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

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October 2018 - Volume 16 Number 10
 
 
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"aya niihka"
The Myaamia (Miami) Greeting
Hello friend
 
 


Loggerhead Shrike (Lanius ludovicianus)

 
 
"otowoskv-rakko"
big chestnut moon
Creek
 
 
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"Grown men can learn from very little children for the hearts of the little children are pure. Therefore, the Great Spirit may show to them many things which older people miss."
~Black Elk, Oglala Lakota Sioux~
 
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We Salute
2018 Cherokee National Treasures

Cherokee Nation citizens Loretta Shade, Troy Jackson, Lisa Rutherford and the late Annie Wildcat were recently named the 2018 Cherokee National Treasures and received the distinction during the 66th annual Cherokee National Holiday Awards Banquet in late August.

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Our Featured Artist: Honoring Students
Kanienkehá:ka Artist Garrison Garrow

Garrison Garrow, Kanienkehá:ka artist and designer of several collectable mint coins, unveiled his latest 'Fancy Dance' just before the grand entrance to the First Peoples' House 17th Annual Powwow at McGill University, Montreal, QC.

 
Young, Female, Native American, Scientist

A pre-veterinary student used drones to study beaver dams in Montana. A senior majoring in chemical engineering researched how to make nontoxic batteries. A sophomore in chemistry got a taste of nanomedicine. Three other students examined bacteria from the gut microbiome as part of research to improve diagnostic tests of infectious diseases.

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Our Featured Story: First Person History:
Everyday Native: Healing Racism Through Education

Everyday Native aims to fuel a movement of new, more accurate perceptions about and respect between non-Native and Native peoples.

 
Ladder to the Sky

Long ago, in the old, forgotten time, Gitchi Manitou, the Great Spirit, created only strong, healthy people.
In those days, all the men were tall and brave. The women in those times sang as they worked. Nobody was ever sick in those days.
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News and Views Banner
Preserving Language Education News
'We Try Hard To Teach These Kids Cherokee'

The New Kituwah Academy opened its doors in 2009 with a full-immersion Cherokee language program for children ranging from infants to eighth-graders.

The school is designed to keep the Cherokee language alive by increasing the number of young fluent speakers, as only 238 people in North Carolina still speak the Kituwah dialect and most of them are above the age of 55.

 
Look Who's Laughing Now; The 50 Years Of Diné College

Diné College, known as Navajo Community College before 1997, is the first and largest tribal college in the country

Radio announcer Raymond Nakai hosted a popular radio show in the 1950s. "Navajos need their own college," he once said.

 

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Education News Education News
Art Historian Maintains Deep Connections To Landscapes Of Her Youth

Two years after receiving her Harvard Ph.D., Italian Renaissance and Baroque scholar Shawon Kinew has joined the Department of History of Art and Architecture as an assistant professor. She is also a Shutzer Assistant Professor at Radcliffe.

Kinew was born in Canada on the tribal territory of the Anishinaabe. She was a postdoctoral fellow in the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellowship of Scholars in the Humanities and a lecturer at Stanford, and has held residential fellowships with the Bibliotheca Hertziana, Max Planck Institute for Art History in Rome, and the Getty Research Institute.
 
It Actually Is Rocket Science

"How would you explain your job to a 5-year old?"

Shayna laughs, "I'm a rocket surgeon." She declares her title with confidence, despite the lightheartedness of the question.

As a child, Shayna grew up in the Northern Navajo Reservation near Cortez, Colorado. Every night the sky lit up with millions of stars, filling her with a sense of wonder and a love for exploration. Amidst this unbound, galactic plane, Shayna dreamt of becoming an astrophysicist. She begged her parents for a Pod Racer Lego set from the Star Wars collection so she could tinker with all the Legos, re-engineer models to create her own Star Wars sets, and spend hours making various hybrids.
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Our Beginnings Our Beginnings
"Two Nations, One Reservation": Exhibits To Educate Wyoming Kids About Wind River Reservation

Last year, lawmakers passed legislation to bring more education about Native American history and culture to Wyoming students. It’s called Indian Education For All and it fulfills social studies requirements. To help with the effort, the Wyoming Humanities Council has created a fold-out kiosk that will be exhibited in schools and libraries around the state starting next month.

 
The False Narratives, Invisibility, And The Erasure Of Native Peoples Must End

Forget what your elementary teacher taught you about Native Americans. American students learn some of the most damaging misconceptions and biases toward Native Americans in grades K-12. In fact, 87 percent of history books in the U.S. portray Native Americans as a population existing before 1900, according to a 2014 study on academic standards. For many Americans, we no longer exist.

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The Vote Living Traditions
History Strikes Again:
A Native Woman Will Help Lead Minnesota

Then, the office of lieutenant governor has an interesting history.

In some countries, the lieutenant governor is the official representative of the sovereign (the king or queen). Some lieutenant governors are largely ceremonial. Some are private, close confidants to the governor. Others have actual jobs, with a portfolio of responsibilities. Five states -- Arizona, Maine, New Hampshire, Oregon, and Wyoming -- don't even bother with post.

 
Inside Fashion:
Pull Back The Curtain
And
Celebrate Artists Backstage

Profile: Four Native American makeup artists who made their way into the fashion industry, now contribute unique styles

Fashion Week was that moment when fashion designers and models were brilliant in the spotlight. Yet behind the scenes, backstage, there were also hair and makeup artists who helped create the event.

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Living Traditions Living Traditions
Kyrie Irving's Roots In The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, And His Winding Journey Back

Elizabeth Ann Larson Irving lies under a small patch of ground in the far corner of a tiny cemetery, tucked next to a pair of babies' graves from pioneer days. If not for a modest sign, and a tiny fence circling it, Rock Creek Cemetery wouldn't even be noticeable from the dirt road a few feet away.

In 1996, Irving was buried here, less than 10 miles outside of Mitchell, S.D., where she spent eight of her 29 years, the adopted daughter of George and Norma Larson. Elizabeth, whose birth mother was Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, moved with her adopted family near Tacoma, Wash., became a star athlete in high school and met her husband at Boston University.

 
Cherokee Represented At Speed Week

Men have been testing their mettle and their metal in the form of iron horse racing since 1912 at the Bonneville Salt Flats. Speed Week is held Aug. 11-17 at the Flats and Cherokee is being represented by one of the members of the Cherokee Blue Ridge Run event team.

Jay Allen, the master of ceremonies for the 2017 Cherokee Blue Ridge Run, is running his 2000cc turbocharged bike named “Code Talker” on the Flats this week and is putting in a good showing for team Cherokee. He quickly set a class record of 218 mph on Tuesday, Aug. 14. The next day, he posted another record on another of his bikes, a stunning 189 mph. So, two records in the record books and he still has time to bring home another.

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Our Beginnings Living Traditions
New Cultural Center Unveils Thousands Of Yup'ik Artifacts Rescued In Race Against Climate Change

A cultural center that opened last week in a Southwest Alaska village showcases thousands of Yup'ik treasures rescued from a nearly 500-year-old site along the eroding Bering Sea coast, organizers said.

The trove at the Nunalleq Culture and Archaeology Center in Quinhagak some 450 miles west of Anchorage features high-tech tools and ornaments of the past, underscoring the region's rich heritage.
 
Preserving Ancestral Lands Of The Black Hills

Rising through the Great Plains of North America are the historical and sacred region of the Black Hills that extend from South Dakota into Wyoming. Along with the scenic routes and beautiful landscapes that lavish the Black Hills are also historical roots planted deep within Native American culture that are not known to many today. Known for its sacredness in native culture, Black Hills was the region in which various Tribes paid homage to, including the Lakota, Omaha, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Kiowa and Kiowa-Apache Tribes. The connection between Tribes and the sacredness of Black Hills throughout history remains a topic of interest as the National Park Service (NPS) strives to seek input from Native communities.
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Education News   Living Traditions
Tribal Culture Aids In Food Sovereignty Efforts

Agriculture has always influenced Citizen Potawatomi Nation member Jeremy Bennett’s life. From being active in his local FFA chapter as a kid to assisting with the 2014 Farm Bill’s language as a young adult, he enjoys being involved with the industry.

“My upbringing, my roots and my passion is agriculture,” Bennett said.

“I have always been very interested in this field — my background is in Native American agriculture and environmental policy issues because both of them correlate to each other.”

 
800 Miles With Bears Ears Prayer Runners

Everyone ran the final miles to Bears Ears National Monument together. It was a sunny, blue-sky day in March, and 45 pairs of feet shuffled down a road of soft red dirt, kicking up a dust cloud. One woman wore her jingle dress, a garment used in ceremonial dances, its rows of metal cones clinking as she moved. Some still wore running shoes, but many had switched to moccasins. No one spoke. At this point, many of them had been running relay-style for three days straight, from sunrise until the light ran out.The group—composed of members of the Hopi, Navajo, Ute, and Ute Mountain Ute tribes; a few of the New Mexico pueblos; and a contingent from the Wintun and Maidu tribes in California—had come together to run nearly 800 miles from New Mexico, Arizona, or Colorado to Bears Ears from March 12 to 17.
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Living Traditions   Living Traditions
Otoe - Missouria Relatives Express Their Appreciation And Sentiments Of Kinship With The Ho-Chunk Nation

Ho-Chunk Nation and approximately 60 Otoe-Missouria relatives from Oklahoma celebrated a homecoming during the Labor Day Pow-wow in Black River Falls, Wisconsin. The tribes were once banded together in the Great Lakes region of the United States and are related in custom and culture. They were separated in the mid-19th century.
 
What Makes Someone Native American?

In March 2012, Heather McMillan Nakai wrote a letter to the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs asking the agency to verify that she was Indian. She was seeking a job at the Indian Health Service and wanted to apply with "Indian preference." Nakai knew this might be difficult: As far as she was aware, no one from her North Carolina tribe — the Lumbee — had ever been granted such preference.
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Education News   Living Traditions
Sioux Falls' First Ever Native American Day Parade To Bring Traditional Dancing, Regalia Downtown

One of the men responsible for getting Columbus Day changed to Native American Day in South Dakota will be honored during the first-ever Sioux Falls Native American Day Parade next month.

Tim Giago, a prominent member of the South Dakota journalism and Native American community who was paramount in working with Gov. George S. Mickelson to make Native American Day a state holiday in 1990, will be the grand marshal of the 2018 Sioux Falls Native American Day Parade on Monday, Oct. 8.

 
Prospects Are Looking Up For This Gulf Coast Tribe Relocating To Higher Ground

"We are displaced. Our once large oak trees are now ghosts. The island that provided refuge and prosperity is now just a frail skeleton," says Chantel Comardelle, tribal secretary of the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw, as we sit in one of the few houses left on the Louisiana Gulf Coast island, which has shrunk from 34.5 square miles to half a square mile. Out front a stagnant canal festers, obstructed by a recent levee built by the Army Corps of Engineers to protect the remainder of the island.

The community of Isle de Jean Charles understands and widely accepts that climate change is affecting them
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Living Traditions   Living Traditions
California Condors Could Soon Soar Above the Redwoods Again Thanks To One Local Tribe

The last California Condor of the Pacific Northwest was shot and killed sometime between 1890 and 1910 in a tiny town outside Redwood National Park. Glass-eyed and dusty, the bird is mounted at the nearby Clarke Historical Museum in Eureka.

Not far from Eureka, along the same stretch of California coastline, the Yurok tribe calls home an area around the Klamath River, which meanders from Southern Oregon into Northern California. Like their ancestors, the Yurok still build sweathouses from fallen redwoods and fish the river for salmon. But the tribe aches to be reunited with prey-go-neesh—their ancestral name for the condor. “To us, he is the king of the sky,” says tribe chairman Thomas P. O’Rourke, Sr. "His absence is a hole in our hearts."
 
Tapir's Jaw
An "Incredibly Rare" Find

Thanks to her six-year-old grandson, Janet Klein of Homer recently hosted a few interesting house guests.

Five experts on ancient creatures slept in Klein's Homer house last month as they searched local cliffs for another chunk of a mammal that lived in Alaska millions of years ago. Her guests were Patrick Druckenmiller of the UA Museum of the North, Grant Zazula and Susan Hewitson of the Yukon government, paleontologist Analia Forasiepi of Argentina, and Ross MacPhee, curator of mammology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

Along with Klein, a Homer resident and naturalist, the scientists were looking for a rock that might fit into the petrified jawbone of a tapir Klein's grandson Kai found about a year ago on a beach near Homer.
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In Every Issue Banner
About This Issue's Greeting - "Wáa sá iyatee?"
"Hello Fiend " is "aya niihka" in Miami. That is pronounced similar to " ah-yah (hello) nee-ka (friend)" But it is only used when greeting a friend of the same gender.
Nature's Beauty:
Shrikes
 
This Issue's
Favorite Web sites
 
A Story To Share:
The Shrike and The Chipmunks
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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 - 2018 of Vicki Williams Barry and Paul Barry.
 

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