Sugar Maples Trees in Autumn

Cherokee Citizen Powers Through His Limitations

It's not unusual to find musicians from different genres - or from different cultures - collaborating. Opera star Luciano Pavarotti belted out the blues with Eric Clapton and South Africa's Ladysmith Black Mambazo recorded an album with folk legend Paul Simon.

Another more recent musical mash-up has a traditional Native American drum group performing with a classical symphony orchestra.

The N’Amerind Friendship Centre, a First Nations Canadian organization that serves aboriginal communities in London, Ontario, is partnering with the Alzheimer Society of London and Middlesex, in order to preserve precious memories of the past and foster the Native storytelling tradition, the London Free Press reported. The Center is joining the Generation Link — a program that matches high school students with seniors suffering from early Alzheimer’s disease.

The 19 students who every day wander into room E-1 at Eva B. Stokely Elementary School enter a different world.

Here, the kindergartners are expected to listen to, speak and write Navajo for the full school day.

Some of British Columbia's ancient languages are getting an ultra-modern boost in the hopes that cool technology will appeal to young aboriginal people.

New language apps for Apple's iPod, iPad and iPhone devices have been developed for two native languages in the province: Sencoten, spoken on southern Vancouver Island; and Halq'emeylem, spoken in the Fraser Valley

Students Jena Thomason, Rachel Pearson and Katie Schlinker answered almost every vocabulary question aloud in Choctaw as their Durant, Okla., teacher asked questions by a video link Wednesday.

Before class and during review sessions, they and seven other Arkoma 10th- through 12th-grade students in the morning Choctaw Language class consulted one another and their workbooks regarding their lesson on kinship terms.

When Kyle McHenry stood in front of the elders of his Mechoopda Maidu tribe and played for them a program he'd created of their native language this summer, tears came to their eyes.

"There are no native speakers," he said. "It was worth all the work that I did just to see the look on their faces. They haven't heard it since they were kids."

One of the elders he spoke to was his grandmother, Delores McHenry.

"My grandfather was fluent in the language," Delores explained. "But he could not pass it on to my dad because Bidwell wasn't letting them speak the language."

Shared Vision member Michael Meuers is “absolutely psyched” about what was unveiled Monday.

Ojibwe translations for nearly 100 English phrases common to Northern Minnesota are now available online and on campus at Bemidji State University and Northwest Technical College.

The multimedia materials, which include paper form and audio clips, are part of a collaborative effort between Shared Vision and BSU. Shared Vision is an organization dedicated to improving relations between American Indians and non-Indians in the community.

At the apex of dance stands -- en pointe -- "Swan Lake." "Nutcracker" may have more familiar music and "Don Quixote" the more spectacular leaps. But when most people think of ballet, lithe (and astonishingly athletic) female bodies gracefully imitating great white birds are what come to mind. It is the classic to which all others in the genre must be compared.

A new "Alaska" version of "Swan Lake" will debut Friday and Saturday in the Discovery Theatre.