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City Indians
A new exhibit in Minneapolis looks at what it means to be a "city Indian." For many American Indians it could mean reclaiming a land that used to be their own.
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indigent artist
It's hard to miss Steven White's art studio, a panel truck parked on the roadside with paintings of outer space and Native American scenes hanging on the side...
The self-described "indigent" artist, who has lived in an RV for about three years, forced the city to make changes in this weekend's Apache Junction Art Festival.
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More Buffy St. Marie
A Rhode Island News article:
"As long as you're an Indian singing about Indians," said Sainte-Marie, "you won't get attacked for that. Because you're in your place," said the singer whose antiwar activism in the Vietnam era earned her a place on the same blacklist as Eartha Kitt and Taj Mahal.
BSM's online Cradleboard Teaching Project.
The Cradleboard Teaching Project turns on the lights in public education about Native American culture - past, present, and most important for the children - the Future. It comes out of Indian country, and reaches far beyond, into the mainstream classroom and into the future of education.
Backed by lesson plans and an excellent curriculum, the Cradleboard Teaching Project is also live and interactive, and totally unique; children learn with and through their long-distance peers using the new technology alongside standard tools, and delivering the truth to little kids with the help of several American Indian colleges. Cradleboard reaches both Indian and non-Indian children with positive realities, while they are young.
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Harry Shearer, from This Is Spinal Tap has written a "political satire" about non-natives starting a reservation to gain a casino for their dying town. Read a review for
Not Enough Indians at The Washington Post.
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Indian Brook First Nation has bounced most of the councillors who seemed to have hijacked a fishing company from their community. The new council and reelected chief are trying to wash their hands of the shipwreck.
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In the "Holy Cr*p!!!" department:
A child from the Whitefish Bay community in Sioux Narrows, a couple hours Northwest of here, was attacked by a
cougar last week. While that may not sound unusual, if you were in the foothills of the Rockies, this is Northwestern Ontario and these critters have long been officially extinct around here.
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Northwest Territories Cree just say no to test-tube bison. Apparently the elders think that would be insulting and wrong. Scientists and politicians don't see what the problem is.
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A Maclean's magazine
article about the impetus to move Kasheshewan.
After coming to prominence amid last year's tainted water crisis, the Kashechewan First Nation had slowly faded from the national consciousness. Now, courtesy of a controversial report for the federal government by former Ontario cabinet minister Alan Pope, the poverty and misery of the Cree community is back in the headlines — not least because of Pope's recommendation that, among many other things, the entire community decamp for greener pastures near Timmins.
There's a small mention about DeBeers preparing to mine Kasheshewan territory, for diamonds. Ya don't think that may have something to do with dispersing the Cree off their land?
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Archaeology for dummies:
Members of the Songhees First Nation oppose development of a cave and underground lake that they say is a sacred place. The developer wants to go ahead. The province's archeology branch doesn't have any rules governing sacred sites, so it has allowed the cave's destruction as part of a search for artifacts to determine whether the site should be protected.
This is much like demolishing a church to look for the candlesticks.
This story reminds me of the time a bunch of us were called in to rescue a burial that was falling out of a steep hill overlooking a hydro dam construction site on a river leading to Lake Nipigon. The local Native people had protested the project because it was a burial site, the Ontario government wouldn't take the people's word for it -without evidence that would require disturbing the burial- and they greenlit the project. Of course the bones came out and they flew us in to find the rest.
The dam was finished but eventually abandoned, because it wasn't economically viable. Go figger.
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1 comment:
there have been cougar sightings in northern mn for a few years now. i saw one real close (i was in my old fiat driving at night) in northern wisconsin in the mid 90s. all i gotta say is i'd sure hate to run into one of those fuckers just walking in the woods.
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