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Canku Ota
(Many Paths)
An Online Newsletter Celebrating Native America

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November 2016 - Volume 14 Number 11
 
 
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"Neenjit dagoonch'uu "
Gwich'in
How are you?
 
 


Bighorn Sheep
(Ovis canadensis)

 
 
"KELMUYA"
Fledgling Raptor Moon
Hopi
 
 
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"A Warrior is challenged to assume responsibility, practice humility, and display the power of giving, and then center his or her life around a core of spirituality. I challenge today's youth to live like a warrior."
~Billy Mills~
 
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We Salute
Daryl Baldwin

Daryl Baldwin of the Miami Tribe described learning that he'd been chosen as one of the 2016 MacArthur Fellows as "a surreal experience."

Commonly known as the "genius grant," the fellowship includes a no-strings-attached award of $625,000. Recipients must meet three criteria: exceptional creativity, promise for important future advances based on a track record of significant accomplishment, and potential for the fellowship to facilitate subsequent work.

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Our Featured Artist:

Honoring

Wooden Lacrosse Stickmaker Gives Thanks By A Sacred Lake

People travel for miles to buy wooden lacrosse sticks they ordered from Alf Jacques. They drive Route 11A, through the Onondaga Nation, until they find his little shop beneath a hill, near the house where he grew up. Alf will hand them a stick, polished hickory shining like bone. He knows many buyers keep the sticks on display, and Alf always offers one simple piece of advice:

“This stick was made to be used,” he’ll tell them. “Honor it. Make that stick happy and take it down sometimes and use it, then put it back on the wall.”
 
Hiawatha Belt Returns To Onondaga Lake

Before European contact on Turtle Island the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy was born on the shores of Onondaga Lake in what is now central New York State. The Hiawatha belt was created to symbolize the unity between the five nations. The Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, and Mohawk comprised the original union, before adding the Tuscarora later on.

New York State was in possession of the belt from 1900 until 1989 when the Hiawatha Belt was returned to the Onondaga Nation after efforts to reclaim it by Nation leaders. Since its return the belt has never been back on the shores of the birthplace of the Haudenosaunee until October 14, 2016.

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Our Featured Story: First Person History:
Films To Watch In November On PBS

Just in time for Native American Heritage Month in November, Vision Maker Media presents five new films that celebrate the accomplishments of Native peoples in the areas of medicine, math and energy empowerment. The films provide historical context as well as modern insight on key issues affecting Native Americans.
 
Bering Strait Theory,
Part Six:

DNA, Blood Types and Stereotypes
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Education News Living Traditions
Zuni Crew Preserves Ancestor's Legacy

Visitors to Chimney Rock National Monument next year will have a safer hike to the mesa top following work completed this month by a Native American crew from Zuni Pueblo, a New Mexico tribe with cultural ties to the ancestral Puebloans.

Chimney Rock, which became a national monument in 2012, covers 7 square miles of the San Juan National Forest and features hundreds of prehistoric pit houses and ceremonial buildings built by the ancestral Puebloans. The trail to the Chacoan-style Great House Pueblo on the mesa at 7,000 feet may only be a half-mile long, but it's steep and rocky.
 
Navajo Hoop Dancer And Healer Jones Benally Has Seen It All

Age is only a concept to Dine hoop dancer Jones Benally, who was born in an octagonal home on the Navajo reservation in the dirt floor/no water/no electricity days before birth certificates. He is still going strong today.

Two years ago, when he became the recipient of the first-ever "Hoop Dance Legacy Award" from Heard Museum, the press release noted that Benally was in his 90s and had been a hoop dancer for more than 75 years "traveling the world as a cultural ambassador sharing culture and song."
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Education News Preserving Language
Chokka' Kilimpi' Supports Chickasaw Students At OU, OKC Metro

Going back to school was a walk in the park for Oklahoma City metro area Chickasaw college students. The Norman-based Chokka' Kilimpi' program welcomed students back with stickball and an opportunity to socialize with other Chickasaw students with back to school bashes in two locations.

Katie Croy, a Chickasaw student from Oklahoma City, recently learned about the program at Oklahoma City Community College (OCCC.) The program recently expanded to following its success at the University of Oklahoma (OU.)
 
From The Other Side Of The Atlantic, French-speakers Learn Inuktitut

Johanne Morel considers herself a life-long learner of the Inuit language.

The Montreal-based doctor travels regularly throughout Nunavik to work from community health centres that serve the local population.

As a francophone working in an Inuktitut-speaking milieu, Morel and her patients communicate most often in English.
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Honoring Students Preserving Language
Hoop Dance Champ Wows Crowd In Flagstaff

Nakotah LaRance wowed the crowd at the 83rd annual Hopi Festival of Arts and Culture July 2 treating the crowd to a dazzling performance of his world hoop dance champion skills at the Museum of Northern Arizona.

Nakotah started out as a fancy dancer, which is a flashy dance usually performed by young men to attract visitors to powwows. Before his dance, 8-year-old fancy dancer Lowell Chimerica, from Moenkopi, danced. Charlie Chimerica sang for Nakotah.
 
Grand View School Gets Grant For Cherokee Language

Grand View School is teaching students about the Cherokee history, culture and language thanks to a grant from the U.S. Department of Education.

The school is one out of 10 to receive the grant that supports Native American and Alaska Native children who are English-learning students, according to a DOE statement.
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Living Traditions Education News
FDL Doctor Receives Unsung Hero Award; Holds Silent Auction For Breast Cancer

Dr. Arne Vainio is known for many things. The fact that he is one of many great doctors at our clinics, his segments on the Native Report, his Mad Dr. Science projects, and his writings from Indianz.com and News from Indian Country are just a few ways he’s known (in my family he’s most know for his car that runs on grease), but Dr. Vainio never seeks out recognition.
 
Alaska Natives, International Officials Gather For White House Meeting On Arctic Research

Science ministers from 25 nations joined Alaska Natives from the Alaska Arctic for a first-of-its-kind White House meeting Wednesday to work on international cooperation for Arctic research.
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Living Traditions Education News
Conserving Culture And History At Grand Canyon

More than 80 years after Hopi artist Fred Kabotie painted colorful murals on the walls of Mary Colter's new Desert View Watchtower, his grandson, Ed Kabotie, takes a water-moistened brush in hand and applies it carefully to the unsealed plaster walls.

This is his history. A direct connection to his family and people. Looking around, Kabotie explains the significance of some of the figures on the walls. The largest mural, he said, is the story of the first Hopi person to travel down the Colorado River.
 
Miss Navajo Makes Special Appearance At Annual Tribal And Cultural Event At Tuba City

Even though tribal language and culture are extremely important to Tuba City Unified School District (TCUSD), Indian Week offers students the opportunity to learn from tribal presenters through presentations and cultural activities.
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Living Traditions Living Traditions
Perseverance for Preservation; A LONG Run: Arizona To North Dakota To Honor Water

It's about a 15 year old Hopi boy who has convictions about protecting other living things from the dangers of pollution. Meet Riley Ortega, a Hopi 'Spider clan' long distance runner who has every intention of running from Flagstaff, Arizona to Cannonball, North Dakota near the Standing Rock Nation. His parents, Lori and Erin Ortega who work for the Yavapai-Apache Nation fully support their son's run to North Dakota.

 
Pine Nuts—Sacred Staple From Highland Forests

“Everything depends on the water and the trees,” said spiritual leader Johnny Bob, from the Yomba Shoshone Tribe, as he prayed for the start of a Western Shoshone pine-nut gathering. In September, members of several bands came together in a steep-walled mountain valley in central Nevada to collect the protein- and nutrient-rich nuts that were once the mainstay of their diet.

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Healthy Living   Living Traditions
Using The Stroke Of A Brush To Promote Substance Abuse Prevention

On Sept. 30 tribal members were invited to partake in a ‘Paint Party' hosted by the Cheyenne and Arapaho Strategic Prevention Framework and Substance Abuse programs (SPIFTIG) at the Concho Community Center in Concho, Okla. Empty canvases, paints and brushes lined the tables that soon were filled with over 80 participants.
 
Documenting The Art Of Seal Skin Preparation For Future Generations

When Regilee Ootova was a child, she remembers watching her mother preparing to bleach seal skin.

It looked like a frantic activity: she would place the seal skin in boiling water, twirling carefully, and anxiously chanting “Aina, aina” to herself.
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Living Traditions   Healthy Living
Ten Ho-Chunk Elders Trek To South America For Fun, Education And Cultural Understanding

It all started about a year ago – just a casual conversation about what each person had on his or her bucket list.

That conversation at the Tribal Aging Unit turned a dream into reality.
 
Manoomin Is Coming Back To Northern Minnesota

As close to heaven as one can get. That's how the Fond du Lac Band, of Lake Superior Chippewa, describe the St. Louis River estuary, where the river slows and widens before emptying into the Lake Superior in Duluth.

"This was sort of a perfect place, a Mecca of sorts is what my uncle called it," said Thomas Howes, the band's natural resources director. "Everything that one needed for a good life was provided by the environment here."
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Living Traditions   Healthy Living
Chairman Barrett Honored At 2016 Trail Of Courage Festival

Taking place in the original homelands of what is today known as the Citizen Potawatomi Nation; CPN Tribal Chairman John “Rocky” Barrett was one of the guests of honor at the 41st annual Trail of Courage History Festival taking place on September 17-18 in Rochester, Indiana.
 
Dodoshke'wek-The First Sacred Food

Enedina Banks, who works in the language department at the CPN Cultural Heritage Center, has committed her life to revitalizing Potawatomi ways. One way she does this is by educating the world about the language and cultural ways of the Potawatomi people, which includes encouraging mothers to feed their children the “first sacred food” – breast milk, known as dodoshke’wek in Potawatomi.
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  Who We Are
Big Screen Story Two Lovers And A Bear Set For Nunavut Premiere

How to make life and love work in a small, remote Arctic community.

That’s the focus of Two Lovers and a Bear, a film, which the title suggests, is a big love story—and an adventure film.
 
Cherokee Family Joins Trail of Tears Association To Honor Forced Removal Survivor

After the Cherokee Adult Choir sang the last notes of Amazing Grace, the descendants of Margaret "Peggy" Dick, a Trail of Tears survivor, gathered around her grave for photos and to say their goodbyes.
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In Every Issue Banner
About This Issue's Greeting - "Neenjit dagoonch'uu "
The Gwich'in Athapaskan language has also been known as Loucheux, Kutchin and Tukudh. It is used in Northern Yukon, Northeast Alaska and Northeast N.W.T. The people of the Gwich'in community of Old Crow call themselves the Van Tat-Gwich'in, or people
who live among the lakes (ie., Crow Flats)" (The language is referred to as Kutchin, or Tukudh.)
Nature's Beauty:
Bighorn Sheep
 
This Issue's
Favorite Web sites
 
A Story To Share:
Mistakes of Old Man
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Canku Ota is a free Newsletter celebrating Native America, its traditions and accomplishments . We do not provide subscriber or visitor names to anyone. Some articles presented in Canku Ota may contain copyright material. We have received appropriate permissions for republishing any articles. Material appearing here is distributed without profit or monetary gain to those who have expressed an interest. This is in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107.
 
 
Canku Ota is a copyright © 2000 - 2016 of Vicki Williams Barry and Paul Barry.
 

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