THE EIGHT DIRECTORS OF WARU, L-R: CHELSEA WINSTANLEY, KATIE WOLFE, BRIAR GRACE-SMITH, PAULA W. JONES, AINSLEY GARDINER, RENAE MAIHI, CASEY KAA, AWANUI SIMICH-PENE. IMAGE: BROWN APPLE SUGAR GRUNT PRODUCTIONS.
Filmmaker Kath Akuhata-Brown looks at the unique challenges of making Waru, a film directed by eight Māori women. Beneath the yelling and screaming of our recent general election, as child poverty was being turned into a political platform, a group of Māori filmmakers quietly went about the task
Monthly Archives: November 2017
Agreement marks new chapter in Yale-Mohegan relationship
Yale and the Mohegan Tribe signed an agreement formalizing cooperation between the Peabody Museum and the tribe’s Tantaquidgeon Museum.
Source: Agreement marks new chapter in Yale-Mohegan relationship
A Lakota Archive
During American Indian Heritage Month, it is good to remember all of the excellent Native-run museums, archives, and galleries across the country that work hard to preserve cultural heritage and to educate the general public. The Heritage Center at the Red Cloud Indian School on the Pine Ridge Reservation is a great example.
In October of this year, The Heritage Center announced the acquisition of new work by Bobby C Martin (Creek), an artist, curator, and educator from Oklahoma, the Lakota artist James Star Comes Out, Tasha Abourzek (Mandan/Hidatsa), and Aloysius Dreaming Bear (Lakota), of Pine Ridge.
For those who love Native art, discovering The Heritage Center is like discovering a hidden gem. Located in the rolling hills of the Pine Ridge Reservation on Red Cloud’s historic campus—more than 100 miles from any major urban center.
From The Heritage Center’s website:
The Heritage Center collection began with the purchase of three prize-winning pieces from the Red Cloud Indian Art Show in 1969, and has grown today to include nearly 10,000 pieces of the Native American contemporary and historical Lakota art (all recently catalogued thanks to generous funding from the Institute for Museum and Library Services and the Bush Foundation). The collection includes paintings, textiles, traditional art, historical items, pottery and sculpture, as well as a library and historical archives.
The Heritage Center is one of the oldest such archives located on a U.S. reservation. It is a model of Native-centered cultural sovereignty, promoting contemporary Indian artists and crafts people, and providing a space for visitors to discover the connections between time-honored Lakota creative traditions and their 21st-century forms.
James Star Comes Out “Buffalo Doll,” Northern Plains Indian Art Market, 2015.
Directions: The Heritage Center is located on the campus of Red Cloud Indian School in Pine Ridge, South Dakota.
The Heritage Center at Red Cloud Indian School 100 Mission Drive
Pine Ridge, South Dakota 57770
Hurricane Irma Unearths Calusa Village Site
A recent posting on artnetnews, a blog site dedicated to information on art auctions and collecting from around the world, announced that Hurricane Irma had disturbed an ancient indigenous village site on Florida’s Marco Island:
Hundreds of artifacts have been uncovered after Hurricane Irma uprooted trees on a Native American preserve on South Florida’s Marco Island in September . . . Archaeologists have long suspected that the area was rife with historical artifacts, but the excavation of public land is illegal and wouldn’t have been approved by the local government. Now that the items have been unearthed naturally, archaeologists have removed 200 artifacts from the preserve, including tools, glass, pottery, and shells.
The objects have been transported to the Marco Island Historical Museum, where they will be studied and prepared for display or loaned to other institutions.
Most people have not heard of the Calusa, but at one time, their influence was felt across the whole of South Florida. Researchers at the Florida Museum of Natural History estimate their population to have been in the several thousands, citing Spanish accounts of a Calusa ceremony in 1566:
According to eyewitness accounts, in 1566 over 4,000 people gathered to witness ceremonies in which the Calusa king made an alliance with Spanish governor Menéndez de Avilés. The king entertained the governor in a building so large that 2,000 people could stand inside.
The Calusa were unique in another respect. Unlike most indigenous communities in in Florida, which relied on the production of staple crops for sustenance and trade, the Calusa “raised no corn, beans, or manioc,” and relied on fishing and gathering for their sustenance. They were also skilled mariners, plying the Gulf’s waters from Southwest Florida coastline to Cuba, and it was perhaps this that enabled them to maintain such a large population and widespread influence.
Some local Native community members would like the objects unearthed by Irma to be returned to the land. In this day of three dimensional printing and digital imaging, it might be possible to do so, especially if archaeologists make copies of the originals and then rebury them in Marco Island’s Otter Mound preserve, which is already set up to protect indigenous materials.
Sources:
https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/sflarch/research/calusa-domain/
Hundreds of Native American Artifacts Unearthed by Hurricane Irma Are Headed to a Florida Museum