EXHIBITION More than 600 objects, including art and clothing made by Alaskan indigenous people more than 100 years ago, go on display at the Anchorage Museum
By Kara Briggs Anchorage—For the past 30 years, Tlingit leader George Ramos, 79, has traveled to museums around the U.S. and found irreplaceable objects that he had heard his elders talk about, but he’d never seen. They “belong to Alaska,” Ramos says. Now, “Living Our Cultures, Sharing Our Heritage” has opened at the Anchorage Museum, with 600 objects that were selected in part because they were fairly traded by Native communities to collectors over a century ago and ended up in the collections of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History and the National Museum of the American Indian. The exhibition of the objects will continue for seven years in Alaska. The May 22 opening was a cause for celebration by Alaska Native peoples, among them Beverly Faye Hugo, an Iñupiaq adviser to the exhibition from Barrow. “These are our treasures,” Hugo said. “It is time to let them come home.” The Git-hoan, a Tsimshian dance group based in Seattle, performed at the exhibition’s opening celebration. At one point, the group invited the Native peoples of Alaska to join the dance. Midway through the song, group leader David Boxley called out, “On stage, George Ramos, a leader of leaders.”... |
MUSIC From Jimi Hendrix to Buffy Sainte-Marie, performers who lit up the stage and record charts are the focus of “Up Where We Belong” at the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian By Kara Brigga,
“Up Where We Belong,” a 1982 crossover hit co-written by Cree folk singer Buffy Sainte-Marie, lends its name to an upcoming exhibition about American Indians in rock and pop music at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian. “We’re trying to show where Native musicians were instrumental in crafting the big American music,” said Tim Johnson, one of the museum’s associate directors, “and document instances where Native musicians were right in the center of it.” The exhibition opens July 1. “Up Where We Belong” was popularized by Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes in the movie “An Officer and a Gentleman,” winning the 1982 Oscar for Best Song. Sainte-Marie co-wrote the song with Jack Nitzsche and also made a recording of it. Hendrix was raised with his Cherokee grandmother, a former vaudevillian who passed on her performance gene as well as a taste for extravagant stage clothes. Janie Hendrix, the late singer’s stepsister, loaned the museum Hendrix’s long, multi-colored leather patchwork coat. It was one of the few pieces of Hendrix’s belongings that his father was able to recover from the musician’s apartment after his death at age 27 in 1970. The rest were stolen. “The coat has never been exhibited anywhere before,” Johnson said. “Janie Hendrix personally delivered it after we indicated that we didn’t want a guitar or a gold record. We wanted the person.”... |
MUSEUM The curator and author discusses how Native people live in the world as it is, and how that’s reflected in the work of two ground-breaking artists
American Indian News Service Paul Chaat Smith, Comanche, is a curator at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian and author of “Everything You Know about Indians Is Wrong,” a 2009 collection of often-biographical essays that explore museums, politics and contemporary American Indian life. Smith has curated many exhibitions including ones about two of the most prominent contemporary Native artists, as well as a permanent exhibition about the history of indigenous Americans. In 2008, he co-curated a major retrospective of the late Luiseño abstract expressionist Fritz Scholder, titled “Fritz Scholder: Indian/Not Indian.” Last year, Smith curated a retrospective of another provocative artist, Brian Jungen, the Dunne-za sculptor from British Columbia. Smith calls him the best Native artist of the 21st century. Recently Paul Chaat Smith joined American Indian News Service editor Kara Briggs for a conversation.... |
YOUTH Students from across the country depict themes of Native American power and perseverance to win an art contest American Indian News Service
A student art contest held recently by the National Congress of American Indians to mark the 2010 U.S. Census recognized winners at different grade levels from across Indian Country. The second-place winner at the college level, Julius Badoni, a senior at Arizona State University, said he wanted to incorporate symbols of perseverance, tribal pride, and strength, while encouraging Native Americans to participate in the Census. “Even at the lowest point in the 1900s, Native Americans endured,” said Badoni, who is Navajo, about his piece titled “Resurgence,” a colorful abstract showing the plight of Native people since 1492. “There will be a continued endurance and resurgence of Native Americans.” The contest was judged by staff at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian. ... |
OPINION By Tim Johnson
Before it opened, founders of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian heard from Native peoples that one of its most important roles would be to teach all children the true history of the Americas. In this undertaking, I cannot overstate the importance of what José Martí, the Cuban poet and thinker, wrote in his 1891 manifesto, "Our America." He stated, "The American intelligence is an Indian headdress." What Martí was saying grew out of his observation that human progress must not only factor in economic considerations, but must also include social, cultural, and familial dimensions. He came to this understanding by listening to what Indians had to say. I think one could even venture to say that the future belongs to the American Indian. That might sound a bit grandiose and perhaps ethnocentric, but it emerges from Native cultural perspectives and underscores the relevance of Native knowledge and experience in the world today. In order to survive, the world will have to arrive at many of the same principles, values and social life-ways of Native cultures, which will produce a more balanced way of living for the future.... |
Go to www.americanindiannews.org to access full-lenght articles, high resolution photos, and Word documents with the full article. Add editor@americanindiannews.org to your address book to receive the HTML version of this news service. The Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian is located in Washington, D.C., New York City and Suitland, Md. View online exhibitions at www.AmericanIndian.si.edu The American Indian News Service is edited by Kara Briggs, a Yakama and Snohomish journalist. She owns Red Hummingbird Media Corp., which is contracted by the National Museum of the American Indian to provide this service. Contact her at editor@americanindiannews.org or by phone at 503-577-0012. We're interested in how the American Indian News Service is used. We welcome copies of newspapers that contain news service material, or emailed links to online postings. Please forward to Red Hummingbird Media Corp., 8825 34th Ave. NE, Suite L-154, Tulalip, WA 98271; or e-mail to editor@americanindiannews.org. Kara Briggs, Editor National Museum of the American Indian George Gustav Heye Center Cultural Resources Center To opt-out to this publication, please email editor@americanindiannews.org. Proud member of:
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