"What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset." -
Crowfoot - Blackfoot
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
Important dates in history, December...
December 15, 1890 - Chief Sitting Bull is murdered outside his home at Standing Rock, ND
December 16, 1882 - The Hopi reservation is established in Arizona
December 18, 1971 - Alaskan Native Claims Act is signed into law
December 26, 1862 - 38 Dakotas are publically hanged in largest mass execution in U.S. history
December 29, 1890 - Wounded Knee massacre of Big Foot's Lakota. In less than ten minutes, more than three hundred old men, women, and children are massacred by the U.S. Seventh Cavalry
Information provided by Native American Rights Fund. "We ask for nothing more and will accept nothing less than the U.S. government keeping the promises it has made to Native Americans." - John E. Echohawk, Executive Director, NARF
December 16, 1882 - The Hopi reservation is established in Arizona
December 18, 1971 - Alaskan Native Claims Act is signed into law
December 26, 1862 - 38 Dakotas are publically hanged in largest mass execution in U.S. history
December 29, 1890 - Wounded Knee massacre of Big Foot's Lakota. In less than ten minutes, more than three hundred old men, women, and children are massacred by the U.S. Seventh Cavalry
Information provided by Native American Rights Fund. "We ask for nothing more and will accept nothing less than the U.S. government keeping the promises it has made to Native Americans." - John E. Echohawk, Executive Director, NARF
'Pulling Down the Clouds' unites many authors' voices
By: Konnie LeMay
WASHINGTON - It begins beautifully with Pulitzer Prize-winning author N. Scott Momaday, Kiowa.
Starting with the famed author of ''House Made of Dawn'' is, of course, a great way to begin anything, but especially what is probably the largest gathering of contemporary Native writers on one compact disc.
''Pulling Down the Clouds: Contemporary Native Writers Read Their Work'' is an anthology of works by various writers read by the authors themselves. It pulls together a portion of the Native Writers Series undertaken for nine nights during each of the last four years at the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.
Tanya Thrasher, Cherokee and editor of the CD project, said that after four years of invitations to writers to read their work, ''we have this amazing collection of audio recordings ... just the magnitude, just the power of every author and the talent they have.''
The result is a satisfying mixture of familiar universal stories with personal insights, a smattering of humor and even one song. The stories are told through the eyes of the authors or through their characters, like Momaday's empathetic envisioning of Sacagawea's thoughts as she traveled with Lewis and Clark; or the examination by Louise Erdrich, Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, of the wisdom told by wolves to a once-suicidal old man from her Anishinaabe heritage: '''We live because we live.' ... The wolves accept the life they are given.''
Read more here: http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096416151
WASHINGTON - It begins beautifully with Pulitzer Prize-winning author N. Scott Momaday, Kiowa.
Starting with the famed author of ''House Made of Dawn'' is, of course, a great way to begin anything, but especially what is probably the largest gathering of contemporary Native writers on one compact disc.
''Pulling Down the Clouds: Contemporary Native Writers Read Their Work'' is an anthology of works by various writers read by the authors themselves. It pulls together a portion of the Native Writers Series undertaken for nine nights during each of the last four years at the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.
Tanya Thrasher, Cherokee and editor of the CD project, said that after four years of invitations to writers to read their work, ''we have this amazing collection of audio recordings ... just the magnitude, just the power of every author and the talent they have.''
The result is a satisfying mixture of familiar universal stories with personal insights, a smattering of humor and even one song. The stories are told through the eyes of the authors or through their characters, like Momaday's empathetic envisioning of Sacagawea's thoughts as she traveled with Lewis and Clark; or the examination by Louise Erdrich, Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, of the wisdom told by wolves to a once-suicidal old man from her Anishinaabe heritage: '''We live because we live.' ... The wolves accept the life they are given.''
Read more here: http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096416151
Sherman Alexie wins the National Book Award
By: Mary Ann Gwinn
SEATTLE (MCT) - 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.''
Alexie got the news the night of Nov. 14 at the awards ceremony in New York. He won for best book in the young people's literature category. In his acceptance speech, Alexie, an author of 19 books of fiction, poetry and essays, quipped, ''Wow ... I obviously should have been writing YA [young adult] all along.''
He credited Alex Kuo, a creative-writing teacher at Washington State University who gave him an anthology of American Indian writing. It helped persuade him to become a writer. ''I had never read words written by a Native American. The first one was a poem about frying baloney ... I grew up eating fried baloney. The other was a poem by Adrian Lewis, and the poem had the line, 'Oh, Uncle Adrian, I'm in the reservation of my mind.' I knew right then when I read that line that I wanted to be a writer. It's been a gorgeous and magnificent and lonely 20 years since then.''
''I am in post-traumatic shock-stress syndrome,'' Alexie said later. ''It's just astonishing. It's all because 27 years ago, I went up to my mom and dad and asked if I could leave the rez school, and they said yes.''
He thanked his wife, his two sons and his editor, ''who edited me, even though I can be an arrogant bastard.''
Read the full article here: http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096416191
SEATTLE (MCT) - 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.''
Alexie got the news the night of Nov. 14 at the awards ceremony in New York. He won for best book in the young people's literature category. In his acceptance speech, Alexie, an author of 19 books of fiction, poetry and essays, quipped, ''Wow ... I obviously should have been writing YA [young adult] all along.''
He credited Alex Kuo, a creative-writing teacher at Washington State University who gave him an anthology of American Indian writing. It helped persuade him to become a writer. ''I had never read words written by a Native American. The first one was a poem about frying baloney ... I grew up eating fried baloney. The other was a poem by Adrian Lewis, and the poem had the line, 'Oh, Uncle Adrian, I'm in the reservation of my mind.' I knew right then when I read that line that I wanted to be a writer. It's been a gorgeous and magnificent and lonely 20 years since then.''
''I am in post-traumatic shock-stress syndrome,'' Alexie said later. ''It's just astonishing. It's all because 27 years ago, I went up to my mom and dad and asked if I could leave the rez school, and they said yes.''
He thanked his wife, his two sons and his editor, ''who edited me, even though I can be an arrogant bastard.''
Read the full article here: http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096416191
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