Fishing in the Western Great Lakes Region

by: Ojibwa

Mon May 14, 2012 at 15:01:23 PM PDT

First Nations News & Views: Living in two worlds, 'An Overdue Apology' & rally against racism

by: navajo

Sun May 13, 2012 at 15:07:52 PM PDT

Welcome to the 14th edition of First Nations News & Views. This weekly series is one element in the "Invisible Indians" project put together by Meteor Blades and me, with assistance from the Native American Netroots Group. Last week's edition is here. In this edition you will find my personal account of living in two worlds, a look at the years 1541 and 1885 in American Indian history, four news briefs and some linked bulleted briefs. Click on any of the headlines below to take you directly to that section of News & Views or to any of our earlier editions.

This Week in American Indian History in 1541 and 1885

~

Killing of White Buffalo Seen As Possible Hate Crime  ~  Indians Plan Rally Over Racist Attack on Blind Lakota Man  ~  Samuel Tso, VP of the Navajo Code Talkers Association Has Walked On  ~  U. of Minnesota Students Produce Film Calling for Apology to Dakota Indians  ~  

All Previous Editions

Cross Posted from Native American Netroots

I am trying to live in two worlds.

I was born in Utah. My white father descended from the Mormon pioneers. His grandparents were polygamists. My full-blood Navajo mother - who was taken from her family at age five to be assimilated into white culture at the Tuba City Boarding School - joined the Mormon church in her 20s.

Mom had the typical boarding school experience. Overwhelming homesickness, having her mouth washed out with soap for accidentally speaking forbidden Navajo, witnessing others endure severe punishment for being incorrigible in some Navajo way and a constant curriculum of You Need to Become White Now. My mom was smart, she learned fast to conform, to survive. She excelled at the school and even skipped grades.

Many of her supervisors there were Mormon and the church also had a strong presence on the rest of the Navajo reservation. It was everywhere. Mom eventually served a two-year mission for the church, doing her work among the Zuni. When she completed her mission, the local paper, the Richfield Reaper, reported her accomplishment. Someone mailed the announcement to my father because he had an interest in Indians and a strong love of the church. He was so impressed that she had devoted two years of her life to the church while leaving her three-year-old son with friends. Her first husband, another Navajo, had been killed at a young age. My dad wrote her a letter and asked to meet her. Later they married and started a family in rural Utah.

1959. As you can see, we assimilated quite well with our modern hairstyles and contemporary dress in the dominant culture's approved fashions. From left to right: My little brother Spence, (named after Spencer W. Kimball, who was an apostle of the Mormon church at that time), my mom Flora, my older half-brother Tom, my dad Rulon, and me, age four.

Being Indian, being Navajo, is one world. I'll get to that shortly.

The majority of my life was spent living in the world of white where I often hid my real blood by altering my appearance as best I could. All around me was a common attitude that my brown skin made me inferior to the white townfolk. See my essay Born Evil for my experience growing up as a "Lamanite." That's what the Mormon church still calls Indians. In those days not so long ago, it went further and called us fierce, bloodthirsty, lazy, idolatrous and loathsome because God cursed us with dark skin. In that essay you can read about my being told in public that I was not preferred by God the way my white Sunday school classmates were. And that I must work hard to make up for it.

The common belief system supported directly by the Book of Mormon and emphasized by public comments from the leaders of the church fostered an attitude that being "white and delightsome" was superior in the eyes of God. Thus white was the preferred skin color in the community as well.

It was hard growing up where I was considered a second-class citizen, even by Utahns who were non-Mormon.

There are two reasons my memories have come flooding back now. The news about Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren in which her alleged "Indianness" has been made an issue and the bullying by presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

The right-wing's instant response regarding Warren's claims of a Native heritage was to make fun of her by slurring Indians with a flurry of insults using stereotypes and calling her "Pinocchio-hontas," "Faux-hontas," "Chief Full-of-Lies," "Running Joke" "Sacaja-whiner" and "Spreading Bull." A name like Sitting Bull should be treated with respect. Why is this the first thing people think to do when they want to make fun of Indians?

The slurs reminded me of the same sad treatment I received as I was growing up.

In 1973, after the American Indian Movement and Oglalas on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota took over the village of Wounded Knee, my bully of a high school political science teacher, who was also the football coach, took to calling me Wounded Knee in class. Every time I raised my hand to ask a question he would say, "Oh, Wounded Knee has a question!" I was deeply annoyed but did not want to draw more attention to myself, so I did not respond publicly with anger or sadness. I went on as though nothing had happened. Fortunately, the majority of my classmates were fond of me and did not themselves adopt this racist dig of a nickname. They also never used the slur "half breed" to me.

But when I was nominated to be homecoming queen the next year, I knew that that fondness had its limits. No way would I be chosen since I was running against two of the prettiest and most popular girls in my class. White girls. I was certain one of them would win. I was honored just to have been nominated. That was enough for me. The three of us were called on stage during an assembly to announce the new queen. I wondered which of them would be chosen. Then my name was announced! I couldn't believe it. The other two burst into tears. Like me, neither of them thought I would be chosen. As I looked out into the cheering audience, I saw why the three of us had misjudged. All the Navajo Dormitory students were jumping up and down with huge grins. They were the students separated from their families and brought to town from all over the Navajo Nation to have the Indian taken out of them in the Richfield schools. My mother worked in the cafeteria at the Navajo Dormitory. I had forgotten the alliance I would have with those students. I had the swing vote!

Another time I felt very unsafe. The sheriff's son, who was a senior when I was a sophomore, said harshly and menacingly close to my face, "Ho." For NavaHO. That's what jerks like him called all Indian students in town: Hos. This was well before the word was slang for "whore," as it is today, so that was not his intent. But it was meant to be derogatory. I stayed away from him after that. Fifteen years later I was in my hometown with my young daughters at a restaurant. In walks the guy, and I see that he's now the sheriff! I quietly grabbed my girls, got in the car and left town. I saw his gaze follow me as we left. He seemed to being trying to place me. I checked my rearview mirror several times on the way to the freeway. I'm always afraid of lawmen in small towns.

When I finally started to pursue a career, I found I advanced faster if I didn't dress to match like my ethnic background. Dressing with Indian elements was viewed as a caricature, as if I were wearing a costume rather than expressing ethnic pride. In the workplace my ethnic clothing and jewelry were met with raised eyebrows. I got the distinct impression I needed to dress more conservatively, to fit in better. And I did. I tried to look as white as possible. I cut my long brown hair very short. I didn't wear any Navajo jewelry.

Decades later, I finally took a break from working as a result of too much travel and burnout. It was during that quiet interlude I found that I regretted not having embrace my Indianness and especially regretted that my daughters didn't know much about their heritage. I made a concerted effort after that to take regular road trips to the reservation with my daughters so they could meet their relatives and taste the wonderful, rich culture. I wanted them to feel a part of the reservation even though they are assimilated.

I'm also assimilated. Born and raised off the reservation, never taught my Native language and existing more or less comfortably within the dominant culture. I'm invisible to non-Indians, so we get along well. In the past few years, I have made strong statements with my appearance, but no one ever asks if I'm Indian. They just assume I'm of the hippie culture that is very much alive and well here in urban Northern California.

Now for that other world.

In spite of my Navajo grandparents having to give up their children to the government-run boarding schools to have the Indian removed from each child, our extended family miraculously retained its culture. My grandparents plotted to hide half their children from the Bureau of Indian Affairs kidnappers in the deep canyons of Inscription House on the Navajo Nation in northern Arizona. Those kids did not learn English and they kept to the traditional lifestyle of living in hogans without electricity or plumbed water. Shi cheii (the term meaning "my maternal grandfather" in Navajo) was a renowned medicine man. He passed on his hathalie (healing and spiritual) knowledge to his eldest son Robert. I became very close with my Uncle Robert in his last few years. That's another story I'll tell another day.

In the previous century, my mother's ancestors defeated one of the myriad government actions meant to destroy our culture. In 1864, thousands of Navajo were forcefully removed from their lands and force-marched almost 300 miles away to Fort Sumner in New Mexico. Fortunately, the tribe was able to return four years later, but it was devastated by the trauma of incarceration. Our family was lucky. They were able to hide deep in the canyons and high on top of Navajo Mountain. They did not go on The Long Walk. But it was still difficult for them to endure this wartime atmosphere and recover from it. In order for the Navajo to return to their lands they had to sign a treaty with many demands. One was that all the children would be given up to the government boarding schools to be assimilated. That led to the boarding school experience my mother survived. Her older sister Zonnie didn't survive.

Because this family culture wasn't destroyed, my mom's Navajo roots remained strong. She visited her family on vacations and she remained steeped in the culture. She maintained fluency in the language. She took us along for several weeks every summer to herd sheep, enjoy the wonderful food, play with our cousins and live in the traditional style. We watched shi cheii perform ceremonies. I treasured every moment on the Rez.

1958. My father took this photograph of us all standing next to the hogan where my grandparents lived. My mother is to the far right holding my little brother Spence. I'm the little one at her feet in the red moccasins. Next to me is my grandfather (shi cheii) who was a medicine man. He's the one in the tobacco-colored trousers. I loved sitting on his lap. He was so accepting of me, as was my grandmother (shi choi) who is to his right.

However, years earlier when my mom was at boarding school, she was advised to marry a white man and not teach her children the Navajo language. She was told this would raise her out of poverty and not hold her children back from advancing in the white world. It was curious that with such a strong cultural background that my mom followed this terrible advice. I think it points to how forceful the directives were from the government and how much of a survival instinct my mom had.

She felt that she was doing the right thing for us.

I admire non-English speakers who immerse their children in their mother tongue. As a result, as adults they can communicate more broadly and understand other cultures in ways monolingual people cannot. Sadly, neither I nor my siblings are fluent in Navajo, a result of the government assimilation policy and a compliant Indian woman who took the path of least resistance in her struggle to get by, to fit in.

I pay a price for not knowing the language when I visit my relatives on the Rez. Every time I go, I'm completely left out as my relatives converse in Navajo. I have to patiently wait for someone to translate for me. I can't tell you how many times I've asked for a translation and no one could go back that far in the conversation to help me out. And then the talk forges on while I sit in the dark.

Once, a few years ago at a family reunion for a traditional Navajo marriage, my cousin said deliberately within earshot of me, "Well, we are certainly getting whiter and whiter every time we get together ..." I felt unwelcomed by him. The same cousin later laughed when I tried to pronounce a word in Navajo. Another time I asked a question of my Uncle Robert and this cousin interrupted: "We don't share our stories with outsiders. You can ask all the questions you want but we won't answer them."  

So here I was, again in the same situation I dreaded in the white world. Not fully accepted in either world. Half breed.

But my uncle Robert, who usually sat quietly and merely observed, slowly started to speak, in Navajo. He spoke a long time with many hand gestures indicating distance, of travel. When he finished, this cousin, his son, sat silent. Everyone sat silent. When I realized no one was going to fill me in without prompting I asked what had just been said. My cousin Judy said that Uncle Robert had told his son that I was not an outsider. He had described the story of how I found him and reunited him with my mother, his sister he had not seen for 30 years. There's much more to that story, one I'll tell another day. Uncle Robert told his son I was blood and that I should be included. His son stood down and sat quietly the rest of the visit.

So in both worlds, there are inclusive people and exclusive people. Fortunately for my mental health there were many more nice people than mean ones. But the adverse experiences take a toll, especially on a young heart and mind.

One tends to never forget them.

The Red River War

by: Ojibwa

Wed May 09, 2012 at 08:57:45 AM PDT

"There is no question of national dignity, be it remembered, involved in the treatment of savages by a civilized power. With wild men, as with wild beasts, the question whether in a given situation one shall fight, coax, or run, is a question merely of what is easiest and safest."

First Nations News & Views: Elizabeth Warren, UN Special Rapporteur, Indian energy, Apache skaters

by: Meteor Blades

Sun May 06, 2012 at 15:40:36 PM PDT

Welcome to the 13th edition of First Nations News & Views. This weekly series is one element in the "Invisible Indians" project put together by navajo and me, with assistance from the Native American Netroots Group. Our last edition is here. In this edition you will find an exploration the Elizabeth Warren imbroglio, a look at the years 1877, 1916 & 1969 in American Indian history, three news briefs and some linkable bulleted news briefs. Click on any of the headlines below to take you directly to that section of News & Views or to any of our earlier editions.

This Week in American Indian History in 1877, 1916 & 1969

UN Special Rapporteur Calls for Restoration of Some Indian Lands  ~  "Ramp It Up" Exhibit Opens at the San Diego Museum of Man  ~  Navajo Band and Jemez Pueblo Plan Major Solar Installations  ~  

All Previous Editions

Cross Posted from Native American Netroots

Rendering by Dennis Joseph Weber

The outpouring of right-wing outrage over the revelation that Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren had checked the "Native American" box in directories of the Association of American Law Schools has followed a familiar trajectory. No surprise since it's election campaign season. Given the right's modern efforts to destroy or at least undermine tribal sovereignty and extinguish Indianness altogether, the racist hypocrisy exhibited in the accusations that Warren was lying and, in the words of Japanese internment praiser Michelle Malkin, playing "oppression Olympics" sent more than one Indian on a hunt for a barf bag.

On the other hand, Warren's stated reasons for having made professional note of her Native heritage are hard to swallow. Other than that Cherokee great-great-great-grandmother listed on a 19th Century marriage certificate, her connection to Indians is tenuous. There is a cousin deeply involved in Cherokee affairs and Native causes in general. Warren, however, isn't enrolled in any of the Cherokee bands, she doesn't speak the language, she doesn't go to ceremonies or otherwise practice the culture, she never made an attempt to discover who that three-greats grandmother really was, she doesn't hang around other Indians, she apparently has never attended a conference on Native law to network with Indians as she has said was trying to do when she checked that box, and she has made no effort that anyone has unearthed to speak to Indians about their legal and political concerns or for them in public forums. The reality for her seems to be that a mantle photo of her grandfather showed him with "high cheekbones." Well, I have those, too. But it is hard to call someone with that background an Indian, Cherokee or otherwise.

What Warren did is widely known as "box checking." Assigning oneself Native heritage on job applications and elsewhere even if that heritage is no more than family legend. For some, and this is especially true in Oklahoma, making note of an American Indian in the family tree is perfectly innocent and accurate even if there is no real evidence and no current connection. Some individuals lie outright and go further. The tribe-shopping Ward Churchill made claims to be Creek and Cherokee - claims he made to my face in the late 1970s - but could provide no evidence of Indian ancestors in any tribes back the six generations that investigators could trace documents.

He and others falsely claiming such ancestry, by checking boxes or more elaborate means, may do so for personal benefit. That is, of course, what Warren's detractors say. Others may make the claim out of real pride, in remembrance of a grandparent or more distant ancestor whom they know for sure was Indian or have been told was so in family lore.

[Box-checking] was precisely what the Coalition of Bar Associations of Color was getting at when they passed a "Resolution on Academic Ethnic Fraud" last July. The resolution, signed by the presidents of the Hispanic, Asian, Native American and National bar associations, states, among other things, that "fraudulent self-identification as Native American on applications for higher education ... is particularly pervasive among undergraduate and law school applicants."

It goes on to say the phenomenon is "so pervasive, it is commonly understood and referred to within the Native American Community as 'box-checking.'"

It's clear that Warren didn't lie. She does have a Cherokee ancestor. And, if that long-dead woman was a full-blood, that makes Warren 1/32nd Cherokee, the same as the current Principal Chief Bill John Baker of the Cherokee Nation, which has some 317,000 enrolled members. But Baker has never been disconnected from his heritage, which includes well-known Cherokees. His great-great-grandmother was orphaned when her parents died on the "Trail of Tears," the infamous death-march of the Cherokees from their homes in the Southeast to Indian Territory, now Oklahoma where both he and Warren were born.

Rendering by Dennis Joseph Weber

His ancestors are on the Dawes Rolls, on which Cherokee, Choctaw, Creek, Chickasaw, Oklahoma Seminole and some Florida Seminoles were enumerated. So far, nobody has found a Warren ancestor on the Dawes Roll. That doesn't mean there isn't one there. And it doesn't mean More than a quarter-million people applied to be included. Fewer than a 100,000 actually made it. People were chosen to be listed by whites who inspected their appearance. In some cases a brother was included and another was not. One unstated goal of the rolls was to exterminate Indian identity after the period of actual slaughter had ended. Thus, many who legitmately claimed Indian blood were denied a listing. Warren's ancestor could easily have been one of those. If one is found, she could apply for membership in Cherokee Nation. Any amount of "blood quantum" is acceptable to those on the Dawes Rolls. Without that connection, however, she is not legally an Indian.

What's unclear is whether Warren checked the "Native American" box solely out of pride or because it might perhaps give her a one- or two-percent edge over some other job candidate without that heritage. She says she didn't. She says, in fact:

"I listed myself in the directory in the hopes that it might mean that I would be invited to a luncheon, a group something that might happen with people who are like I am," she said. "Nothing like that ever happened, that was clearly not the use for it and so I stopped checking it off."

This sounds like after-the-fact excuse-making to me. But there is no evidence contradicting her. And Warren has a record for being a straight-shooter. So one either takes her at her word on this or not, assigning it small or great significance depending on one's point of view about the rest of her career.

What Warren also didn't do, however, was step up in 1996 when it became clear that Harvard, under pressure from students and others about the lack of diversity on its law faculty, was touting her Native heritage in order to be able to claim another minority professor. What Harvard did was despicable. What Warren didn't do enabled Harvard to get away with it. She was wrong, very wrong, to let that pass. It was an error in judgment, the kind of thing many, many people make in their lives. Was it also a moral lapse? Perhaps.

But the fact of the matter is Warren is a pre-eminently qualified person to be a Harvard professor of law. And she has demonstrated repeatedly and courageously against elected politicians and political appointees that she stands up for the average American, the ones on the precarious edge of economic existence today, against the austerity-mongers and New Deal-dismantlers and tax-cuts-for-the wealthy/program-cuts-for-everybody-else crowd that have grasped the nation by the short hairs and refuses to let go. Her opponent is a lite version of that crowd. Which is why - my finger-wagging over her box-checking and clumsy campaign response to its revelation aside - I was glad to see her enter the Senate race, have contributed money to her and will continue to do so, and would vote for her enthusiastically if I lived in Massachusetts.

The focus on Warren has done something that always has some value: made us invisible Indians visible. Of course, that has elicited gobs of the usual racism, like this putrid column by Howie Carr in the Boston Herald, whose only redeeming feature is that it didn't actually make a joke about "injuns" or "Redskins." But the Warren affair also provides the opportunity to explain to non-Indians what Indianness is about.

What it is not about is appearance. Not about skin tone. Not about high cheekbones. Not about looking like somebody in an Edward Curtis photograph. As I wrote previously in a comment in Joan McCarter's excellent diary about what Warren should do campaign-wise regarding this flare-up, I am a white-looking tribally enrolled Seminole, with about 3/8s Indian blood. At reunions when the older generation of my extended family was alive, people went from lighter than me to as dark as Michelle Obama. All of us Seminole, all of us related by blood. Many tribal chiefs today, are light-skinned with a mix of Indian and European or Indian, European and African blood. In fact, most tribally enrolled Indians today, on and off the reservations, are mixed bloods. They can look very non-Indian but be thoroughly Indian culturally.

Most of us, on or off the reservation, are cultural hybrids. We may or may not have an Indian-sounding name. When we do, it is typically a translation, like Deborah White Plume (Oglala-Lakota). We, or our ancestors may have adopted a non-Indian religion. Or, there too, we may practice a hybrid, or stick exclusively to a clearly defined Native religion. Or we may, like a significant portion of other Americans, practice no religion at all. My partner in this series, navajo, as she has written, was raised a Mormon. I was raised a Catholic and subsequently a Lutheran. We both abandoned those religions decades ago.

Rendering by Dennis Joseph Weber

About half of people identifying themselves as American Indian today were born on or near reservations, but many of us who were not have a strong connection to reservation life. But others were not and do not. Yet they maintain a strong Indian identity. A modern identity. One shaped by our unique personal stories, by our tribal history and the entangling interactions of both these with others of our own tribe and the tribes of people whose histories are far different, and with the dominant culture and other sub-cultures of the American populace.

Whether we live on or off the reservation, in an urban or rural setting, whether we speak the language or not, whether we're tribally enrolled or for various reasons not, we have one thing in common, we are connected to other Indians and we are appalled at how dreadful the existence of so many of our brothers and sisters remain 120 years after the last massacre of our people. We seek a better life for us all, on our collective and individual terms, blending or separating, but never forgetting how we can to be who we are 20 generations after Columbus arrived.

^{By Meteor Blades}

On May 5, 1877, nearly a year after Lakota and Northern Cheyenne and Northern Arapaho warriors stunned the United States by wiping out five of the seven companies Lt. Col. George A. Custer's regiment at the Battle of the Greasy Grass, the man who saw a vision of it beforehand - "soldiers falling into his camp like grasshoppers from the sky" - Tȟatȟáŋka Íyotake, Sitting (Buffalo) Bull (Lakota-Hunkpapa) - led his beleaguered people across the border into Canada.

Knowing full well that their victory against the 7th Cavalry would bring down the Army's wrath, the various bands making up the great encampment in Medicine Tail Coulee had scattered within 48 hours, hoping to make the job of revenge more difficult. In the next months, the Army clashed mercilessly with these bands and forced thousands of Indians back onto reservations at gunpoint. It was the beginning of the end of the Indian wars, and these POWs were treated in ways that would make the drafters of the Geneva Conventions shudder.

Sitting Bull, his mother, his daughter and granddaughter,
seated, and two of his wives (date unknown)

That caused Miles, who had defeated the Kiowa and Southern Arapaho and Southern Cheyenne two years earlier, to step up his actions. Sitting Bull decided to strike out for what the Indians called the "grandmother's land," named for Queen Victoria.

They remained there for four years. At first, all went well. The Canadian government was not on a campaign to wipe out the buffalo as a means to destroy Indian culture and game was plentiful. But his warriors got tired and started needling other tribes in the area. That brought the Royal Canadian Mounted Police into the picture. They pressured Sitting Bull to go home and take his young troublemakers with him. With the nomadic buffalo falling prey to hunters and habitat shrinkage from ever more white settlers in the States, the effect of their extermination soon became felt farther and farther north, and times became tougher. Many of the band gave in to emissaries who said reservation life in the U.S. was better than what was becoming a hand-to-mouth existence in Canada.

By 1881, Sitting Bull's band was made up mostly of the old and sick, and he reluctantly surrendered in July, with just 187 others. After a few transfers, he the rest were incarcerated at Fort Randall in southeastern South Dakota for the next two years. They were allowed to return to the Standing Rock Agency (the Lakota reservation that now straddles North and South Dakota) in mid-1883.

On May 5, 1916, U.S. Army Indian Scouts, all of them Apaches, were part of what some claim is the "last cavalry charge" against Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa at Ojos Azules ranch in the state of Chihuahua, Mexico. They were an element of the 11th Cavalry, which had entered Mexico as part of Gen. John J. Pershing's Punitive Expedition.

Indian Scouts Andrew Paxton, Charley Shipp and Joe Quintero
with Dr. McCloud, on horseback, at Fort Apache in 1918.

In Mark Van de Logt's 2010 book, War Party in Blue: Pawnee Scouts in the U.S. Army, Pawnee Scout leader Luther H. North is quoted as saying, "Neither the Wild Tribes, nor the Government Indian Scouts ever adopted any of the white soldier's tactics. They thought their own much better." Apache scouts were no different.

The Indian Scouts were not officially deactivated until the last member retired in 1947. Their memory lives in the cross-arrows insignia still worn on the uniforms of U.S. Army Special Forces with the motto: de oppresso liber, which in bad Latin has been taken to mean, "to free from oppression," but more accurately means, "from the captured man is one made free," rather ironic given the origin of the insignia.

Col. H.B. Wharfield, a lieutenant at the time of the Punitive Expedition, later wrote:

During my service in 1918 at Fort Apache the scouts wore cavalry issue clothing shoes and leggin[g]s, but some retained the wide car[tridge] belt of their own construction and design. An emblem U.S.S. for United State Scouts was fastened on the front of the issue campaign hat. The regulation emblem was crossed arrows on a disc with the initials U.S.S.; but I never saw such a design on the scouts' uniform nor in the Quartermaster supply room.

On May 5, 1969, Navarre Scott Momaday (Kiowa-Cherokee) became the first American Indian to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction with his House Made of Dawn. That same year, "he was initiated into the Gourd Dance Society, the ancient fraternal organization of the Kiowas." He went on to have a highly distinguished career as a writer and professor, having obtained his doctorate in 1965.

Navarre Scott Momaday

His 1971 essay "The American Land Ethic" drew public attention to the tradition of respect for nature practiced by the native peoples and its significance to modern American society in an era of environmental degradation. It was partly written while he was lecturing in Moscow in 1974. At the same time, he took up drawing and painting seriously for the first time in his life. Since then his work has been exhibited throughout the United States. His newer books are frequently illustrated with his own paintings and etchings.

He has taught at Berkeley, Stanford and the University of Arizona. President George W. Bush awarded Momaday the National Medal of Arts in 2007 "for his writings and his work that celebrate and preserve Native American art and oral tradition."

Etowah

by: Ojibwa

Fri May 04, 2012 at 22:26:40 PM PDT

The Bozeman Trail

by: Ojibwa

Fri May 04, 2012 at 19:14:37 PM PDT

The Northeastern Late Woodland Period

by: Ojibwa

Fri Apr 27, 2012 at 07:36:20 AM PDT

The Naming of America

by: Ojibwa

Tue Apr 24, 2012 at 09:17:16 AM PDT

The Klamath River Salmon War

by: Ojibwa

Mon Apr 23, 2012 at 17:25:20 PM PDT

A Yurok plankhouse is shown above.  

First Nations News & Views: Lamanites aren't us, Ely Parker and Johnny Depp reprises sidekick role

by: navajo

Sun Apr 22, 2012 at 15:32:45 PM PDT

Welcome to the 12th edition of First Nations News & Views. This weekly series is one element in the "Invisible Indians" project put together by Meteor Blades and me, with assistance from the Native American Netroots Group. Last week's edition is here. In this edition you will find my personal encounter as second-grader with Mormon racism, a look at the year 1869 in American Indian history, Johnny Depp's meeting with starstruck Navajo leaders and several news bullets. Click on any of the headlines below to take you directly to that section of News & Views or to any of our earlier editions.

This Week in American Indian History in 1869

 ~ Navajo Nation Leaders Welcome Johnny Depp
on Film Set in Monument Valley  ~  

~  Jump to Bullets Here  ~  

All Previous Editions

Cross Posted at Daily Kos

By navajo

I was probably in the second grade. The Sunday school teacher in my southern Utah town was giving a lesson from the Book of Mormon to a small class of a few girls. It had to have been in very simple terms since we were so young. I can see now that the lesson was meant to be a self esteem-builder. But it backfired on me. The teacher was trying to show us little girls how much God loved us and how important we are on this earth to do his work. I was barely paying attention since I really wanted to be home watching Rocky and Bullwinkle. I resented missing all my cartoons and being forced to go to church, which I considered boring. But I had no choice in the matter.

That day, however, as the teacher recited the lesson and looked from girl to girl, my attention perked up when she said, "and YOU are all white and delightsome to our lord and he has special plans for you in this world ..." Just then, she came to me and her roving eyes stalled out. She stammered a couple of times because she had forgotten that her rote lesson was being delivered in a class that now included a little brown girl. An Indian that the Book of Mormon (I later found out) describes as bloodthirsty, fierce and loathsome. An Indian whose skin was dark because of a curse from God.

After gulping a couple of times, she said something like "but Neeta here is a Lamanite (the Book of Mormon's name for the descendants of Laman, who was cursed with dark skin for displeasing god) and we welcome her. They too, if they work very hard can go to the Celestial Kingdom." That being the highest of the three kingdoms in heaven. I was told that if I made it to the Celestial Kingdom my skin would turn light.

This promise of skin lightening was commonly preached when I was growing up. In fact, there was a Paiute woman in our town who had vitiligo, "a skin condition in which there is a loss of brown color (pigment) from areas of skin, resulting in irregular white patches that feel like normal skin." My full-blood Navajo mother, Flora, a devoted Mormon, said that one of the bishops had told Mrs. Kanosh that the skin-color change was her reward from God for going to church. My mother was so pleased with this news. She loved anything that pointed to proof the Mormon gospel was true.

Gradually, over the next few years, I learned more of what Joseph Smith (the founder of the church and the author of the Book of Mormon) had said about Indians. We were innately wicked. We converted ones had to be constantly watched against reverting to our evil, heathen ways. This was on top of the church's attitudes toward women. The General Counsel (the church's highest governing body) instructed women to obey their husbands, the priesthood holders. Another instruction I remember: The priesthood holder should love the lord first and then his wife. One really had to accept a lot of demoralization to be female AND BROWN when I was growing up Mormon.

Attitude was bolstered by action. The church's Indian Placement Program ran from 1947 to 1996. Its mission was to remove children from desolate reservations and help them get an education by placing them in Mormon foster homes. Any child involved had to be baptized in order to participate. Nothing subtle about this virtual kidnapping. The church took children away from their homes to assimilate them into Mormon culture.

As the daughter of a Navajo mother and a white father, I straddled two cultures differently than the foster kids. I had many relatives on the reservation and spent much time in the summers there. But it wasn't home. In talking with some of the foster kids, I learned they had a hard time when they were younger. Some didn't want to join the church but were forced into it. They found it difficult to live in two worlds, the white world during the school year and then back on the reservation during the summer. Some of them sadly recounted that they were made fun of back on the reservation because they had lost some of their language and traditional knowledge.

The majority of the Indian students attending school in our town were not foster kids but lived instead at the Indian dormitory on the outskirts. There was no requirement there to join the church. But those kids also told me about being homesick and feeling like an outsider in both worlds.

Today, it's clear to most people that taking young children away from their families and culture is NOT a good thing. In fact, it's terrible. And it happened to 20,000 children in the Mormon church's Indian Placement Program.

These decades-old memories came flooding back to me when I saw a recent report that Lamanite action figures were being sold at the church-owned Deseret Bookstore and online by a private company, Latter Day Designs.

The Book of Mormon descriptions I came to strongly resent are used for each product.

Behold:

Lamanite Warrior
[01020] $5.95

Lamanite Warriors were lazy and idolatrous ... wild and ferocious ... believing in the false traditions of their fathers. They trusted in their own abilities and not in the strength of the Lord. The Book of Mormon tells that the heads of the Lamanites were shorn, they were naked, save it were skin which was girded about their loins... (Alma 3) They were armed with bows, arrows, stones and slings. ...They had marked themselves with red in their foreheads after the manner of the Lamanites... These wicked warriors ... reap their rewards according to their works, whether they were good or whether they were bad, to reap eternal happiness or eternal misery ...

^{This product was added to our catalog on Thursday 30 April, 2009.}

Laman
[01005] $5.95

Laman, the oldest son of Lehi and Sariah, was stubborn, hard-hearted, and did not believe in the righteous teachings of his father, Lehi. The Book of Mormon records that Laman was so rebellious that he refused to listen when an angel from the Lord told him to change his behavior. Laman was a troublemaker and seldom helped his family. His wickedness caused his parents a great deal of pain and sorrow.

(Laman is available in two versions. The one on the right has been cursed by god with dark skin for his wickedness.)

^{This product was added to our catalog on Thursday 30 April, 2009.}

King Lamoni
[01019] $5.95

King Lamoni was a ruthless leader who ruled his people harshly. He often executed servants for being careless with his herds of sheep. Ammon, desiring to teach the Gospel to the Lamanites, fasted and prayed for guidance from the Lord. He became a faithful servant to King Lamoni. Recorded in The Book of Mormon (Alma 18 & 19) is the marvelous conversion to the Gospel of Jesus Christ of Lamoni, the queen, servants, and many of his people. Lamoni repented and helped his people become zealous in keeping the commandments of God.

^{This product was added to our catalog on Thursday 30 April, 2009.}

There are three more Lamanite action figures. However, they are good guys and are approved by God for their good works unto him.  It's curious though. Shouldn't their skin have been lightened for being such obedient souls? By the way, that hot-buff one is called a Stripling Warrior because he's young. Conveniently, there were exactly 2000 of them in the Book of Mormon for important plot purposes.

Mormons weren't the only people who believed that the curse of Cain was dark skin. That was once the standard Christian view. But Mormons took it very seriously and barred African Americans from holding the priesthood because of the curse. I was 22 years old in 1978 when the church back-pedaled and allowed black men to hold the priesthood. That was quite a big step in damage control. But the teachings that produced the racist beliefs in the first place have never been officially repudiated. Still, I never thought I'd see African Americans allowed into the priesthood. It was hardly enough to keep me in the church and I left shortly afterward.

All the derogatory descriptions about Lamanites remain in the Book of Mormon in verses like Alma 3:6:

"And the skins of the Lamanites were dark, according to the mark which was set upon their fathers, which was a curse upon them because of their transgression and their rebellion against their brethren, who consisted of Nephi, Jacob, and Joseph, and Sam, who were just and holy men."

Those descriptions live on in Sunday school lessons and action figures for impressionable Mormon children. It's hard to change the word of God in books like that, so the record on what the Mormons think of Indians is written on golden plates, never to be changed.

How one can be Indian and a member of the Mormon church is completely beyond me.

By Meteor Blades

Donagä'wa aka Ely S. Parker

Born in 1828 on the Tonawanda Reservation in Indian Falls, N.Y, to a prominent Seneca family with a lineage tracing to the famed Red Jacket, he was educated at a missionary school and learned perfect English by age 14 when he became the scribe and translator for his tribe. That proved crucial when the government tried to exile the Senecas to Kansas in the late 1840s as part of Indian removal policy. The tribe fought this vigorously, its leaders arguing that the treaties requiring removal were unfair and had been arrived at without their consent. Parker lobbied Congress at the time, but he was just 19, and despite his diplomatic skills, his efforts failed. Ultimately, however, the Seneca prevailed in court, and most of their descendants now live in New York on the same land they traditionally held. Some Seneca also live in Oklahoma.

Parker studied law for three years. But after completing his studies, he was not allowed to take the bar because he was Indian. With the help of a scholar studying the kinship structure of the League of the Haudenosaunee (the six-tribe Iroquois Confederacy of which the Seneca are a part), Parker enrolled at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, got his civil engineering degree and practiced as an engineer from 1850 until the Civil War broke out. In 1852, he became one of the 10 chiefs of the Seneca nation.

It was as an engineer in Galena, Ill., where he had moved in 1857 to build a customshouse, that he met a demoralized, hard-drinking, ex-Army officer, U.S. Grant, then working as a storekeeper. They hit it off.

When the war broke out, Parker tried to raise a regiment of Iroquois volunteers, but the New York governor nixed the idea of Indians in Union uniforms. Parker then tried to join the Army directly but was again rejected because he was an Indian, this time by the Secretary of War.

But persistence was one of Parker's key traits. So he contacted Grant who finagled him a job as an engineer with the rank of captain in 1863. He performed well and Grant soon appointed him as his adjutant and later his military secretary, a job for which he was promoted to lieutenant colonel. Much of Grant's subsequent correspondence was written by Parker. He also helped draft the surrender documents signed by Grant and Robert E. Lee at Appomattox. Those documents are in Parker's handwriting.

Parker remained as Grant's military secretary until he resigned from the Army in 1869 with the rank of brigadier general when the president appointed him to head the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

But, as he rose in white society, having married the socialite Minnie Orton Sackett in 1867, the Tonawanda Senecas became increasingly critical of him for neglecting his own people and taking stances they felt reflected an anti-Indian attitude. That wasn't how Parker saw it. In his 1867 Report on Indian Affairs, he wrote:

"...as the hardy pioneer and adventurous miner advanced into the inhospitable regions occupied by the Indians, in search of the precious metals, they found no rights possessed by the Indians that they were bound to respect. The faith of treaties solemnly entered into were totally disregarded, and Indian territory wantonly violated. If any tribe remonstrated against the violation of their natural and treaty rights, members of the tribe were inhumanely shot down and the whole treated as mere dogs. Retaliation generally followed, and bloody Indian wars have been the consequence, costing many lives..."

Far left, Lt. Col. Ely S. Parker in 1865,
with Gen. U.S. Grant in the center.

Arrangements now, as heretofore, will doubtless be required with tribes desiring to be settled upon reservations for the relinquishment of their rights to the lands claimed by them, and for assistance in sustaining themselves in a new position, but I am of the opinion that they should not be of a treaty nature. It has become a matter of serious import whether the treaty system in use ought longer to be continued. In my judgement it should not. A treaty involves the idea of a compact between two or more sovereign powers, each possessing of sufficient authority and force to compel a compliance with the obligations incurred. The Indian tribes of the United States are not sovereign nations, capable of making treaties, as none of them have an organized government of such inherent strength as would secure a faithful obedience of its people in the observance of compacts of this character. They are held to be the wards of the government, and the only title to the law concedes to them to the lands they occupy or claim is a mere possessory one. But because treaties have been made with them generally for the extinguishment of their supposed absolute title to land inhabited by them, or over which they roam, they have become falsely impressed with the notion of national independence.

It is time that this idea should be dispelled, and that the government cease the cruel farce of thus dealing with its helpless and ignorant wards. Many good men, looking at this matter only from a Christian point of view, will perhaps say that the poor Indian has been greatly wronged and ill treated; that this whole county was once his of which he has been despoiled, and that he has been driven from place to place until he has hardly left to him a spot where to lay his head. This indeed may be philanthropic, and human, but the stern letter of the law admits of no conclusion, and great injury has been done by the government deluding these people into the belief of their being independent sovereignties, while they were at the same time recognized only as it s dependents and wards.

As a consequence of this report and subsequent pressure, no treaties were signed with the tribes after 1871. But most of Parker's other recommendations for restructuring the bureau and ending the corruption associated with providing goods for the tribes and private acquisition of Indian resources, were ignored. And, ironically, it was a scandal, that of the deeply corrupt Indian Ring, that forced him to resign, even though he was personally cleared of any wrongdoing and the ring had come into being well before he as appointed.

After resigning, Parker made a quick fortune in the stock market, lost it in the Panic of 1873, then got what amounted to a clerk's job where he worked until retiring. He died in poverty in Connecticut in 1895 and was buried there. At the request of tribal leaders, he was exhumed two years later and reburied in Seneca territory next to his ancestor, Red Jacket.

1962

by: Ojibwa

Thu Apr 19, 2012 at 12:53:51 PM PDT

Apache Oil in the 1970s

by: Ojibwa

Tue Apr 17, 2012 at 20:07:33 PM PDT

In 1953, the tribe entered into a series of agreements with oil companies to provide oil and gas leases. The oil companies approached the Commissioner of Indian Affairs in the Department of the Interior about these leases and negotiated them with representatives from the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). The BIA then presented the finalized lease agreements to the tribal council, which was expected to approve them without debate.  

First Nations News & Views: 11 Native artists in Paris, stealing water, billion-dollar agreement

by: Meteor Blades

Sun Apr 15, 2012 at 13:23:54 PM PDT

Welcome to the 11th edition of First Nations News & Views. This weekly series is one element in the "Invisible Indians" project put together by navajo and me, with assistance from the Native American Netroots Group. Last week's edition is here. In this edition you will find a review of the Oklahoma Painters exhibit at the Grand Palais in Paris, a look at the year 1883 in American Indian history,  the first in a series on the attempt to steal Hopi and Navajo water resources, the $1 billion government settlement with 41 tribes, an eye-rolling take on an Indian "party theme" and a baker's dozen of linkable news bullets. Click on any of the headlines below to take you directly to that section of News & Views or to any of our earlier editions.

This Week in American Indian History in 1883

 ~  U.S. Deal for Navajo-Hopi Water Has Familiar Stench  ~  Feds Settle Century of Rip-offs with $1 Billion to 41 Tribes  ~  Stereotypes Celebrated for Privileged Children Birthday Party Idea  ~  

~  Jump to Bullets Here  ~  

All Previous Editions

Cross Posted from Native American Netroots

^{By navajo}

Last November, an art exhibit titled Oklahoma Painters was presented at the prestigious Grand Palais in Paris as part of the sixth annual Art en Capital event. Eleven American Indian artists were featured. The exhibit is the first major one of its kind in Paris since the Kiowa Five were featured in the 1920s. It was curated by Russell Tallchief (Osage), director of Arts & Exhibitions at the American Indian Cultural Center & Museum in Oklahoma City.

Many visitors were intrigued by the modern display of art from American Indians, their expectations having been influenced by the romantic and stereotypical vision that Hollywood movies and the photos of Edward Curtis perpetuate throughout the world. Surprised, some commented about the variety of style among the artists as they had anticipated one uniform product from a unified culture. Instead they were exposed to contemporary pieces from the youth to the elders of various tribes, defining the uniqueness of individuals and their cultures.

The featured artists hail from 10 different tribes in Oklahoma:  

Hock E Aye Vi - Edgar Heap of Birds (Cheyenne/Arapaho)

Edgar Heap of Birds with his painting Smile for Racism
Photo courtesy of Dominque Godreche
(Note the backward words: Cleveland and Mascots)

Born in 1954 in Wichita, Kan., Heap of Birds studied at Haskell Indian School in Lawrence. He took a B.F.A. from the University of Kansas, an M.F.A from Temple University and then studied at the Royal College of Art, in London. Since 1988, he has served on the faculty at the University of Oklahoma as professor of Native American Studies. "Heap of Birds has exhibited internationally in the diverse mediums of signage, monumental sculpture, painting, print, drawing and installation."

Telling Many Magpies,
Telling Black Wolf,
Telling Hachivi
[Hachivi, his Cheyenne name, "Little Chief"]
~The artist explains that the backward
word NATURAL means
that it's not.

To my eye, his most impressive installation is theWheel sculpture at the Denver Art Museum, which is named for the symbolic medicine wheel. The project took 10 years to complete. Ten red porcelain-covered, steel-forked trees have been placed in a 50-foot circle and inscribed with references to "extermination, ancient pictography, astrological bodies and pillars of shared understanding like respect, encapsulating the interconnectivity of Indigenous science and philosophy. The positioning and writing of this installation mark millennia of Indigenous knowledge, systematically intervened to commemorate nuanced views of colonial policy and global Indigenous cooperation. The sculpture itself is aligned with astrological bodies." On the summer solstice the sun rises between two of the forked panels.

Wheel or Nah Kev Ho Eya Zim,
is Heap of Birds's grandmother's proverb of how Indians
never leave home in their minds, which translates as
"We are always returning back home again."

He negotiated a 100-year contract to control the land under the installation which was part of the first land that the southern Cheyenne and Arapaho lost in the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851. The genocide of these tribes began with the Massacre at Sand Creek in Kiowa County, Colo., in 1864. The southern Cheyenne and Arapaho were then moved out of Colorado to Kansas and Indian Territory (now Oklahoma). Heap of Birds's tribes have reclaimed the land in Denver with this sculpture. By using his grandmother's proverb on the wall next to the Wheel, they have taken back the sacred circle.

Tribal chiefs came for the dedication of the Wheel in June 2005. The tribes now use the site for ceremonies, and it is on the route of the annual Sand Creek Massacre Spiritual Healing Run.

In addition, this 26-minute VIDEO of Heap of Bird's fascinating speech at Otis College of Art and Design on what has influenced his art. It's a must-view.

Highlights that struck me:

• A photo of a cradleboard decorated with protective symbols showed it was specifically designed so that, if the Army attacked, the baby could be scooped up and run away with.

• Cavalrymen cut out uteruses of Indian women and made them into hats, a symbol of ensuring no Indian babies could be born from the wounded.

• Inspired by the sketches drawn by incarcerated warriors imprisoned at Fort Marion, Fla., in the 1870s, Heap of Birds saw power in rendering one's oppressors through protest art.

• His great-great-great-grandfather was one of the chiefs imprisoned at Fort Marion. His Cheyenne name is properly interpreted in English as Many Magpies, but the day that Captain Richard Henry Pratt couldn't pronounce the Cheyenne version, the hasty label Heap of Birds was recorded, trapping his ancestors and his family today, imprisoning them linguistically because they couldn't speak English and now had to accept the names the invader chose for them. Symbolically then, Heap of Birds's work with text is a way of reclaiming the power of naming.

• There is, he says, a strange amnesia in America. We all know about the pyramids around the world but there are pyramids in the U.S. For example, Creek pyramids in Georgia are misunderstood because the tribe was forced to walk to Indian Territory on the Trail of Tears. Everyone thinks these pyramids belong to a lost culture. But that culture is alive in Oklahoma.

His brilliant, direct style explains why he is sought after to speak around the world.

Three samples of Edgar Heap of Birds's public art interventions

Joe Don Brave (Osage)

Joe Don Brave with his piece for le Grand Palais exhibit

Joe Don Brave says he has worked his whole life for something of the caliber of the exhibit in Paris. Born in 1965, he was named Vincent Paul Brave after Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin by his father, Franklin Brave, a professional artist and graphic designer. One day his father nicknamed him Joe Don after Oklahoma football star Joe Don Looney. That nickname stuck.

As a child Brave learned to paint in his father's studio. Brave studied art at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, N.M., and has worked at the National Museum of American Indian and the Smithsonian Institute in New York City. He also owns his gallery in downtown Pawhuska, Okla.

Brave was raised in the traditions and customs of the Osage, and he's still an active participant in the tribe's annual traditional ceremonial dances.

Anita Fields (Osage)

Anita Fields at work in her studio and her "Three Dresses" collection

Anita Fields, born in 1951 and raised in Hominy, Okla., is one of a few American Indian potters who does not live in the Southwest where the many pueblos, Hopi and Navajo dominate that medium.

Fields is probably the first Indian potter to create conceptual installation pieces instead of functional or display pottery. To make her artistic statement she often uses abstract versions of traditional clothing and artifacts. Influenced by American Indian clothing and weaving, she translates these soft features into her hard clay works.

She says her work honors women: "The dresses convey my attitudes toward the strength of women and how native peoples show remarkable resourcefulness and adaptability toward their environment. The clothing Indian women created shows great pride, dignity, and hope in a culture facing insurmountable odds."

Yatika Fields (Osage)

Yatika Fields painting in the courtyard of Indian Market Weekend in Santa Fe

Born in 1980 to Anita Fields, the artist featured just above, Yatika Fields grew up in Oklahoma but currently lives in Brooklyn. 

After living in Boston with bike messengers he developed a passion for cycling. He moved to New York without any cash and got a job in the dangerous occupation of city bike messengering. That's riding a bike with a fixed gear and NO brakes. After realizing he was pretty fast he ventured into alleycats, illegal street racing where the only prize is honor.

Here is a terrific VIDEO of Fields painting a wall in the apartment Ryan Red Corn (Osage).

His work is currently exhibited at Chiaroscuro Contemporary in Santa Fe, Sam Noble Museum in Norman, Okla., and The Heard Museum in Phoenix, Ariz. Last October he was in Barcelona for three weeks doing live painting events and then in Paris in November where he enjoyed traveling with his mother.

Brent Greenwood (Chickasaw/Ponca)

Brent Greenwood with his "There Goes the Neighborhood" piece

Brent Greenwood was born in 1971 in Midwest City, Okla.. He graduated with an AFA in 2-Dimensional Art from the Institute of American Indian Arts and a BFA from the Oklahoma City University.

Greenwood incorporates early tribal history into his contemporary acrylic designs, often with faceless figures but vibrant with color. Some of his artistic inspiration is derived from other artists' work and energy. He is most proud of his family and the inspiration they provide. His wife Kennetha (Otoe/Missouria) is an artist as well. Greenwood encourages his children to paint alongside him. He enjoys singing Ponca songs at events and shares this spirit with his children and other youth in his community.

America Meredith (Cherokee)

America Meredith painting and her piece "Agalisiga Checks a Box"

America Meredith, also of Swedish descent, "blends traditional styles from Native America and Europe with pop imagery of her childhood. The Cherokee language and syllabary figure prominently in her work, as they are the strongest visual imagery unique to her tribe."

Meredith "earned her MFA in painting from the San Francisco Art Institute and her BFA from the University of Oklahoma. She has shown throughout the United States and in Canada and Europe in the last 15 years and has won awards at the Heard and SWAIA's Indian Market as well as at numerous competitive shows" and now featured in Paris.

Her on-line portfolio is an absolute treat, and my favorite page is Present Tense. Check out The Tewa Man in Black, illustrating the importance of corn to American Indians and Cameron Chino, an Indian full-blood who loves the Japanese culture.

A stunning international art exhibit inviting the tight-knit bike messenger community to use its spokecard is the Cherokee Spokespeople Project. "Spokecards are laminated cards that can be held in place by the spokes of a bicycle wheel, which bike messengers create as souvenirs for bike races and other messenger events." 

To survive, Cherokee cannot be stuck in the past or confined to one part of the country. Cherokee Spokespeople are introducing new people to their language and bringing it into an international, urban setting.

"This project continued from 2004 to 2011. [Meredith] distributed hundreds of spokecards by hand, at SFBMA meetings, at cycle courier races, and through the mail. The Cherokee Spokespeople Project has been exhibited at the Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba in Brandon, Manitoba, Canada; IAIA Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico; the Euphrat Museum in Cupertino, CA; the City Arts Center in Oklahoma City, OK; and was finally exhibited as a solo show at the Ho-Chee-Nee Chapel on the grounds of the Cherokee Heritage Center in Park Hill, OK."

Navarre Scott Momaday (Kiowa/Cherokee)

N. Scott Momaday in front of the Louvre, his book cover and one of the lithographs inside

N. Scott Momaday, born in 1934 in Lawton, Okla., is a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer. Momaday's novel House Made of Dawn is credited for launching Native American literature into the mainstream. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1969.

He received the first Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers' Circle of the Americas in 1992. He was awarded a 2007 National Medal of Arts and received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2010.

In Paris, Momday's book The Man Made of Visions, a dozen unpublished poems and signed lithographs were featured. Thumbnails of the lithographs can be seen here.

Thomas Poolaw (Kiowa/Delaware)

"Eyes #2 and the artist, Thomas Poolaw

Born in 1959 and currently residing in Norman, Okla., Tom Poolaw works primarily with acrylics and digital images. He was heavily influenced by his grandfather, Horace Poolaw, a photographer.

He prefers to let his work unfold rather than knowing what it will look like at the finish. "Process is the focus of my work. I choose formats and situations that encourage spontaneity and experimentation. The journey must be exciting and inspired. I want to produce something nearer to poetry than documentation.

"My work usually deals with Native American subject matter expressed in a contemporary manner. It doesn't always have to, but that's who I am and where I come from. I hope the work reflects the status of today's Native American individual, that is complex, modern and spiritual."

Marla Skye (Onondaga)

Marla Skye and her piece that was used for an invitation in Paris

Marla Skye works with several mediums, painting, silversmithing, beading and woodcarving. Her father, Larry Jones, was a skilled woodcarver and artist. He died just two months before her showing in Paris. He was thrilled that she was going to be featured there. Skye is a graduate of The Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, N.M.

D.g. Smalling (Choctaw)

D.g. Smalling was born and raised in Oklahoma City. He is known for his "single line" art in which he creates the initial outline never lifting his pen. He then fills in the spaces with color. This amazing and beautiful technique is captured in this VIDEO. 

He credits his Choctaw culture whose traditions and lifestyle embrace minimalism. His abstractions begin with the most basic element-the line-the foundation of all design.

The pieces he produced for the Paris exhibit are here.

Smalling hosts The Spy's Eye on NDN-Country on thespyfm.com, Saturday mornings from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m., Central Time.

Dana Tiger (Creek/Seminole/Cherokee)

Dana Tiger and one of her Warrior Women paintings

Dana Tiger was born and raised in Muskogee, Okla. Her legendary father, Jerome Tiger died when she was five years old. She used his art as a way to get to know him and along with guidance from her uncle, Johnny Tiger, Jr. From them, she learned the richness of her culture and carried on the family's artistic tradition. Her watercolors and acrylic paintings celebrate the strength and determination of American Indian women.

Some of the artists in Paris during their exhibition

And since it is the Grand Palais, pour le pièce de résistance ... a grand nod to curator Russell Tallchief (Osage). He gathered these 11 artists in the Salon du Dessin et de la Peinture à l'eau (Room of Painting and Water Colors) at the Grand Palais. As a special treat, on Nov. 24, 2011, he performed an ancient southern style of Osage war dance. He is a Straight Dancer and performed as a Taildancer, a privileged position that serves to set the pace and motivate the other performers to dance harder. The dance symbolizes being on the battlefield.

Russell Tallchief performing an Osage war dance in Paris

Tallchief is related to the renowned ballerinas Maria Tallchief (born 1925) who danced with the New York City Ballet and Marjorie Tallchief (born 1927) who was the first American to achieve première danseuse étoile with the Paris Opera Ballet.  

The exhibit was viewed by over 40,000 visitors.

Ancient America: The Birth and Death of a Pueblo

by: Ojibwa

Sat Apr 14, 2012 at 14:58:58 PM PDT

The Flathead and Lewis and Clark

by: Ojibwa

Wed Apr 11, 2012 at 18:57:20 PM PDT