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Print2009 May/June On the Wind (News)
A Man for All Ages
Knowledge passed down for eons among Indigenous peoples on plant cultivation, on making the basic tools needed for life, on gathering medicines from the land, and the many other skills required to live a simple but sustainable life might be the most endangered commodity on Earth, and thus the most valuable. In that regard, Richard Goodridge (Maricopa/Apache) might be considered the Bank of Arizona or the Federal Reserve of the Southwest.
Goodridge, 49, lives in a modest home on the Gila River Indian Community near Gila Crossing, Arizona. Around his home grows as astounding diversity of traditional food crops and other plants of value to his people. This includes the Pima orange lima bean, Tarahumara white bean, five species of sunflowers, three varieties of watermelon, the Tohono O’odham black-eyed pea, Cocopah sweet roasting corn, wild onions, wild spinach, Pima club wheat, garbanzos, the Pima beige bean, Magdalena squash, Gila River sugarcane, Salt River Pima squash and five varieties of gourds. He is the only person he knows raising some of these crops, which played a key role in the lives of regional Native cultures in the past and could go a long way toward addressing chronic health issues they face today—such as the world’s highest rates of diabetes.
Not only does Goodridge know how to coax these crops from south-central Arizona’s dry soils, but he also knows how to prepare them for consumption and other useful ways they can serve mankind. For instance, the black-eyed peas he grows also produce a tiny fiber. Gathering these together, he weaves small nets and bags. Rabbits, mice and rats cannot stand its flavor, thus this was the perfect material in earlier times for making traps for these critters and containers they would not gnaw into.
“I started down this road a long time ago,” Goodridge explains. “Since the boarding schools at the turn of the last century wiped out generations of knowledge, I was forced to visit museums, study old books and talk to the few elders that still knew anything of these practices. I began with simple questions: ‘Who am I?’ and ‘What am I?’ I wanted to know how my ancestors survived in this place. One question led to another. Once you are on this road, you can’t get off. But, not to brag, among the regional tribes, when it comes to knowing about this stuff, I’m it. It’s taken me a lifetime to learn this, and when I’m gone, I’m afraid it will all go with me.”
Avoiding this immense loss has become the focus of his life nowadays. He has secured a 10-acre plot to create a large-scale demonstration farm, but needs funding to drill a well and obtain a tractor. And before that, he needs a lawyer to help him set up a nonprofit organization so he can pursue grant funds. Once the water is flowing, he is sure he can attract university agriculture students to assist him, and he will open the farm up to community members to harvest the crops. School kids will be drawn to the work like bees to honey.
In addition to his traditional farming savvy, Goodridge is also a master at creating many other useful material goods found among his people in the past. This includes four kinds of bows (hunting, fighting, children’s and bird), leather sandals and shields, fishing rods (complete with reed pole, agave fiber line, basalt sinkers, pumice floaters and barrel cactus spine hooks), stone mortars, cottonwood pestles, quail traps, flour sifters, fire makers, palm drills, twine spinners, weaving looms, cooking utensils, cradleboards, canteens, war clubs and “potato masher” weapons, and an assortment of musical instruments.
Goodridge is very proud of his miniature Maricopa cradleboards. He shows how their bases are cushioned with the inner bark fiber of willows, both for comfort and its absorption qualities. He points out that the ones for baby girls lacked a few of the lower back slats. “This was to open up the girl’s hips for ease in child-bearing,” he notes.
“The more I learn, the more I am amazed at the ingenuity of my ancestors. It’s not about me being a weaver—it’s about the weaving. It’s not about me as a farmer—it’s the crops. Who will help me save this knowledge and ways?” As we face a very uncertain future, such information might prove vital to the very existence of man.
Details: Richard Goodridge can be contacted by writing Rural Route 6, Box 884, Laveen, AZ 85339, or by emailing him at richard_goodridge@live.com
Forged by Tradition, Cast with Creativity
On Feb. 18, the Southwestern Association for Indian Arts (SWAIA), host of the annual Santa Fe Indian Market, unveiled its official 2009 event poster. In an unusual move, the organization chose this year to feature a female artist (only the third since the poster component was launched in 1976): jeweler extraordinaire Maria Samora of Taos Pueblo.
The poster portrays three of Samora’s unique gold and silver bracelets, including one (at top) made with a traditional Korean technique called keum-boo. Another (at bottom) features 75 delicate gold discs laboriously soldered onto an underlying form. At a press conference held at the striking new Buffalo Thunder Resort & Casino just north of Santa Fe, where SWAIA has opened its first gallery, Samora explained that she began her jewelry career almost by chance—taking a course at the University of New Mexico. This will be her fifth upcoming appearance at the Santa Fe Indian Market, which attests to how quickly she took to her field.
“It’s such an honor to be chosen for this,” she noted. “Indian Market is, to me, about community and family and friends, and every year I am blown away by the quality of work I see there. We all feed off one another’s ideas, so I feel fortunate to have been selected for this.”
SWAIA Executive Director Bruce Bernstein added, “Indian Market is constantly refreshed by artists like Maria. Native artists have consistently used art to tell us they are still here and to offer insights into their cultures and values.” In this case, Samora’s work tells us Indian artists and Native people are not averse to innovation and nonconformity, for her jewelry is anything but bland.
Lines
Arguably the most stylish of all Native-themed mass-apparel manufacturers, Native Threads, has wrapped up an 18-month legal battle over trademark issues and direction of the company, and is ramping up production under Randy Bardwell (Pechanga Band of Mission Luiseño). … The nonprofit Indigenous Language Institute of Santa Fe is the winner of the Third Annual Verizon Tech Savvy Award for its series of workshops titled “Ancient Voices, Modern Tools: Native Languages and Technology.” … In November, Joseph Boyden (Métis) was awarded Canada’s highest prize for literary fiction for his book Through Black Spruce, which is set in the Cree lands of Mushkegowuk, Ontario; the prize came with a $50,000 stipend. … Joanne Shenandoah (Oneida) and Michael Bucher (Cherokee) have released a highly touted collection of modern folk songs titled Bitter Tears, Sacred Ground (hondomesarecords.com), paying tribute to the late, great musicians Johnny Cash, Peter La Farge and Floyd Red Crow Westerman, with a body of songs penned by all five of these American songwriting icons. … A new national nonprofit alliance of Indian organizations, businesses and individuals to encourage the expansion of “green collar” jobs and a green economy in Indian Country called Native Workplace has been launched, led by Executive Director Cristala Allen (Caddo) and Board Chair Lee Ann TallBear (Sisseton-Wahpeton Sioux); check it out at www.nativeworkplace.com. … David Midthunder (Assiniboine/Sioux) has a small role in the film Terminator Salvation, opening May 21, as a resistance soldier. … The Native American Sports Council and its Sports Warriors Track Club are hosting their second annual Native American 5,000-meter run in Albuquerque on May 23, with entrants in five age divisions racing for national championship titles; visit www.nascsports.org to sign up.
Shards
From top: Monumental sculpture by Doug Hyde in Winterhaven, CA. Press photo from the play, Almighty Voice and His Wife being staged in May in London. From left: Louis Mofsie (Hopi/Winnebago), Tom Pearson (Cherokee/Creek), Donna Ahmadi (Eastern Band Cherokee) in the dance piece Mesa 2.0
In November 2008, a monumental sculpture of an eagle in flight by artist Doug Hyde (Nez Perce/Assiniboine/Chippewa) was dedicated atop Fort Yuma Hill in Winterhaven, California on the Quechan Nation. The work measures 20 feet from wing tip to wing tip. It honors Quechan veterans, and all U.S. veterans. The project was dreamed up by Hyde—who received the Silver Star in Viet Nam—and his fishing buddy and former Institute of American Indian Arts dorm mate Norman Osborne (Quechan).
London is the setting for the United Kingdom’s inaugural Origins: Festival of First Nations, featuring Indigenous theatre and film from Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States. The festival is a co-presentation of Origins, founded by Gordon Bronitsky of the U.S., and Border Crossings, founded by Artistic Director Michael Walling of England. It will kick off on May 4 at 2:30 p.m. with a Maori welcome ceremony at the Scoop at More. Among the four plays being presented is Salvage by Diane Glancy (Cherokee), directed by Sheila Tousey (Menominee and Stockbridge Munsee), with Robert Greygrass (Lakota). It will be presented at the Riverside Studios May 12–17. Native-made films from the four nations will be screened across the city, many featuring comments by their directors, such as Canada’s acclaimed Alanis Obomsawin (Abenaki). Workshops, panel discussions, storytelling and ceremonies will add additional elements to this groundbreaking project. Details: www.bordercrossings.org.uk
In addition to the excellent programs in the series We Shall Remain, airing on PBS in April and May (see Nov./Dec. 2008 issue, p. 64), the Web site associated with the series is home to an exciting body of short documentary and fictional films produced by Native youth across the country. These works, bundled under the title “ReelNative,” were nurtured to birth by Tvli Jacob (Choctaw), who presented workshops to aspiring filmmakers nationwide. Jacob is a veteran of the ABC/Disney Diversity Scholars program, a videographer for Touchstone Pictures and producer of the doc Silent Thunder. Details: www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/weshallremain/reel_native
Ideas of home, heritage, ceremony and tradition, as seen through the eyes of some urban Indians from New York City visiting the American Southwest, are the themes explored in the contemporary dance piece Mesa 2.0. The work, created and performed by Tom Pearson (Coharie/Creek/Eastern Band Cherokee), Louis Mofsie (Hopi/Winnebago) and Donna Ahmadi (Eastern Band Cherokee), will be presented in New York May 22–24 at La MaMa (74A E. Fourth St., www.lamama.org). It will be reprised in an expanded version (and free show) at the National Museum of the American Indian (Heye Center at One Bowling Green) on June 4 and June 6. The work includes dance, video, live music, spoken word and ambient sounds. Pearson served as choreographer, while Mofsie provided original music.
Passages
Navajo jeweler Harvey Begay passed away on March 2 in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. Born in 1938, he was a jet fighter radio operator in Vietnam and went on to partially fill the huge shoes left by his father, Kenneth Begay, in the field of contemporary Southwestern jewelry. In 2005 he was named an Arizona Living Treasure.
On Dec. 16, Colombian Indian activist Edwin Legarda was killed in a hail of bullets en route to a meeting in the Indigenous reserve of La Mesa de Togoima in Colombia. It is believed that his wife, Aida Quilicué, chief counselor of the Indigenous Council of Cauca, was the primary target of the attack, but she was not in the vehicle. He is believed to be the 66th Indian assassinated in Colombia in 2008.
Crow Tribal Chairman Carl Venne passed away in his sleep in Montana on Feb. 15 at age 62. Venne welcomed then–presidential candidate Barack Obama to the Crow reservation last May, which turned out to be a pivotal moment in securing the support of many Indian voters for Obama. The president noted, “I was honored to have worked with Chairman Venne, who implored us to uphold treaties and honor Native ancestors.”
Honoring
From left: Samantha Crain (Shawnee), Kyle Lohse (Nomlaki), Tinsel Korey (Anishinaabe).
A Native musician garnering rave reviews these days is Samantha Crain (Shawnee). The 22-year-old and her band, the Midnight Shivers, played at the closing party for the recent NMAI Film and Video Festival in New York, and her music was featured in the film Barking Water by Sterlin Harjo (Seminole/Creek), which screened at the Sundance Film Festival in February and at the New Directors, New Directions Festival in late March. Her album Songs in the Night (Ramseur Records) was released April 28, and she is now touring ambitiously to support it.
Three Native designers, Virgil Ortiz (Cochiti Pueblo), Patricia Michaels (Taos Pueblo) and Dorothy Grant (Haida), were among the elite body of American and international designers asked to show their works at Fashion Week in New York in February. It was a first in American apparel events history.
Filmmaker Heather Rae (Cherokee) took the Emerging Producers Award at the Independent Spirit Awards on Feb. 21 for the film Frozen River. Misty Upham (Blackfeet) was also nominated for best supporting actress in this film, which was nominated for a total of six Spirit Awards and also received an Oscar nomination for lead actress Melissa Leo.
A compilation record titled Come to Me Great Mystery, on Silver Wave Records (see “Music,” March/April 2009) took the Grammy for Best Native Album at the Grammy Awards in February. Also receiving nominations were Songs From the Black Hills (SOAR) by Bryan Akipa, Spo’Mo’Kin’Nan (Canyon) by Black Lodge, Red Rock (Canyon) by Northern Cree and Faith (Canyon) by Kevin Yazzie.
The striking Tinsel Korey (Anishinaabe), of Canada, is a star on the rise. The Vancouver singer/songwriter, dancer, painter and actress (the original Sci-Fi Channel movie Wyvern, Minority Report, Tin Man, The Lookout) has a smoking MySpace page with lots of music and video. Check out her performance singing “Into the West” at Canada’s National Aboriginal Achievement Awards.
Major League Baseball pitcher Kyle Lohse (Nomlaki) has agreed to a four-year, $41 million contract with the St. Louis Cardinals, joining Jacoby Ellsbury (Navajo) of the Boston Red Sox and Joba Chamberlain (Winnebago) of the Yankees in the big-league elites. Last season, his first as a Cardinal, he racked up a 15-6 record. He made his Majors debut in 2001 with the Minnesota Twins.
The Southwestern Association for Indian Arts will honor a handful of Natives, non-Natives and institutions on the evening of June 4 at the Buffalo Thunder Resort & Casino north of Santa Fe. Receiving Lifetime Achievement Awards will be potter Sophia Medina (Zia Pueblo), painter Sam English (Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa) and (posthumously) painter Oscar Howe (Yanktonai Band of Dakota). In recognition of their service and support to Native arts, the Museum of New Mexico (accepting will be Stuart Ashman), Kenneth Chapman (posthumously), Chuck Daily and Barbara Reber will receive Povika Awards.
Director/producer Chris Eyre (Cheyenne/Arapaho) directed a primetime episode of NBC’s Friday Night Lights, titled “Keeping Up Appearances.” It aired on Feb. 27. Named as one of the 50 most important artists in the country in 2008 by the group United States Artists, Eyre notes, “I am happy to be working and continuing to tell stories that reflect the wealth of good people and their characters. I believe stories do change the world.”
