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Canku Ota
(Many Paths)
An Online Newsletter Celebrating Native America

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January 2020 - Volume 18 Number 1
 
 
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Yaxei haa satee, aax hoon gei
The Tlingit Greeting
“It is good to see you, all my relations!”
 
 


California Condor
Gymnogyps californianus

 
 
"Opolahsomuwehs"
whirling wind month

Passamaquoddy
 
 
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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
Emmett Eastman

At 87, Emmett Eastman Runs To Honor The 38 Indians Hung In Mankato Including His Great-Great-Grandfather

At just past midnight on the morning after Christmas, Emmett Eastman walked briskly over a thin layer of snow in an open field near historic Fort Snelling, reached Hwy. 55 and began jogging across the Mendota Bridge.

It was the first leg of a group relay run to Mankato to mark the 156th anniversary of the largest mass execution in U.S. history, the hanging of 38 Dakota Sioux Indians in Mankato in 1862. About 50 people participated in the relay, but Eastman was the run's most eminent presence and the eldest among them, having turned 87 on Christmas Eve.
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Our Featured Artist: Honoring

Global artist Ron Senungetuk, died at age 86

In an art student's 2006 Master's thesis, sculptor Abraham Anghik Ruben is quoted as saying, "[Ron] Senungetuk's timing was impeccable. He came at a time when Alaska Natives needed an infusion of culture and art to prepare for the changes that were coming," said Ron's former student. "He was able to change the course of Alaska art history single handedly, both Native and non-Native contemporary art." The quote appears in Charis Ann Gullickson's thesis for the University of Tromsø, Norway.

Later in her paper, Gullickson said Ron's "pursuit to promote Alaska Native pre-contact art, by updating it into a contemporary artform, is a kind of political agenda. Essentially he is giving life to an art form that was devastated by colonialism."
 

Choctaw Basketball Player Inducted Into Naismith Hall Of Fame

Rosalie Ardese was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame September 6, 2019, as a member of the Wayland Baptist University Flying Queens basketball team. Ardese played for Wayland between 1974 and 1975.

After graduating from Panola High School, Ardese received a scholarship to play at Wayland. The Flying Queens held the record for the longest win streak of any men's or women's collegiate basketball program between 1953 and 1958 at 131. During that time the Flying Queens won four straight Amateur Athletic Union titles. In their 35-year run, the Flying Queens won 10 overall AAU titles.
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Our Featured Story: First Person History:

Sisters In Red: Ignacio Girls Basketball Brings Uncomfortable Conversation To Gymnasium

Justa Whitt entered the gymnasium at Ignacio High School to take an extraordinary team photo back in December. What she saw sent chills down her spine.

Each coach and player on the girls varsity basketball team had a red or black handprint painted over their mouths that extended to their cheekbones. They lined up in their uniforms with a basketball in hand, put on a stoic expression and posed.
 

Sacred Dakota Peace Pipe Sells For $40,000 — And Buyer Gives It Back To Minnesota Tribe

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Education News Education News

The Best Native Books Of 2019

Winter is a time for storytelling. Whether conversing with friends around a crackling fire, curling up with a book on a cozy couch, or jogging with earbuds while keeping a New Year’s resolution, we’re entering the time of year when stories hold a special place in our lives. For many of us, this means short days and cold nights—time we’d like to pass lost in narratives that entertain, challenge, and inspire us. We’re also entering a sacred time celebrated by holiday gift giving. On the precipice of these dual seasons, I’d like to highlight some of the best Native books published this past year. I implore you all to acquire, consume, and share them with others.
 

Navajo And Pueblo Youth Make It To Cross Country National Finals

There was a strong showing of Indigenous runners at this weekend's USATF National Junior Olympic National Cross Country Championships in Madison, Wisconsin.

On a day where wind chills hung around 10 degrees and the ground remained frozen, Dine' and Pueblo runners competed against the best youth from across the country.

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Education News Preserving Language

Cherokee Students To Revisit "Lion King Jr." In Upcoming Performances

Several years ago, Cherokee students took to the stage and presented "Lion King Jr." which was the first musical production in the history of Cherokee Central Schools (CCS). Now, many of those same students – a lot of them now seniors at Cherokee High School, are revisiting the play for a set of upcoming performances.

"Our senior class this year is filled with kids that I have always called 'The Trailblazers'," said Michael Yannette, Cherokee Performing Arts program director. "They started the Performing Arts Program at CCS when they were in middle school with 'Lion King Jr.' They have grown so much now and have had years of performing experiences in musicals and as part of the Cherokee Chamber Singers."
 

Elevating the Oral Tradition

When Marcus Briggs-Cloud, MTS '10, began to sing in his native Muscogee language in the main hall at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology this past October, it was a testament to the survival of his community and culture through centuries of genocidal efforts against indigenous peoples in the United States.

But Briggs-Cloud, who was there to celebrate the official opening of the museum's new video installation "Revitalizing Indigenous Languages," aimed to highlight more than the narrative of survival. There's a grassroots renewal of indigenous languages underway—what he called the "sacred work of generating new, fluent speakers." And that's a story worth telling.

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Preserving Language Our Natural World

Language Update

It has been a busy buys season for the Citizen Potawatomi Nation Language Department. Our new online dictionary, at potawatomidictionary.com, has been getting over 100 unique views daily. The dictionary is downloadable in the Google App store. We are also working on developing a PDF downloadable version.

We recently started a Potawatomi Youth Choir. We have currently about 12 kids participating. They have been learning different Christmas songs in the language. They have been working on Silver Bells, Frosty the Snowman, We Wish You a Merry Christmas and Let It Snow. We shared some of the songs on our Potawatomi Language Facebook group around Christmas. By the time this comes out, the kids will have performed at the Foster Parent Appreciation Dinner, the Oklahoma Indian Education Conference hosted at the Grand Casino Hotel & Resort as well as Christmas caroling with our adult language class at elders housing and Citizen Place North.

 

Wadasé Zhabwé's Telemetry Stuns Experts

Winter is finally here, although looking at the forecast here in Oklahoma, you might not know it. The first week of winter brings a welcome warm spell with temperatures in the high 60s. That may sound unusual, but it's on par with the rest of the year. Spring gave us more than our total yearly rainfall in one season; summer's green hung around well into fall; and fall seemed to just skip right into winter. Our winters here rarely bring us picture-worthy snow. But this time of year does bring migratory birds of all kinds, and it signals breeding season for raptors, including eagles. This year's winter in particular is the winter we have waited on since we started sharing Wadasé Zhabwé's story six and a half years ago.

Like a broken record, stuck on repeat, we kept saying, "One more season of her telemetry data, and we will know where she nests." In fact, there's a worn spot on the corner of our desk where we superstitiously knock on wood during tours when we talk about how long she's worn her GPS telemetry backpack.
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Native Voices Education News

South Dakota Tribes Making Second Attempt To Repeal 1863 Dakota Removal Act

Tribes in South Dakota are trying again to gain support from state lawmakers to repeal the 1863 federal law banning them from Minnesota.

The legislative State-Tribal Relations Committee moved in a 6-3 vote on Wednesday to introduce a resolution during the 2020 legislative session requesting Congress repeal the federal Dakota Removal Act, which forced the tribe onto South Dakota reservations following the 1862 conflict that included the mass hanging of 38 Dakota men.
 

Indigenous Education Grows and Gifts Ceremonial Tobacco

Last January, RRC Indigenous Wellness Advisor Donna Glover had an idea. She saw that the College had a traditional medicine garden, but they were not growing tobacco. Glover took it upon herself to change that.

Tobacco is one of the four sacred medicines in Indigenous culture and Glover felt that it was important for the College to create a relationship with the medicine themselves. "Anyone can go to the gas station and buy tobacco, but we wanted a special connection," she says.
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Living Traditions Living Traditions

Sisters Enjoy Creating Cherokee Art Together

It could be said that two Cherokee sisters who are multi-talented artists came to it naturally.

Shirley Sims, of Christie, and Carlene Wiley, of Watts, grew up in Pumpkin Hollow near Briggs. They made beadwork as children whenever they could find or purchase beads. Later, they made baskets and were naturals at it.

Sims said she got started with basket making in 2001 while taking a computer class at Skelly School near Watts. She was asked to if she would be interested in working on baskets. At first she was hesitant, but then she did it and “got into it.”
 

Snoqualmie Tribe kicks off Washington's first Native Arts Week by buying a Native design brand

Louie Gong began his entrepreneurial art journey by painting Native American patterns and designs on Vans slip-on sneakers. In 2008 he founded Eighth Generation, a design studio that collaborates exclusively with Native American artists across the country to create authentic Native American products. In 2016, Gong (Nooksack) opened a brick-and-mortar shop at Pike Place Market. Today, Eighth Generation becomes the Snoqualmie Tribe's most recent cultural investment.
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Repatriation Living Traditions

Cornplanter's Pipe Tomahawk Officially Repatriated To Seneca Nation

Nation leaders welcomed officials from the New York State Museum to Salamanca on January 9, 2020 to announce that a pipe tomahawk originally given to the respected Seneca leader and diplomat Cornplanter by George Washington has been officially repatriated to the Nation. The announcement took place at the Nation's Onöhsagwe:de' Cultural Center, where the pipe tomahawk has been on loan to the Nation since March.
 

Stitches Through Time

Once a month, Higbee family members gather at a Citizen Potawatomi Nation-owned restaurant to discuss their heritage, Potawatomi culture and build camaraderie.

“We call the group ‘the cousins’ because we’re all cousins,” said the head of the Higbee family, John Dragoo.

After the October 2019 Higbee cousins meeting, they gathered at the Cultural Heritage Center where Dragoo unveiled a quilt handed down through the family for decades that features an in-depth Higbee family tree.
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Living Traditions   Repatriation

Historic Preservation Brings Traditional Choctaw Skirt Back To Life

Since March of 2018, the Historic Preservation department staff and tribal members have been working together to learn about Choctaw textiles that go back thousands of years. Through this community effort, we learned enough to create a completed an vlhkuna, a skirt, modeled after a 1700s bison wool and plant fiber skirt. According to an anonymous French chronicler writing in the mid-1700s, Choctaw women made “a fabric, partly of (bison) wool, and partly of fibre from a very strong herb which they spun. This fabric was double like two-sided handkerchiefs and thick as canvas, (about 22.5 inches wide and 33.75 inches long).”
 

Ancestral Human Remains And One Funerary Object Recommitted To Earth

An Aug. 22, 2019 Recommitment to Earth ceremony was held for ancestral human remains from the Sloan Museum of Flint, Mich.

The Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe and its Ziibiwing Center of Anishinabe Culture & Lifeways, and with assistance from the Michigan Anishinaabek Cultural Preservation & Repatriation Alliance (MACPRA) and Mille Lacs Band of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, recommitted to the earth the ancestral human remains of nine Native American individuals and one funerary object from the Sloan Museum.
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Education News   Education News

The Gallery Experience Raises More Than $11,000 For Pawhuska Schoolteachers

In its second year, The Gallery Experience art-driven fundraiser topped its inaugural year's collection by $9,000 with a total of more than $11,000 raised from art purchases and live auction bids at the Dec. 5 event.

Osage artist Addie Roanhorse hosted The Gallery Experience fundraiser in support of Pawhuska Public School teachers at her Big Rain Gallery in downtown Pawhuska for the second year in a row. The Gallery Experience received a sponsorship from Osage Casino, which helped pay for costs associated with the event.

 

Five Colleges, Inc., Receives $2.5M Grant For Native American And Indigenous Studies

Good news was delivered to several Western Massachusetts colleges and universities looking to enhance their study of Native American and indigenous cultures and history.

Five Colleges, Incorporated has been awarded a $2.5 million, four-year grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to help its member campuses transform how they approach Native American and indigenous studies, with the goal of enhancing teaching, learning and scholarship in the field.
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Repatriation   Repatriation

100 Pieces Of Tewa Pottery Returned To Their Ancestral Home In The Rio Grande Valley

SANTA FE, NM— This month, the Poeh Cultural Center at the Pueblo of Pojoaque in New Mexico unveiled a collection of 100 pieces of Tewa pottery, newly restored to the land where they were created. The exhibition, titled Di Wae Powa: They Came Back, signals the start of an extended partnership between the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) and Pueblo communities. Until now, the collection was maintained at the NMAI.

The arrangement materialized after Pojoaque Pueblo’s former governor George Rivera, then-lieutenant governor Joseph Talachy, and the Pueblo’s Historic Preservation Officer Bruce Bernstein first proposed to NMAI in 2015 that the pots be returned to their communities. NMAI agreed to a long-term loan.
 

Bill To Place Lands In Tennessee Into Trust Passes House

The House of Representatives has passed legislation that would put 76 acres in east Tennessee, containing several historic sites to the Tribe, into trust for the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. The Eastern Band of Cherokee Historic Lands Reacquisition Act (H.R. 453), introduced by Rep. Charles J. Fleischmann (R-Tenn.) on Jan. 10, 2019, passed the House on Dec. 16, 2019.

"For the second year in a row, the House agreed to a widespread bipartisan fashion to maintain a commitment to the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians by placing specified lands and easements in Monroe County, Tenn., into a trust for the use and benefit of the Tribe," Rep. Fleischmann said in a statement on Dec. 16, 2019. “The Cherokee Nation has a rich history in the Third District, and I am grateful to be engaged in the process to safeguard the story of the Eastern Band in the Cherokee towns of Tanasi and Chota."
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Living Traditions   Living Traditions

Archaeology Breakthrough: Why 'Unexpected Find' Helps 'Rewrite History' Of Ancient Maya

The Mayans were a civilisation known for their architecture, mathematics and astronomical beliefs, who date back to as far as 2000BC, with many of their impressive constructions still standing in the jungles of southeast Mexico, Guatemala, Belize and western parts of Honduras. Archaeologists hunting for a sacred well beneath the city of Chichen Itza in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula accidentally discovered a trove of more than 150 ritual objects untouched for more than 1,000 years. The discovery of the cave system, known as Balamku or "Jaguar God," was announced by Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) in a press conference held in March this year.
 

This Inca Idol Survived The Spanish Conquest. 500 Years Later, Archaeologists Are Unveiling Its History

As the year 1533 drew to a close, Spanish conquistador Hernando Pizarro departed Peru, full to bursting with stories of the wonders he had seen. The Inca Empire, he explained to his comrades and superiors, had readily succumbed to the four Pizarro brothers and their forces. Along the way, the Spaniards had attacked the locals, imprisoned their leaders, looted Inca valuables and desecrated places of worship.

One sacred casualty, Pizarro boasted, was an 8-foot-tall wooden idol, intricately carved with human figures and animals, once housed in the Painted Temple near what is now Lima. The Inca revered the idol, which represented one of their most important deities, as an oracle. But Pizarro quickly linked the artifact to apparent "devil" worship and ordered his followers to "undo the vault where the idol was and break him in front of everyone."
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About This Issue's Greeting - "Yaxei haa satee, aax hoon gei"
“It is good to see you, all my relations!” is "Yaxei haa satee, aax hoon gei" in Tlingit. That is pronounced similar to "yuckx-ay haa satee, aax hoon gay".

The Nadene languages form another linguistic family; its branches include Athabascan, Haida, and Tlingit. The Haida and Tlingit tongues are spoken in parts of Canada and Alaska. As a whole, the Nadene languages have tones that convey meaning and some degree of polysynthesism. The verb is characterized by a reliance on aspect and voice rather than on tense.
Nature's Beauty:
California Condor
Gymnogyps californianus
 
This Issue's
Favorite Web sites
 
A Story To Share:
Bringing Prey-Go-Neesh Home
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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 - 2020 of Vicki Williams Barry and Paul Barry.
 

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