only 391 more shopping days until next xmas

Sharptail Grouse roost.


Joy Harjo (Creek) Musician and writer.

Joy Harjo lectures at Naropa Institute, hosted -and available for streaming or download- at the Internet Archive.
part 1 and part 2.


Long drive out, from unsuccessful deer hunt.


An abridged reading of Sherman Alexie (Spokane/Coeur d'Alene) story - What You Pawn I Will Redeem; read by Raul Moreno.

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Tags: Joy Harjo, creek, pics, Sherman Alexie, broken vulture art, bingorage, blog, naropa, internet archive, spokane, Coeur d'Alene

it is winter

Update: November 29 -- cleaned up a bit of sloppy HTML. Finally caved-in and got a new computer, as well. I am taking it out for a spin and will let you know how she handles.



I just read a little newz blurb, about a Native American Artist seeking backing to build a "21-story" (207' tall)bronze statue of a Native American warrior.

Holy Cow!!!!!

Wikipedia article about the statue, to be title "The American". Now, that is a statue I would travel to see.

(Shan)Gray, who is part Osage, has built a career on large-scale sculptures of Oklahoman sports figures such as New York Yankees pitcher Allie "Superchief" Reynolds and Heisman trophy winner Billy Vessels...

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Here's another one of my mum's favourite little thingies. A woodknot carving of a whimsical face. There is a carved set of initials, "TB", on the back. It's a heavy, resinous chunk of wood; no idea which type.





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Click the clown to visit the guys at Anurag Art.

Tags: native art, first nation, native american,bingorage, broken vulture art, pics, sculpture, bronze,oklahoma, Shan Gray,osage

Bingorage interview at Brainripples

Update: My clunky old computer finally died, on me. I will be running (sort of) the office out of the library until I can retool or replace. Please check out the Bingorage interview at Brainripples, in the meantime...
and pass it on to your friends, or highly-placed enemies.

If you're feeling cashy and uppity, send me the bestest, fastest, gaudiest alienware(etc.) computer you can afford, or a doughnut... or commiserations.
:Eric

Bass Relief

This series of pics was taken on a disposable 35mm camera and then squeezed through the guts of my new, old scanner and decrepit PC. Click to enlarge.











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An article about how-not-to-succeed in the artworld, over at Making a Mark blog.

Orcas in the City. Public art in Vancouver, finished up by a variety of artists like the Peanuts characters in St. Paul, MN or the bears in Winnipeg.

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Tags: smallmouth bass, fish, paper sculpture papier mache, native art, public art, fibreglass, bingorage, broken vulture art, blog, pics

hooting and flinging

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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.

Tags: native issues, first nation, native american, canadian politics, ontario politics, bingorage, broken vulture art, pics, ojibway, cree, kasheshewan, buffy saint marie, cradleboard teaching project, songhees, sacred cave, cougar attack, test tube bison, northwest territories, british columbia, city indian

It is, neither legal, safe, or moral...

to hunt Whitetail deer, by bludgeoning them with a platypus.

Ontario provincial laws and MNR policy simply make no provision for hunting platypi; whereas, the regulations clearly make provisions for the use of, or prohibition of, hunting dogs.

It is not safe, because the male platypus is armed with a poisoned spike on his hind leg and hunters could become accidentally envenomated far from medical assisstance and freakingly, stupefyingly, ridiculously and geographically removed from a ready shot of platypus antivenin/antivenom(?).

Clearly, obviously -however- it is immoral to hunt Whitetail Deer by bludgeoning them with a poor, defenceles, far-from-home, somewhat cute, furry, egg-laying chimera, because the deer would suffer, unnecessarily.

Just say NO to hunting platypi.



Click to enlarge...
click thumb below, to see first draft of pic.



Obviously, I've been spending way too much time thinking
about deerhunting.
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Some interesting art/native art links:

Seattle is slow on fullfilling their
pledge of increasing the representation of public native art at the Olympic Sculpture Park.

In October, a panel gathered in South Dakota to discuss the importance of
art to Native heritage and culture.

In November, a large sculpture installation in North Dakota, created by native students, was
vandalised prior to its unveiling.

Here's on online primer on Colour theory

A short interview with Buffy St. Marie.
Buffy's Full Life, Blacklist Sorrow, touching on her "blacklisting" off mainstream
radio during the Vietnam War era.

Tags: whitetail deer, deerhunt, platypus, sketch, mspaint, broken vulture hunt, bingorage, blog, bludgeon, native art, vandalism, north dakota, south dakota, seattle, olympic sculpture park, buffy saint marie, blacklist, vietnam war

Surly Bonds

A human rights group is seeking to have charges against former U$A Sec.Def., D.Rum$feld, filed in Germany. Also on the list, Attorney General A. Gonzales. Charges will be in connection with the illegal torture and imprisonment of individuals in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay.

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High Flight

Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds -- and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of -- wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long, delirious burning blue,
I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew.
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untresspassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

-- RCAF Flight-Lieutenant John Gillespie Magee Jr.
(1922-1941).

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An E-vite, for the Edwin Decker book-release party in Ocean Beach, Cali.
RSVP and ring-a-ding-ding.

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DECEMBER 12, 2006 -- FEBRUARY 8, 2007

"Salish Signatures": Coast Salish Art

At the Queen Elizabeth Theatre.

Traditional and contemporary works by Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun, Melvin Dunn, Brenda Crabtree and others, on display in the Mezzanine Gallery. Curated by Rose M. Spahan.

Tags: remembrance day, november 11, veterans, surly bonds, broken vulture art, bingorage, blog

Good Luck with that voting thing, down there.

Beaded stars and stripes bracelet on leather; with glass, bone and wooden beads.




I am republishing this press release from my pal, Marcie Rendon.
Check it out, if you're in the Twin Cities (MN) area.

You are invited to a FREE 'writing for theater' residency
November 11 & 12, saturday and sunday
AND November 18 & 19, saturday and sunday
from 11am to 4pm each day
at Two Rivers Gallery
Minneapolis American Indian Center

This residency will be for anyone who wants to write for theater, act, create
performance pieces, dance, sing - be anything or anyone on stage!
The goal of the residency will be to collaboratively create one site-specific
theater piece to be performed somewhere in the twin cities native community.
Or for you to write your own performance piece.

This residency will be facilitated by Marcie Rendon, playwright and
performance artist. It is sponsored by Project Hoop Native theater project out of UCLA
in Los Angeles. To register or for more information e-mail:
MRendon703@aol.com
Or just show up on Saturday, November 11
Please forward to anyone you think might be interested


Bio
Marcie R. Rendon, White Earth Anishinabe, is a mother, grandmother, writer,
and sometimes performance artist. Rendon has facilitated Project Hoop
residencies at Haskell Indian College, LCO Tribal College, and for the Ojibwe Language
project in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota. A former recipient of the Loft’s
Inroads Writers of Color Award for Native Americans she is a l998/99 recipient of
the St. Paul Company’s LIN (Leadership In Neighborhoods) Award. As a theater
artist, she has had six plays produced, with numerous one-acts, collaborations
and Raving Native productions also produced. She received a l996-’97 Jerome
Fellowship from the Minneapolis Playwright’s Center. Her first children’s book,
Pow Wow Summer was published by CarolRhoda in l996 with her second, The
Farmer’s Market/Families Working Together, released in the spring of 2001.

http://hometown.aol.com/MRendon703/

Tags: marcie rendon, american election, beadwork, bracelet, broken vulture art, bingorage, blog, native playwright