Coral Stitch: "how-to"

[Pics click to enlarge.]

The body of the typical coral-stitch earring is composed of:

- The main "trunks" of the "coral" which dangle from the "head" and connection point for the earwire.
- The "head"; what I usually call the -one or more- larger beads between the trunks and the connection point. I usually choose them for the way their colours and shape complement the "coral".
- The "connection point" is usually a split ring [or soldered split ring if I can find them]; the hardware.
- "Y-branches" off the main trunks.
- "Fringe" on the Y-branches; usually 3 beads, of a separate colour from the main "body". I have used large, single stone chips and shell components as the fringe element, however.

---

Considerations, before starting:

- Size and colours of the main body and fringe beads.
- Shape, size, number and colour of the "head" beads.
- Number and length of main trunks. This is an important decision, determining the length and "bushiness" of the earrings. Also; I like to use numbers that are one or two digits above a multiple of 3 for the trunks. Since I usually space the Y-branches 3 beads apart, this puts Y-branches near the head and keeps the hole in the bottom of the head bead relatively clear.
- I use a fine nylon thread, with the narrowest beading needle that I can find in my tackle box.

---

What I call "Y-branch", is the basic unit of coral-stitch.

In order to create the "Y":

-Thread on 6 beads of the main body colour and the beads (usually 3) of Fringe "B" ["B" comes first in my drawing].
Three of the 6 body beads will be the "stem" of the Y, the next 3 beads make Branch "B" of the Y.
- Pass the needle through the fringe beads, keeping tension on the thread and pass the needle back through the beads of Branch "B", again.
- String on 3 beads of main colour (Branch "A" in drawing) and another set of fringe beads. Before passing the needle back through the Branch "A" beads, make sure that Branch "B" hasn't picked up any slack. If necessary, gently pinch "B" between fingers and pull on the needle end of the thread to regain tension. Use this technique often to maintain thread tension.
- Pass the needle back through the beads of Branch "A", check tension and then pass needle back through the "stem" beads.

You're done the Y-branch!



N.B. - At the bottom of the trunk, the "first" Y-branch utilizes 6 of the trunk beads in its construction; 3 trunk beads comprise Branch "B" and 3 more, the stem. It's easy to forget that the "first stem" also counts as the 3-bead space in the trunk, before the next Y-branch.



After finishing a Y-branch, pass the needle back inside the trunk and up, a 3-bead space, towards the head. Exit the trunk at that point and start the next Y-branch. Repeat.



Once you reach the "head" beads, pass the needle through the head and the jumpring, then back down through the head beads.
Take care that your needle doesn't pass through the top beads of previous trunk, immediately under the head. String on the beads of the new trunk.

---
Variations:

Add different fringe colours/beads.


"Extend" the length of a Y-branch stem, creating a trunk bifurcation; then add more Y-branches.


Instead of just a two branch split in the Y, add a third and make tetrahedrons.


Experiment away.

---

New coral-stitch earrings:

This is the pair of earrings created by the above demo. Various colours and sizes of glass bead and quartz crystal.



---

Black and silver glass, wooden disks and white marble beads.



---

Red and black glass, blue glass chips and red wood beads.



---

Transparent blue and bronze glass and 'redstone' beads.



---

Various coloured glass, wooden disk and moss agate beads.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Loomwork beadwork, applied to carved leather purse.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
New visitor?

My coral-stitch beadwork photo gallery and general beadwork photo gallery
Updated,when new pics uploaded.

Few fave posts:

Busted pictograph trip.

Last tasty bit.

Bringing the Bassalope.

Merry season.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Remember:
- Johnny has thumbs.
- He's prolly bigger than you are.
- His evil is weak.
- His squeak is worse than his bite.
- Johnny's the goof, but he once saved Sage from a Rottweiler pup by busting his harness and charging the beastie.



Remember:
- Sage is small and fraidy.
- Her growl is incongruous.
- (She's the serious one).
- You can call her "Kiiiittty".
- She wants to check her email... Now.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tags: beadwork, coral stitch, loomwork, native art, ojibway art,how to, cats, earring, jewelry,Bingorage, Broken Vulture Art, blog,pics

Death of a warrior. Free Speech versus Multi-culti? etc.

Native 'residential school' activist found dead

"... the woman behind the landmark lawsuit for residential school survivors died Thursday in what police are calling a "suspicious death"...
Bernard was the native activist who spearheaded the class action lawsuit against the federal government.
The lawsuit sought compensation for loss of language and culture on behalf of nearly 80,000 residential school children who suffered physical and sexual abuse in residential schools from the 1870s to the 1970s..."

Ms. Bernard's family were quoted as aying that they believed that Ms. Bernard passed away from natural causes, but the local police are now investigating her death as a possible homicide. The lawsuit that she championed is estimated to be costing the Canadian government upwards of 5 Billion dollars (long delayed), in compensation for generations of institutionalised physical and sexual abuse by several religious denominations/orders in federally mandated concentration camps filled with kidnapped children, pledged to their cultural annhilation "residential schools".

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

An interesting article, in Maclean's magazine, about the ongoing demographic shift in Europe and other "western" countries. The author has been generating plenty of discussion for his analysis.

"if you want to launch a revolution, it's not very likely if you've only got seven revolutionaries. And they're all over 80. But, if you've got two million and seven revolutionaries and they're all under 30 you're in business.
For example, I wonder how many pontificators on the "Middle East peace process" ever run this number:
The median age in the Gaza Strip is 15.8 years.
Once you know that, all the rest is details...
the salient feature of Europe, Canada, Japan and Russia is that they're running out of babies. What's happening in the developed world is one of the fastest demographic evolutions in history"

A link to the author's blog.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Artstuff:

Jsack Hokeah and the Art of the Kiowa Five through Jan. 20, at Jacobson House Native Art Center, University of Oklahoma at 609 Chautauqua.

An auctioneer and appraiser takes a look at a Robert Yellowhair piece. What's it Worth?"AuctionWally's Anitques Appraisals, eBay Tips, & Auction Articles Archive"

Two totem poles commissioned for Tulalip Tribes' new hotel.

"One pole, by Joe Gobin, is a gambling pole with Man and Bear throwing bones, one marked and one unmarked...
The second pole is a story pole-house post that portrays transformations between the natural and spirit worlds. The center of the pole features a fierce sea wolf, a mythical creature so large it devoured orca whales..."

---

A new resource from NativeWeb, Native Wiki.
One of the first sections that I browsed, was the writer's category, Storytellers: Native American Authors Online.

---

"Thunder in the Desert"

"The Third Peoples' World Fair and Pow Wow... will take place in Tucson, Arizona at the Rillito Raceway Park on December 28th, 2007 thru January 6, 2008."

Article at AZ Reporter

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Random stuff:

Voices From Around The World

"Beginning in October 2007, individuals and communities from around the world are invited to record and submit their perceptions about the links between their culture and the natural world... To be considered for inclusion in the Voices from Around the World selected highlights presentation at the Symposium, please send your submission by Monday, February 11, 2008. "

No Xcuses None! A site dedicated to keeping 'Meth' off our reservations.

Indian Innocence Project.

"Through the Indian Innocence Project, law schools and students, lawyers, investigators and other volunteers provide pro-bono research and investigative assistance to 'native' individuals throughout the U.S. who have been arrested, tried, found guilty, and imprisoned for crimes the Project believes they did not commit. The project works in states with the country's highest native incarceration rates.

By identifying and remedying cases and causes of wrongful conviction, the Project engages in high impact, frontline advocacy in the courts of law and public opinion, and leads community-based responses to the mistakes made by our criminal justice system against native individuals.

We also assist exonerated inmates with their transition into the free world upon their release."

Based upon the success of The Innocence Project, apparently.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tags: Nora Bernard, residential school settlement, Mark Steyn, multiculturalism, free speech, native innocence project, native wiki,Bingorage, Broken Vulture Art, blog,pics

Bingorage cartoon, etcetera [+Benazir Bhutto]

[updated 12/27/2007: 11:00pm]

The Wikipedia article on Benazir Bhutto."[Wikipedia clip-subject to change]... a "thin man" on a motorcycle, carrying an AK-47 rifle, fired two shots, one into Bhutto's neck, and she fell back into the vehicle.[3] After this, the assailant proceeded to detonate an explosive which resulted in the deaths of himself and at least 22 others..."

Bhutto Supporters Blame Musharraf. "[Forbes.Com] She was considered a leading contender to take office a third time in the January elections.
Former rival Nawaz Sharif, who also returned to Pakistan recently for the January elections, promised to take up Bhutto’s battle. "This is very tragic…I assure you that I will fight your war from now on..."

---

[Pics click to enlarge]

This cartoon idea was found hiding in a sketch pad. There is a chance of resuscitating the cartoon... perhaps.


---

This 2004 sketch idea shows a bear/human transformation being, rising from a megis shell with a rawhide/antler rattle. [Eric's rattle gallery]



---
New visitors; click bass for link to papier mache bass sculpture gallery:



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Click the cartoon for link to XKCD homepage
[A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.]:


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A short review of the LA Skins Fest; a new Native American film festival.

A worldwide directory of Indigenous peoples and resources at "Aboriginal Connections.

Some great looking handmade knives at BUFFALO "WALLER" KNIFE WORKS.

Online Native "web magazine", American Comments. I'm not sure how often this site gets updated.

Vermont artist had several bronze sculptures stolen from inside and outside his studio, local scrap yards bought the pieces and returned them; the thieves have been caught.

The largest dam-removal project in history will begin to restore the Elwha River and its Salmon runs.

"Starting in early 2008, the 108-foot-tall Elwha Dam and the 210-foot-tall Glines Canyon Dam will be dismantled in stages, reopening 70 miles of prime salmon and steelhead spawning habitat. The Elwha offers a unique opportunity to fully restore a river since nearly all of the river's watershed is preserved in Olympic National Park..."

Nick Coleman article (MPLS Star Tribune) about the upcoming 150'th anniversary of Minnesota and the bloody roots of its statehood.

"Minnesota was baptized in blood, and reminders are scattered across a vast landscape: A monument in a cornfield that marks the spot of a small settlement whose settlers -- all of them -- were surprised and killed on the first day of the war. A marker in a woods where more than 1,000 Indian women and children were imprisoned in a pen. A barren place on the Missouri River where hundreds died of starvation and disease after being "deported" by a new state that exiled the people whose language gave the state its name..."

---

Things could have been worse.
Prior to the current US administration's preparations for mass detentions; "Former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover...

"had a plan to suspend the rules against illegal detention and arrest up to 12,000 Americans he suspected of being disloyal, according to a newly declassified document."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cdesign proponentsists claim that the eye is far too complex to have 'evolved' from simpler forms ["irreducible complexity"], so it is interesting to find that a predicted transitional form of the eye has been discovered in a fossil Australian fish.

"Part of the trouble in tracing the evolution of the eye is that soft tissues don't tend to fossilise. But the eye cavities in the braincase of these 400 million-year-old fossil fish were lined with a delicate layer of very thin bone. All the details of the nerve canals and muscle insertions inside the eye socket are preserved - the first definite fossil evidence demonstrating an intermediate stage in the evolution of our most complex sensory organ.

"These extinct placoderms had the eyeball still connected to the braincase by cartilage, as in modern sharks, and a primitive eye muscle arrangement as in living jawless fish." Dr Young said that this anatomical arrangement is different from all modern vertebrates, in which there is a consistent pattern of tiny muscles for rotating each eyeball."

Richard Dawkins has a proposal for how the eye could have begun as a light sensitive patch of skin on an ancient lineage.A practical lecture, from Richard Dawkins, with demonstrations can be found here and here. Watch the animation, below, for a quick explanation:


Wikipedia entry for "irreducible complexity".

Richard Dawkins:

"...There really was no neeed for Darwin to shudder. Half an eye is better than no eye... 1% of an eye is better than no eye at all."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tags: xkcd comic, cartoon, transformation, papier mache, Elwha dam, evolution, irreducible complexity,native art,Bingorage, Broken Vulture Art, blog,pics

ho ho ho, brrrrr

Have a happy, multidenominational
winter solstice celebration!

Some Wikipedia articles:
Winter Solstice
Festivus
Saturnalia

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sculpture idea sketch; Sturgeon Hunt, by Canoe:










The stylised 'canoe' and the 'human' figures are based on the pictographic "rock art" imagery of the boreal forest, extending through the Boreal Forest and Canadian Shield of Northern Quebec, Northern Ontario, Northern Minnesota, Northern Manitoba and Northern Saskatchewan; probably further. Usually, however, the 'canoe' contains four figures, probably referencing the 'shamanic canoe' ritual. The spear is tipped with a polished deer antler harpoon, typical of the Laurel Culture toolkit found in association with the Rainy River and the prominent burial mounds on its banks.

I see the sturgeon as about 15 feet in length and realistically represented; about the largest size of fish found in these inland waters in the days before commercial fisheries, industrial pollution and wanton waste.

The boulder in the river is a glacial erratic; scooped up and delivered from hundreds of miles away by mile-high sheets of ice that scraped this land down to the bone, over the last hundred thousand years.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ojibway artist, George Morrrison, at Wikipedia.

An article about Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian show (2004-2005), showcasing George Morrison and Allan Houser; another important modern Native visual artist.

"The two artists came from very different backgrounds, but artistically their lives converged. While Houser grew up on the southern Plains of Oklahoma and spent much of his life in the deserts of the Southwest, Morrison's studio overlooked a lake in Grand Portage, Minnesota. But the representational realism of their early careers gradually became abstracted in later life, and both artists drew profoundly on influences derived from nature."

[Click picture for link to Minnesota Museum of American Art listing for George Morrison.]

Cube, 1988 exotic woods, Sylvia Brown, Dr. Wolfgang Zeman, and Renato and Giorgio Marmont Funds Purchase

---

History Tree honors native traditions.

The 2007 Mantle of Shame Awards, at Indian Country Today.

"This year has been filled with so many acts worthy of a place on the Mantle of Shame that there simply isn't room for all the deserving. But don't think that the anti-Indian wingnut writers or Team Abramoff didn't make the cut. I just can't bear to write another word about them this year. Ditto for the Mel Gibson's uber-tacky Macacalypto and Ward Churchill's bizarre "Dances with Identities."..."

"Macacalypto". Now that's funny; I hadn't heard/read that one before.

Seven inaugural inductees in Montana Indian Athletic Hall of Fame.

"Twenty-First Century Regionalists: Art of the New West" December 22, 2007 – April 13, 2008,Booth Western Museum.

---
Why are we using unnecessary "weapons-grade" nuclear material to make medicines?:

If you live in Canada, you couldn't avoid hearing the kerfuffle about the shutdown of the Chalk River Nuclear facility, upriver of Ottawa. Apparently, it is the major supplier of medical isotopes for North America, and it had been shut down for safety reasons. The Conservative government forced the plant to reopen, against the advice of the people who are supposed to regulate this "nucular" stuff.

An article, at Native Unity gave me pause...

"An important aspect of the isotope-production fiasco on Algonquin territory is being ignored. AECL Atomic Energy of Canada Limited uses 95 per cent highly enriched "weapons-grade" uranium HEU to make the main isotope (Molybdenum-99). This can be made using low-enriched uranium LEU which is NOT weapons-usable material, but is more expensive. Somebody wants to make isotopes and bombs cheaply.

He continued, "It's easier to make a very powerful bomb with weapons-grade uranium like the one dropped on Hiroshima in 1945". The only stockpile of weapons-grade uranium in Canada is at Chalk River, less than 200 kilometers up the Ottawa River from Canada’s capital. The Canadian public and Members of Parliament are told they are for "essential and life saving" medical isotope production. However, there's enough there to build two or more atom bombs and the stockpile is increasing."

WTF? They better not be driving this crap through my town. Are they driving it through yours?

Another article, at the National post:

"Edwin Lyman, senior staff scientist at the Washington-based Union of Concerned Scientists, said research facilities, including one at Chalk River's Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., can't properly guard this highly enriched uranium from terrorists, so they should not use it.

Mr. Kuperman noted that countries such as Argentina and Australia have already stopped using weapons-grade matter to produce medical isotopes, while the Netherlands and South Africa are now converting to less-powerful nuclear material.

But Canada's Crown-owned AECL and MDS Nordion have resisted a similar conversion at Chalk River. The two companies were one until Canada privatized the retail and processing parts of its isotope-creating business, and sold it to MDS Inc. in 1991. The new business became known as MDSNordion."

Nice.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Merry Xmas; unless you're Lakota.

Tim Giago article about the December 29 anniversary of the Wounded Knee Massacre (1890).

"... I quoted an editorial that appeared in the Aberdeen (SD) Saturday Review on January 3, 1891, just five days after the massacre. The author wrote about those terrible "Redskins," his favorite word for Indians. He wrote, "The Pioneer has before declared that our only safety depends upon the total extermination of the Indians. Having wronged them for centuries we had better, in order to protect our civilization, follow it up by one or more wrong and wipe these untamed and untamable creatures from the face of the earth."

That editorial calling for the genocide of the Lakota people was written by L. Frank Baum, the man who would later write, "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz..."

December 26, anniversary of the largest mass hanging in US history (1862); Mankato, Minnesota.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tags: winter solstice, festivus, sculpture idea sketch, bronze sculpture, wounded knee, mass hanging,george morrison, Chalk River, native art,Bingorage, Broken Vulture Art, blog,pics

The blood price is paid... again and again

Ipper wash park is being returned to the Chippewas of Kettle and Stony Point First Nation, by the government of Ontario.


The following long excerpt comes from a CBC "Timeline" article. Please read the article, for full story.

"... The dispute goes back to 1942. It was wartime and the federal government expropriated land belonging to the Stony Point band under the War Measures Act in order to build a military camp - Camp Ipperwash. In the years following, the band tried to get the land back, claiming it contained a burial ground destroyed when the camp was built.

Shortly after the war ended, the Department of National Defense said it was willing to return most of the land as long as it could lease back what it still needed for the military base. The offer was later withdrawn... In 1993, Stony Point band members began moving back on to the land. The military withdrew in September 1995, when another group of Stony Point natives marched onto the base.

It was then that a group of about 30 protesters built barricades at nearby Ipperwash Provincial Park to underline their land claim and to protest the destruction of the burial ground. Dudley George was one of the group's leaders.

There's no agreement on what happened next. The Ontario Provincial Police moved in on the protesters to remove them from the park. The police say they had no choice but to draw their guns because the protesters were armed; the protesters say the opposite, that they were unarmed and that police - dressed in riot gear - used unnecessary force...

Dudley George did not survive the raid. He died on Sept. 6, 1995, after being shot by acting Sgt. Kenneth Deane of the OPP. In 1997, Deane was convicted of criminal negligence causing death after a court ruled he did not have a "reasonable belief" George was armed. Deane later resigned from the force...

In January 2004, CBC News obtained surveillance videotapes taken by police officers in September 1995, one of which contains racist remarks made by police officers the day before George's death.

Representatives of George's family say the attitude the officers had toward natives "makes it pretty easy to shoot an Indian."

---
Mexico Remembers 1997 Indian Massacre.

"It's been nearly a decade since pro-government villagers armed with guns and machetes slaughtered 45 men, women and children in the neighboring hamlet of Acteal _ a massacre that remains emblematic of Mexico's human rights failures..."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
New coral-stitch earrings [Minus earwires. Pics click to enlarge]:

Wooden and glass (gunmetal, bronze transparent) beads.


Wooden, dyed "fossil" limestone, shell knuckles, glass beads.


Jasper, blue/green "opalite", glass beads.


---
I'm pretty sure that I have posted this piece, before, but the new camera takes a better macro picture. Lazy stitch on canvas.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Legalstuff:

Lakota Freedom, delegation to Washington. Earlier today, a delegation of Lakota Sioux were scheduled to announce their withdrawal from the USA.

"... We have no choice but to take this historic action to protect our people and our way of life, and reclaim our freedom from the colonial systems of the United States Government. So we travel to Washington D.C. to withdraw from our treaties with the United States and announce full return of our sovereign status under Article 6 of the U.S. Constitution, International and Natural Law..."

The second suspect in the murder of Anna Mae Aquash, in 1975, has been extradited from Canada to South Dakota.

"... Witnesses at Looking Cloud's trial said they heard him admit that Graham pulled the trigger that killed Pictou Aquash. Looking Cloud has since recanted that story, and Graham has always maintained his innocence..."

---
Artstuff:

Norval Morrisseau notice, Art Gallery of Ontario.

A "call" for memorial proposals, for Iraqi civilians. The current aim is not to create the memorial in a given timespan, but to generate discussion and imagery around the idea.

"All submitted memorial proposals that meet the project guidelines will be featured on this site - accessible through the exhibition portal (visit the "call for proposals" for project guidelines). New project proposals will be uploaded as they are received. There is no "winner" of this call for proposals - the goal for this project is to create a growing database of memorial concepts that is free, open and accessible."

Facebook event listing Storytelling & Bannock-Making Bake-Off.
Saturday, January 12, 2008; 11:30am - 4:00pm. Native Canadian Cenre, 16 Spadina Road, N of Bloor, Toronto, ON.

Free photo contest at Picture.Com.

The Quill Box: Doctor learns from patient.

---

Podcast feed for Radio Intelligentaboriginal.

Main page for Radio Intelligentaboriginal, Inteligentaindigena Novajoservo

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Science stuff:

Sandia National Laboratories offers new explanation for the Tunguska Event "probably caused by a small asteroid", and smaller than previously thought.
Following clip from the History Channel:



Sci-Fi author, Bill DeSmedt has written, recorded and released a free (donations cheerfully accepted) podcast version of his novel, Singularity, based on an alternative explanation for the Tunguska event. Namely, a collision with an ancient microscopic black hole! (And it's still down there!). Not very likely in the real world, but an awesome audiobook; check it out.

Wikipedia article, on the Tunguska event.

---

"Whales May Have Come From Deer-Like Animal".

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tags: beadwork, Ipperwash, Dudley George, Anna Mae Aquash, Acteal, Lazy-stitch, Coral_stitch,native art,Bingorage, Broken Vulture Art, blog,pics

ashes, paint... bone, nuts and beads

RIP Floyd 'Red Crow' Westerman,
December 13, 2007. Wikipedia article.

I had not seen/heard mention of his death in the mainstream press, but found it online.

"Sisseton-Wahpeton Dakota musician, actor and activist Floyd Red Crow Westerman passed away early Thursday in a hospital in Los Angeles after an extended illness, family members said. He was 71...
Westerman, who was born in Veblen, S.D., was an active member of the American Indian Movement. He participated in the occupation of Wounded Knee in 1973 and was a spokesman for the group’s International Indian Treaty Council..."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Recent coral-stitch earrings (minus earwires):







--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Download free Chapter one PDF, of the new Scott Sigler novel, Nocturnal.
Get the latest Sigler spew at Scott's main page.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
My friend, Will Lahti, has a show up in Finland, at Baari Vakiopaine, December 3-23, 2007. Check postcard for contact info.
Drop in if you get a chance. [Pics click to enlarge]

His show's postcard invite. Grandpa Turtle








My fave:




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Art and history resources/stuff:

Another online art magazine, CanadianArt.

Canadian First Nations actor/writer, Darrell Dennis (Secwepemc Nation, BC), tapped for the January Screenwriters Lab, at Sundance Institute.

"Darrell Dennis (writer) / TALES OF AN URBAN INDIAN (Canada): A dark, irreverent comedy that follows the trials and tribulations of a young Native American man from the reservation to the big city and ultimately to self respect."

Changing Hands: Art Without Reservation. An exhibit at the Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis; October 26, 2007 - January 13, 2008.

"Changing Hands: Art Without Reservation features a diverse array of contemporary Native American artists whose work at once acknowledges and pushes the long tradition of Native American visual art. This exhibition, the second in the Changing Hands series organized by the Museum of Arts & Design, New York, features approximately 150 works of art by more than 130 artists from areas west of the Mississippi including the Plains, Plateau, West Coast, Western Canada, Alaska, and Hawaii."

The religious sacrament, peyote, is becoming increasingly rare and endangered.
A Rare and Unusual Harvest.

The increasing scrutiny of the human genome is revealing some startling surprises. It seems that ancient viruses had long ago inserted their own genetic data into our own, shared human code -perhaps millions of years ago- and we continue to paas them down, today. Darwin's Surprise. They seem to be remnants of previous battles between our ancestors and extinct/defeated viral lineages. The shared viral inheritance between humans and apes provides an unexpected confirmation of shared lineage.

"... makes sense, though, only if humans share most of those viral fragments with relatives like chimpanzees and monkeys. And we do, in thousands of places throughout our genome. If that were a coincidence, humans and chimpanzees would have had to endure an incalculable number of identical viral infections in the course of millions of years, and then, somehow, those infections would have had to end up in exactly the same place within each genome. The rungs of the ladder of human DNA consist of three billion pairs of nucleotides spread across forty-six chromosomes. The sequences of those nucleotides determine how each person differs from another, and from all other living things. The only way that humans, in thousands of seemingly random locations, could possess the exact retroviral DNA found in another species is by inheriting it from a common ancestor."

An article about the disappearing languages of Native America. At a Loss for Words.

"But like so many indigenous languages on every populated continent, Salish–Pend d'Oreille is on the point of vanishing. Fewer than thirty fluent native speakers remain, and nearly all of them are elderly. The great majority of the roughly 6,000 Salish and Pend d'Oreille tribal members do not speak their ancestral language at all.

The fluent Salish–Pend d'Oreille speakers who work with me report that the only opportunities they have to "talk Indian" are at the tribes' Culture Committee's weekly elders’ meetings from the fall through the spring, and in their weekly language sessions with me during the summer. John Peter Paul, who died in 2001 at the age of ninety-two, was married to his wife Agnes PokerJim Paul, a Bitterroot Salish, for seventy-two years; they were the last married couple who spoke their language regularly at home. Their oldest daughter, Josephine Quequesah, is a fluent and highly skilled speaker of the language, but some of her younger siblings have a more passive level of fluency."

New "Clovis" dates.

"... analysis of dates for the best-documented Clovis sites suggests the culture arose later and was shorter-lived than once thought, a finding that some say deals a blow to the "Clovis first" theories that maintain the big-game-hunting people were the first immigrants to the New World. Michael Waters, director of the Center for the Study of the First Americans, and Thomas Stafford of Stafford Research Laboratories in Colorado, used modern radiocarbon methods to re-date more than 20 previously known Clovis sites which had been dated with older, less precise techniques. All of the sites now seem to fall between 13,050 to 12,800 years ago..."

Archaeologists studied the first known chimpanzee archaeological site.

"... a grouping of stone hammers that were used by apes 4,300 years ago to smash open nuts. By analyzing pollen grains embedded in the stones, the team was able to identify five species of nuts the tools were used to open, four of which are not eaten by humans. The discovery shows that stone tool use is not a behavior that chimpanzees learned recently by watching the farmers who live in the area..."

Prehistoric chickens in Chile associated by DNA to Polynesian, not Spanish introduction.

"Radiocarbon dating shows the El Arenal chicken lived sometime between a.d. 1321 and 1407, well after Polynesians first settled Easter Island and the other easternmost islands of the Pacific."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From RUSirius and the MondoGloboNetwork:

A timeline of the Bush administration attack on American Bill of Rights.

The question authority proposal.

The Open Source Party proposal."... I propose a Liberal/Libertarian/Other unity party that will develop ideas and solutions to America's political problems through an Open Source process that will be engaging and fun. We will have online conferences, social networks and wikis, we will have meetups, we will have parties, we will create games that model likely real world responses to our proposed ideas, we will field candidates starting in 2010, get "crazed" anti-authoritarians on TV and radio, and maybe change a few things before the apocalypse, the Singularity, the second coming, the complete conquest of the world by Google, the election of another generation of Bushes and Clintons, or whatever other event you may be expecting..."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tags: Floyd Red Crow Westerman, beadwork, coral stitch, earrings, Ojibway Jewelry, Will Lahti, Finland,clovis, evolution,Native ArtBingorage, Broken Vulture Art, blog,pics

Impacts; ice, rock, flesh

Science break:

Prius Versus Hummer: A Nickel for Your Thoughts.

"...urban legends have sprung up about the Prius and its battery, the most colorful being this claim about the hybrid being less ecofriendly than a Hummer... You can disprove most of the false claims by doing a bit of math..."

Huge 'hurricane' rages on Saturn.

"A hurricane-like storm, two-thirds the diameter of Earth, is raging at Saturn's south pole, new images from Nasa's Cassini space probe reveal.
Measuring 5,000 miles (8,000km) across, the storm is the first hurricane ever detected on a planet other than Earth."

Ice Age Ends Smashingly: Did a comet blow up over eastern Canada?

"Evidence unearthed at more than two dozen sites across North America suggests that an extraterrestrial object exploded in Earth's atmosphere above Canada about 12,900 years ago, just as the climate was warming at the end of the last ice age. The explosion sparked immense wildfires, devastated North America's ecosystems and prehistoric cultures, and triggered a millennium-long cold spell, scientists say."

From what appears to have been an earlier impact event: Great beasts peppered from space

"Startling evidence has been found which shows mammoth and other great beasts from the last ice age were blasted with material that came from space.
Eight tusks dating to some 35,000 years ago all show signs of having being peppered with meteorite fragments... Raised, burnt surface rings trace the point of entry of high-velocity projectiles; and the punctures are on only one side, consistent with a blast coming from a single direction..."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Eric's meteor crater fascination [Pics click to enlarge. Latitude, Longitude and measurement details more visible on enlargements.]:

I've always been fascinated by meteor craters on Earth; such obvious scars testifying to incredible impacts of objects from space. The sky is falling, indeed. Since putting Google Earth onto my computer, I can now spend some of my free time surfing the planet, looking for possible evidence of these impacts. Some are obvious; others, worn, eroded, filled and hidden. Not all of the possibilities that I've identified are real impact craters, of course; they could be volcanic plugs worn to concentric features, coincidence, 4am projections of wishful thinking, etc., etc.

You can look at the growing gallery of wishful crater evidence at my Zoto.com Possible Meteor album.

In one of the previous articles that I've linked to, the obvious semi-circular feature of Hudson's Bay is pointed to as a possible impact site. There is a lack of evidence for such an impact, on the ground, but the author of the article speculates that there was a thick sheet of ice at the time, "buffering" the impact. There is evidence for an airburst of a comet or meteor, around 12 900 years ago, that may have contributed to the release of a glacial meltwater lake into the ocean via Hudson' Bay. If you enlarge the third pic of this group, you will see the pair of definite, smaller craters to the east of the semi-circular feature; probably from a different time period.




Here are some more possibles, from Northern Manitoba:







This is how these three group; on the surface, but not necessarily in time.




---




---




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

New Tim Giago article.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A more personal remembrance of Norval Morrisseau.

"... As he grew up and the art became more complex, told stories, gave away our secrets, say for instance how a loon can lead you to a school of fish. There were fears that if all the white people knew these secrets then there'd be no more fish, not to mention what they could do if they knew what the Midewiwin know..."

Native-American themed comic, Shaman's Tears. Read online, for free.

Native blog, for AlterNative Media.

Honouring Tradition:Reframing Native ArtFebruary 16, 2008 – September 28, 2008.

"... experience the rich artistic traditions of Native people from the Northern Plains and Subarctic regions. Past and present meet and interact with over 200 colourful objects including shirts, moccasins, baskets, story robes, sculptures, photographs, paintings and mixed media works..."

Remembering Norval Morrisseau at Macleans magazine.
Norval Morrisseau found a Paris salon in the boreal forest.

Sherman Alexie wins the National Book Award.

"Seattle author Sherman Alexie has won the National Book Award for his highly autobiographical novel for young people, "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian."

Norval Morrisseau worked on a series of paintings that were meant to be translated into mosaics for the Toronto subway. However, the project never happened, but now the paintings are for sale...
at 100 Grand ($100 000.00) a piece!

"Mcleod insists they (the prices) were determined well before the painter's death from complications associated with Parkinson's disease."

Yeah, right.

Another Native blog, Radical Indian

"(From the author's statement)...I encourage others to search within themselves for this same type of emotional freedom. A genocide happened to our people, a genocide so enormous and traumatic that sometimes our own people can't even comprehend it. All we can do is revel in its impact. The evidence is all around us and very obvious to non-Aborignal people. We can be free though. We need to stand up. We need to unite ourselves. We need to get stronger! We need to work past the pain, the hurt, the rage. We need to become more solution focussed and ready. We need to shake this system that has so defined us. We need to use everything they have taught us against them to break free from this oppression. One day, we can be free..."

Artist visit; Jim Denomie

"... latest exhibition “Brown-eyed Rabbit” is currently being shown at the Bockly Gallery in South Minneapolis. Jim paints in a very expressionistic style in which he uses vibrant colors and loose brush strokes to convey a satirical story about contempery Native Americans and their perceived role in a maladaptive society..."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tags: norval morrisseau, meteor crater, geology, comet, meteorite, bolide, native art, google earth, Bingorage, Broken Vulture Art, blog, pics