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luckygrrrLanguage as Something More Than Just Words
When they get noticed at all, they’re the supporting players in every Thanksgiving play or pageant. Rarely, if ever, do we hear them speak.
But the Wampanoag — the Cape Cod Indian tribe that famously helped the original Pilgrims survive in the New World in the early 1600s — use their own long-unspoken words to make a powerful statement in Anne Makepeace’s new documentary film, We Still Live Here, showing at the Autry on Sunday.
Michael Heralda: Passing on a Native Philosophy Through Stories
Michael Heralda found his life’s vocation in a dusty book bin in a yard sale 17 years ago. But he is neither author nor bookseller. He is a storyteller and a philosopher for our time, fostering people’s understanding of what is and is not authentic in the modern world. “The key to remember is that … Read more
Native American Music and the GRAMMY Awards
The National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS) decision in April to drop 31 music categories from the annual GRAMMY Awards, including their own, has left Native American musicians dismayed. They say it took a herculean effort to achieve the academy’s recognition with their own category in 2001, only to have it taken away … Read more
George Harwood Phillips on Stitching Together the Story of a People
Updated May 9 — When, as a young academic at UCLA, George Harwood Phillips switched from African history to focusing on the Native peoples of California, he had no idea that they were probably one of the best-documented groups in existence. Phillips, now a retired Professor of History at the University of Colorado, Boulder, spoke … Read more
LA Plaza Opens a Space for Mexican-American History and Culture in Los Angeles
Given that almost anywhere you go in Los Angeles, you’re likely to encounter some aspect of its Mexican origins, on some level it seems almost redundant to have a museum dedicated to L.A.’s Mexican and Mexican-American history, culture and art. On the other hand, not to have one is unthinkable. The latest effort to rectify … Read more
Gaining a Spouse and Losing Visibility
On Thursday morning, Mar. 31, National Public Radio aired a Census-based story about intermarriage among Native Americans: that they are the most likely to marry outside their group, and how that can sometimes jeopardize their legal standing as tribe members. “For the Eastern Shoshone of Wyoming, you have to be at least one-quarter Native American … Read more
“The Frybread Queen”: More Than a Handful of Recipes
In The Frybread Queen, playwright Carolyn Dunn, of Muskogee Creek and Cherokee descent, explores the competition that embeds itself in the relationships among women when there is a man in their midst — even when that man remains only a shared memory. A universal enough topic, but to Jane Lind and Kimberly Norris Guerrero, who … Read more
How a Line in the Sand Can Enslave a People
Updated Mar. 21 — They are mere directions drawn in the dirt, lines on a piece of paper, apps on an iPhone. Maps might seem to you and me to be the most pedestrian, the most ephemeral of documents, but to Paul Apodaca, lecturer-in-residence for the Autry’s American Indian Lecture Series, they are enduring, dangerous … Read more
John Bradley on American Indian Culture: Learn Everything
Updated Mar. 7 — Native American elders and artists often pick one tradition to focus on in their ongoing efforts to preserve and promote their tribal heritage. Learning and mastering that skill usually takes such dedication that it’s difficult to branch out. So these culture bearers dance, say, or do beadwork, or tell stories, or … Read more
The Boss Will See You Now
Marshall McKay, the new chair of the Autry Board of Trustees, was in town recently, and Trading Posts sat down with him for an interview. As the first Native American elected to chair the museum’s board of trustees, McKay, who is the tribal chairman of the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation headquartered near Sacramento, has been … Read more
