Canku Ota - December 2018

	Canku Ota (Many Paths) An Online Newsletter Celebrating Native America
	December 2018 - Volume 16 Number 12


	"Nich-che-coogh!" The Umatilla Greeting "Welcome"
	Barn swallow (Hirundo rustica)

	"Hash Haponi" moon of cooking Choctaw

"Let us put our minds together and see what life we can make for our children. ~Sitting Bull~

We Salute
Aaron Yazzie

"A lot could've gone wrong and a lot of work that I had done for many years could have blown up and crashed on Mars. That would have been really sad," Yazzie said over the phone from Pasadena, California. "But it all went really well. I was really happy."

Our Featured Artist:		Honoring Students
Anishinabe Wiigwaasi-Jiiman (canoe building) Community Project “The purpose of this build is to bring the community together to revitalize the teachings and knowledge of our ancestors to build a 15-foot Anishinabe Wiigwaasi-Jiiman (birchbark canoe) that can be used to harvest wild rice the way our ancestors did,” said Lupe Gonzalez, coordinator for SCTC’s Extension Program.		Hopi High Students Take Home Awards At State Journalism Conference Hopi High School won nine awards at the Arizona Interscholastic Press Association Conference Nov. 6 at Arizona State University in Tempe. Hopi High was the only reservation school to win media awards and was one of the smallest schools represented.

Our Featured Story:		First Person History:
Native American Women Made History In The Midterms Two years ago, as Americans were locked in a bitter dispute over the presidential election, Deb Haaland stuffed her suitcase full of green chiles and flew from her home state of New Mexico to North Dakota to join a different fight.		World War I And American Indians In 1917 the United States entered into World War I. While Indians were not liable to be drafted, they enlisted in large numbers. Many of the volunteers were eager to count coup, gain war honors, and to maintain the warrior traditions of their tribes. An estimated 10,000 Indians served in the military during the war.

Living Traditions		Living Traditions
America Moves To Bite The Hand That Fed It We know that we, the Mashpee Wampanoag, have occupied the same region for over 12,000 years. But what many do not know today is that we are in a struggle to maintain homelands that were placed in trust by the United States of America Department of the Interior in 2015- some 400 years after sustained European contact and settlement and the same number of years of struggle to maintain our homelands.		The Thanksgiving Tale We Tell Is A Harmful Lie I was born and raised on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota in the 1970s and am a member of the Oglala Lakota Sioux Tribe. Growing up, I went to a very small country school on the reservation, in the poorest county in the United States. Our school had predominantly Native students, but we were still taught what everybody was about Thanksgiving: It represented a time when "pilgrims and Indians" celebrated together, and it was about being thankful. Only later would we find out that it was a lie.

Preserving Language		Education News
Reconnecting With Roots At Alaska Native Languages Summit The Walter Soboleff Building on May 12, 2015, home of the Sealaska Heritage Institute. The private nonprofit hosted a three-day emergency language summit at the Centennial Hall Convention Center in Juneau beginning Nov. 13.		Public School Named After Native Olympian Billy Mills, Becomes First In History Supporters, students, teachers and the gold medal-winning Olympian Billy Mills gathered in Lawrence, Kansas to celebrate a historic day in honor of Billy Mills Middle School as the only public school to bear the name of a Native American public figure.

Living Traditions		Living Traditions
Sharice Davids' Historical Election To Congress Celebrated In Kansas Ho-Chunk Sharice Davids from Kansas won her bid for United States Congress on Nov. 6, 2018. Davids and Deb Haaland, Laguna Pueblo, of New Mexico are the first Native women elected to Congress. Also, Sharice Davids is the first L.G.B.T. Native to serve as a federal lawmaker.		Six Nations School Will Spend $732K To Train New Speakers Of Cayuga Language Six Nations Polytechnic (SNP) will train eight Cayuga language speakers to teach others. That pool of speakers will also create an archive of resources, and train teachers who will teach the language at the school. "This project will be the most significant effort to stabilize the Cayuga language that our organization has ever initiated," said Rebecca Jamieson, SNP president, in a media release.

Honoring Students		Book Review
New Town Runners Building A Dynasty While running has long been a tradition at New Town High School, which encompasses five towns, the last decade or so has been a boom particularly for the boys cross-country program. The Eagles have won 12 North Dakota small-school titles in the last 14 years, including six in a row. The years they didn't win, they finished second.		Book About Vine Deloria's Influence A Page Turner Every now and then a book comes along that reminds us that there is a vast history of the real work (not just indulgences like memoirs) that Native writers have been doing in the 20th century that advances our knowledge of the “race” problem in the United States in important ways. Vine Deloria has always been my mentor even though I did not study with him.

Living Traditions		Living Traditions
Wadasé Returns With A Friend Weather patterns have been erratic this year, and fall has been no exception in Oklahoma. The pastures are still lush and green, and the trees, which would normally be nearly bare, are full of leaves that are only just beginning to suggest that autumn is here. But the wildlife around us has already signaled a shift in seasons.		Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape Tribal Nation Wins Big Court Victory “This fight to restore recognition has been lengthy, costly, and sad," Chief Mark Gould said. "But today New Jersey has reaffirmed that American Indians are not only part of its storied past, but valued partners in a shared future. We are ready to do our part to rebuild our relationship with the state government.”

Living Traditions		Living Traditions
It's Clear Sailing For A Giant Sioux Wind Power Enterprise Called the 'Saudi Arabia of wind power,' the Great Plains could fulfill U.S. energy needs several times over with emissions-free, wind-generated electricity. A coalition of Sioux tribes is poised to harness the wind. Long held sacred by the Great Sioux Nation, or Oceti Sakowin, the wind may soon provide tribal communities with clean, renewable power and sustainable economic development.		Meet Nunavut's First Inuit-Owned Coffee Company: Kaapittiaq That means good coffee, and it’s the name of a new Inuit-owned social enterprise company dedicated to the production of premium coffee by and for the Canadian Arctic.

Living Traditions		Living Traditions
Putting Osage Women In Control Of Their Own Images Like many Americans, Osage women in Oklahoma in the early 1900s loved to put on their best clothes and have their portraits taken. The photos were a nice gift for family or descendants and an expression of self-respect that attacked prevailing American attitudes about indigenous people. But the practice quickly went bad.		Oneida Heritage Center And Warrior Archery Welcome Olympian Mackenzie Brown 23-year-old Olympic archer Mackenzie Brown, ranked 15th in the world, visited the Oneida Heritage Center’s Warrior Archery on Saturday, Oct. 26 to teach and inspire kids from the YMCA of the Greater Tri-Valley about the sport of archery. Her visit preceded the beginning of the Y’s youth archery program at Oneida Heritage, which will run Nov. 24 – Dec. 29 each Saturday morning starting at 10 a.m. or 11 a.m., and Nov. 28 – Jan. 9 each Wednesday night from 5-6 p.m.

Living Traditions		Living Traditions
DNA Of World's Oldest Natural Mummy Unlocks Secrets Of America's Ice Age Tribes A legal battle over a 10,600-year-old ancient skeleton – called the 'Spirit Cave Mummy' – has ended after advanced DNA sequencing found it was related to a Native American tribe.		The Indians Were Right, The English Were Wrong: A Virginia Tribe Reclaims Its Past From the road, the abandoned chief's house is a shadow, almost invisible under a cloak of vines and trees on the edge of a corn field. If you managed to find it, you wouldn't know what it meant — the ragged wood siding, the gaping windows, the shattered plaster.

Education News		Education News
Building A Love For Math And Science Starts Early Parents and caregivers don’t have to wait until a child can solve written math problems or conduct complex science experiments. Activities such as finger painting, building blocks and baking are fun and interactive ways to build science and math skills in young kids.		Migizi Communications Purchases New Building With Big Plans Migizi Communications is celebrating 40 years of service to the American Indian community in the Twin Cities but is looking far ahead through training Native youth for leadership, education preparation and careers in emerging environmental, technical and renewable energy occupations.

Living Traditions		A Poem
In The Puget Sound, Welcoming The Return Of The Salmon Every summer, a generation of salmon returns to rivers across the Pacific Northwest where they hatched. And when they do, coastal tribes from British Columbia to Oregon gather on driftwood-strewn beaches to celebrate the First Salmon ceremony, to welcome the salmon back with open arms.		Native American Farmers Are Growing A Sustainable Market Thirty miles south of Phoenix, green fields of alfalfa and pima cotton stretch toward a triple-digit sun. Hundreds of yellow butterflies dance above the purple flowers that dapple the tops of the young alfalfa stalks—to expert eyes, the flowers signal that the plants are heat-stressed and should be harvested soon.

About This Issue's Greeting -"Nich-che-coogh!"

The three tribes (Cayuse, Umatilla and Walla Walla) are part of a much larger culture group called the Plateau Culture. The Plateau Culture includes the Nez Perce bands of Idaho and Washington, the Yakama bands of Central Washington and the Wasco and Warm Springs bands of North Central Oregon on the lower Columbia River. There were many other smaller bands and groups such as the Palouse and Wanapum.

This large body of people belonged to the Sahaptin Language group and each tribe spoke a distinct and separate dialect of Sahaptin. The Umatilla and Walla Walla each spoke their own separate dialect, while the Cayuse in later years spoke a dialect of the Nez Perce with whom they associated a great deal. The original Cayuse language, which is extinct today but for a few words spoken by a few individuals on the Umatilla Reservation, is closely related to the Mollala Indian language of the Oregon Cascade Mountains.

Nature's Beauty: Barn Swallows Have Evolved To Live Alongside Us	This Issue's Favorite Web sites	A Story To Share: How The Swallow's Tail Came To Be Forked







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