up in Jenks and attended a school system that is now home to more than 10,000 students.

During the pre-Columbian contact era, indigenous peoples of Turtle Island, now known as North America, passed their stories, poetry and songs down from one generation to the next through oral history. Using their own tribal language, their creation stories established a sense of belonging to Mother Earth and their prophecies guided them for the future

As special adviser for Indian affairs at Arizona State University, former Navajo Nation president Peterson Zah spent the past 16 years trying to develop Native American youth leaders.

He pressed students to get educated, return to their villages and build a future on the reservation.

Languages once as diverse as the people who spoke them are falling silent around the world.

In our own state, indigenous languages like that of the Mojave tribe are considered endangered, and linguists at ASU are working to save them.

The Center for Indian Education at ASU, created 51 years ago as a research, teaching and outreach effort, works with the Navajo Nation, Gila River Indian Community and others in the state.There are about 175 to 200 Native American languages still spoken in the United States said Teresa McCarty, the co-director for the Center for Indian Education at ASU.

Language, Tipiziwin Young will tell you, has the power to heal broken cultures.

Especially on South Dakota's nine Indian reservations, where poverty, alcoholism and violence continue to shatter lives and homes, Young is convinced that the Lakota language can be their salvation.

"Lakota is the language our creator gave us," Young, who wants to become a Lakota language teacher, says from her Fort Yates, N.D., home. "There is a beauty and power in our prayers, our songs and our words. ... that I think can be very healing."

An anonymous donor who wanted his collection of Native cultural objects to go home has given 15 pieces that date at least to the early 1900s to Sealaska Heritage Institute.

The collection includes some very important ceremonial pieces, said SHI President Rosita Worl.

The Comanche Nation Ethno Ornithological Initiative is the nesting place for more than 70 eagles and other birds of cultural importance to Native Americans. But like many Native programs today, it’s looking for more operating funds.

The Sia Essential Species Repository is searching for funds to keep alive its mission of Comanche “preservation through cultural understanding of the eagle in history, science and spirit.”

Nearly 200 kids participated in a youth basketball camp this past weekend at the Pechanga Recreation Center in Temecula, hosted by Inter Tribal Sports (ITS). It's safe to say it wasn't difficult to distinguish the camp's speaker amongst the youth.

Native American culture is something often taught in school, but rarely can one learn about it by just simply walking in a restaurant. Red House BBQ in Tehachapi, California is doing just that by combining food and decor.

"It's a lifestyle," said Mano Lujan, owner of Red House BBQ. "It's how we live; it's how we believe."