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Featured Art - Cankpe Opi

Featured Art - Cankpe Opi
Frank Howell

Featured Video - Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee

Thursday, July 26, 2007

Featured website - NCAI.org

National Congress of American Indians

The NCAI was founded in 1944 in response to termination and assimilation policies that the United States forced upon the tribal governments in contradiction of their treaty rights and status as sovereigns. NCAI stressed the need for unity and cooperation among tribal governments for the protection of their treaty and sovereign rights. Since 1944, the National Congress of American Indians has been working to inform the public and Congress on the governmental rights of American Indians and Alaska Natives.

Over a half a century later, our goals remain unchanged. NCAI has grown over the years from its modest beginnings of 100 people to include 250 member tribes from throughout the United States. Now serving as the major national tribal government organization, NCAI is positioned to monitor federal policy and coordinated efforts to inform federal decisions that affect tribal government interests.

Now as in the past, NCAI serves to secure for ourselves and our descendants the rights and benefits to which we are entitled; to enlighten the public toward the better understanding of the Indian people; to preserve rights under Indian treaties or agreements with the United States; and to promote the common welfare of the American Indians and Alaska Natives.

Check it out! http://www.ncai.org

Today in history...

1763: Fort Sandusky (in Ohio) is destroyed by Indians on May 16th. Detroit is also being besieged. Captain James Dalyell and almost 300 soldiers arrive on the southern shore of Lake Erie. They find many bodies and the remnants of structures. His forces immediately march against a Wyandot village near modern Fremont.

1824: Seminole Principal Chief Neamathla (also called Eneah Emathla) has managed to avoid removing his people from Florida to the west. Florida Governor William Duval has become convinced that Neamathla is planning another uprising. The Governor officially removes Neamathla from his position as Chief.

'Native Americans of Arizona' - book review

by: Lee Allen

TUCSON, Ariz. - How serendipitous is this? A husband and wife who deal in out-of-print books, prints and postcards attend an Arizona Historical Society convention and set up their booth right next to a history book publishing company that specializes in ''postcard history'' books.

The result is ''Native Americans of Arizona,'' 225 postcard images from the 1,500-postcard collection of Tucsonans Paul and Kathleen Nickens crafted into book form by Arcadia Publishing to offer a wide-ranging overview of the rich imagery of Native people in Arizona in the early 1900s.

''Picture postcards were used by promoters like the Fred Harvey Company and the Santa Fe Railroad to sell the Southwest. Travelers came from the East, where they got on a train at one end and traveled on that train car to the other end visiting designated tourist stops in Arizona and New Mexico, where they took side trips to buy postcards and picture books to validate their trip,'' said Paul Nickens, an archaeologist specializing in the American Southwest who now sells Southwestern collectibles (www.SabinoBooks.com).

''This focuses on Arizona's 21 tribes and nations and is a pictorial walk-through of the history of the first half of the 21st century,'' he said. ''There are images in here that are real gems, probably not seen elsewhere, that couldn't be replicated today. Some of these images were spontaneous, some posed, and if you look at them with a critical eye, you'll see the details of the time.''

There's more here: http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096415452

Indian House

by: Patti Jo King

Forty years of uncompromising traditional music recording

TAOS, N.M. - In 1966, Tony Isaacs and his wife, Ida, opened a small arts and crafts shop next to their home in Taos. Over the next 41 years, that shop, Indian House, became an important connection for Indians across the nation to find traditional Native music recordings. It all started with Tony's passion for authentic Indian music.

Back in the 1940s, 14-year-old Isaacs purchased a 78 rpm Soundchiefs recording of a Plains drum group in a Los Angeles record store. His purpose was to learn an Indian song for his Boy Scout troop. Surprised by the complexity of the music, he began buying more records and trying to learn all he could about the music's structure.

In 1954, he visited the Flagstaff Pow Wow and, in 1956, the Anadarko Exposition.

''I was completely bowled over,'' he said. ''I was learning the music from old 78s. Those recordings were mostly a couple of guys playing a drum and singing, but at the pow wows I saw maybe 25 guys singing around the drums. I could hear and feel the power of the music for the first time. It was thrilling.''

One of the first things Isaacs noticed was the way dancers in the arena instinctively stop on the last beat of the song.

''There were 200 dancers,'' he recalled. ''Every one of them, young or old, knew how to stop dancing on the last beat of the song. I was puzzled. How did they know when to end?'' He asked different drummers how they knew when the song was going to end. He said they all gave the same answer. ''Don't know. You can just tell.'' That was when he realized that the music is an inherent part of the people who grow up in and around it.

Read more here: http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096415450