MUSIC Guitar afire, this Mohawk is 'crashing this glass ceiling of being a Native artist'
By Kara Briggs Washington, D.C.—Derek Miller stepped onto an international stage in early 2010, making his Gibson Firebird guitar blaze in a solo at the Closing Ceremonies of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games. And by laying down tracks for a new album with the band of late blues guitar legend Stevie Ray Vaughan, Double Trouble. At 35, and soon to release his third album, “Derek Miller with Double Trouble,” Miller’s rock roots trace back to a fellow Native guitarist—Link Wray, the Rockabilly Hall of Famer credited with inventing the power chord central to rock, heavy metal, pop and blues music. The Shawnee musician’s distorted electric guitar keyed hits like 1958’s “Rumble.” For Miller, who once felt like a misfit kid playing roots rock in the era of rap, Wray became “my beacon of light.” “I found a kinship with Link Wray,” Miller says. “There was so much intensity, passion and furiousness.” ... |
MUSEUM Input from Alaska Native advisers guides how 600 precious objects loaned by the Smithsonian are experienced by visitors—including descendents of their makers— at a landmark exhibition By Kara Briggs,
Anchorage—A landmark exhibition of 600 Alaska Native objects loaned by the Smithsonian Institution uses new technology in everything from display cases to interactive computer panels to make the objects more accessible to museum visitors. In planning since 2001 with elders and culture bearers from Native communities across the vast 49th state, the exhibition brings back to Alaska objects collected by Smithsonian ethnographers as long as 160 years ago. As breathtaking as the objects are in "Living Our Cultures, Sharing Our Heritage: The First Peoples of Alaska,” technological innovations are also on display in the 10,000-square-foot gallery of the Smithsonian’s Arctic Studies Center, located in the Anchorage Museum. Not the least of the innovations was the Alaska Native advisory panel itself, which consulted on every aspect of the exhibition. “Their overarching idea was that the objects needed to be able to come out of the cases,” said Dawn Biddison, the Arctic Studies Center’s assistant curator. “And of wanting to have objects presented in a more representative and realistic way. Cultural interests were driving the front end of technology.” Eight floor-to-ceiling glass cases, which were custom-made in Scotland, make the materials in them visible from all sides, unlike traditional museum cases that are only viewed from the front. ... |
RECIPE
By Richard Hetzler, executive chef of the Mitsitam Native Foods Cafe Buffalo and duck burger topped with roasted pepper, Dijonaise sauce and smoked tomatoes Serves 4 Duck confit is the secret ingredient in this buffalo burger from Chef Richard Hetzler’s summer menu at the popular Mitsitam Cafe in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C. Hetzler combines a homemade confit to moisten and add richness to flavorful ground buffalo. Fresh herbs, roasted tomatoes and Dijonaise sauce complement and amplify the taste of a unique burger that draws on two different indigenous American meats. —Kara Briggs. |
SPORT The fourth-ranked team’s refusal to travel on other nations’ passports sidelines it from a championship, but nets a teachable moment on Native sovereignty American Indian News Service
In the doldrums of summer, a news story involving the travel obstacles of a world-class Native lacrosse team introduced the wider public to the Haudenosaunee Confederacy—inventors of the game—and to their tradition of traveling internationally on their own nation’s passports. The Iroquois Nationals, a lacrosse team made up of 23 players representing each member nation of the Haudenosaunee, also known as the Iroquois confederacy, were barred from traveling to the world championships in Great Britain on their Haudenosaunee passports, despite an offer of a one-time travel waiver from U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. After British officials refused to issue visas to the Nationals, ranked fourth in the world, more than 2,000 news reports told the story of the team that resolutely refused to travel on U.S. or Canadian passports. The Haudenosaunee passports, some partially handwritten, do not include new security features, including computer chips, which are expected in the post-9/11 era. But the team had traveled internationally without incident until now, which made the British and Canadian refusal so close to the tournament surprising. ... |
NATURE American Indian News Service
Several times each summer, employees at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian release ladybugs into its landscape as a natural control for aphids. Each of the diminutive beetles will eat thousands of the plant-sucking pests in its lifetime. The ladybug releases are made joyous by local children who join museum staff in releasing the bugs on the sunny southern side of the Washington museum, where corn, beans and squash are just some of the indigenous American crops grown and enjoyed by thousands of visitors each year. The bugs arrive in little burlap sacks in which they are refrigerated and kept dormant until release. The ladybugs emerge onto the arms and legs of the children, then fly or crawl off into the museum’s popular public garden. The mostly preschoolers at the recent event said the ladybugs tickled their skin. A 4-year-old said she liked the ladybug’s red color. A 5-year-old liked their spots. Another said, “I like that they eat other bugs.” Over 450 different lady beetles, ladybugs and ladybird beetles live in North America. Some are native and others were imported from Europe or Asia for use by farmers. While the most familiar are red, the beetles can also be white, yellow, pink or orange. ... |
CULTURE Thousands of Native paddlers arrive in Neah Bay, Wash., and come ashore to be welcomed by the Makah after ocean voyages of weeks for those from Alaska and Canada American Indian News Service
Neah Bay, Wash.—The Journey to Makah: Journey to the Beginning of the World concluded early on the morning of July 25, the completion of a canoe journey that some of its 10,000 Native participants began three weeks earlier, paddling from as far as Southeast Alaska and Northern Vancouver Island in British Columbia to the westernmost point in the continental United States. The annual Canoe Journey began in 1989 and has occurred every year since 1993. Each year a different Indian nation among the Coast Salish has hosted, with canoes from all nations crossing internal and territorial borders to join together on the water highways of their ancestors. Landing at Neah Bay, the point of the Olympic Peninsula in Washington, where the Pacific Ocean meets the recently named Salish Sea, canoe families waited their turn to declare their intentions in coming ashore, a protocol as old as the practice of paddling carved cedar canoes on these waters. Many of the pullers in the canoes are young people from the nations, who train with their elders year-round, forming what’s called a canoe family, and learning songs while building their physical endurance. ... |
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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