Editor's Note This month the American Indian News Service celebrates how Native youth are taking leadership roles to preserve their cultures, inspiring everyone around them. Also in this issue: At the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, plans are underway to turn a gallery into a family activity center; a sculpture on display tells of an Oregon artist’s experience mentoring imprisoned teens; and a pianist in Texas studies and performs forgotten classical works based on Native American music of long ago. |
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EXHIBITION Teens and adults perform ancient wolf dances at a Seattle museum exhibition on Quileute history, setting the record straight on the hit book and film series
By Kara Briggs Seattle, Wash.—The Seattle Art Museum opened an exhibition of some of the oldest-known objects from the Quileute Nation, including more than a dozen items that have never been displayed from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian. The exhibition, “Behind the Scenes: The Real Story of the Quileute Wolves,” is meant to provide a counterpoint to the popular “Twilight” series of books and movies, which fictionalizes the Northwest tribe and its origins. When the first movie came out in 2008, the Quileute’s one-square-mile reservation in a remote part of coastal Washington state instantly became a worldwide destination for tween fans.” But real Quileute have nothing in common with the werewolves that the movies interpret them to be, as 1,600 people who crowded into the Seattle museum this summer ... |
CULTURE Whether summoning the courage to dance or apprenticing to harvest an endangered tree for basketry, Native children play an important role in preserving ancestral ways By Kara Briggs,
Washington, D.C.—Kelly Church, a weaver of black ash baskets, is working against time to teach the children of her tribe, the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa, about the imperiled tree. Black ash trees across a vast swath of the continent—from Wisconsin to New York and as far south as Tennessee and north as Ontario—could be effectively extinct in as little as a decade because of an infestation by the emerald ash borer, a voracious imported Asian beetle. In her home state of Michigan, Church said, a decade is optimistic. “I apprenticed two kids who were able to harvest a tree with me, and pound it—that’s one of the most important parts of what we did,” she said. “More importantly, we need these kids to plant the black ash seeds decades from now, when the emerald ash borer is expected to be extinct.” American Indian children across North America take on grown-up responsibilities for cultural preservation. Every Indian nation has its own way of sharing its ancient indigenous knowledge with its younger generation. But now, the speed of that transfer of knowledge has increased ... |
ENVIRONMENT Scientists, leaders and educators describe looming impacts of climate change on populations worldwide and seek solutions incorporating Native thinking By Kara Briggs,
Washington, D.C.—The Living Earth/Living Waters symposium at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian explored how recent declines in glaciers across North and South America, as well as the threat of rising sea levels, could displace large populations, including Native peoples. The Aug. 7 symposium, which brought together scholars and scientists, was part of the Living Earth Festival. José Barreiro, who is Taíno and the assistant director for research at the museum, opened the event by speaking about his research and travels on the Inka Road in Peru. “The Andean glaciers are closer to the sun, and melting faster than in other places,” Barreiro said. “In the Andes, glaciers have lost 20 percent of their mass. People in the cities are in serious threat of lacking drinking water. Lack of water could cause mass migrations of people away from La Paz, Bolivia, and other cities. Ceremonially, elders say that the white-haired mountains are increasingly dressing in black to signify mourning.” Nancy Maynard is senior research scientist in the Cryospheric Sciences Branch at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. A marine biologist, she also runs NASA’s Tribal Colleges and University Program, through which she has worked to bring scientific analysis together with indigenous ways of knowing. She said: “The Earth planet is a water planet. It is a pale blue dot ... |
ARTS Oregon artist Rick Bartow’s provocative sculpture appears in “Vantage Point,” an exhibition of contemporary Native art at NMAI American Indian News Service
Rick Bartow’s sculpture “From the Mad River to the Little Salmon River, or The Responsibility of Raising a Child” is a precariously balanced series of images. The work, part of an exhibition of contemporary Native art called “Vantage Point” now showing at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, grew out of Bartow’s impressions of boys incarcerated at Oregon’s MacLaren Youth Correctional Facility. Aged 12 to 18, many of the boys Bartow met already had girlfriends and babies. Around them swirled a history of alcohol and drug addiction, perhaps abuse, perhaps being an abuser of someone else. Out of empathy for the imprisoned boys whom he mentored, Bartow carved the sculpture, later casting it in bronze. Here are some of the images Bartow used: The sculpture is built on the back of a coyote, the trickster. A grandmother mask on the coyote’s back end carries a tattoo that Bartow’s mother saw when she was a girl on the face of an elder healing woman at Siletz, Ore. A grandfather mask sits on the coyote’s hip. A pair of salmon rest on the coyote’s back. Salmon give up their lives for their children. A Pacific lamprey eel feeds on the male salmon. ... |
MUSIC Lisa Cheryl Thomas performs largely forgotten works by a group of 20th-century classical composers who used Native rhythms, scales and themes By Kara Briggs,
Washington, D.C.—Lisa Cheryl Thomas, a pianist and scholar who has made the music of a group of classical composers called Indianists her specialty, performed this summer at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian and at the Kennedy Center. Thomas, Cherokee descent, who lives near Dallas, considers the melodies and rhythms of Native American music to be among the most important in the American tradition of classical music. She performs a program of work by the Indianists of the early 20th century and by contemporary Native American composers of today. “Antonin Dvorák composed music with Czechoslovakian melodies, and he said America needs to have its own music based on Native American music,” said Thomas, who recently completed a doctorate focusing on the topic at the University of North Texas College of Music. “The Indianists composed music with Native American motifs, and even though they weren’t Native American themselves, their compositions were based upon documentation of Native music by ethnomusicologists, and they carried forth fascinating rhythms, scales and pitch systems.” ... |
MUSEUM American Indian News Service Washington, D.C.—A third-floor gallery in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian is being renovated into an interactive children’s exhibition space. “We want it to be a place where anyone can feel comfortable exploring,” said Amy Van Allen, the museum’s outreach manager in community and constituent services. The 5,700-square-foot gallery is unique in the museum for having windows that look out on the National Mall and the U.S. Capitol. Many Native leaders gathered in the space two years ago to watch the inauguration of President Obama. The creation of the new gallery for children will be welcomed like a birth, which children will be invited to celebrate in a gala upon its arrival around Mother’s Day, May 8, 2011, and at annual birthday events in the years to come. ... |
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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