Native News Network

Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA) in collaboration with Museum of Contemporary Craft (MoCC) is honored to welcome celebrated author, activist, and musician Joy Harjo, who will deliver the 2014 Alfred Edelman Lecture on Wednesday, March 12, 6:30 pm.

Harjo’s lecture is part of Illuminations, a city-wide event series celebrating Native arts and cultures centered around This is Not a Silent Movie at Museum of Contemporary Craft.

About Joy Harjo
Joy Harjo was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma and is a member of the Mvskoke Nation. She just published her memoir, Crazy Brave, detailing her journey to becoming a poet.

Harjo’s seven books of poetry, which includes such well-known titles as How We Became Human-New and Selected Poems, The Woman Who Fell From the Sky, and She Had Some Horses have garnered many awards. These include the New Mexico Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers Circle of the Americas; and the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America. In 2009 For A Girl Becoming was published.

She has released four award-winning CD’s of original music and in 2009 won a Native American Music Award (NAMMY) for Best Female Artist of the Year for Winding Through the Milky Way. Her most recent CD release is a traditional flute album: Red Dreams, a Trail Beyond Tears. She performs nationally and internationally with her band, the Arrow Dynamics.

She also performs her one-woman show, Wings of Night Sky, Wings of Morning Light,which premiered at the Wells Fargo Theater in Los Angeles in 2009 with recent performances at the Public Theater in NYC and LaJolla Playhouse as part of the Native Voices at the Autry. She has received a Rasmusson: US Artists Fellowship and is a founding board member of the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation. Harjo writes a column “Comings and Goings” for her tribal newspaper, the Muscogee Nation News. She lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

About the Edelman Lecture
When the late Portland architect and photographer, Alfred Edelman, taught three-dimensional design at PNCA, he challenged his students to consider the principles of engineering, kinetics, physics and other subjects seemingly dissimilar to art. In doing so he brought the outside world into his classroom. Founded by Carol Edelman, the Alfred Edelman Lecture was created to enhance the student’s understanding of the visual world by presenting timeless and/or unique ways to examine and manipulate three-dimensional space and to be a catalyst for lively discussions in the classroom at PNCA.

In The Light Of Justice

Walter Echo-Hawk
325 pages, softcover: 
$19.95.
Fulcrum Publishing, 2013.

It's unthinkable that kids in America would ever be allowed to play "slaves and masters," writes Walter Echo-Hawk, but we don't see anything wrong with Junior strapping on the trusty ol' cap-shooters for a game of "cowboys and Indians."

Echo-Hawk, a Pawnee tribal member and lawyer who has toiled for 35 years in federal Indian law, has written a provocative book that examines the tragic and continuing effects of colonial conquest and its resulting "settler" mindset. He does this without ever scolding his readers and succeeds in pointing a way toward eventual healing.

In the Light of Justice shines its own light onto often overlooked issues, explaining that what many whites think of as History – a bygone era of treaty-making, frontier warfare and taming the West – is, to most Indian people, actually Current Events.

James Anaya, a human rights investigator for the United Nations, agrees. In his foreward to the book, Anaya writes that, during a tour of Indian Country in the wake of the U.S. endorsement of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, he was struck "by … the deep, still open wounds" left by Manifest Destiny.

It's disturbing, Echo-Hawk notes, that former colonists who rebelled for the sake of freedom treated, and continue to treat, indigenous people in the manner of 500 years of Western European colonialism. The doctrines of conquest and discovery have not only unjustly destroyed indigenous economies and societies; they have harmed the land as well, by treating it solely as a resource to be exploited. And yet those doctrines are still cited by federal courts today.

Echo-Hawk devotes a chapter to the need for what he calls an American land ethic, something, he writes, that Aldo Leopold suggested as early as 1948. Without a new way to engage with the landscape, "the American people cannot fully mature from a nation of immigrants and settlers recovering from a rapacious frontier history of Manifest Destiny and stride toward a more just culture … and resolve to become more 'native' to place."

In 10 focused chapters, Echo-Hawk maps the way from the dark legacy of conquest to the light of justice. The "clothes of the conqueror," he concludes, do not well fit the American ideals of liberty and justice.

Joy Harjo was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma and is a member of the Mvskoke Nation. Joy Harjo was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma and is a member of the Mvskoke Nation. Her seven books 

of poetry, which includes such well-known titles as How We Became Human- New and Selected Poems, The Woman Who Fell From the Sky, and She Had Some Horses have garnered many awards.  These include the New Mexico Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers Circle of the Americas; and the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America. For A Girl Becoming, a young adult/coming of age book, was released in 2009 and is Harjo’s most recent publication.Her seven books of poetry and five award-winning CD's.

http://joyharjo.com

Manitobah Mukluks is looking for new artists for the Storyboot Project.

Are you an expert mukluk or moccasin maker? Are you interested in showcasing and selling your one-of-a-kind pieces to a world-wide audience?

Simply email tarab@manitobah.ca with the following information:

1. Your name

2. Your bio, background & work style

3. Photo (s) of your work & prices

About the Storyboot Project: 

As an Aboriginal-owned footwear company, our vision is to build a vibrant, global brand that makes a significant social impact in Aboriginal communities. Part of that commitment means supporting and showcasing living artists who continue to make mukluks and moccasins the traditional way. Each artist that we showcase has a unique story to tell and all of the money that is made from the sale of their work goes directly back to them. Along with keeping traditions alive, this practice serves to increase the value of hand-made mukluks and moccasins.

The Young Native Writers Essay Contest is a writing contest for Native American high school students and is designed to encourage young Native Americans to write about the progress their tribal communities have made and how their tribal communities can keep moving forward. 

Tonight on American Indian Airwaves, Arigon Starr. See forwarded message for more details. Thank you. 

Tuesday, February 26th, 2013 • 8-9pm (pst).  American Indian Airwaves regularly broadcast every Tuesday from 8pm to 9pm (pacific standard time) on KPFK FM 90.7 in Los Angles, FM 98.7 in Santa Barbara, and by Internet with Real Media Player, Winamp, & Itunes at http://www.kpfk.org  Listen live, www.kpfk.org/listen-live.html

Tuesday, 02/24/13, on American Indian Airwaves
8pm to 9pm

      "Super Indian, For Indigenous Minds Only, and A Good Day to Die" 

Arigon Starr (Kickapoo/ Creek/Cherokee & Seneca Nations) ( http://www.arigonstarr.com/) joins us live in studio to discuss music and newly developed and produced all-Indigenous themed Super Indian Comic Series. Comic books have been popular in American culture for generations often portraying Indigenous peoples in stereotypical ways. Arigon Starr establishes narrative and visual sovereignty with her new Indigenous comic series. All this, plus more on today's show.

 American Indian Airwaves regularly broadcast every Tuesday from 8pm to 9pm (PCT) on KPFK FM 90.7 in Los Angles, FM 98.7 in Santa Barbara, FM 99.5 China Lake, FM 93.7 North San Diego, WCRS FM 98.3/102.1 in Columbus, OH, and on the Internet @ www.kpfk.org