Indians inspired Pollock

Jackson PollockThe real creative breakthrough came completely by accident. As a child, Henderson had a Navajo nanny and had become obsessed with American Indian culture. Also, since Jungian theory posited the notion that a colonizing people "inherit" the racial memory of the natives they displace, the therapist assumed that Pollock's unconscious contained American Indian imagery and ordered him to "dredge it up." (Yes, this is extremely bizarre. Try to imagine someone like Teddy Roosevelt "inheriting" the racial memory of all the dead Apaches...)

While poor Pollock could not come up with anything that vaguely resembled indigenous art, he did begin to explore native art on his own. Influenced by Henderson, he began to study Navajo sand paintings. He also began to haunt the Museum of Natural History and was fixated on the artwork of the Kwakiutl, Bella Coola, Haida, Tsimshian and Tlingit tribes. Pollock came to the realization that he was yearning for the same kind of shamanic power that these artists had achieved and began to think of his artwork as the analogy of that of tribal artists. By digging into his own subconscious and by seeking oneness with nature, he would achieve the same kind of power that he saw in the museum pieces.

It is singularly ironic that Pollock would gravitate toward American Indian artists, since fame or fortune were the last things on their mind. Pollock was simply looking for a technique that could elevate his work to a higher plane. The obsession with American Indian artwork was based on almost total ignorance about their way of life, characteristic not only of Pollock but other big-time artists and critics as well. Abstract Expressionist superstar Barnett Newman wrote in the 1947 essay "The Ideographic Picture":

"The Kwakiutl artist painting on a hide did not concern himself with ... inconsequentials...The abstract shape he used, his entire plastic language, was directed by a ritualistic will towards metaphysical understanding. The everyday realities he left to the toy-makers; the pleasant play of non-objective pattern basket weavers. To him a shape was a living thing, a vehicle for an abstract thought-complex, a carrier of the awesome feelings he felt before the terror of the unknowable."His Unique StyleHis method of painting came from his interest in primitive cultures and he was especially fascinated with Native American Navajo sand painters and their method of working. Their works were created on the ground with sand of various colors let loose from the hand. He described his abstraction as an attempt to evoke the rhythmic energy of nature.Pollock on PaperAs he matured, Pollock became more and more a glyph-maker of the feral and unsayable: animals and biomorphic deformities (some cribbed from Picasso: maws and paws, bulls' heads, snouted ladies, bristling forked bipeds), stiletto draperies, sharp-edged lariats and blades, imaginary creatures (usually in some condition of trouble), and motifs suggestive of Navajo sand painting, Hopi bowl designs, and the celebrative bonfires of Pueblo communities.

A 1946 experiment comically illustrates Pollock's running hide-and-seek with representation: over a photograph of a dog he laminated film skimmed from enamel paint. Stressed-out canines appear often. In his 1943 painting Guardians of the Secret, in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the slashingly drawn coyote-ish animal lying at the picture's bottom, between gaunt male and female hierophants, recalls the Prankster of American Indian stories.

Chabon's Jewish/Tlingit novel

Meshuga Alaska[I]f Gentlemen disappoints, The Yiddish Policemen's Union, in which the enduring tropes of the private-eye novel and the science-fiction parallel-universe fantasy are mixed and matched, is triumphant, as if Raymond Chandler and Philip K. Dick had smoked a joint with I.B. Singer. In the alternative twentieth century conceived by Chabon, Russia has gone through three republics without a revolution. The Holocaust is called, instead, the Destruction. An atom bomb fell on Berlin in 1946. In 1948, Jews in the Holy Land were defeated and savaged by Arabs, so there is no Israel. Enticed by an American settlement act that promised them sixty years of sanctuary before their federal district reverted to Alaska, thousands of Yiddish-speaking Jews arrived by a World War I troop transport at a swamp near the old Russian colony of Sitka, where they were numbered, inoculated, deloused, and tagged like migrant birds, only to discover 50,000 Tlingit Indians already in possession of most of the flat and usable land. After which, nonetheless, crews of young Jewesses in blue head scarves went immediately to work, "singing Negro spirituals with Yiddish lyrics that paraphrased Lincoln and Marx." Down south, the American first lady is Marilyn Monroe Kennedy, the Cuban war has not gone well, and the Jews of Sitka are called "the Frozen Chosen."

Jewish Sitka, population 3.2 million, a couple of months shy of the 2008 "Reversion," is one of the novel's finest characters, an imaginary city, as palpable as Tel Aviv, as ghostly as Warsaw, as liverish as Buenos Aires, with newspapers, cigarettes, tunnels, and secrets —everything but public transportation. We visit the Hotel Zamenhof on Max Nordau Street for dead bodies, the Hotel Einstein on Adler for nostalgia, the Ringelblum Avenue Baths for conspiracy, Bronfman University for a joke, the Polar-Shtern Kafeteria for pickled crab apple and perhaps a kreplach shaped like the head of Maimonides, and Goldblatt's Dairy Restaurant to remember a Jewish massacre of Tlingits. We meet momzers, shtarkers, schlossers, grifters, boundary mavens, patzer ex-cons, bottom-rung bet runners like Penguin Simkowitz, mouse-eyed shtinkers like Zigmund Landau ("the Heifetz of Informers"), ultra-Orthodox black-hat wiseguys like the Verbover Hasidim, in charge of gun-running, money-laundering, cigarette smuggling, policy racketeering, and Third Temple fantasizing, and Landsman's partner in crime-stopping, Berko Shemets, a half-Tlingit whose Indian line goes all the way back to the creation-mythic Raven but who is, at this time in this place, an observant Jew "for his own reasons": "He is a minotaur, and the world of Jews is his labyrinth."

Preserving seeds and cultures

Preserved seeds restore aboriginal food systemsIn 1983, four Tucsonans involved with feeding the hungry began to worry that seed stock for future crops was disappearing. They contributed $100 each to cover the cost of locating 40 varieties of endangered seeds to ensure those specific strains would not permanently disappear. Now, nearly 25 years later, 2,000 varieties of seeds have been saved from extinction.

"If we had to duplicate our seed collection today, it would be impossible because many of the originals are no longer available," said Barney Burns, one of the original founders. "Ours is a treasure trove that provides an irreplaceable genetic library to draw on as a basis for sustainable, environmentally-friendly Native American agriculture of the future."

"These seeds represent cultures that have survived for thousands of years in the Southwest," said Kevin Dahl, executive director of the organization. "Ancient farmers figured out how to be successful in pretty marginal growing conditions--little water, soil heavy in alkalinity, hot growing conditions. It wasn't an easy task."

Preview of Montclair exhibit

Taken from a press release:The Comic Book Super-Hero:  America’s Mythology, Society’s Mirror

This important 2007 exhibit by the prestigious Montclair Art Museum not only recognizes the comic book as a true art form as indigenous to America as jazz, but also presents comic books as reflectors of a changing American culture from the 1930s to today, and hails comic book super-heroes as America’s modern-day mythology.

Using rare, first issues of comic books that have fetched prices in excess of $400,000 and one-of-a-kind original artwork from historic comic books which have never been available for display to the general public or to the generations of fans, The Montclair Art Museum exhibit honors the long-ignored geniuses of story and art who founded an industry, forged super-heroes out of their fertile imaginations, and both entertained and educated audiences for nearly 75 years.Comment:  I hope to be a guest at this exhibit and speak about Indian comics.

Thunder in the Desert

Thunder in the Desert to rumble into TucsonThe event is billed as "10,000 years of culture--150 tribal nations--10 days--all in one location"; and despite a full and busy agenda, organizer Fred Synder advises: "Take your watch off and put it in your pocket," because nothing starts until the medicine men and the Gourd dancers finish blessing the grounds.

The year 2008 will mark the third encounter of First People's New Millennium World Fair and the Thunder in the Desert premier event at Rillito Raceway Park in Tucson.

"Native Americans feel it important to commemorate the 21st century as a special time in history," Synder said. "Symbolically, a mark will be placed on a calendar stick and a design inscribed on buffalo hide to celebrate the continued existence of the people throughout the past millennium--and a recommitment made to continue the strength, beauty and endurance of tradition and culture."

Preview of Huntington exhibit

From a press release on an upcoming Huntington Library exhibit:New Exhibition on Native Americans Opens June 9th

In recognition of the 400th anniversary of the meeting of European and Native American peoples in Jamestown, Va., this exhibition will look at how North American Indians have been depicted in images from the 1500s to the early 1900s. Featuring extraordinary rare material drawn from The Huntington's collections, the exhibition includes the first pictures said to be of an Indian in a 15th-century published account of Columbus' Western Hemisphere landing. Also on view will be the first lithograph of an Indian by Swiss artist Peter Rindisbacher; stunning portraits published by Thomas McKenney and James Hall in their History of the Indian Tribes of North America (1842-44); and much more.

Better choice for Virginia's quarter

This silver commemorative coin includes all three of the races that were instrumental in founding Virginia. That's better than two (the coin I previously suggested) or zero (the actual coin chosen).

Sweat lodges for prisoners

Sweat lodge ceremonies reconnect Native American inmates with their culture, people and landThe volatile cocktail of emotions that was mixing in Melvin Martin had reached a boiling point. He felt like he was about to go crazy.

Far from his home on the Navajo reservation and far from his people’s ancient healing traditions, he could do nothing but fester inside a Sandoval County lockup as he waited for the justice system to run its course.

Today, the soft-spoken Navajo from Crownpoint says he’s a different person. He seems more relaxed, respectful and reconnected to his culture.Some history:It’s been three decades since the first sweat lodge was built in a Nebraska prison, but American Indian prisoners in some states only recently won access to such religious ceremonies, and others are still fighting for it. Security is usually the top argument against Native ceremonies.

In Maine, a group of prisoners is suing over claims that their constitutional rights were violated because they have no access to sweat lodges or ceremonial music and food. In New Jersey, lawyers representing a handful of Indian prisoners are close to settling an eight-year-old lawsuit involving religious rights.

“We have had to pursue litigation, legislation and more recently negotiating with prison officials to implement these programs,” said Lenny Foster, a Navajo spiritual adviser who works with hundreds of prisoners across the country and has testified before Congress and the United Nations on Native rights.

“I think for the longest time we’ve been denied, as Indian people, that right to practice our tradition, our culture,” he said. “We were told not to speak our language; we cut our hair; we were told to convert to Christianity. Our sweat lodges, our medicine bundles, our pipes were burned.”

Giat: Sioux betrayed themselves

HBO feels 'Wounded'

The final chapter of the American Indians' doomed struggle to cling to their homeland gets a starkly realistic treatment in HBO's 'Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.'"My primary objective was to fully dimensionalize these people," Giat says. "Sitting Bull was vain. He was desperate to hold onto the esteem of his people and win the esteem of the whites. But I think in depicting his desperation and the measures he took in acting on it, it makes it all the more sad and tragic, and I think we identify with him all the more for it."

"People have an iconic view of Sitting Bull," says Yves Simoneau, the film's director, "but that image is restrictive. The way August played him, noble but far from perfect, made him the character the test audiences identified with the most—by a long way." Schellenberg played Sitting Bull in TNT's "Crazy Horse" (1995), but he is much more forceful here.

The key theme in the film that underscores the conflictedness of the Sioux at this cataclysmic moment in their history is that of self-betrayal. Two of Sitting Bull's warriors became tribal policemen at the Standing Rock Agency. One of them unintentionally tramples on his people's pride by killing a buffalo in a corral. The other, who shoots Sitting Bull, was the bitter father of the slain baby.Comment:  See Hanay Geiogamah's response to this article. Also see my response to the same issues.

Geiogamah slams Bury My Heart

The End of the Hollywood TrailWith breathtaking arrogance, Bury My Heart's narrative forcibly inducts American Indians into the brotherhood of savagery as a way of universalizing them and making them like all other people.

Genocide is dramatized as just as much the result of the mean-spirited and physically cruel behavior of American Indians, who were fighting for their very survival, as it was of the inhumanity of the American armies. The last shreds of Indian nobility are eliminated once and for all.

A feature article on the making of Bury My Heart titled "The Last Stand" in the May 27 Los Angeles Times gives a brief, perplexing account of how Hollywood came to the view that American Indians can now be justly and fairly seen as co-agents of their own destruction. As a two-hour condensation of the book, "The film didn't have time to dwell on the spiritual, Earth-friendly image of Native Americans," says the article's author, Graham Fuller. "Nor does it offer a politically correct perspective," he adds. The Sioux, we're told, were "as rapacious as their white conquerers."

This view is scaldingly laid out with the portrayal of Sitting Bull as a baby killer, as a coward who hid in his tipi at the height of the Battle of Little Bighorn, and as a greedy buffoon who lusts for the white man's money and approval.Comment:  Geiogamah provides a poetic overview of the movie's flaws. My article provides the details.

Ancients communicated over miles

Reflecting the past:  Rangers, archeologists test out ancient messaging systemThe shard of reflected sunlight sliced through the sage-brush-covered mesa like molten silver.

"We can see you really well!" Aztec Ruins Interpretive Ranger Jackie Berens said into a cell phone. About two miles away, her fellow ranger Terry Nichols changed the angle of a full-length dressing mirror and the silver shard glinted.

From Nichols' perch, she could see a similar mirror some 61 miles away on Huerfano Mountain on Tuesday.

"It was pretty cool," she said. "(I said), Whoa! There it is!"

About 1,000 years ago, the Chacoan Anasazi inhabitants may have communicated the same way—minus the cell phone and dressing mirror.

Park rangers and archeologists at 23 Anasazi ruins scattered over 86 miles tested the theory that the ancient people passed messages between population centers. Instead of mirrors, the people would likely have used flat, shiny abalone shells or signal fires.

Review of Coyote Blue

Book Review:  Coyote Blue by Christopher MooreChristopher Moore in Coyote Blue has written a Coyote story that is funny, and sad at the same time. Like all good Coyote stories it gives a life lesson or two; in this case they are finding out what is truly important in life and being true to who you are. Perhaps it's because it was the first book of his that I read, but I still think of it as his best one. The characters are strong and the plot is great and the story moves at the perfect pace. That he's caught the essence of a Coyote story to perfection a well doesn't hurt.

I love to see Old Man Coyote chasing his tail and Christopher Moore has done a great job with this book of keeping Old Man Coyote alive for anybody who cares to catch a glimpse of the tricky bugger. Just be careful that you don't get left holding the bag–-or some other part of his anatomy that he's decided he doesn't want to use at the moment.Comment:  Coyote Blue is another great native-themed book. Rob's rating: 8.5 of 10.

Churchill must go?

CU could salvage its reputationBrown's letter puts this matter in the proper context when he cites the three reasons why Churchill must be dismissed. One of those, on the interests of the entire state, deserves to be quoted in full:

"Professor Churchill's misconduct impacts the University's academic reputation and the reputation of its faculty. The integrity of the work of the faculty is central to the University's academic mission. And, as a publicly supported institution, the public must be able to trust that the University's resources will be dedicated to academic endeavors carried out according to the highest possible standards. Professor Churchill's conduct, if allowed to stand, would erode the university's integrity and public trust."

Bury My Heart's bias against Indians

The most notable thing in HBO's version of Dee Brown's Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee isn't the writing, acting, or directing. All these things are passable in this flawed but watchable movie. What stands out is the anti-Indian bias.

How is that possible in a production based on one of the most pro-Indian books ever? Read on for the evidence against the movie.

Bury My Heart's Bias Against Indians

A century of John Wayne

Memorializing the Deadly Myth of John WayneWayne was a vocal conservative, and his critics contend that the onscreen “Injun killer” was racist off-screen. In an infamous 1971 Playboy magazine interview, the Duke made insensitive comments about blacks and said this about America’s indigenous people: “I don’t feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from them. Our so-called stealing of this country from them was just a matter of survival. There were great numbers of people who needed new land, and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves.”

Wayne was, in reality, a draft dodger. America’s archetypal soldier was in fact a chicken hawk. He was a cheerleader and champion of militaristic patriotism and combat he had never experienced. Wayne had “other priorities” during WWII—achieving superstardom (and saving his neck) was more important than defeating fascism. Much like Vice President Dick Cheney, who sought numerous deferments during the Vietnam War, Wayne was the quintessential war wimp.

On the 100th anniversary of the Duke’s birth, Americans need to distinguish between myth and deadly realities. We must re-examine America’s love affair with settling disputes through gunplay, and question people and institutions that demand that the young sacrifice their minds and bodies in tribute to these actors (of the stage and political theater) and the violence they celebrate.Comment:  For more on Wayne, see Straight Shootin' with the Duke.

Eskimos can continue whaling

Whaling a 'Necessity' to Eskimos, Senator SaysA U.S. senator urged delegates of the International Whaling Commission to renew a five-year subsistence whaling quota for Alaska Native communities, calling it crucial to their society.

"It is more than a right--it is an absolute necessity which affects every facet of their well-being," Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) said Monday at the opening of the 76-nation commission's four-day meeting. "To deny this history would jeopardize their way of life."

Harvesting whales is considered a sacred accomplishment by many of an estimated 5,000 Eskimos who rely heavily on the meat to fill their tables. Ceremonial dances are held to bless the hunts, and successful harvests prompt village celebrations at which the meat is cut up and distributed.Eskimo whalers win 5-year huntThe ballroom at the Hotel Captain Cook broke out in applause this morning and Eskimo whalers shook hands after they won the right from the International Whaling Commission to subsistence hunt for another five years.

Despite concerns some countries would block the request to take 51 bowheads a year from 2008 to 2012, the proposal passed by consensus after commissioners from several countries voiced support.

Stewart wants to trademark chief

American Indians opposed to Martha Stewart's trademark attemptMartha Stewart's attempt to trademark "Katonah"--a move that has already riled some of her village neighbors--has now upset some American Indians because the name originally belonged to a 17th-century chief.

Two members of the Ramapough Lenape Indian Nation, which claims Chief Katonah as its own, have joined the anti-trademark battle being waged by the Katonah Village Improvement Society.

And other American Indian leaders on Tuesday said that Stewart's trademark application was offensive.

"If I wanted to trademark 'Martha Stewart' and put out a line of tea towels, she would have me in court very quickly," said Suzan Harjo, president of the Morning Star Institute, a national advocacy group. "She'd be saying, 'You can't use my name, that's valuable, that belongs to me."'Commment:  See also the Brady Braves on Martha Stewart, Playing with "Indian" Names?

Comment on Imprint

From IMDB.com:First of all, it's just beautifully filmed. The scenery in that area is great.

Tonantzin's performance is awesome. Her facial expressions and actions are intense.

The story itself is not quite like any that I've seen before. At first it made me think of "The Grudge" a little bit. But, you can't tell if Shayla is just losing her mind or if she is really seeing and hearing these things. There always seems to MAYBE be a reason for these noises, but then again, why can't anyone else hear them? The recurring sound of metal banging and this hook repeatedly show up is just creepy. I knew that somehow the phone ringing at the same time everyday and the significance of always showing the time had something to do with this mystery, but I didn't put it together until after 9:13. I spent the last 15 minutes of the movie muttering "Holy crap!!! Holy crap!! Holy crap!!"

More comics news and reviews

Indian Comics Irregular #155:  From the Eiteljorg to Ecuador

Brits assume Indians are tolerant

"Navajo" project promotes well-being among gays, bisexuals

Butcher chops Indians again

Butcher calls Indian lawmaker "chief" and gavel a "war club"

Can an outsider write Indian books?

Kenneth Thomasma's books"White men who have tried to write stories about the Indian have either foisted on the public some bloodcurdling, impossible “thriller”; or, if they have been in sympathy with the Indian, have written from knowledge that was not accurate and reliable. No one is able to understand the Indian race like an Indian."

—Luther Standing Bear, 1928

Generations later, Kenneth Thomasma’s books embody the very problems Standing Bear wrote about. Using historical events as a background, teacher-turned-author Thomasma has produced a formulaic series called “Amazing Indian Children.” He also conducts writing workshops, storytelling assemblies and school programs, according to his press packet, “dressed in an Indian elk hide suit, complete with obsidian knife.” Choosing to represent Indian children, families, cultures and histories, he says his program “makes those Indian children proud of their heritage and restores self-respect to them that should never have been taken away.”

As a teacher, Thomasma could easily have accessed books by Luther Standing Bear/Ota K’te, Charles Eastman/Ohiyesa, Gertrude Bonnin/Zitkala Sa and others who wrote of their own lives as Indian children in the 19th Century. Instead, he visited historical sites, read accounts by non-Native scholars, spoke with Native elders “to get the details right,” and added his own “speculations and educated guesses.” Does all of this qualify Thomasma to produce a series of children’s books about Indian children? Does it qualify him to interpret another people’s stories? Does it make his books a way of teaching “all kids what it was like to be an Indian child” or make “Indian children proud of their heritage” and restore “self-respect to them”? Can an outsider enter a community, speak with a few people and then understand enough to be the legitimate voice of its children?(Excerpted from Debbie Reese's American Indians in Children's Literature, 5/25/07.)

Native singer climbs the charts

Upstream into the mainstream

Shawn Michael Perry is on the moveSinger/songwriter/actor Shawn Michael Perry is one ambitious man. As a recording artist, he's had the savvy to court the radio industry, successfully persuading to place cuts from his debut CD with his band, Shawn Michael Perry & Only the Brave, on America's pop, top 40, adult contemporary, college and country charts. He did his research, made his move and took a leap of faith.

“They hit on every one,” Perry exulted. “One song! I was like, wow!”His background:Perry was born in San Diego to a Salish father and a Panamanian mother of Mayan ancestry. One of his earliest memories of performing was singing Christmas songs in kindergarten.

"I was hooked from day one," he said, referring to the sound of applause. "What got me excited about music was 'The Flip Wilson Show,' and Michael Jackson used to come on there with the Jackson 5. I just thought that was it. As soon as I heard his voice and how people reacted to him, I just knew as a young child that that's exactly what I wanted to do."

Nakai collaborates again

A cultural musical journey through 'Voyagers'For the first time ever, traditional Native flute has been beautifully intertwined with Jewish- and Israeli-themed classical cello music, creating magnificent cross-cultural dialogues between world-renowned musicians R. Carlos Nakai, Navajo-Ute, flutist, and cellist Udi Bar-David, Israeli emigre. From these dialogues, the “Voyagers” recording evolved, creating an unforgettable unique collection of musical and cultural history.

Preparing for the recording, Bar-David, a 20-year veteran cellist for the Philadelphia Orchestra, listened to American Indian traditional music as well as Jewish- and Israeli-themed music. Once in the studio, Bar-David explained, “We expanded on themed music and entered an artistic dialogue. We created it at the moment. It was an improvisation, a natural revolution. We created a cross-cultural recording, a first of its kind.”

The "Brady Braves" blog

I just came across a great blog called "Brady Braves." Its mission:here at the official bbb, the bureau of brady braves, we are an e-research center that delivers news and views on redface, or playing "indian."Check out some of its postings on Native stereotypes:

The Today Show:  sweat lodges and rosie ...
Welch's Grape Juice:  Welch's "Indians"
My Wife and Kids:  "Michael's Tribe," Part II
My Wife and Kids:  My Wife and Kids "Michael's Tribe," Part I
The Smurfs:  Smurfing "Indians"
The Suite Life of Zack and Cody:  Disney's Revolutionary "Indians"
The Brady Bunch:  Greg, Peter, and Bobby = "Indians"?
General David Petraeus:  The Fonz's "Indians" ...
The Brady Bunch:  here's the story of a lovely lady ...

My take on Bury My Heart

I’d say Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee was better than the negative critics said but not as good as the positive critics said. Which is another way of saying the average critic got it right. Score another one for the perspicacity of critics.

In short, it was flawed but worth watching. I question a lot of the details, but at least it showed the reality of the era: the camps, the skirmishes, the primitive reservation. The movie gave you a flavor of the time and place you couldn’t get from a book.

Rob's rating:  7.5 of 10.

Rob an ignorant racist?

You may enjoy the following smackdown. It offers a few more arguments about Mark Reed and L. Frank Baum, of all people. I post it here only because it's in the archives and you probably wouldn't see it otherwise.

"You've showed yourself as an ignorant racist and a fan of advocates of genocide. Period."

Highly Defective People and their videos

YouTube videos show models with feathers, face paint, bones

Comment:  Follow the link to see all five videos and the criticism they garnered.

Why Indian vets get stressed

Soldier highlights problems in U.S. ArmyLeCompte's case is particularly disturbing because of the racist element, said Steve Robinson, director of veterans' affairs for the Veterans of America, who has investigated more than 40 complaints at Fort Carson alone.

"The fact that people in his chain of command used ethnic and racial slurs, called him 'sand nigger' and 'prairie nigger' and 'wagon-burner' and other things is very disturbing. I served 20 years in the military. We don't treat people like that in our military and it's not tolerated. When I heard these things, it made the hair on the back of my neck stand up and I realized that the moral fabric of what I believe the military to be must be under a tremendous amount of pressure," Robinson said.And:LeCompte also endured taunting on the battlefield.

"They ridiculed him and called him a 'drunken Indian.' They said, 'Hey, dude, you look just like a haji--you'd better run.' They call the Arabs 'haji.' I mean, it's one thing to worry for your life, but then to have to worry about friendly fire because you don't know who in the hell will shoot you?" Tammie LeCompte said.
Comment:  Happy Memorial Day!

Pop Art capital of South America

At 12,000 Feet, Andean Culture Meets Pop ArtA generation ago, fiestas like Ch'uta drew considerable attention from a group of young artists in La Paz. Partly inspired by the New York-based Pop Art movement, this circle began producing works filled with playful references to Aymara Indian culture: the festival masks, costumes and brightly colored fabrics that stand out sharply amid the washed-out landscapes of the altiplano. But while the Pop Art scene in New York was soon supplanted by other creative waves, it has never really disappeared from La Paz. And now the unique aesthetics of this city and the surrounding region have begun inspiring not just local artists, but also fashion designers and painters from the rest of South America and beyond.

Noted painters from the United States and Europe have come to La Paz to soak up the city's Andean atmosphere. The British designer John Galliano recently created a line based on the clothing of the Indian tribes of Bolivia and Peru, and last year the Buenos Aires fashion company Tramando introduced tops and skirts inspired by the “warmth, festivities and myths [and] rich chromatic nuances” of altiplano culture. Trixie d'Epanoux, a partner in Tramando, recently referred to La Paz as the Pop Art capital of South America.

Governor's office responds to FAITA article

Received via e-mail:Rob,

Thank you for your article regarding the 15th Annual First Americans in the Arts Awards. I am the woman you are referring to from Governor Schwarzenegger's office. I would also like to add that I am a Nez Perce tribal member as well and I've had the honor of representing the Governor at various Native American events. Maybe our paths will cross in the future and I would have an opportunity of meeting you in person.

Respectfully,

Rika

Rika Powaukee
Assistant to the Director/Office Manager
Office of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger
300 South Spring Street Suite 16701
Los Angeles, CA 90013

Brown's book changed everything

Wounded Knee's ghosts ride again

A TV movie is set to reignite the debate over the fate of Native AmericansBack in 1970, when Brown's book was published, Native Americans were all but forgotten and powerless on their reservations, reduced in popular culture to stock images of whooping warriors in cowboy films or friendly farmers in Thanksgiving Day ceremonies.

Brown's book changed all that. Chapter by chapter, it chronicled the experience of individual tribes at the hands of white men. And though the characters and locations changed, the story was always the same: white treachery, the loss of Native American lands and the extermination of a culture. It has now sold more than 5 million copies. 'It had an enormous impact. It changed everything,' said Riggs.

Ohio plays feature Indians

Staging history outdoorsLike all lands along the Western frontier, Ohio couldn't wait to push native people beyond its newly drawn borders. Now, two centuries later, the state welcomes theatrical "American Indians" back each summer as stars of its long-running outdoor dramas.

Ohio has three granddaddy productions, dating back to "Trumpet in the Land" in 1970, a tragedy about Ohio's first European settlement and the Delaware Indians they came to convert.

"Blue Jacket," about a white choosing to live as a Shawnee, and "Tecumseh!" about the great Shawnee leader, followed on the outdoor stages, exploring Ohio's once-powerful Shawnee nation on the land they once revered.

Skateboarders, rappers, and punk rockers

“When Your Hands Are Tied”:  Keeping Traditions in the Age of Hip HopMia Boccella Hartle and Marley Shebala’s documentary, When Your Hands Are Tied, profiles the lives of young Natives and the challenges and rewards of embracing their ethnic identity amidst America’s cultural goulash.

The tenor of the film is uniformly upbeat. The filmmakers focused on Natives from the Southwest—teens to tribal elders, the Governor of the Nambe Pueblo who started a break dancing team, members of the Apache Skateboarders, Navajo rappers and punk rock musicians, and former beauty queen—all acknowledging the power they’ve gained from reaffirming their cultural ties.

December Stereotype of the Month loser

The loser:  Apocalypto portrays Maya as brutal, bloodthirsty barbarians

Dishonorable mention:  ND Indians live in "pure filth"; rez system is a "total failure"

Earnest, dutiful Bury My Heart

'Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee'

HBO's 'Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee' is more dutiful than inspired, but there's always the book.To say that you should not mistake HBO's dramatic adaptation of Dee Brown's great book "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" for actual history is to say only what must be said about nearly every film that dresses actors as real people and gives them a script to read. In all but the deftest hands, such movies are basically just pageants, episodic stagings of great moments from the past, sometimes strung together on what is usually a not very convincing through-line—a "personal journey."

But even a bad historical film on a good subject may make you want to learn more, if only by getting you to ask yourself, "Could it possibly have happened that way?" If HBO's version of "Wounded Knee"—which is not really a bad film, just an average one of its kind, earnest, dutiful, oversimplified, underdeveloped, weighted down in exposition and by turns intriguing, melodramatic and dull—does nothing more than send a few more people to Brown's book, that may be all the credit in heaven it needs.Wounded Knee:  America's Killing Fields

HBO movie depicts the slow, brutal death of a once-proud raceThe inclusion of Goodale’s point of view and the love story between her and Eastman, who, although an important historical figure, is not a part of Brown’s book, is vaguely problematic in that it reflects a disturbing tradition of mass-entertainment films about nonwhite races being partly driven by white—or, in the case of Eastman, assimilated-and-acting-on-behalf-of-white—characters. (Think Dances With Wolves, Dangerous Minds, Mississippi Burning or any movie Hollywood’s made about Africa.)

Considering what made Brown’s book such a revisionist revelation upon its release—the overdue novelty of steadfastly hewing to the poetic words and bitter remembrances of sympathetic Native Americans, after years of popular history depicting them as savages—this is a sticky element for anybody attempting to faithfully evoke the book’s we-were-screwed importance. Of the three prongs in the crisscrossing narrative—Sitting Bull, Dawes and Eastman—only Sitting Bull’s scenes feel like they capture the ugly dehumanization Brown was after. Whenever the focus is Eastman, who goes from well-intentioned policy collaborator with Dawes to reservation doctor, and watches firsthand how America’s ramshackle recruitment of Indians toward a “civilized” way of life is actually killing them, the movie develops a curious remove, despite Beach’s best efforts to communicate anguish. (You just don’t worry as much for the degreed doctor as you do for a Sioux uprooted from everything he knows.)Buried in HistoryVirginia Woolf once wrote that after reading some novels, she felt she was expected to reach for her checkbook. HBO's new film, "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee," which airs Sunday, makes you feel that way, except that you don't know where to send the check.

Despite its good intentions, "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" tries to jam too much history and significance into too small a space. For instance, the entire prickly issue of whether the Sioux were a predatory people who took their sacred Black Hills territory from the Crow—and, trust me, I've heard that question debated by members of both tribes, and as a white person you wouldn't want to touch it with a 10-foot lance—is compressed into a few lines of dialogue between Sitting Bull and Colonel Miles (played by a grim-visage Shaun Johnston). Insults, humiliations, and atrocities to the American Indians become so common that the conflagration at Wounded Knee seems almost anticlimactic. (Mr. Simoneau's restraint in the Wounded Knee scenes is in sharp contrast to Joe Johnston's horrific imagery of the slaughter in 2004's "Hidalgo.")Exclusive Interview:  Adam Beach, Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee

Trouble making Bury My Heart

Pergament:  HBO’s ‘Wounded Knee’ is deserving of kudosAfter a 36-year wait, HBO Films has adapted the late Dee Brown’s 1971 best-selling nonfiction book, “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.” However, the cable network is airing it at 9 p.m. Sunday—during a low-viewing Memorial Day weekend when much of America may be out barbecuing or celebrating the unofficial start of summer.

The story of “Wounded Knee,” which depicts the government’s claim to sacred Native American land and its political attempts to assimilate the Native American, is hardly a cause for celebration.

The U.S. government is the bad guy in this drama, which may be one reason it took so long for the book to be made into a film. In an interview last January in Pasadena, Calif., producer Tom Thayer said he asked the book’s literary agent why it hadn’t been made into a film when he sought the rights.

“Well, my dear boy,” Thayer said he was told, “if you’ve read the book, it’s all told from their point of view, so who would you cast?”

The bigger question is whether an American audience will embrace a movie that makes its government look so heartless, greedy and unsympathetic as it broke treaties, promises and hearts to open the American West.

Key exchange in Bury My Heart

There’s an Allegory in Those Hills“How very convenient to cloak your claims in spiritualism. And what would you say to the Mormons and others who believe that their God has given to them Indian lands in the West?

“No matter what your legends say, you didn’t sprout from the plains like the spring grasses and you didn’t coalesce out of the ether. You came out of the Minnesota woodlands armed to the teeth and set upon your fellow man. You massacred the Kiowa, the Omaha, the Ponca, the Oto and the Pawnee without mercy. And yet you claim the Black Hills as a private preserve bequeathed to you by the Great Spirit.”

Sitting Bull shoots back: “And who gave us the guns and powder to kill our enemies? And who traded guns to the Chippewa and others who drove us from our home?”

Colonel Miles replies: “Chief Sitting Bull, the proposition that you were a peaceable people before the appearance of the white man is the most fanciful legend of all! You were killing each other for hundreds of moons before the first white stepped foot on this continent. You conquered those tribes, lusting for their game and their lands. Just as we have now conquered you for no less noble a cause.”Comment:  I've already given some responses to a version of this speech. I'd love to hear how a Lakota or any Indian would respond.

RedCloud tours reservations

Ex-Mexican Gangmember, RedCloud, Displays Positive Message On Debut AlbumAs rappers continue to compete against each other to prove who is the hardest around, Mexican rapper RedCloud is focused on bringing a positive message to the culture.

With the release of his long awaited debut, Hawthrone's Most Wanted (named after his Los Angeles hometown), RedCloud is determined to connect with the average person who can't related to topics rappers have made the norm--diamonds, cars, women and money. Instead, he says he's speaking to the average person with personal stories everyone can relate to.He's sharing this attitude with Indians:Currently, RedCloud is currently enduring a grueling touring schedule, which is packed with 140 shows. However, he not only plays the clubs with his music, but also does mission outreach to Native American reservations where he comes face to face with poverty, addiction and other rough problems.

"We travel from reservation to reservation sharing a message of hope to the Native American people, the First Nation's people and Indigenous people of Mexico," explains RedCloud. "Nowadays, 90% of Native American youth are into hip-hop. They forget what their elders are telling them these days, or they don't care about tradition or their heritage tells them. They want to do what they love, which is hip-hop and we speak that language very, very well."

New Maria Tallchief documentary

The Miami Nation presents a “Sneak Preview” of an upcoming PBS Documentary Maria Tallchief by Sandra and Yasu OsawaThis documentary is the third in a trilogy of films that highlights contemporary American Indian themes, issues and people by the Seattle based Upstream Productions. In this film, Ms. Tallchief tells her own story accompanied by dance clips, interviews with colleagues and historians and archival photos. Explained Sandra Osawa, a Makah filmmaker, “There are no contemporary stories about Native American women on PBS, the myriad of other television stations or on the big screen. For us, as American Indian women, Pocahontas is as good as it gets. This documentary aims to change the perpetual image of Indian women from one of ‘beast of burden’ or ‘romantic princess’ to one which will highlight a truly inspirational life—one filled with integrity and passion for the arts.”

Osawa’s film explains that in the late 1940’s, Tallchief ushered in a new prototype of the ballerina that was distinctly American, in a ballet world that was dominated by the Russians, the French and the English. All that changed in 1948 when Ms. Tallchief took the stage to capture the critical NY audience in a new ballet called Orpheus. Author Francis Mason, who is featured in the film exclaimed, “Maria Tallchief lit a fire under classical ballet that is still burning.”

Native food = restaurant trend

The Oldest Nouvelle Cuisine

Going beyond spas, Arizona tries culinary tourism with Native American foodRestaurateurs have mined every corner of the world in the constant search for something different to put on the menu. Yet the original American cuisine, Native American cooking, is just now slowly emerging into the spotlight, primarily in the Southwest.

The movement to revive indigenous cuisine is part of an attempt to restore Native Americans' pride in their culture, combined with an effort by food enthusiasts to resurrect near-forgotten culinary traditions. It's also a chance for towns in the Southwest to broaden their appeal beyond spas and outdoor activities to the potentially lucrative realm of culinary tourism.

Digital TV at Ramah

"Why can't PBS's Big Bird learn Navajo?" Learn the answer in this Turquoise Tales posting.

Bury My Heart = movie of the week

There’s an Allegory in Those HillsThis project was doomed to overreach and to sermonize. To begin with, it’s about American Indians, who ever since Sacheen Littlefeather declined Marlon Brando’s Oscar in 1973 have scared the chutzpah out of Hollywood, forcing the showoffs who invented westerns into defensive crouches and sorry offerings that look more like cut-and-paste Sunday school atonement projects than filmmaking.

Second, “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee” is a television movie. The red carpet premiere and credible stars (Aidan Quinn, Anna Paquin) that HBO supplied can’t conceal that this is a movie of the week—a form as eternal, indigenous and sacrosanct as the Black Hills of South Dakota. Simple-minded, blocky, smug, uplifting, always in a major key. Easy to sing along with.Comment:  Let's note the connections. Screenwriter Daniel Giat fabricated Eastman's role in the story. He rearranged details to make it accessible. He added expository speeches and anachronisms.

As a result, Bury My Heart sounds like a creative failure. From now on, when people think of Dee Brown's book, they'll remember this production. They'll assume the book is equally unpalatable and skip it.

This is exactly why you need creators dedicated to honesty and authenticy. If the screenplay is messy, uncomfortable, even difficult, that's reality. Manipulating it doesn't necessarily make it better and often makes it worse.

Of course, when I see Bury My Heart, I may decide it's good. But the point is valid regardless. If a contrived Bury My Heart is good, an uncontrived Bury My Heart could have been great.

Native news service planned

Bringing the Global Market to Native LandsAt the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, a group of college entrepreneurs are preparing to enter the global market by launching an American Indian news service—and without ever having to step foot off the reservation.

“You don’t need to leave the reservation to have global or regional impact because of the technology,” says Glorianna Cordova, a founding member of the new Red Wire news service. Cordova, who along with her four business partners, attends Oglala Lakota College in Pine Ridge, where she is studying digital video and new media production.

If they are successful in executing their business plan, Red Wire will provide subscribers from around the world an Internet-based source of news by and about American Indians. After decades of being defined by the mainstream media’s view of what is news in Indian Country, Cordova and her classmates are convinced they have found a niche by adding a Native perspective.Comment:  Newspapers such as Indian Country Today, the Native Times, and the Native Voice already are trying to provide national news from a Native perspective. So are websites such as Indianz.com and PECHANGA.net. How will this news service be different?

From what I've heard, ICT is struggling rather than flourishing, even though it's owned by the deep-pockets Oneida Nation. Therefore, I have to wonder if Red Wire's subscription model will work. I'd read the business plan carefully before I bet any money on it.

That said, any news service is to be applauded for trying to increase the flow of Native news. We may reach a point where the need for such news is satisfied, but we're not there yet.

US attorney targeted for helping Indians?

Aide:  Political stripes helped PauloseHeffelfinger, an experienced prosecutor and a Republican appointed by President Bush, resigned in February 2006, but has maintained he was not encouraged to leave and had no idea that anyone in Washington was thinking of firing him. It has since been established that Heffelfinger was indeed on lists of federal prosecutors considered for dismissal by the Justice Department.

Heffelfinger had placed a priority on issues pertaining to American Indians and led a subcommittee of U.S. attorneys examining the prevalence of gangs, guns, terrorism and other violent crimes on reservations. Federal attorneys oversee the prosecution of such crimes.

"If it's true that people within the Department of Justice were critical of the amount of time I was spending on Indian issues, I'm outraged," Heffelfinger said Wednesday afternoon. "Are they telling me that I spent too much time responding to the school shooting in Red Lake, which was the second-largest act of school violence prior to Virginia Tech? Are they telling me I spent too much time trying to improve public safety for Native Americans, who are victims of violent crime at a rate 2½ times the national population? If they are, then shame on them."

Bury My Heart worth watching

McCollum:  'Bury My Heart' is not perfect, but it's very good[T]he Eastman character is so well-written by Giat and acted with such passion and nuance by Adam Beach ("Flags Of Our Fathers") that you almost can overlook the historical inaccuracies. Beach's work is so good that it alone makes "Bury My Heart" worth watching.

In addition, Giat has crafted multidimensional portraits of Sitting Bull (a deft performance by Canadian actor August Schellenberg, who is part-Mohawk) and of Dawes (a skillful turn by Aidan Quinn of "Empire Falls"). The great chief and the well-meaning but patronizing politician could have been shown simplistically as hero and villain, but Giat and the actors give both shades of gray that make them far more interesting and, probably, truer-to-life.

And in the end, the filmmakers achieve what they set out to: They've made a moving and enlightening movie about a horrific chapter in American history. "Bury My Heart" may not encompass everything that was in Brown's book, but it does manage to capture its tone and its pain. I can live with inconsistency of detail if the big picture is fundamentally truthful and true to the subject. Which means I can recommend "Bury My Heart," even with its flaws.

Super Size Me in reverse

Buffalo-based diet plan includes 'spiritual connection'

Documentary to track man's journey on Dakota DietIt is Day 100 of filming for the documentary "Good Meat," and its star, Beau LeBeau, is devouring a buffalo burger for lunch.

The buffalo that LeBeau is dining on after a morning full of medical tests is the "good meat" of the title. But it is the film's 10-word tagline that sums up the story: "How the Lakota Got Fat and Beau LeBeau Saved Himself."

Filmmakers Sam Hurst and Larry Pourier like to describe their documentary, which will air on PBS late this year, as "Super Size Me" upside down.

Instead of filming a physically fit, healthy white male for 30 days while he gorges on fast food by eating at McDonalds three times a day, these independent filmmakers are following LeBeau, a 35-year-old, obese, Lakota man, for 200 days while he tries to return to the diet of his ancestors, or at least to the closest approximation of it that he can find in 2007 on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

Dress exhibit is drudgery

Only Hide-Deep

Dress Exhibit at Indian Museum Comes Up ShortSometimes a dress--no matter how historically rare, culturally significant or spiritually meaningful--is just boring. This unfortunate fact has nothing to do with the value of the garment or even its beauty, but rather the circumstances under which it is presented. And one of the surest ways to guarantee that a dress will fail to excite either the mind or heart is to put it in a museum and treat it with too much reverence.

An exhibition of even the most dazzling clothes begins to feel like drudgery when the garments are imbued with so much gravitas that they lose the vibrancy that comes from the quirks, foibles and humor of the people who wore them.

The current exhibition at the National Museum of the American Indian burrows deeply into the details of Native American women's attire. But it focuses on the subtleties without clarifying the broader story.

Inuit throat-singers get attention

Throat-singers steal the showWhen Inuits Lydia Etok and Nina Segalowitz took to the stage, their skill at throat-singing was a show-stopper.

“Our grandmothers and great grandmothers developed throat singing as a way to entertain themselves when their work was done and they were waiting for the men to come back from hunting. They were imitating sounds from nature, or animal sounds. It was also a way of competing among themselves, for hides, or food, or sometimes even mates,” said Segalowitz, who was born in the Far North, was adopted by a Jewish/Catholic couple and was raised in Outremont.

Pope backtracks on colonization

Pope:  Injustices Done in Colonization"Certainly, the memory of a glorious past cannot ignore the shadows that accompanied the work of evangelizing the Latin American continent," the pope said.

Benedict's remarks to Italian-speaking pilgrims at his general audience in the square were even stronger than the comments in English.

"It is not possible, indeed, to forget the sufferings and injustices inflicted by colonizers on the indigenous populations, whose fundamental human rights were often trampled on," Benedict said.

The pontiff said he was making a "dutiful mention of such unjustifiable crimes" and said some missionaries and theologians in the past had condemned them.Why the pope is wrong:

Pope recognizes colonial injusticesThe pope made no mention of forced conversions, epidemic illnesses, massacres, enslavement and other abuses that most historians agree accompanied colonization.

Indigenous rights groups, plus the presidents of Venezuela and Bolivia, were incensed.

The episode is the latest in which the pope, elucidating a theological point he firmly believes, made statements that appeared to ignore or disregard cultural and historical sensitivities.

The most explosive example occurred last year when, during a speech on faith and reason in Germany, he quoted comments by a Byzantine emperor widely seen as insulting to Islam. The speech triggered rage across the Muslim world, prompting the pope to make several subsequent statements, not apologizing for what he said but saying he was sorry for the reaction his words had caused.Comment:  So much for the pope's alleged infallibility. This pope is more ignorant than a schoolchild when it comes to non-Christians--whether they're Muslims or Natives.

Variety pans Bury My Heart

Bury My Heart at Wounded KneeThe horrors inflicted upon Native Americans have traditionally made for wrenching drama, but this loose adaptation of Dee Alexander Brown's seminal 1971 book is a powerful story limply told, steeped in tired Western cliches and an overbearing score. A few emotional moments emerge almost by default, but a splintered focus and uneven storytelling largely negate them as well as the efforts of the large cast. HBO is using the movie to give "The Sopranos" and "Entourage" a Memorial Day weekend vacation, which, in cable scheduling terms, perhaps represents its own kind of burial.To be more specific:As with any tale of this period, the movie is punctuated by broken promises, horrible conditions, willful ignorance toward Native American traditions and bursts of grisly violence against innocents, including women and children. There are also modern echoes of the cultural rift between the west and radical Islam in the dialogue, with two cultures that speak at cross-purposes.

Dramatically, though--even tinkering with history to weave the Eastman character into the narrative--"Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" proves curiously flat, retracing revisionist looks at this era from "Little Big Man" to TNT's recent miniseries "Into the West," another stilted disappointment despite a herd of Emmy nominations. Within that framework, the cast is hamstrung by the archetypal characters, which possess only slightly more dimension than the black-and-white photographs that partition the scenes.

Schellenberg is the one exception, with his deep-set eyes and low rumble of a voice, but other Native-American performers (among them Wes Studi and Eric Schweig) are underutilized. Even the climactic bloodbath proves unaffecting, captured in a distancing flashback without eliciting the horror it should evoke--despite what's otherwise a meticulously mounted production, lensed in the wilds of Canada.

Lakota vet opposes war

Tribal official's criticism of veterans causes uproar on reservation

Oglala council member's anti-war blast prompt talk of recall"I'm opposed to all wars and conflicts because women and children die, and I don't honor that," he said in a telephone interview Tuesday. "I feel that I'm a person of high moral character. Regardless of what nation-state commits the acts of war, I do not agree. Past or present."

Little said the fact that a nation-state sanctions an invasion or war "does not absolve the individual of an act of murder. It does not give any human a license to kill indiscriminately and with impunity."

But Little's opposition to the military reflects an issue larger than how a soldier conducts himself in war. It's about whose war it is.

"Six years ago, I made the conscious decision, announced it in a local paper, that I was going to burn an American flag in protest of the colonialism and the laws the United States imposed on us as Lakota people," he said. Little did burn a U.S. flag, prompting Lakota veterans to lobby for a tribal ordinance against desecrating or burning a U.S. flag. The law passed.

"The people of Oglala District have known for years ... that I detest being occupied by the United States, and I detest this colonial rule we're under," Little, who had also espoused his views on his own radio program, said. "It was no secret, yet I was voted in."Comment:  For more on the subject, see Native Intelligence:  The Long View.

Native vote could decide election

American Indians Could Influence 2008 Presidential Vote[T]he “native vote” has become pivotal in some Western states. According to the book, “In 2000, Indian voters helped [Democrat] Maria Cantwell defeat [Republican U.S.] Sen. Slade Gorton [in Washington state], and helped Al Gore carry New Mexico.” Two years later, Indian voters again displayed their potential power. In South Dakota, they provided the winning margin for Democratic U.S. Sen. Tim Johnson in his very close re-election bid, and they were credited with helping to elect Democratic Gov. Brad Henry in Oklahoma. Janet Napolitano, the governor of Arizona acknowledged at the 2004 Democratic National Convention that “Without the Native Americans, I wouldn’t be standing here today.”

According to an article in the New York Times on September 24, 2004, “In the last few years, political races from Congress to county sheriff have begun to hinge on the Indian vote ... .” Indian tribes also have become big players in campaign contributions, lobbying and running candidates for office. Co-author McCool says that with the growing influence of the Western states in presidential primaries, the Indian vote will become even more important. “I think it’s safe to say that there are specific scenarios where the presidential race could hinge on the vote in some Western states, much like it did on Florida in 2000 or Pennsylvania in 2004. Indian voters have already proven that they can swing statewide elections in Washington, Arizona, New Mexico and South Dakota. If any of these states becomes pivotal in a tight presidential race, the Indian vote could make the difference,” says McCool.

Spirit Riders accompanies Bury My Heart

"Spirit Riders" Featured in Conjunction With "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee"In conjunction with its release of HBO Films' "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" on May 27, HBO.com is featuring the award-winning documentary "Spirit Riders, Riding to Mend the Sacred Hoop" about the birth of the American Indian peace movement by director James Kleinert. Filmed over a 10-year period following the 100-year anniversary of the massacre at Wounded Knee, "Spirit Riders" is the story of today's Lakota and how they have returned to their roots and their horses via their peace and unity horseback rides. The rides have become a source of inspiration for the Lakota people, especially the youth. A segment of the film can be accessed at www.hbo.com/films/burymyheart/resources. Many respected members of the Lakota community are featured in "Spirit Riders," including descendents of Black Elk and Sitting Bull, as well as actor Viggo Mortensen, who participated one of the rides to Wounded Knee.

As "Spirit Riders" reveals, in 1986 one of the Lakota spiritual leaders was visited by a dream where he was surrounded by many people riding and walking together to release their grief at long last from the events at Wounded Knee and the prior killing of Sitting Bull.

Obi-Wan Hiawatha

Longfellow’s Hiawatha to be released on 6-CD setLongfellow’s epic poem, "The Song of Hiawatha," was written 152 years ago, but Michael Maglaras thinks the story can be as appealing to modern-day audiences as "Superman" or "Star Wars."

Like Clark Kent and Obi-Wan Kenobi, the Indian hero Hiawatha has human traits and super powers, while battling evil and doing right. Maglaras, the owner of a record company, is now producing a six-CD audio recording of the poem that he plans to complete in late summer.Others don't necessarily agree that "Hiawatha" is worthy:Although "The Song of Hiawatha" was a commercial success, it was criticized for being overly sentimental and parodied for its monotonous meter.

Among Native Americans, it has been criticized for perpetuating Indian stereotypes but also praised for showing Indian culture--even a romanticized version--to whites at a time when wars with Indians were still being fought.

Sky ride vs. burial ground

Sky ride opening nears despite concerns over burial groundAn Oklahoma-based Indian tribe is fighting with a Missouri man over land where the tribe's ancestors are buried.

Bill McMurtry wants to reopen a sky ride in Clarksville, Missouri, about 70 miles north of St. Louis. The ride is similar to a ski lift and was a popular attraction in the 1960s and 70s as it carried people on brief rides over the valley with a view of the Mississippi River.

But the platform for the ride is built on a burial ground of the Sac and Fox Nation and the tribe wants to keep the ride closed.

Swiss author preserves Blackfoot culture

Adolf Hungry-Wolf’s four-part set tells story of Blackfoot Confederacy"The Blackfoot Papers" weighs 15 pounds and tells the story of the Blackfoot Confederacy in 1,500 glossy pages, including nearly 3,000 paintings and illustrations.

The price is hefty, too—$300 for the boxed, four-volume set or $1,000 for a leather-bound, limited edition volume. Volume 1 is Pikunni history and culture; II is ceremonial life; III is a Pikunni portfolio; and IV is biographies of the elders and leaders.

Members of the tribe credit Hungry-Wolf for taking the time and effort to learn and preserve their history and culture.

Darrell Norman, owner of the Lodgepole Gallery in Browning, credits Hungry-Wolf with saving Blackfeet ways that might have been lost.This is all the more remarkable because the author isn't Native:Although Hungry-Wolf is not Indian, his wife Beverly is, and their children are enrolled members of the Blood Tribe.

Adolf Gutohrlein (his birth name) moved from his native Switzerland to southern California with his parents as a child of 9. In the 1960s, he came to Montana, where his dancing at tribal ceremonies first caught the attention of Earl Old Person, chief of the Blackfeet Nation.

"Adolf Hungry Wolf has been among our people for a long time now and has learned a lot of our ways," Old Person wrote in the introduction to the book.

"He takes part in our dances and he also performs some of our traditional ceremonies," wrote Old Person. "For him to write these books, I think it is important for him to have lived the kind of life that our people did.

Oneida animated short debuts

New animated short film brings Oneida legend to the big screenThe Oneida Indian Nation' of New York's Four Directions Productions held the world premiere of its first 3-D animated short film at the Syracuse International Film Festival in Syracuse, N.Y.

"Long ago, American Indians delivered important messages by sending runners; going from one village to another and nation to nation," said Dale Rood, director of studio operations for Four Directions Productions and a Turtle Clan representative to the OIN's Men's Council.

"Our ancestors also entertained and educated their young through storytelling," he said. "Today, communications are done much differently. We still need to inform and educate, but in a way that captures the attention of a public that is used to video games, cell phones and flat screened televisions. We must also correct stereotypes of Indian people painted by Hollywood. That's been embedded into the fabric of modern society."

Alexie on basketball

Sherman Alexie on Watching the NBA Through a Racial LensI'm positive the anti-NBA reaction is racial AND racist.

First of all, in racial terms, the game has become so black American and internationally dominated that the typical white American fan has nobody special to root for. That's not racism, but it is racial. And it's not a problem. If a Native American ever makes it into the NBA, he will instantly become my favorite player because I will racially, culturally, and physically identify with him. I understand and completely accept why so many white guys love Larry Bird, just as I understand why there are 1,000 black kids in Kobe Bryant jerseys at every Laker game played here in Seattle. It's a tribal thing.

But the racial aspects of fandom can easily become racist. And I think that many white fans, having no player like Larry Bird or even Tom Chambers to root for, have consciously and/or subconsiously turned that lack of a special white player into an indictment of the league in general. And since the league is black it becomes an indictment of blackness.

How FAITA got started

A Native night in HollywoodIn 1991, a group of people gathered in Harrison Lowe's apartment just on the edge of Hollywood to start an organization dedicated to American Indians in the arts that would not only support and promote the established artist, but also provide funding opportunities for up-and-coming American Indian artists. They also believed that part of their organizations' mission would be to honor Native actors and actresses for their achievements in the arts. Today this group is known as the First Americans in the Arts.

"There were not many opportunities for Native American actors and actresses, especially in the early '90s. Our group did not have any money; as a matter of fact, we started off in the hole but continued to reach out to the communities and studios. And now look, we just celebrated our 15th annual awards show," explained Lowe, Navajo, FAITA founding trustee.

Old Indian Trick

OIT Rocks Native Style at Red Earth Pow Wow After PartyOld Indian Trick [OIT] is one of the few all Native rock bands around the country with its present members from the Kiowa, Creek, Choctaw, Southern Cheyenne and Arapahoe Nations. OIT members are all thirty-seven years and older, all have families and careers going on outside their music commitments to the band. They rarely have time to practice but have been together so long, that knowing one another’s strengths has been the key in making the band last.

Jamming across Oklahoma since 2001, OIT influences span from heavy metal, 80’s rock, country, R & B to a blend of their own Native contemporary rock style, which includes several of their own tracks written by OIT bass player, Terrell Tanequodle.

Review of Bury My Heart

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee

Bottom Line: Compelling storytelling that unearths truth and bold historic drama."Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee," stunningly filmed and honestly told, is based on the 1971 book by Dee Alexander Brown, a nonfiction account of the final years of conflict between the U.S. and the American Indians it sought to displace by any means necessary.

Quinn, Beach and Schellenberg are flawless. Schellenberg, in particular, makes his expressive face a window into Sitting Bull's soul. Director Yves Simoneau brings a subtle eye to the story, imparting immense amounts of historical detail without making it feel like a lecture. He paints with colors that reflect the barren plains, the looming gray clouds and the bleak future of the Sioux.

Composer of the Mohicans

Composer brings silent film to lifeAmerican Indian composer Brent Michael Davids took his fascination for the story "The Last of the Mohicans" to the next level by creating a score for the 1920 silent version of the film.

Davids, whose composing career spans 30 years, premiered his full score for the 1920 film "The Last of the Mohicans" at the opening event of the 4th annual Syracuse International Film Festival in Syracuse, N.Y., April 18. Davids, who plays the Native flute, joined the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra to perform his original soundtrack live at the event.

Review of Cheyenne Autumn

Cheyenne AutumnCheyenne Autumn is a 1964 western starring Richard Widmark, Carroll Baker, James Stewart, and Edward G. Robinson. The film was the last western to be directed by John Ford, who claimed it to be a sort of elegy for the Native Americans who had been abused by the American government and misinterpreted by many of the director's own films.John Ford Mounts Huge Frontier WesternThere is poetry in the graphic comprehension—in a scene of the Indians at dawn, wrapped in their Government blankets, their chiefs standing stalwart and strong; in scenes of the cavalry wheeling and thrashing in skirmishes with the tribe. And there is tragic and epic grandeur in the enactment of the whole exodus theme."A big mess."A big mess; an epic Western that is burdensome and wooden and even though it gets the story right about the Indians and humanizes them in a sympathetic light it still fails to give them well-developed characters and further slights them by casting Latinos such as Sal Mineo, Gilbert Roland, Dolores Del Rio and Ricardo Montalban to portray them.Cheyenne Autumn B+As the scholar Place has noted, in the book, from which the story and film's title derive, the Indians' point of view is taken throughout, and the few white characters do not stand out as individuals. However, the Native Americans in Cheyenne Autumn are much like those of his earlier film, they stand for "something," rather than being flesh-and-blood individuals. Indeed, the Indians are not even presented as hostile individuals, just as a massive collective.Comment:  Let's look at the portrayal of Indians in John Ford's Cheyenne Autumn:

The good

The movie acknowledges that the Cheyenne were promised food and medicine. They're suffering from smallpox, measles, and malaria.

The Indians speak some unidentified language, possibly Cheyenne. A few speak English.

The Cheyenne are dressed in Western clothes: shirts and pants for the men, long dresses for the women.

Only three braves are shown riding off without shirts but with feathers in headbands. (Since they're fiery young hotheads, this seems reasonable.)

A cowboy cuts off the scalp of a fallen Cheyenne.

Politicians in Washington DC want the Army to oversee the Dept. of the Interior so they can better exploit the Indians.

A plain full of bones shows what the white man did to the buffalo.

Newspapers invent or exaggerate the "Indian menace."

The bad

Ominous drumming and chanting fill the initial Cheyenne encampments.

Some Cheyenne smoke peace pipes.

Richard Widmark and Carroll Baker are on hand to express sympathy toward the Cheyenne--presumably because the Cheyenne themselves aren't sympathetic enough.

The Latinos playing the primary Cheyenne characters are unconvincing as Indians. (The Indian "extras" may well be played by Indians.)

The interlude with Jimmy Stewart as Wyatt Earp derails the whole film. Ford spends so much time here that he seems to lose interest in the main story. You get the feeling that this is the tale he really wanted to tell, but someone forced him to film the Cheyenne.

At one point a Cheyenne raises his hand and says "How."

The ugly

The opening shot of the movie shows tipis in Monument Valley (!), a spot where tipis have never stood except as a tourist attraction.

The movie takes place in and around Monument Valley. The narration tries to cover this by calling it "American Southwest." But the Cheyenne were encamped in Oklahoma, which isn't the Southwest and which looks nothing like southern Utah.

This is a prime example of locating Indians in the wilderness "out there." The effect is to make them seem remote and exotic. The real Cheyenne probably met lots of homesteaders when they trekked through Oklahoma and Nebraska, but here they're out of sight and out of mind.

This setting also commingles the Cheyenne with the real Indians of the Southwest, particularly the Navajo. The effect is to make all Indians seem the same. According to Ford's movies, they all lived, suffered, and died in some barren wasteland.

You have to pity them--and here I mean all Indians--and shake your head at their folly. Who would choose to live in a desert when America had so much prime real estate? Although we understand the Indians' attachment to the land intellectually, we don't feel this is a fit place for human habitation.

The stark, unearthly Monument Valley is just about the polar opposite of what we call civilization. So white men live in towns, homes, and forts while Indians live amid dirt, rocks, and cacti. In other words, white men are civilized and Indians aren't.

Conclusion

Cheyenne Autumn isn't a masterpiece, but it has many good attributes. It's worth seeing for what it says about the changing perception of Indians. Rob's rating: 7.5 of 10.

Review of LOIS LANE #110

Synopsis from the Unofficial Superman Index:Lois Lane honors a dying Indian mother’s last wish, and becomes foster mother to her baby, Little Moon, despite vocal opposition from both whites and Native Americans.Some choice comments from the Ye Olde Comick Booke Blogge:On the cover, an angry mob is hurling rocks at Lois Lane, who appears to be on her way to play the mascot at a Florida State football game. But these angry folks aren't just drunken Gators fans. Instead, they're... um... well, I'm not really sure which of the many angry groups from this story the mob is supposed to represent, but I'm guessing it's white people who don't think a Native American baby should be allowed to live in a two-bedroom walk-up brownstone in Metropolis because there's too great a risk of it growing up to kill General Custer and thus should have its head crushed by a flying brick.Lois goes to cover a Pueblo Indian rain dance outside Santa Fe. The Indians, however, aren't dancing, and the people who paid to see the event are getting unhappy.

As calmer heads prevail, Lois Lane learns the Indians are planning to all become suicide bombers and destroy a dam the construction workers are building. The Indians then explain the reasoning behind their plan by pretty much paraphrasing all the political points made in Little Big Man with Dustin Hoffman. The white man killed all the buffalo, put them on reservations, and so on.Superman eliminates the threat but an Indian woman is injured. She gives Lois her baby Little Moon, leading to:Lois takes a leave of absence from work to care for Little Moon, but her decision to care for the baby stirs up all kinds of controversy, pitting Native Americans against their natural enemy (other than construction workers), feminists.

Native American protesters face a frustrating catch-22. Most of the time, the topic of protest is something along the lines of "treat us with respect, we're not all caricatures with big feather headdresses," yet to be recognized, they have to wear their headdresses and full outfits to the protest.

Blogger doesn't know Chippewa

Blogger should learn lesson about Indian lifeThe 15 hours Port spent on the Turtle Mountain reservation gave him a lopsided view of the Turtle Mountain Chippewa. Port gathered a whole group of people into one bundle, tied a dirty, lazy knot around them and tossed them into the national spotlight.What Port missed: Among the tribe's Ph.D. holders are Tammy Jollie-Trottier, Leigh Jeanotte, Viola LaFontaine, Gerald “Carty” Monette, Loretta Delong, Shelly Peltier, Ramona Klein, Denise Lajimodierre, Angie Azure-LaRocque, W. Larry Belgarde, Duane Schindler, Jim Davis, Bill Gourneau, Heid Erdrich, Virginia Allery, Paul Dauphinais, Donna Brown, Lavonne Fox, Betsy Laverdure, Jeff Hamley, Joan LaFrance, Dwight Gourneau and Carol Davis.

Tribal members who are lawyers include Jerilyn DeCoteau, Roxanne LaVallie, Richard Monette, Jeff Davis, Bernice Delorme, Eugene Delorme, Monique Vondall and Jan Morley. Louise Erdrich and Duane Champaigne are nationally known writers; there also are six engineers and one architect.

There are more than 400 people working on the reservation who have bachelors degrees and about 200 with masters degrees, according to a survey taken by the Turtle Mountain Community College.

Review of Imprint

Imprint Makes an Impression

Supernatural Mystery Showcases Modern Natives

By Rob Schmidt 5/21/2007The setting was the Zanuck Theater on the Fox Studios lot in West Los Angeles. The scene was the premiere of an independent Native-themed thriller, Imprint. The mood was expectant.

Writer/director Michael Linn was present along with his whole clan. Other notables included producer Chris Eyre, Mark Reed of American Indians in Film and Television, and James Lujan of Intertribal Entertainment. Also present were 40 or 50 students from the Sherman Indian School in Riverside, who had raised the money to travel to the screening.

I settled in to watch the spooky show. Eighty-eight minutes and one reel change later, I was impressed.

Adam Beach on SVU tonight

'Screwed'--Guest Starring LudacrisLudacris guest stars on the shocking season finale of SVU!

[Chester] Lake returns to the SVU and works with Tutuola when Tutuola needs to handle some unresolved issues with Darius.

Turning Indian students into victims

End image of Native student victims, expert saysDeloria said he's heartened to meet hundreds of students who have goals of being doctors, microbiologists, engineers and entering professions he never heard of. And he said he knows they will do it.

“I'm so thrilled these kids have not been reached by that element that tried to make them feel or spend their lives as downtrodden victims. They're just charging right ahead and they're going to do something in their lives and do something for their communities,” he said. “They're not feeling sorry for themselves. They're not reliving the last time a village got burned.”

It's one reason he gets riled when professors promote the idea of multigenerational trauma.

“It basically enables an endless generation of Indian kids to use a boarding school that they never attended as an excuse for not taking responsibility for themselves,” he said.

“We can't afford to let that happen. There's so much academic enforcement perpetuating this, that you're really taking your life into your hands questioning it. It's just nuts. It's such a disservice to our own people, to our own kids.

“Yes, it was painful--but come on. We're not encouraging good mental health in our own people because we don't want to sacrifice our own victimhood.”

But he sees students who aren't wallowing in sorrow. They are saying: We've got work to do. We've got people to help.

“It's such an inspiration,” said Deloria. “It's such a different world. I tell you. I don't think I could compete with these kids. I'm glad I'm too damn old to have to try. They're smart. They're attractive. They're self-confident.Comment:  I have to question Deloria's point here. Students who are smart and confident to make it to college are smart and confident enough to filter a professor's claims. Eighteen years of experience have shaped their sense of self-worth, so nothing short of another boarding-school trauma is likely to faze them.

But let's assume Deloria has a point. Professors are trying but failing to make Indian students feel bad about themselves. So what exactly is the problem? That today's professors are ineffectual or incompetent? That today's students have to listen to a few hours of victim-speak before they go on to their professional careers?

Unless things have changed since I was in college, I presume Deloria is talking about American Indian studies. Why are Indian students taking these classes if their goal is to be a doctor, scientist, or engineer? What do you expect to learn in a history class...biochemistry? If today's science and engineering teachers are spouting off about Sand Creek or Wounded Knee, that's a problem, but I doubt it's happening.

If Deloria wants to make his point, he should do it by telling us tales of smart, confident students whose professors turned them into victims and thwarted their budding careers. Then I'd believe this is a problem. Until then, no.

What motivates anti-Indian groups?

Treaty Rights and Responding to Anti-Indian ActivityAt least five major factors motivate anti-Indian groups. The first is the call for "equal rights for whites"--that the increased legal powers of the tribes infringes on the liberties of the individual white American taxpayer. The use of civil rights imagery can reach such extremes that whites are described as an oppressed people victimized by "Red Apartheid," and the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., is invoked in support of an agenda to roll back Indian rights.

The second factor is access to natural resources. These resources can be fish or game, land or water, but the case is the same: no citizens should have "special rights" to use the resources. (It is not mentioned that non-Indians also can retain property use rights over land they sell.) The case is made in anti-treaty pamphlets such as "Are We Giving America Back to the Indians?," "200 Million Custers," and the ironically titled book Don't Blame the Indians: Native Americans and the Mechanized Destruction of Fish and Wildlife by Massachusetts writer Ted Williams.

The third factor is the issue of economic dependency and sovereignty. In a rural reflection of the "Welfare Cadillac" myths used against urban African Americans, all reservation Indians are said to wallow in welfare, food stamps, free housing and medical care, affirmative action programs, and gargantuan federal cash payments--all tax-free, of course. (No one has to pay state sales tax on reservations, but otherwise Indians have had virtually identical tax obligations as non-Indians.) While any quick drive through a reservation will show the Third World conditions Indian peoples have to live under, anti-Indian groups maintain that these conditions arc caused by alcoholism and the breakdown of the Indian family, rather than the reverse. In the same breath, the groups denounce any tribal effort to build some economic self-sufficiency, through appropriate industries, small businesses, tourism campaigns, gaming, or the sale of natural resources. The message is clear and consistent: Indians should be kept under the poverty line, by any means possible.

The fourth factor is the attitude of cultural superiority. Cultural bias comes out in many ways: racist team logos and mascots, the excavation of mounds and burial sites, disrespect of sacred objects such as feathers and drums, and efforts to restrict Native languages and bilingual education. Any Indian objection to these practices more often than not provokes a strong counter-reaction. The very existence of a non-Western belief system, rooted in the middle of the most powerful Western nation, is seen by anti-Indian groups as a fundamental obstacle to overcome.

The fifth factor is simple racism. This includes not only vicious slurs and violent harassment of Indian people, but also the widespread belief that Indians are unfit to govern themselves. Williams describes Indian people as "children," as lazy recipients of outsiders' hand-outs In a right-wing context, this view can easily be translated into a myth that holds Indians as passive components in a conspiracy run by more intelligent non-Indians.

Beach not worried about typecasting

Proud of Heritage, SuccessYou know Adam Beach. From Clint Eastwood's "Flags of Our Fathers." From John Woo's "Windtalkers." From "Smoke Signals." And soon from "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee." So isn't he fearful of getting typed in Native American roles?

"No. I don't want to stay away from Indian roles. I want always to show Indians are a part of all stages of society. Like everyone else they're actors, doctors, lawyers, carpenters, hockey players. It is my responsibility to expose the fact that we are like everyone else. If not for me, maybe nobody would believe an Indian could make it to this level of success."Comment:  Interesting implications in Cindy Adams's question. Can one be typecast playing a member of a particular race? Even if that race has millions of past and present members? Who have fulfilled every role in society from chief, warrior, and priest to butcher, baker, and candlestick maker?

Adams seems to imply that Indians fill only certain roles in society--e.g., historical figures and wise elders who spout spiritual platitudes. But that says more about Hollywood and Adams than it does about Native actors. Who's offering these actors nontraditional roles...anyone?

Another documentary on wise Indians

Local filmmaker opens door to pastEd Breeding thinks it's time to draw on the wisdom of the past and the beauty of American wilderness and indigenous cultures to inspire change and healing.

Breeding has drawn on many of his own diverse talents—along with those of regional artists—to produce "Echoes From The Ancestors," which he describes as "a 30-minute film featuring quotes, voiceovers and music by Native Americans."Comment:  Since I haven't seen Breeding's film, I can't comment on it directly. But it sounds like a lot of the documentaries I've seen. I'd say it's time to do something other than drawing on the wisdom and beauty of indigenous cultures to inspire change and healing. In other words, something that hasn't been done a hundred times before.

Using myself as one of many possible examples, I don't duplicate the efforts of those who have written about Native cultures before. Instead, I run a Stereotype of the Month contest on my website. I critique Native-themed products in this blog. I (try to) publish Native-themed comics. Whether you agree with these efforts or not, you must admit they're not the same old documentaries with ponderous voiceovers and flute music in the background.

Which massacre was worse?

Letter:  Massacres of Indians worse than Va TechThe mass shooting at Virginia Tech was a terrible thing to happen, but I must disagree in calling it the worst shooting massacre in United States history. It is not the worst. I can think of at least three shooting massacres that can claim the title as the worst.

There is Sand Creek, Colo., in 1864 committed by Col. John Chivington and his Colorado Volunteers, He especially ordered the killing of the Indian children saying "nits make lice," Washita Oklahoma in 1868 committed by Lt. Col. G. A. Custer and the 7th Cavalry, Wounded Knee in 1890 committed by Nelson Miles and the remnants of the 7th US Cavalry, all of in which peaceful Indian women, children and sick and elderly were shot down in cold blood by the hundreds in the middle of winter.

But as usual Indians don't count, right?Comment:  Follow the link for some interesting responses to this letter.

Morongo pulls ad campaign

Assembly Hearing to Governor: Re-negotiate California Casino Deals[O]n Saturday, the Morongo Tribe abruptly pulled its $20 million campaign aimed at Assembly Democrats. Morongo’s spokesperson, former Republican Party Communications Director Patrick Dorinson, claimed the campaign had accomplished its goals, but the word in the Capitol was that the hugely expensive campaign was backfiring badly. In addition to its bold attempt at bullying the Assembly’s political leadership, numerous commentators had remarked how the Tribe’s expensive campaign had somehow failed to mention that it was promoting a casino expansion with 22,500 more slots for a tiny group of rich tribes. The Tribe even hired door knockers to generate calls to Assembly offices, but failed to tell voters about the giant casino expansions. Capitol staffers reported that when they asked unsuspecting callers, “So you’re supporting casino expansions for five wealthy tribes?” the conversations changed dramatically.

CSA: Confederate States of America

CSA: The Confederate States of AmericaImagine we live in an alternate reality where the South won the Civil War. Now imagine you're watching a local TV station one evening as it airs a British-made documentary about American history. "CSA: The Confederate States of America" is that documentary, complete with commercials that reflect the culture of modern Confederate America.

With a satiric eye, Willmott uses "historians" and faked news footage to show the last 143 years of American history. We see Lincoln's exile to Canada, an early D.W. Griffith silent film depicting his capture, and clips from the 1955 thriller "I Married an Abolitionist" (abolitionists where the big boogeymen in the '50s, rather than Communists). A commercial advertises daily reruns of "Leave It to Beulah," about a sassy slave in a white household. Before the documentary begins, viewers are warned that, due to its controversial nature (it was made by anti-slavery Brits, after all), it may not be suitable "for children or servants."

Willmott's imagination about how history would have changed with a Southern victory is perceptive and sharp. The Confederacy actually did have plans to colonize Latin America, so Willmott uses that. The anti-Negro philosophies of the day, made law by the new Confederate States of America, evolve into anti-everything, putting the C.S.A. right in line with Hitler when he comes along.

Some of the faked stock footage and newsreels are remarkably well done, notably the aforementioned D.W. Griffith short, which is also raucously funny. But others are obviously low-budget and shoddily made, and few of the actors are convincing. One of the keys to success here is making this faux documentary and its accompanying TV commercials look legit, and much of the material just doesn't cut it.Irreverent rewrite of history is hilariousIt is in this vision of an America that never abolished slavery that "CSA" is most successful. The alternate history is more problematic, mostly due to its adherence to the existing timeline of historical events. The country still enters into a war with Japan on Dec. 7, 1941, although in this version America launches the sneak attack. John Kennedy, an abolition-preaching Republican, still defeats Richard Nixon in the 1960 presidential election, and is still assassinated in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. Obviously, had such a cataclysmic upset as a Southern victory in the Civil War occurred, these events would not have occurred.

Less significant issues such as "Dixie" being the national anthem are nonetheless disconcerting. Since the song was written by a former slave, it would not exist had slavery not been abolished. More serious is the supposition that the genocide against the Indians would have been carried out by the Southern cavalry, when it was exclusively a result of western expansion by the North.

"CSA" is best when inventing, not amending, history. The idea that Canada, by welcoming runaway slaves and pro-abolitionist refugees, would have become the birthplace of rock 'n' roll while the culture of the United States would have been limited to government propaganda, is only one of many hilarious what-ifs offered by this often remarkable film.Comment:  I'd say these reviews sum up the strengths and weakenesses of CSA accurately. But I don't agree with the comment about the Indians. If the South had won and taken control of the country, it would've expanded just as the North expanded. Southerners had no special tolerance for Indians that I'm aware of.

In fact, CSA makes a good case that the more religiously oriented South would've believed in Manifest Destiny even more fervently than the North did. In the movie, the South exercises this belief by invading and conquering Latin America. If you buy that, you must also buy that the CSA would've dominated America's Indians.

Other than the bit on the Indian Wars, CSA mentions Indians once more: when it shows two football teams named the Washington Indians and the New York Niggers. This is a brief but effective comment on the mascot issue. In the racist society of CSA, the team names and mascots are little different from ours. We don't mock blacks with mascots, but we still mock Indians.

It would be interesting to see a mockumentary of Jake Page's Apacheria, perhaps the best alternative history featuring American Indians. This movie would explore and elucidate many Anglo/Indian issues. Mr. Page, if you're reading this, let's talk.

Rob's rating of CSA: 7.5 of 10.

Reviews of Now & Forever

A Love That Stands the Tests of Time and Cree WisdomIn "Now & Forever," a mystical love story directed by Bob Clark ("Porky's," "A Christmas Story"), John (Adam Beach), a young Cree Indian from a small town in Saskatchewan, has been in love with Angela (Mia Kirshner) since the two were children. But after her father, a Vietnam veteran, commits suicide, the troubled and restless Angela takes up instead with T. J. (Gabriel Olds), a callow youth who brags about their sex life to his friends.

When John rescues Angela from an assault at the hands of T. J.'s marauding gang, she flees their hometown in shame, determined to make her way as an actress. She leaves the heartbroken John with the gift of a leather-bound journal, in which he records thoughts like "I was wrenched out of her arms by the holocaust of my reality."

John's gift for solemn, unintentionally funny pronouncements may be inherited from his father, Ghost Fox (Gordon Tootoosis), the kind of movie Indian who uses contractions sparsely as he reassures his son that "this soil is sacred, full of stirring memories" and that "all will unfold as it should." For Angela and John this unfolding will involve fulfilling a magical bond fated to unite them forever. When Angela falls ill with a rare disease, John mysteriously reappears in her life to realize the prophecy.

Ms. Kirshner, who plays a similarly frail and damaged character on Showtime's "L Word," is a saucer-eyed beauty with an appealing screen presence, but she's not given much to do here except suffer prettily. Theresa Russell is terrific as Angela's slatternly but loving mother, but her character disappears abruptly midway through the movie. As T. J., Mr. Olds is so calculatingly evil, he may as well be twisting the ends of a waxed mustache, while the Indian characters are stiff and noble enough to be carved in wood and parked outside a tobacco shop.'Now & Forever'Now & Forever's heart is in the right place, but its mouth is not; this earnest Canadian production from 2002 boasts one of the single most odious voice-over narrations in recent memory. It is read by Adam Beach, whose apathetic delivery suggests that he understood the innate crappiness of lines like "At that moment, my heart discovered new words for emptiness that my mind could never grasp." Beach's John waxes philosophomoric for Angela (Mia Kirshner), who stands up to one of his childhood bullies, endearing herself to him for all eternity ("I knew that joy and pain would now forever be my constant companions!"). In the film's final third, Angela and John reunite after a lengthy separation, and the stars, unencumbered by pretentious voice-over, develop a warm chemistry. But the screenplay keeps getting in their way.Now & ForeverNow & Forever was directed by Bob Clark, who remains best known for his '80s hits Porky's and A Christmas Story. In recent years, Clark has been making a living by helming family TV-movies and such embarrassing features as Baby Geniuses and its sequel Superbabies. It's understandable that he'd like to see Now & Forever reach a wider audience; after all, this is the first adult story he's been able to tackle in ages. Clark's direction is professional enough, as are the lead performances, but the movie is doomed from the get-go by Bill Boyle's mawkish, cliché-ridden screenplay. You can see every plot development coming a mile away and the final "twist" almost pushes the film into camp. And if the writer notices anything slightly distasteful about the central romance--a Native American man who is so devoted to serving this oblivious white woman that he thinks of nothing else--he doesn't acknowledge it. In fact, Boyle isn't particularly interested in John and his father as people; they are primarily on hand to spout all the trite spiritual platitudes about eternal love that are prerequisites for this kind of weepy melodrama. "I'm going to do dying well...there is no way that I'm going to do some cheesy movie-of-the-week," Angela says as her sickness worsens. Sorry, sweetheart--it's too late for that.Comment:  These reviews pretty much nailed the problems with this film. John and his father qualify as your standard mystical Indians, with lots of New Age-y talk about spirits and souls. Rob's rating: 6.0 of 10.

P.S. I saw Clark's A Christmas Story last year. A holiday classic? I don't think so.

If you think A Christmas Story is a great movie, you may like Now & Forever. I suspect the inverse is also true.

Now & Forever Photo Gallery

Review of OMEGA FLIGHT #2

Omega Flight #2This is such a depressing book. Omega Flight really should be the last attempt to bring this team back to comics if this is the best Marvel could do. Michael Avon Oeming a writer whom I respect makes the book literary Prozac.

Sasquatch has been captured by the Wrecking Crew to be gruesomely tortured. Joy. U.S. Agent attacks a villain for attempting to wipe out her credit debt. Hussah. He's almost wiped out from existence until the second Spider-Woman saves his sorry butt. Yay.

When I put Omega Flight on my subscription list I was hoping for a book that would avoid the Civil War, but no. This Big Stupid Event is deep in its heart. If you have any doubt, Tin Fascist and his pet quisling Ms. Marvel make an appearance through a SHIELD vidlink. Oeming even throws in a few gratuitous flashbacks of the Civil War as Talisman criticizes American registration.

Whatever happened to fun? This book with murky artwork by Kolins and Reber isn't fun.Comment:  I wouldn't be quite this harsh, but the series isn't getting better as it goes along. I agree that the art is murky and the story is uninspired so far. I'll probably give it one more issue to see what happens.

The interesting thing here is how Talisman steps forward as a main character and probable leader of the new Omega Flight. She does a mystical thing or two a la your typical Indian shaman. She cops an attitude a la Dani Moonstar; she even looks like Moonstar.

But the most noteworthy thing to me is the first extended look at her new costume. Talisman must be magical because I don't see how this costume would stay up otherwise. It's pure exploitation, making Talisman into a Native sex object like so many predecessors. There's no way a tribal shaman or a woman with Elizabeth's disdain for superheroics would wear such a revealing costume.

Her previous costume was also somewhat revealing, although it was more demure. But then she wasn't a tribal shaman or someone trying to live as a traditional Native. Now she is. Her costume should've gone in the other direction--becoming less revealing, not more.

Giago notices casino benefits

The Key Word is R-E-S-P-E-C-TRespect is a word an Indian could never expect to hear in the towns bordering their reservations. But it is amazing the amount of respect that money can buy. Those ragtag Indians scraping by on little or nothing now have an abundance of cash in their pockets. Or at least some of them do. Those casino dollars now make the Indian people much sought after consumers. They can now buy new furniture; clothing, automobiles, appliances and they can now open bank accounts.

I recall that not too long ago when I owned a weekly newspaper one of my advertising sales people went into a local carpet store to solicit an ad for the paper. The haughty sales manager quipped, "Oh, I didn't know Indians had carpets in their tee pees."

From a lady who prepared taxes for the IRS my sales lady heard, "Well, I know that Indians don't pay taxes," and from a local new car dealership, "Your readers just don't have the credit to buy our new cars," and finally from the manager of an upscale department store, "I don't think your readers are the kind of people that would be comfortable in our store." As Rodney Dangerfield used to say, "No respect, I don't get no respect."Comment:  Giago says his views on casinos have changed 180 degrees. But it's not clear he has any new information. It seems he finally noticed what gaming proponents have been saying for at least a decade. Namely, that gaming lets Indians join the economic mainstream.

O'odham myth inspires mazes

Following a path to serenityAs a child growing up on the Tohono O'odham Reservation, a young Jordan Francisco remembers the designs his grandmother taught him about the "Man in the Maze."

Linked to the story about a god who resides in a cave below the peak of Baboquivari Peak on the O'odham Reservation, the design in the "Man in the Maze" tells a story about the different stages in life, said Francisco, 41.

"Each line symbolizes a time in our life—birth, childhood, puberty, marriage and death—it's continuous," Francisco said. "He's a prominent figure for all of us in our journey of life."

The "Man in the Maze" is now being incorporated into labyrinth paths around the region, with one featured at the Morris K. Udall Center, and the posh Miraval Life in Balance Tucson Resort & Spa.

Indians vs. progress

Are Indigenous People Hostile Towards Development?[I]t’s not as if indigenous people want to be setting up blockades here. And it’s not like they just can’t find something good on tv either… It’s because conventional ‘acceptable actions’ like going to court, petitioning the UN, and writing appeals to the Queen almost always end in a twisted, neutralizing way: Nothing ever changes, which means everything gets worse.

It’s not like there’s a choice either. If there was, these States would not be arresting and criminalizing innocent people in a blatant effort to make sure things continue, business as usual.

Wind Bird: Gift of the Mist

Wind Bird Gift of the Mist“Long, long ago, in a land of the North Country, an ancient people lived between dark evergreen forested hills and the deep, clear waters of a beautiful lake.”

Thus begins the story of Wind Bird: Gift of the Mist.

Gluskop, caretaker of his people, helps provide the land’s riches for them. When harsh winds howl across the lake, the people come to Gluskop because they cannot fish, hunt or plant.

He then confronts Wocawson, the giant bird whose powerful wings make the winds blow. However Gluskop's initial actions result in catastrophic effects.

This tribal legend is authored by Sarah Stiles Bright as told by Passamaquoddy Elder, Wayne Newell and illustrated by Gustav Moore.

Wind Bird: Gift of the Mist is a Passamaquoddy story describing the conflict between people and nature, and the lesson of living life in balance with the Earth.

It’s a story for all ages, told in partnership with the Maine Lakes Conservancy Institute (MLCI).Rob's review:  As literature, Wind Bird is a little heavy-handed. It's probably best-suited to be read aloud in a classroom setting. But it's an interesting example of using a Native story to promote a worthy goal--in this case, preserving Maine's lakes.

For more on the story, see Passamaquoddy Book Provides Balance.

James Welch's The Indian Lawyer

The Indian LawyerSylvester Yellow Calf, a Blackfeet Indian lawyer, is a nontraditional character whose past and present worlds collide and then threaten to destroy him. Elements of fear are introduced in this thoughtful, evenly paced novel, not in the form of blood or violence, but rather by virtue of wrong decisions, unforeseen consequences, and the dread of loss. Yellow Calf is a fully realized character, a complex, self-made man who overcomes the adversities of parentage and poverty. He is on the verge of an unplanned political success when his very human, normal behavior in a seemingly insignificant incident sets in motion a fall from grace. Welch shifts the story's focus back and forth between a state prison and Helena, where Yellow Calf has created his own version of the American dream. His relationships with several different women add to the rich texture of the novel and provide the seeds for his undoing. As events threaten Yellow Calf's security, a fascinating third world unfolds: the reservation childhood he has tried to leave behind. It is from his past that Yellow Calf eventually finds the truth about himself and the strength to do the right thing. An absorbing psychological tale that should fascinate mature readers.And:I couldn't put the book down once I started reading. The novel painted an intricate web of characterization between prison life, growing up on a reservation raised by grandparents, the contrast between native and white cultures, politics, and confused romances. The plot was provoking, the story well written and cast fully human. I put the book down feeling exhilerated, wanting to explore Mr. Welch's other works.Comment:  I managed to put the book down once I started reading it. As with Zorro, though, it's one of the best Native-themed books I've read. Rob's rating: 8.5 of 10.

Jamestown as foundation tale

The Jamestown ProjectOne result of our historical favoring of Plymouth is that most Americans remain ignorant of basic Jamestown facts, a lacuna that Kupperman fills, as does prizewinning British author and broadcaster Benjamin Woolley in his jazzier Savage Kingdom. The story of the Pilgrims comes back to us when we eat turkey at Thanksgiving. Since we don’t annually eat rats or a salted, murdered, pregnant wife—both part of Jamestown’s “creation story from hell,” in Kupperman’s phrase—we’re foggy on details. For every American familiar with Capt. John Smith’s supposed romance with the 10-year-old Indian princess Pocahontas—by all accounts apocryphal, though she did marry Smith’s fellow colonist John Rolfe and die at 21—few know the miseries of Jamestown’s “Starving Time.”

The historical minutiae Kupperman and Woolley provide tell us much about America’s ethos, then and now. Like almost all European ventures in the New World, Jamestown started as a business project by venture capitalists, meant to return quick profit to investors. It succeeded because the people involved in it—the “rank and file,” according to Kupperman, rather than the elites—wouldn’t let it fail. Yet an ugly part of Jamestown’s survival is that it came only after colonists, following the 1622 massacre, dropped the Virginia Company’s “policy of appeasing the Indians” (in Woolley’s language) and decided to wreak whatever violence on them that they considered necessary, largely destroying them through superior numbers and arms.

Native hip hop

Native American hip hopNative American hip hop is popular among Native Americans in the United States and the First Nations of Canada. Native American rappers began performing in the 1980s and '90s, drawing on influences such as John Trudell's spoken word poetry. Litefoot and Shadowyze, both winners of the Native American Music Award, are the best known Native American rappers. Along with them are other noted artists such as Buggin Malone, who won the NAMA in 2006, Julian B, Without Rezervation, and Robby Bee & the Boyz From the Rez.

Other recent groups include Tha Tribe, who use elements of powwow music in their recordings, and War Party, a Canadian crew who became the first native performers to host Rap City. War Party is one of a number of Canadian groups to gain some chart success, including Tru Rez Crew and Slangblossom.

Indian origin of Preakness

How The Preakness Got Its NameIt all started with the Minisi, a northern New Jersey tribe of Native Americans. They called their area Pra-qua-les, meaning quail woods. After a series of spellings the name eventually evolved into Preakness.

One of its variations was Preckiness, used by General George Washington to describe the area where his troops were quartered in the winter of 1776-77. Nearly a century later, Milton H. Sanford, a thoroughbred owner, became attracted to the name. He called his farms, one in New Jersey and another in Kentucky, Preakness. His Jersey farm was located in the Indians' "quail woods." Today, there remains a Preakness, N.J.

Genocide debate continues

Check out the latest installment of this long-running debate. The second half of the posting is all new:

"Based on this definition, genocide was not carried out by the United States Government against the Indian Nations."

Defining tribal citizenship

Recognition and defense of tribal-nation citizenship rightsThe future of Indian country is in the land. Yet blood, race and sovereignty provide the most controversial and heated debates these days. Speakers at Federal Bar Association meetings don't talk so much about land theft as they talk about identity issues and gaming. If that seems unfair, just ask the Seminoles, or the Cherokees of Oklahoma. A few anonymous comments from the latest FBA meeting illustrate the banality of what passes for law theory: “I really hope tribes can get away from this notion of blood as the essence of Indian identity.” And, “There might be some kind of long-term benefit for Indian country if we can adopt some expansive notion of Indian identity.” And, “We need other blood in our cultures.” Taku? Taku?

The ongoing struggle for what can be claimed as tribal-nation citizenship rights seems to provide a never-ending battleground for ignorance, self-centeredness, individualism and fraud. In the case for dismissal from his university position, Ward Churchill provides a case in point.

Churchill had falsely claimed to be an Indian for decades. He got a professorship in the ethnic studies department at the University of Colorado in 1973, perpetrating a fraud through that claim, and got away with it for years and is still getting away with it. After he made his now-famous “little Eichmann” remark, the university has been trying to fire him for inadequate research credentials but NOT because his claim to Indian identity was unsubstantiated. In the subsequent investigations, Churchill was not charged with identity fraud by CU - Boulder in their effort to dislodge him from his position, yet that is what critic John P. LaVelle, professor of law at New Mexico School of Law, as well as countless other Native scholars throughout the United States, contend it was.

This failure on the part of CU to charge this academic with fraud reveals how little is understood of American Indian citizenship protocols and how without sympathy, such protocols are held by those in academia and elsewhere. Substantial investigations have shown that Churchill has no citizenship in any Indian nation and possesses no blood quantum or a blood relative to tie him culturally, politically or legally to a tribal legacy. Yet the charges against him ignore that particular aspect of his case, the aspect that is of utmost importance to indigenous rights activists, scholars and tribes.

"Indian industry" exploits Indians?

Native writer slams 'Indian industry'The best way to kill a man is to pay him for doing nothing.

So goes a song by the French musician Felix Leclerc. The idiom was evoked Thursday by Calvin Helin, author of Dances with Dependency, a book calling on aboriginal people to empower themselves by acknowledging and overcoming their dependency mindset on "Indian industry."

"Some of them are doing a good, valid job, and a lot of them are out there just exploiting the situation and exacerbating the problems so that they can make more money out of it."

Helin said that the problem in the aboriginal community is that money has too often been regarded as the solution to problems.

"You would think with $9 billion a year, we would be able to solve this problem," Helin countered, referring to the $9.1 billion annually the federal government puts into programs and services for aboriginals. "If money was the problem, we should have been able to get a long way from where we are now."

The first step, according to Helin, is to simply begin talking about the issues and to give ordinary people a say in what goes on in the aboriginal community.

"Let them decide the direction we should take, not a handful of people," he said. "We need to be able to exercise our view whether it's heard or not in a democratic way to make a change just like every other Canadian has that right."Comment:  Helin makes some valid points but he's also blaming the victim. Tribal citizens can't do much more than stay clean, work hard, and vote for the best candidates.

Outfits like PECHANGA.net, Indianz.com, and Blue Corn Comics are doing exactly what Helin advocates: disseminating information, talking about the issues, and giving ordinary people a say. In fact, for every corrupt tribal council blocking progress, there must be dozens of groups trying to foster progress.

Non-Indians get paid all the time to do nothing. Capital gains, mortgage interest deductions, inheritances, farm subsidies, etc. People rarely say that these things hurt society. Why should they say it about government payments to Indians?

Of course, these payments to Indians are akin to rent paid to use property. Indians are "doing nothing" in the same sense that all landlords are doing nothing when they sit around collecting rent checks. The landlords reached their present positions by trading something of value and so did the Indians.

But the landlords risked their capital, you say. Well, yes, these landlords took a chance when they bought their properties to gain a future stream of payments. And Indians took a chance when they sold their properties to gain a future stream of payments.

How wrong was the pope?

Holy disaster:  Pope alienates indigenous peoplesIn a speech at the Conference of the Latin American and Caribbean Episcopate, the pope characterized pre-contact Indians as "silently longing" for Christianity and stated that "the proclamation of Jesus and of his Gospel did not at any point involve an alienation of the pre-Columbus cultures, nor was it the imposition of a foreign culture." It may be the most blatantly erroneous statement about the Christian legacy on indigenous cultures ever uttered.

Not only did the pope's comments exhibit an ever-increasing general arrogance that aims to deny the rights of indigenous peoples around the world but, in this rare case, they came straight from the source. Millions of tribal people died as a result of the institution of the 15th century Inter Caetera papal bulls that provided legal justification for European colonization of the Native people of the Americas (including Brazil where Benedict spoke) and Africa. Then, Indians were slaughtered, enslaved or exposed to deadly diseases. Now, Native survivors of Christian colonization efforts suffer its traumatic generational effects: a diminished ability to relate to and practice traditional life ways, social exclusion and learned sexual abuse. If this does not qualify as an "imposition" on the culture of indigenous peoples, what does?

Indians rethink the military

American Indians Have Proud Tradition of Military ServiceAt the time of his service during World War II, Lakota elder Johnson Holy Rock felt that his participation in the military would not only carry on his family's warrior tradition, but also help his people. Fighting for the freedom of the oppressed in foreign countries, he assumed, would surely lead to a better life for the Lakota. But his opinion has changed over the last half-century. "I'm sorry that I ever shouldered a gun and spent three years of my life walking all over in a war supposedly to make life a little better for myself, which has not happened. I live. But there are people here on our reservation that are less than Third World status."

And Johnson Holy Rock opposes the current war in Iraq. He says that many American Indians see uncomfortable similarities with the way the U.S. government treated Native Americans. "That's a people. And if the people tolerate that type of life, that's their right to exist as they are," he explains. "And, yet, we disagree with it, just as this nation disagreed that the Indian cannot exist as an Indian, must become a part of the American mainstream society."

More on Churchill's scholarship

Churchill's backers misrepresented sources, relied on faulty books

But they say CU investigators guilty of academic misconductChurchill claims the blood quantum standard is similar to codes adopted by the Nazis to define Jews. Such a code is also controversial, because tribes claim they--not the federal government--have the right to determine their membership.

Churchill says the blood quantum standard is in an 1887 law that imposed private ownership of land on Indians in place of the traditional communal ownership by the tribe.

But legal scholars have said the 1887 law, called the General Allotment Act, contains no reference to blood quantum. The CU investigative committee upheld that view.

Modern Indian art

Cornell displays ‘Discovering American Indian Art'There's David Bradley's “American Gothic/Pueblo,” a humorous look at what's American.

“Twentieth-century artists of American Indian extraction have steadily moved into the spotlight in the international art world,” said Weislogel, who, with a background in Italian art, first experienced American Indian art in curating this show.

“It's possible for American Indian artists to be counted in the global sense; they now participate on the same playing field as artists around the world and aren't pigeonholed according to their cultural origin,” he said.

Bury My Heart humanizes Indians

"Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" premieres in South DakotaThe film gave Giat a chance to explore in-depth such iconic figures as Sitting Bull and tell their stories and humanize them in a way that has never been done before.

Previously, Giat said, it was hard for a white audience to sympathize with those characters because they had always been depicted as saints, not as human beings.

For example, the HBO film depicts Sitting Bull as a flawed man, proud and vain, and the human factor allows the audience to feel for him all the more because of what he does to keep his people together, Giat said.

Traveling exhibit features stereotypes

"Bittersweet Winds"

A Traveling Exhibit on Native American Imagery

Partial contents of the exhibit:A. We were sent a sign that was in the window of an establishment in the Dakotas. It reads: "No Alcohol Served To Indians Past Sundown". The date on the sign is 1929. Right next to it we have a collectible porcelain beer stein that is fully adorned in Native American images, was made in Brazil to be distributed by the, "Avon Company" and then right next to this we have a full bottle of, "Crazy Horse Malt Liquor", which is no longer made.

B. We have a series of hand made, fictitious named sports teams banners that we hang but include a, "Cleveland Indians" banner and we ask the question: "Can you pick out the real one?"

C. We have framed photos, comics and other images from various media that show positive and negative images of Native Americans.History of the exhibit:Christine Rose and I (Richie Plass) began collecting and assembling items. We made phone calls and sent letters to people across the country who we felt would be interested in assisting us in this project. Rob Schmidt, of Blue Corn Comics, contributed many images that he had collected over the years. I also wrote to every school in Wisconsin (Over 70) who still use Native Americans as their names and/or mascots. I was sent back only eleven, which are now part of our exhibit.

When we had our first exhibit in Green Bay, WI., in October 2006, we had one small box, about 60 items and took about 45 minutes to set up. As of today, we have over 150 items and takes almost three hours to set up. Plus, we still get items sent to us and donated at least once every week. The acceptance and involvement by organizations and communities continues to ensure the growth and significance of the exhibit.Comment:  As indicated above, "Bittersweet Winds" includes a lot of images from the Blue Corn Comics website.

P.S. If you want to host this exhibit, please contact me or the exhibit's organizers.

Pix of the Bittersweet Winds exhibit

Navajo movie extra 58 years ago

'She Wore a Yellow Ribbon'

Monument Valley woman had role in 1949 movieClara Mae Johnson, 79, was one of the first Navajos to be in a movie.

Johnson played an extra role in the 1949 western film "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon" and can be seen round dancing in one scene. The movie was directed by John Ford and starred John Wayne as Capt. Nathan Brittles. In the movie, Brittles deals with a series of attacks by the Apache and Arapaho after the defeat of Custer. Near his retirement, he takes it upon himself to try and make peace with a character named Chief Pony That Walks.

"I got paid $50 for the movie," said Johnson through an interpreter, while attending the 2007 Red Bull Air Race World Series on Saturday. Johnson, who was 21 when she starred in the movie, said she also cooked and cleaned on the set as part of her hiring. She also got to meet the famous John Wayne.Curiously, the Navajo still aren't maximizing the benefits of Monument Valley:Maryboy said the backdrop of Monument Valley will continue to be a sought out location for filming, which is all the more reason why a board of some sort should be created.

By forming a board, Maryboy said the community will be able to be more prepared when organizations or filmmakers express interest in wanting to come to Monument Valley, and will allow the community to benefit from outside companies use of the area.

Maryboy said that non-Navajos continue to dominate the areas businesses. With the exception of The View Restaurant and Store, which is Navajo owned, there are only small entrepreneurships, like catering or arts and crafts vendors that are run by Navajos, Maryboy said.

"Tour guides are dominated by non-Navajos," said Maryboy. "They (Navajo entrepreneurs) need to think big, in a global fashion. Monument Valley could easily be promoted internationally."Commment:  I met Natasha Kaye Johnson, who wrote this and other entertainment articles for the Gallup Independent, at the First Americans in the Arts award ceremony. She's a good writer and I'm enjoying her articles.

Wal-Mart doesn't fit Cherokee profile

Cherokee contemplates Wal-Mart’s impactNot that long ago, Cherokee’s landscape was made up almost exclusively of kitschy tourist shops and the blinking lights of Harrah’s Cherokee Casino. Sitting down to a cup of coffee at a shop that exclusively features a free-trade product grown by indigenous people would have seemed incongruous in this tourist-driven town.

Today, however, Natalie Smith serves a small stream of customers at Tribal Grounds coffee shop near the visitor’s center and council house, her espresso and turkey wraps a paradigm of sorts for a profound shift that is under way on the reservation.

Along with the financial empowerment the 10-year-old casino has brought to this once impoverished area, there is also a heightened sense of responsibility and political awareness among many Cherokee.

And Wal-Mart, Smith said, just doesn’t comfortably meld with this emerging new world.

“I don’t think Wal-Mart fits our profile,” she said, adding that tourists visiting the reservation also are trying to escape commercialism and experience Cherokee culture.

“This town has always relied upon tourism, and I think they’d be disappointed to find Wal-Mart,” Smith said.

Eyes trained on Montana

A Mandate for Native HistoryIn 2003, the Montana Supreme Court held that the state was required to provide enough funding to meet the constitutional requirements of the [Montana Indian Education For All] Act. But it still took another two years for legislators to allocate more than $11 million to meet the mandates of IEFA, ensuring a “quality” education to all Montana students. During the same session, “quality” was defined as programs that “integrate the distinct and unique cultural heritage of American Indians into the curricula with particular emphasis on Montana Indians.”

This precedent-setting education legislation is reverberating throughout Indian Country and stirring hope among Indian educators nationwide that they might win similar victories in their home states. This year, the South Dakota Legislature began debating its own Native education act. South Dakota and Montana are very similar in terms of American Indian population and educational statistics, and the wording of South Dakota’s proposed bill is comparable to IEFA. The South Dakota act, however, does not include any funding mechanism. Keith Moore, the state’s director of American Indian education, was quoted by the newspaper Indian Country Today as saying, “We are taking baby steps.”Comment:  For more on the subject, see Integrating Indian Ed.

All about Linda Hogan

Chickasaw poet, activist visits NAUHogan is a Chickasaw poet, novelist, essayist, playwright, and activist, and is widely considered to be one of the most influential and provocative Native American figures in the contemporary American literary landscape. Her concentration is on environmental (she has acted as a consultant in bringing together Native tribal representatives and environmental campaigners) and feminist themes, particularly allying them to her Native ancestry.

All of her work, whether fiction or non-fiction, displays a holistic understanding of the world. She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts grant in fiction, a Guggenheim for fiction, and a Lannan Award in 1994. She has been recognized as a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize for her work "Mean Spirit," and for a National Book Critics Circle award for her "Book of Medicines" and has been honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award, Native Writers' Circle of the Americas. In 2002, Hogan received the Writer of the Year Award in Creative Prose from the Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers.

Churchill to be suspended?

Lawyer:  Churchill Suspension Recommended

Professor Under Fire Over Allegations of Plagiarism, Shoddy ResearchA faculty committee has recommended that a University of Colorado professor accused of faulty research be suspended for one year rather than fired, according to his attorney.

David Lane said Tuesday he didn't think professor Ward Churchill should be disciplined at all but said at least committee members are moving in the "right direction."

"This will make it more difficult for (CU President) Hank Brown and the regents to fire him," Lane said. The Board of Regents oversees the university.

Racism among Indians

Maillard:  Black and red

Racial exclusion in Indian countryTribal life for Black Indians can be difficult. Mixed-blood Indians have been told to "go back to Africa." Tribal meetings escalate to roaring sessions of racist rhetoric, with animal noises, stomping feet and cow calls for "blacks to get the hell out." Blatant proponents of exclusion have no shame in publicly declaring, "We're trying to keep the black people out."

While such behavior has been shunned since the civil rights era, it thrives in some parts of Indian country. This is sovereignty.

Is Bury My Heart honest?

HBO's 'Wounded Knee' movie makes positive contributionThe NMAI reviewers had critiques of the film--nothing captures reality to everyone's satisfaction--but strongly supported a premiere at the NMAI. Announced as a fictional story based on a historical narrative, it was to be expected that events would be changed to facilitate the story line. The question became: Are the historical and biographical themes intellectually honest? The group reported that "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" tells a good story while contributing to the understanding of complex Indian issues.

An early review by New York Times television critic Edward Wyatt questions the techniques of dramatization used to compress 30 years of history into a two-hour film. The language of the review is harsh, labeling the project "historically inaccurate" and chastising the "fabrications" in the biography of Eastman depicted in the film. Quoting relatives and biographers who naturally note the historical license taken, Wyatt wantonly exacerbates the issue. Poetic license is standard practice in film production. To carry forward a dramatic sequence, principal characters are written to endow a story with compelling motion and point of view. The primary issue is whether major historical and biographical themes are honestly depicted and whether a major national audience can be simultaneously entertained and educated. The wonderful thing about Eastman, or Ohiyesa, is that he wrote clearly and extensively and still, in 2007, has a dozen books in print. More people will be educated and made curious about Ohiyesa by this film than have ever heard about him and his very authentic American Indian point of view. If details of the biography have been compressed to move the drama, the sequence of Eastman's life, his heroic work--from treating the wounded and dying of the Wounded Knee Massacre to his advocacy of Native peoples in his point of view, is layered honestly into the story.Comment:  When Barreiro writes that Bury My Heart was "announced as a fictional story"...well, no, not exactly. Here's how executive producer Dick Wolf described it:

"It is a vast, historical epic of non-fiction."

"In a search for historical accuracy, I think we've gone more than the extra mile."

So is it fiction or nonfiction? Accurate or inaccurate? Barreiro and Wolf seem to differ on the point.

Incidentally, I suspect most filmmakers--John Ford, Kevin Costner, Disney, Mel Gibson--considered themselves and their movies intellectually honest. That doesn't mean that they were.

Turtle Mountain bans blogger

Blogger bannedFriday, the Turtle Mountain tribal council banished North Dakota political blogger Rob Port from the reservation after a column critical of the reservation appeared in a state political magazine.

Port, of Minot, is webmaster for SayAnythingBlog.com, a political Web site.

The tribal resolution says Port's column was "injurious to the peace and seriously threatens the general welfare, health, safety, political security and prosperity of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, its members, and other tribes in the state of North Dakota."

Port is under fire for a column that ran in the January issue of The Dakota Beacon, a political magazine published monthly in North Dakota. The column also appears on Port's blog.

Titled "The Appalling State of North Dakota Indian Reservations," the column stems from Port's daylong experience at the Turtle Mountain reservation, where he says he spent about 15 hours "going around neighborhoods and knocking on doors."

In his column, Port talks about the conditions of the homes he saw and the people he came into contact with while on the Turtle Mountain reservation.

He writes that living conditions on the reservation are "abhorrent" and continues with: "Most of us would probably consider living in a squalid apartment in a nasty housing complex a pretty serious consequence for not getting ahead in life, but it seems to me as though most of these Indians are perfectly content to live there. Probably because they don't know any better. They were likely raised in housing projects by their parents, who in turn were probably raised in housing projects themselves."

Port's column also calls for an end to reservations and "cradle-to-grave entitlements."Comment:  This banishment is apparently a response to the column I just posted in the Stereotype of the Month contest:

ND Indians live in "pure filth"; rez system is a "total failure"

But the column I posted wasn't quite as harsh, believe it or not. So Port may have sanitized it for public consumption.

Liberals defend racial stereotypes

Many Whites Still Smugly Tie Their Racial Blinders TightWhat was troubling, though, was the blind rush by the respondents to justify, ignore, gloss over, or flat out defend negative racial typecasting of blacks. These posts weren't on the Fox network's or a conservative website. They were on Alternet, the Huffington Post, and other liberal, progressive sites.

Those that read and post on these sites are more likely young, white, and consider themselves the most socially and politically enlightened. They feverishly bash Bush policies, cheer Michael Moore, and swoon over Obama, unabashedly back environmental, gay rights, immigration reform, and indigenous struggles for land and reform in Latin America. Yet, they see absolutely no harm in racial stereotypes, especially anti-black stereotypes.

Is it ignorance, confusion, racial denial, or closet bigotry? It's all of the above. There are several compelling hints that the racial blinders are tied chokingly tight on many whites, particularly young whites.Comment:  As I wrote in the comments section:

The same applies to Native American stereotypes. The majority of Americans, including liberals, gasp at the word "nigger" but see no problem cheering the Washington Redskins, the Cleveland Indians' Chief Wahoo, or the University of Illinois's Chief Illiniwek. They ignore the Native stereotypes around them even while proclaiming their abhorrence of racism and stereotyping.

See the Stereotype of the Month contest for more on the subject.

Bury My Heart's "poetic license"

HBO Buries its Honesty at Wounded KneeAccording to the New York Times, the network carefully considered its decision. Daniel Giat, who adapted Brown’s book for the screenplay, recently said to a group of television writers “Everyone felt very strongly that we needed a white character or a part-white, part-Indian character to carry a contemporary white audience through this project.”

At least that’s the truth.

Of course, apologists tell us that it’s the “bigger issue” that’s paramount. That “poetic license” is standard practice in adaptations; therefore adding and cutting and fabricating is just dandy and a-okay as long as it remains intellectually honest.

Intellectually honest? Not when you have a real-life person engaging in a major battle he never fought in. Intellectual honesty is when you add dialogue and scenes to flesh out the story but remain faithful to the known facts. That ain’t the case here. HBO IS FABRICATING HISTORY TO APPEAL TO WHITE FOLKS.

Ramona remains relevant

Ramona Outdoor Play's 84th season called a successRamona Bowl board President Jim Pomeroy said the success of its latest season shows that Ramona remains relevant for modern audiences.

"I think it bodes well for next year, and the year after that, and on to the future," he said.

Debuting in 1923, the Ramona play is based on Helen Hunt Jackson's 1884 novel of the same name.

Watching and participating in the play has become a vocation for many San Jacinto Valley families for generations. The play is performed by almost 400 actors, singers, dancers and horsemen--mostly volunteers from Hemet and San Jacinto.

Another insult from the pope

Brazil indigenous groups fault pope talkThe pope told the bishops that, "the proclamation of Jesus and of his Gospel did not at any point involve an alienation of the pre-Columbus cultures, nor was it the imposition of a foreign culture."

"As an anthropologist and a historian I feel obliged to say that, yes, in the past 500 years there was an imposition of the Catholic religion on the indigenous people," Meira said.

"To say that there was no imposition is a falsification in light of the history if those that did not accept the faith were flagellated," said Ricardo Cajas.

Skywalk gets mixed reception

Tourists flock to canyon Skywalk

Arizona attraction overcomes rocky startDespite early reviews that knocked it for being too expensive and hard to reach, the Grand Canyon Skywalk drew more than 50,000 visitors in its first full month of operation.

The Hualapai Indian Tribe, which owns the glass-bottomed walkway 120 miles east of Las Vegas, reported approximately 55,000 paying visitors in April. During the same month last year, 14,000 tourists visited the reservation.

The increased volume has prompted the tribe to hire 140 people, nearly doubling the staff for its burgeoning tourist destination at the canyon's west rim.

"It's been wild," said Sheri Yellowhawk, a former Hualapai council member who now serves as CEO for the tribal-owned Grand Canyon Resort Corp.
April 4, 2007:  Grand Canyon SkywalkThe whole experience was quite disappointing. While the views were spectacular, the cost was just far too high, especially because they were not clearly advertised anywhere. $25 might have been worth it, $75 was far too high. Additionally, none of the infrastructure was able to support the number of visitors and all of the buildings in the advertisements are not built yet. We spent most of our time waiting in line, a lot of it out in the cold, even avoiding the one really long line. My suggestion is to wait until they at least have the buildings built and hopefully have realized that most people do not want to pay that much for that little.

"Melting pot" explained

Newcomb:  Jamestown 2007:  Commemorating the colonization of North America The U.S. tour of Queen Elizabeth II was timed to coincide with the commemoration. Speaking of changes that have occurred in the United States since she last visited Jamestown 50 years ago, when racial segregation was still the law of the land, the queen said, "The melting pot metaphor captures one of the great strengths of your country and is an inspiration to others around the world as we face the continuing social changes ahead."

From an indigenous perspective, however, the melting pot metaphor calls to mind the effort to destroy the traditional indigenous cultures and ways of life in North America, through the violent process of colonization and "reduction."

The melting pot is a metaphorical cauldron used to render indigenous nations from their original independence to a state of subjection and domination. Unfortunately, it is this colonizing process that is being commemorated in Virginia in May.

President Bush, in a May 15, 2006, address on immigration reform, invoked this very image when he said that the United States must "honor the great American tradition of the melting pot, which has made us one nation out of many peoples." For each of our respective Indian nations, such a colonizing "melting" process is a fundamental threat to our continued existence.

A nomination for Beach?

Adam Beach Scores Anew in `Wounded Knee'He wasn't nominated for an Oscar for his role as a Native American Marine in "Flags of Our Fathers," but Adam Beach still feels like a winner.

"Just to hear that people were upset that I didn't get nominated really means a lot," he says of critics enthralled by his haunting portrayal of Ira Hayes, one of the Marines seen raising the flag on Iwo Jima in the prize-winning Associated Press photo snapped during the Second World War battle.

"I've never had to wait for an award to look at my accomplishments," he says. "I've always had the hearts and smiles of Native American people to tell me, 'You've won us.' That's my award."Dick Wolf on his historical manipulations:Although a historical character, Eastman was not the centrepiece of the book as he is in the film.

"It was a dramatic necessity," says executive producer Dick Wolf, "to have somebody who was a synthesis of many different paths and characters. Once we found the character, it was finding an actor."Wolf on a possible nomination for Beach:Wolf expects there will be more in store for Beach after "Wounded Knee" airs.

"I will be stunned, baffled and upset," he says, "if he isn't nominated (for), and wins, an Emmy."

The real message of Jamestown

The emperors have no clothesIn fact, it was the clan-based, longhouse-dwelling people who had knowledge of the land of the so-called New World. And after the colony's establishment, it was African slaves who tended the real "seed of freedom": tobacco. If the foreigners grew anything for themselves, it was the early model of American imperialism--exploiting shared resources to gain wealth for the state. This model flourishes today, the state's hypocrisy honed by consumer-citizens who generally feel no sense of responsibility for the original sins committed by their own ancestors. No doubt this would been a source of resentment for any Native people attending the White House gala, had any been invited.

Just as the legend of Pocahontas as Jamestown's princess heroine persists in the American psyche, so does the myth of the "founding" of an American society based on the rights and dignity of the individual. Pocahontas, the young daughter of Powhatan, is almost always depicted as a love-struck teen who willingly aided the hungry settlers. Rarely is she imagined as a child captive of an unhygienic man twice her age. She is one among the handful of internationally famous Native Americans because she helped the Europeans in their quest to tame the New World. The message is loud and clear: The only good Indian is one who can be honored as a symbol of colonization, of a better life through white "civilization."

Filmmaker chooses home over Hollywood

Quechan filmmaker says he's grateful for blessings in lifeSo far Golding has created one fictional movie and numerous documentaries. That fictional piece was his first and by far his most successful. "When the Fire Dims" earned showings at film festivals throughout the U.S., Canada and Australia. That's the one that also got invited to be shown at the famed Sundance Film Festival.

That first movie tells the story of a young American Indian man in L.A. who loses himself in alcoholism. Golding, who wrote the script and shot the film, distributed his work around universities coast to coast through a filmmakers' co-op. In addition to all the big festivals, the fictional film won honors at the American Indian Film Festival and the Marin County Film Festival.

Costume or clothes?

The word "costume" and American IndiansWhen you're talking about the clothes that American Indians wear, call them clothes, or traditional attire, or regalia. If you know the specific words for the items you're talking about, use them. But it'd be great if we could all stop using the word costume.

Maybe an analogy is helpful? When a Catholic priest is in his robes, it is not proper to call it his costume. If you want to dress up like a Catholic priest for a play, or for Halloween, then what you put on IS a costume.(Excerpted from Debbie Reese's American Indians in Children's Literature, 5/15/07.)

Plenty Coups and Radical Hope

Philoso...therapy

Philosopher and psychoanalyst Jonathan Lear finds the human soul in Aristotle, Freud, and the Crow Nation’s last chief.Learning what it means to be human by listening to one individual also describes Lear’s most recent project. Plenty Coups was the last great chief of the Crow Nation, and he witnessed, during the second half of the 19th century, the collapse of his people’s nomadic hunting and warrior culture. Four years before he died in 1932, he dictated his story to a white friend, Frank B. Linderman: “When the buffalo went away the hearts of my people fell to the ground,” he said, “and they could not lift them up again. After this nothing happened.”

Lear first heard these lines at a Yale lecture on historiography. Two decades later, during a walk along the Chicago lakefront, Plenty Coups’s words came back to him. “And I realized that this had happened before,” he says. “It took me 20 years to notice that after 20 years, it hadn’t gone away. I suddenly thought, I need to find out what this means.” Shortly afterward, the World Trade Center towers fell, and in the newspapers and magazines Lear reads—the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Economist, Harper’s, The New Republic, the Times Literary Supplement—he noticed “a rising sense of anxiety about civilization’s vulnerability.” What can it mean, he wondered, for a leader to say about his nation that after a certain point, nothing happened? And what connection might that assertion have to current cultural fears, which Lear believes fuel anger across the globe?

His meditation resulted in Radical Hope (Harvard University Press, 2006), a book that examines whether it is possible to maintain hope in a meaningful existence even as one’s own existence loses all meaning. “That is radical hope,” Lear says. “It is radical because it’s a hopefulness that outstrips the ability to formulate proper concepts with which to hope.” Culturally unmoored, one hopes without knowing what for. “Even though your inherited understanding of what you could do and who you could be falls apart, you trust sufficiently in the goodness of the world to endure a period in which, for instance, the question of what is courage has no answer.”

Plenty Coups guided the Crow through such an abyss, from a world in which stealing an enemy’s horse was a triumph into a world in which it was theft. As Japan industrialized in the late 1800s, Lear notes, the samurai faced a similar calamity. (He regards the Holocaust as a separate tragedy: Jewish culture didn’t break down but gained meaning from survival in spite of Nazi persecution.) “Or take Don Quixote,” Lear says. “He wants to be a knight errant, but there’s no way to be a knight errant. Part of what makes it such a deep comedy is he’s insisting on being something it’s no longer possible to be.”

Unlike Don Quixote or Plenty Coups’s Sioux rival Sitting Bull, the Crow chief did not insist. Faithful to a dream-vision he’d had as a nine-year-old boy, he steered his followers peacefully onto their Montana reservation in 1892. Their old existence ended, but he sought to forge a new one in the white world.

The justification for recognizing Hawaiians

Akaka Bill opposition loses ground on constitutionality, race and separatism issuesRace is no basis for federal recognition of indigenous peoples and governments, both maintained. "The Supreme Court has specifically stated that the recognition afforded to our Native peoples is political and not racial, and this bill specifically states that the recognition afforded Native Hawaiians is of a type and nature of the relationship the United States has with the several federally recognized Indian tribes," Bennett said. Dinh added that he does not believe the bill would create a citizen class based on race "for the exact reason that the Supreme Court has never considered such legislation dealing with Indian affairs to be race-based bills. Sure, it does single out a class, as with a tribe itself, but that in itself is a power expressly granted in the Constitution ... and the court has very clearly and consistently characterized this as a political decision, not a race-based classification."

The Justice Department's discernment of a secessionist threat came in for incredulous dismissal from Sen. Daniel K. Inouye, D-Hawaii, a member of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs. Questioning Justice Department Principal Deputy Associate Attorney General Gregory Katsis, Inouye asked if the department was really serious to suggest it. He gave examples of Native Hawaiians' patriotism in time of war and said they have participated so fully in federal and state governance that they are well-prepared to govern responsibly. "They are just as American as anyone else, and to suggest that they may involve themselves in separatist movements I think is an insult to them."

Indians associated with Greeks

Exhibit shows progression, change in understanding of the American WestCarl Schafer, associate director of the Museum of Art, said the American Indians have been mythologized by artists like Manship, who associated his American Indian hunter with Greek mythological characters, particularly Hercules.

"[Manship's sculpture] is a heavily mythologized character," Schafer said. "No Native American actually looks like this. This is a really Greek sort of form--this giant hulking torso. They were trying to associate Native Americans with classical mythological characters."Comment:  This statue does the same thing as mascots and other attempts to romanticize the Indian. It locates Indians in the safe and distant past, where we don't have to acknowledge them or take responsibility for our actions toward them.

The Museum of Amexican History

Inverting History to Understand It

“Smoking Mirror” Exhibit Asks Provocative “What If?”Welcome to the Museum of Amexican History, says a sign at Bert Green Fine Art in downtown Los Angeles. It looks like a typical collection of artifacts and artwork illustrating a vanished culture—until you realize exactly which culture it is. Amexica (“not-Mexico”) is the land formerly known as “U-rop” (Europe).

The occasion is “Smoking Mirror,” an exhibition by Ecuadorean artist Eduardo Villacis. Villacis’s goal is to examine our society by looking at its mirror image. What if Mexico had conquered Europe, he muses, rather than the other way around?

Pope insults Indians

Brazil's Indians offended by Pope commentsOutraged Indian leaders in Brazil said on Monday they were offended by Pope Benedict's "arrogant and disrespectful" comments that the Roman Catholic Church had purified them and a revival of their religions would be a backward step.

In a speech to Latin American and Caribbean bishops at the end of a visit to Brazil, the Pope said the Church had not imposed itself on the indigenous peoples of the Americas.

They had welcomed the arrival of European priests at the time of the conquest as they were "silently longing" for Christianity, he said.

Captain Pike, Indian?

In the Star Trek novel Burning Dreams, Margaret Wander Bonnano invents a history for Christopher Pike, James T. Kirk's predecessor. Bonnano writes that Pike's father was part Native, Cherokee, and his stepmother was "mostly Mojave, with a little bit of Navajo." These two raised Pike during his teen years and taught him Indian-style values, including respect for the land and its inhabitants. Presumably Pike transmitted these values to the people he subsequently met, including Spock and the crew of the Enterprise.

Rob's rating:  8.0 of 10.

The Hookers trailer

Welcome to VueTVLast month, we profiled filmmaker Marcel Petit’s upcoming feature documentary, Hookers, which focuses on the lives of prostitutes long after they've left the streets behind. His interest in the subject is innately personal—and his respect for the women profiled provides a perspective never before seen.

Due for release later this year, we’re honored Marcel is allowing NativeVue to premiere the official trailer of his groundbreaking film. Hookers, as you’ve never seen or heard before: VUEtv Premiere…"HOOKERS" Trailer.

Gibson sacrificed the Maya

Culture Shocker

Scholars Say Mel Gibson's Action Flick Sacrifices the Maya Civilization to Hollywood"Apocalypto" depicts the Maya as a super-cruel, psycho-sadistic society on the skids, a ghoulscape engaged in widespread slavery, reckless sewage treatment and bad rave dancing, with a real lust for human blood. Think: Caligula of the Yucatan. Follow the bouncing heads!

This is a problem because most scholars, while acknowledging the violence of this pre-Columbian society, universally applaud the Maya as among the New World's most sophisticated and subtle civilizations. They were, especially at their height around A.D. 800, remarkable Stone Agers who erected avant-garde cities and towering pyramids in the jungles of Mexico and Central America, created sumptuous art, practiced a precise astronomy and (yes, there's more) developed not only a written language, but a heady cosmology of time and space, built around a complex, ordered society of maize, kings and gods. The Maya flourished for a thousand years. They were winners.

But "Apocalypto's" focus on the more, shall we say, extreme hobbies of the Maya (i.e., removal of still operating body parts) is giving the community of Maya researchers the fits. The archaeologists are shouting: slander! They're circulating statements and editorials and e-mails.

"It is a shocking movie to us," says Stephen Houston, professor of anthropology at Brown University, and like the other Mayanists quoted in this article, a scientist who has spent years excavating sites in Mexico and Central America.

Houston and his colleagues say they are not just engaging in the predictable academic nitpicking about the historical accuracy of a potential Hollywood blockbuster--though they are also happy to point out the alleged goofs (the famous Bonampak murals are altered to show a warrior holding a dripping human heart when nothing was in his hand before)--and, in fact, they applaud the things Gibson and his designers got generally right (the groovy tattoos, facial scarification, colorful textiles, nasty weaponry, punky ear plugs, etc.)

The main gripe, says Houston, is that "Apocalypto" will make a bad impression on the general public. "For millions of people this might be their first glimpse of the Maya," he says. "This is the impression that is going to last. But this is Mel Gibson's Maya. This is Mel Gibson's sadism. This is not the Maya we know."

Some of the scientists have seen the movie, others have watched the trailers, read reviews or summaries. David Stuart, professor of Mesoamerican art and writing at the University of Texas, saw a rough cut of the film with Gibson and penned an unpublished editorial with Houston that suggests Gibson's Maya are so evil that they were "a civilization . . . that deserves to die."Even Gibson's paid expert is dubious:Gibson's consultant on the project was Richard Hansen, a respected Mayanist and professor at Idaho State University, as well as the president of the Foundation for Anthropological Research and Environmental Studies, which does preservation work and study in Guatemala. Gibson, a generous contributor to the group, now serves on its board of directors.

Hansen defends the film, believing that his fellow Mayanists will be "pleasantly surprised." He says, "For the most part it is very accurate," and "I was amazed at the level of detail, the stone tools, gourds, iguana skins, strung up turkeys, just amazed." Yet, he adds, "there were things I didn't like that they went ahead and did anyway," and he agrees "there was a lot of artistic license taken," and that there is a mash-up of architectural styles, art, costume and ritual from different time periods during the millennium-long Maya reign.

And the sacrifice, the gore, the Maya as savage? The film does "give the feeling they're a sadistic lot," Hansen says. "I'm a little apprehensive about how the contemporary Maya will take it."Comment:  In my opinion, you can never have too many postings about something as stereotypical as Apocalypto.

Playing the festival game

A Journey to the Film Festival Abyss, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Being A BombI was invited by the Palm Springs Native American Film Festival to submit, but then never heard anything back, not even a rejection letter. And then the rejections really started pouring in. Sundance again passed, of course, though I did get a nice personal response from new Native Forum programmer Bird Runningwater, who said he really liked the sophistication of the story.

And since I thought I was savvier now about the whole festival process, I was trying to tailor my festival submissions accordingly, since it really is a daunting task. There are so many festivals out there now. And since there are more festivals, you’d hope at least some would bite.

But no.

Save for just missing the cut to get into the Method Fest Film Festival in Cali (it focuses on acting and the fest director said he really liked my performance), by October 2006 I had received about 18 rejections and spent almost $600 on submission fees. Ouch.

Invasion of America = invasion of Iraq?

At Jamestown celebration, Bush says US proud to spread liberty

Excuse for the present invasion:[S]peaking in the town of Williamsburg after touring the Jamestown settlement, he said: "America is proud to promote the expansion of democracy, and we must continue to stand with all those struggling to claim their freedom.

"The advance of freedom is the great story of our time, and new chapters are being written every day, from Georgia and Ukraine, to Kyrgyzstan and Lebanon, to Afghanistan and Iraq."Excuse for past invasions:[L]ike the queen, Bush underlined that Jamestown planted the seeds of democracy and free enterprise in the New World, culminating in the English colonies' Declaration of Independence from the motherland in 1776.

"From these humble beginnings, the pillars of a free society began to take hold. Private property rights encouraged ownership and free enterprise. The rule of law helped secure the rights of individuals," he said.

The Fountain revisited

Hope springs eternal in 'The Fountain'

Like a camera-wielding Ponce de León, director Darren Aronofsky goes on a messy adventure.A New Age head trip about the quest for eternal life, "The Fountain" opens with a quote from the Book of Genesis and climaxes with a tragic encounter with the sap-oozing Tree of Life. In between, its hero—of whom there are three versions, played by a varyingly coiffed Hugh Jackman—battles Mayan tribes, tries to cure cancer and assumes yogic poses against golden, nebulous backdrops that resemble prog-rock album covers.

This, in short, is a very easy movie to mock. Panned by most critics upon its release last fall, it flopped at the box office. The film arrives this week on DVD, where it stands a better chance at achieving, if not immortality, then at least a certain cult longevity.

UCE head: Oneidas aren't civilized

"Civilized society" shouldn't tolerate Oneidas' "lawlessness"

Student jokes about killing Indians

Mascot defender:  Harvard "would've slaughtered the Indians"

Another expert criticizes Apocalypto

"Apocalypto" Tortures the Facts, Expert SaysMel Gibson says Apocalypto, his new movie set during the collapse of the Maya Empire, should not be seen as a historical document.

At least one expert couldn't agree more.

To find out what the Maya Empire was really like, Stefan Lovgren checked in with Zachary Hruby, a Maya expert at the University of California, Riverside.Apocalypto:  A New Beginning or a Step Backward?Mel Gibson's new thriller about the ancient Maya civilization is exactly that, thrilling. However, this entertainment comes at a dear price. The Maya at the time of Spanish Contact are depicted as idyllic hunters and gatherers, or as genocidal murderers, and neither of these scenarios is accurate. The film represents a step backward in our understanding of the complex cultures that existed in the New World before the Spanish invasion, and is part of a disturbing trend reemerging in the film industry, which portrays nonwestern natives as evil savages. "King Kong" and "Pirates of the Caribbean II" show these natives as uncaring, beastlike, and virtually inhuman. Apocalypto achieves similar goals, but in a much subtler fashion.

Although this film will undoubtedly create interest in the field of Maya archaeology by way of its spectacular reconstructions and beautiful jungle scenes, the lasting impression of Maya and other Pre-Columbian civilizations is this: The Maya were simple jungle bands or bloodthirsty masses duped by false religions, that their mighty but misguided civilization fell into ruin as a result, and their salvation arrived with the coming of Christian beliefs saddled on the backs of Spanish conquistadors. As we archaeologists struggle to accurately reconstruct ancient Maya society, obstructed by their decimation via Western diseases, destruction of their books, art, and history by Spanish friars, not to mention their subjugation and exploitation by the conquistadors, films such as Apocalypto represent a significant disparagement of that process. Further, inaccurate, irresponsible representations by Hollywood of indigenous peoples as amoral, inhuman, or uncivilized can only lead to greater misunderstanding and strife in contemporary society. This may be particularly important in a modern world where common ground is increasingly difficult to come by.

Coca-Cola vs. Coca Sek

Coca-Cola Vs. Coca Sek in Colombia[U]ntil recently, [President Alvaro Uribe's] hardline government had not gone after natural coca products made by Indians, acknowledging that millions of peasants have chewed calcium-rich coca for thousands of years to stave off hunger and as a remedy for ailments from altitude sickness to stomach aches.

Uribe's presidential Web site even promoted natural coca products as a rare commercial enterprise for poor Indian communities, and the federal food-safety agency provided quality-control advice to the manufacturers of coca tea, cookies, shampoo and other consumer goods.

That suddenly changed in February, when Uribe's administration started banning the sale of coca products outside the reservations where Indians have a constitutional right to grow the hearty plant. Though it's still possible to find coca products at boutique markets and health food stores, inspectors have begun to forcibly remove them from supermarket shelves.

What prompted the switch?

For one, the success of Coca Sek, an energy drink made by the Nasa Indian tribe.

The carbonated drink made with coca, which looks like apple cider and tastes vaguely like ginger ale, was becoming a trendy alternative to Coca-Cola among Colombia's urban youth. The logo on the can even mimicked the popular U.S. soft drink's curvy script.

Newspapers around the world ran David-and-Goliath stories about the challenge by an unknown Indian tribe to the U.S. soda behemoth.

Lacrosse player crosses the line

Cradle of a Sport Has Crossed the Gender LineOn the Onondaga Nation near Syracuse, Jeanne Shenandoah adores lacrosse. All eight of her brothers played it. She scours the papers for scores of the local indoor team. But when it comes to women playing the game that her Iroquois forefathers originated centuries ago, the conversation turns tense.

“This is a precious, sacred area for me,” she said in a room at the Onondaga Communications Office where she works. “To our community and families, lacrosse is a sacred medicine.”

To the Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, Tuscarora and Mohawk—the six nations that comprise the Iroquois confederacy that controlled most of present-day New York before colonization—lacrosse was a gift from the creator to be played by men for healing purposes. It continues to be played in ceremonies and at the request of any individual, clan or for the entire confederacy, anyone who needs its curative powers. Because of its deep, spiritual significance, women are not even allowed to touch a stick.

Commemorative Jamestown coins

2007 Jamestown 400th Anniversary Commemorative CoinsAuthorized by Public Law 108-289, the commemorative coins are limited to maximum mintages across all product options of 500,000 for the silver dollar and 100,000 for the $5 gold coin. The coins will be sold by the United States Mint through the end of 2007 or until the coins sell out.

The coins tell the story of Jamestown as America’s first permanent English settlement that established democracy, free enterprise and a culturally diverse society in what became the United States.

The obverse of the $5 gold coin depicts Captain John Smith conversing with a Virginia Indian. The coin’s reverse pictures the Jamestown Memorial Church—the only structure remaining from the settlement’s earliest years. The gold coin sells for $255.
Comment:  This coin easily could have been Virginia's state quarter. Instead, the state went with a safer choice.

Germans pretend to be Indians

Be Still my ThunderheartThere have even been people who look Indian but are not Indian, and still claim to be Indian, even so far as to claim to be descendants of Geronimo.

"Some fall for the imposter here." Larry says, "we have caught several imposters. They have their stories worked out right down to the name of their fictional Indian grandparents, and their story is believable and on track with our experiences in residential school, up to the contemporary racism against Indians."

The German people's only real interest in Indians is the clichè, Indian on horseback. A real Indian is not accepted until he looks like something he's not, a part of the cliché.

Official site of Bury My Heart

HBO Films:  Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee

Read the interviews and watch the videos at the official site.

Teenage girls = revered chiefs?

Volleyball "Warriors" don headdresses to show school pride

Daniel Giat on Bury My Heart

Interview with Daniel GiatHBO: In working on this project, what did you learn about the assimilation of the American Indian?

Daniel Giat: Well the US government believed that only by imposing white education, white religion, white culture on the reservations, and by, insuring that the Native Americans on the reservations became land holders, and US citizens, that was the best way to insure their survival. The government wanted to assimilate the Indians as quickly as possible into American society. On the surface that might sound like a very positive program. But in fact there was something very arrogant about it. And it really meant the cultural extermination of these people, which is what happened on many reservations.

HBO: Where did you discover Charles Eastman's story?

Daniel Giat: I don't remember which book it was, but when I came across Charles Eastman, it was an absolute revelation, and it was obvious this was the story to tell. Here is a man who had begun as a young boy, living in Sioux society, was taken away from that, and for many years, totally appreciated what white civilization, and Christianity had afforded him. But once he came to Pine Ridge, as physician, the only physician among some 7,000 Sioux, at the Pine Ridge Reservation, he saw what conditions were really like. And, when the Massacre at Wounded Knee took place, it was a sea change for him. And it shattered him. And it's something from which he himself said, he never really fully recovered.

HBO: What do you hope audiences leave with after they see this film?

Daniel Giat: A very important thing happened when I visited the Pine Ridge and Standing Rock, and Rosebud reservations, something was asked of me which stuck with me, and that was, please don't end this story at Wounded Knee. This shouldn't be the story of a massacre. This should not be the story of the end of a people. This should be the story of survival. Because the Sioux did not cease to exist at Wounded Knee. Hundreds of people, innocent people were killed there. But that society exists. And the poverty is terrible, certainly, on the reservation, but these people are struggling to survive, and they are succeeding in a very, very important way. There have been huge barriers set against them. But these people do survive as best they can. Certainly they need help. They need aid. But they are alive, they are vital; they have brought back into their lives many of the customs which had been eradicated from their daily lives by the US Government, including dancing, ritual events; burial customs. There are re- enactments every year of the trek which was made to Wounded Knee by Chief Bigfoot and his people. They have enormous respect for their own history, and it's important that we learn that history as well.

Oldest stories get staged

Debut explores Native American talesWhen most people think of American folk tales, they think of Paul Bunyan, Johnny Appleseed and Brer Rabbit. But when you go back to America's earliest stories, the heroes are the sun, the moon and the coyote.

Native American folk stories focus on nature and animals rather than humans, said Lee Osterhout-Kaplan, director and co-founder of Debut Theatre Company, a theater company for young people by young people.

Debut's latest effort, "Coyote: Tales of a Trickster," combines many of those tales from Native American and Mexican folklore.Comment:  I wonder if this theater is aware of the ethos of using Native stories without permission. Judging by this article, I'm guessing not.

Also, there's the potential for stereotyping here. I get the impression that all Native cultures are the same and similar to Mexican cultures, according to the Debut Theatre. That all Native stories consist of simple homilies about the sun, moon, and animals. This makes the rich, varied oral traditions of thousands of tribes into kid stuff, on a par with Aesop's fables or Kipling's Just So Stories.

Glass art becomes poster

Glass Artist Chosen for ’07 Indian Market PosterThe Southwestern Association for Indian Arts (SWAIA) is pleased to announce Marvin Oliver (Quinault/Isleta Pueblo) as the poster artist for this year’s Santa Fe Indian Market. A celebrated glass artist, sculptor and printmaker, Oliver flew from Seattle, Washington to unveil the poster and original artwork on May 10th, 2007 at La Posada de Santa Fe Resort and Spa.

Using a southwest color palette, but classic Northwest Coast style, Oliver has created the many faces of Raven—mythical, colorful and curious—in visually stunning glass. Shaman Tells the Raven’s Tale, created especially for the Santa Fe Indian Market, is a fused glass, 41.5” x 19” form which incorporates an inlaid cast-glass, dichroic treated face. In Northwest Coast mythology Raven brings light to the world when he transforms himself into a boy (depicted in the piece by the face and human arms) to steal the sun out of the box of daylight. He then changes back to a raven to deliver the sun, moon and the stars into the sky (depicted in Oliver’s piece by the flying birds in the face’s corona). The legs of the boy represent the claws of Raven and the iridescent face on the piece becomes the moon at night and the sun during the day.

SVU role may open doors

Adam Beach Conquers His DemonsBeach also hopes the role will help other Native Americans get a chance in Hollywood.

"This is sending a message every week that we are a part of society," he says. "It's going to open the doors of, 'wow, Adam is really doing good for that show, now we need another Native American in one of our shows.'"

Whether he likes it or not, Beach is a role model for Native Americans. No other Aboriginal actor has reached his level of success, and very few have had roles in mainstream cinema and television.

Iron Eyes needed again

Revisit American Indian who shed a single tearWhen I was growing up, there was an anti-litter campaign on the airwaves that included a television commercial I've never forgotten.

It showed an ancient-looking American Indian named Iron Eyes Cody paddling a canoe on a polluted river along banks covered with garbage. A single tear rolls down his face.

Maybe an ad campaign that packs a similar emotional wallop is needed today to win over new generations.

Indians edited into The War

Ken Burns agrees to re-edit "The War" to accommodate Hispanic-American storiesAfter Hispanic groups complained that the 14-plus hour work excluded them, Burns started filming material that was to be supplemental to his completed documentary. But on Thursday, Burns said he would re-edit the work, which focuses on four American towns, to incorporate the new interviews with Hispanic veterans.Also:Joe DePlasco, the publicist for Burns, said new material will tell of Native American veterans. DePlasco said the majority of the film focuses on the four towns: Luverne, Minn.; Sacramento, Calif.; Mobile, Ala.; and Waterbury, Conn. But there are exceptions, DePlasco said, and the new material will have the same feel as the finished film.

Another graduation feather conflict

Feathers prohibited at graduation attire at NSUWarren Hawk graduated Saturday with a master’s degree in education. But before the commencement ceremony began, organizers told him he would have to remove the eagle feather and medicine wheel he was wearing.

According to Hawk, a member of the Lakota tribe, organizers threatened to have him removed from the ceremony by campus police if he didn’t comply with the graduation dress code: gown, cap, and a rope of a specific color (depending on the degree obtained) around the neck, but no feathers.Comment:  Conflicts like this between Indian students and school officials occur every year. I've noted this particular story because it's the first one since I began doing this blog.

Dick Wolf on Bury My Heart

Interview with Dick WolfHBO: Can you briefly set up the story Dan Giat has adapted?

Dick Wolf: It is a vast, historical epic of non-fiction. The biggest job that Dan did is synthesize a book that is about 500 pages long into a coherent movie that traces the history of the Sioux from Little Bighorn--which was Custer's last stand--through the Massacre of Wounded Knee, which is probably one of the low points of American history. But, I think what the movie will show is that for better or worse, the Indian experience is really one of near genocide, and it is not a proud moment in the history of the United States. But, it is a very revealing look, and there is an enormous mirror into the current world because it is really the story of the United States trying to impose their will on what was essentially a foreign country with a population living a life that was totally different than what this country was becoming.

HBO: Do you have a favorite scene?

Dick Wolf: Oh, I absolutely have a favorite scene, which is a confrontation between Miles, who is the colonel who came to bring the Sioux under control after Little Bighorn, and Sitting Bull. They have a powwow in the middle of the plains, and Sitting Bull takes his position, which is, "Why are you doing this to us? You know we're out here living our lives." And, Miles is the one who turns to him and says, "Wait a minute. You're the most warlike tribe on the North American continent. You came out of Minnesota and killed the Crow. Why are you any better?" And, that is the moment in the film that you can see the historical perspective is one thing, but there is always a rationale for the aggressor to do what he's doing. So, it's a wonderful scene both psychologically and historically because it puts the entire film into perspective. It's the one scene that has not changed in the last three years of writing and rewriting, so it's pretty powerful.Comment:  This is an odd choice for Wolf's favorite scene. It seems to excuse the white man's crimes by saying the Indians did the same thing.

I presume this exchange never took place, so it's doubly odd that Wolf chose to include it. What's the "perspective" he's pushing: that the victims are no different from the victimizers?

Sitting Bull could've responded in several ways to Miles's comment. Here are a few possibilities:

"I'm not responsible for my ancestors' actions. I'm responsible for my actions and so are you."

"Our wars were small-scale skirmishes with few people killed. You're trying to exterminate our race."

"Unlike the Lakota and Crow people who came before us, we signed treaties guaranteeing our rights. You're violating those agreements."

"We didn't preach a philosophy of 'love thy neighbor as thyself,' then violate it. You did."

"Two wrongs don't make a right. Never have, never will."

In the rest of the interview, Wolf justifies the fabrications noted in the NY Times. Needless to say, I don't buy the justification. If a historical episode isn't dramatic enough to tell, then don't tell it. Don't fictionalize it and then tout the honesty and accuracy of your storytelling.

Fabrications in Bury My Heart

Classic Book About America’s Indians Gains a Few Flourishes as a Film[T]he fact that Mr. Brown’s work has been translated into 17 languages and has sold five million copies around the world was not enough to convince HBO that a film version would draw a sizable mainstream audience. When the channel broadcasts its two-hour adaptation of the book, beginning Memorial Day weekend, at its center will be a new character: a man who was part Sioux, was educated at an Ivy League college and married a white woman.

“Everyone felt very strongly that we needed a white character or a part-white, part-Indian character to carry a contemporary white audience through this project,” Daniel Giat, the writer who adapted the book for HBO Films, told a group of television writers earlier this year.

The added character is based on a real person: Charles Eastman, part Sioux and descended from a long line of Santee chiefs but who was sent away by his father to boarding school and then held up as a model of the potential assimilation of 19th-century Native Americans. But the film fictionalizes significant portions of his life. In the HBO version he dodges bullets at the Battle of Little Bighorn. In reality he was far away, in grade school in Nebraska.And:“Eastman was the most well-known, well-educated Indian at the beginning of the 20th century,” said Raymond Wilson, a professor of history at Fort Hays State University in Hays, Kan., who wrote what is considered to be the definitive biography of Eastman. “When I heard they were doing the film,” he said, “I joked with a couple of people that I hoped they didn’t have Charles Eastman shaking hands with Sitting Bull at Pine Ridge.”

Not quite, but almost. The film’s climactic scene has Eastman watching as Sitting Bull addresses a group of Sioux in Pine Ridge at a meeting of which Dawes is the chairman. Sitting Bull tells them not to accept the government land allotments. In fact, the chief lived 200 miles away at the Standing Rock agency, and the meeting never happened.

As for placing Eastman at the Battle of Little Bighorn, Mr. Giat, the screenwriter, defends that choice by noting that some members of Eastman’s tribe were there.

The film also shows Eastman courting Elaine Goodale, a Massachusetts poet and teacher who oversaw schools for Indians in the Dakota territory, over a period of years, beginning while he was in college. In fact, Eastman met her when he arrived at Pine Ridge less than two months before the Wounded Knee massacre. Nor was Goodale anywhere near the reservation in 1883 when Sitting Bull arrived, as shown in the film; she was in Virginia.

The Native Keanu Reaves

NBC calls Adam Beach

With a TV movie set to air on CTV, Canuck star gets Law & Order gigAdam Beach is like some sort of native Canadian Keanu Reeves.

The star of this Free Willy-like movie of the week is an actor whose performances in films like Smoke Signals, Windtalkers and Flags Of Our Fathers swing between intense, vacant and intensely vacant. His vocabulary is equal parts dudespeak and tribal mysticism. And he looks good in a tight white T-shirt, as demonstrated in a prominent Gap ad a few years back, when Beach was being positioned as Hollywood's next big thing.

The heat on Beach's career died down following Windtalkers' tepid reception, but it's since reignited thanks to Clint Eastwood's Flags Of Our Fathers, starring Beach as real-life war hero Ira Hayes.

"There was a huge spotlight on me for a while there, dude, but you can't get caught up in that whirlwind or it's like, whoa!"More on his SVU role:Beach is on the phone from the New Jersey set of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. Producer Dick Wolf was so impressed with Beach's two-episode guest appearance this season that he's made his character, Detective Chester Lake, a series regular and signed Beach to a three-year contract.

"This is the best, dude," he says. "Every week you'll see my little mug."

While Beach has done plenty of TV guest shots on JAG, Third Watch, Everwood, The Dead Zone, Walker Texas Ranger and on and on this is his first as a series regular since North Of 60 almost 15 years ago.

"This is a whole different ball game," he says. "Everything's faster, and it's so hard to play catch-up since [SVU castmates] Mariska Hargitay and Chris Meloni have been doing this for so long. These are the big boys they don't mess around. They come to work so well prepared, you're like, "Whoa, I've got some homework to do. '"

Indigo Girls play for renewable energy

Indigo Girls, Honor the Earth concert to honor Southwest[T]he concert was designed to benefit the local Just Transition Coalition (JTC) and their work to establish a new, safe energy economy-one based on the vast renewable energy potential of Native lands.

"The grassroots organizing in this region is compelling and inspiring. In the midst of such a destructive energy paradigm, Native communities are working to affect positive change and provide an alternative," Ray explained.

But wait, there's more...Honor The Earth executive director Winona LaDuke will also be at the concert to speak in support of the JTC and the need for sustainable energy in contemporary societies.Nor is this something new for the Indigo Girls:Recognizing the need to help rural communities in this predicament, the Indigo Girls joined with Honor the Earth in 1992.

"Our work with Honor the Earth started out because the Native American environment was, to me, on the forefront and really wasn't getting recognition," Ray said. "We were drawn to working with communities to continue their way of life and to bring the good things of progress like solar energy, wind power...and to work to strengthen--not take, but give."

Honor the Earth works to increase funding and public support for Native communities to protect the earth. The organization's work extends throughout North and South America and is heavily invested in developing renewable, sustainable forms of energy on Native lands.

Books misrepresent Indians

Course focuses on portrayal of Native Americans“There’s a whole cottage industry of books that misrepresent Indians and every locality has them,” said Beardslee, a member of the Chapleau Band of Ojibwa and Cree headquartered in Chapleau, Ontario.

She reviews books for Oyate, “a Native organization working to see that our lives and histories are portrayed honestly,” as the group’s Web site states. She is also a painter and book illustrator who said she has turned down illustrating work for books that perpetuate cliches.

Some of the books that pass on stereotypes would surprise people, she said. Some are highly regarded or have won prestigious literary awards, yet they’re often “non-Indian interpretations of what they think native history should be.”

Not all the books she objects to were written by non-Indians and not all those with merit were written by Native Americans, she said.

Some of what she objects to are portrayals of Native Americans as a sterile culture or as mythical people who only exist in the past, and works that present fabricated “legends,” she said.

“People want warm and fuzzy how come Indian stories, like ‘how the bear got its tail,’” Beardslee said. Writers often portray “red people” as a curiosity and land that was “free for the taking.”

"Reggae prince" visits Hopi

Hopi hosts Stephen Marley TourHopi recently played host to a true reggae prince. Stephen Marley, son of legendary reggae "king" Bob Marley, graced the stage at the Hopi Veteran's Memorial Center on April 29. Parrot Promotions, a Hopi-owned promotion company headed by KUYI radio's reggae Diva Sista Parrot (Karen Abeita) was credited for bringing the Stephen Marley Tour out to the Hopi reservation.

"The people--Hopi people and Indian people--have many things in common with us. The peoples' spirits are parallel, and they are good people, God's people, and they are very special. There is much that I wanted to see here, but we have to get going and I hope to return again to perform here again," stated Marley after the concert. Marley later stated that he had been to one other reservation that he could remember. As a youngster he performed on a reservation in Florida.

More FAITA pix

More of the First Americans in the Arts awards--April 14, 2007

Comment:  These photos were taken by professionals, so they're a lot better than mine. Check 'em out.