Sioux Center Settling into Rapid City

The proud Sioux people of South Dakota have been largely absent from state visitor consciousness, but that is about to change. Under the direction of the nonprofit Alliance of Tribal Tourism Advocates (ATTA), plans are moving forward to create a center in Rapid City containing an outdoor performance arena, a living history village and art market for presenting and promoting Sioux life and culture.

Clearing a major hurdle, the city government in November approved a grant of $812,000 for planning and building the center, and the group is now seeking additional funding for operations. “We’re seeking to have a larger market presence in South Dakota, and also to use the facility as a teaching tool for our youth and for on-the-job training,” explains the group’s dynamic executive director, Daphne Richards-Cook (Oglala Sioux).

The center will include a 5,000-seat outdoor arena surrounded by earthen berms planted with native foliage, which will double as an education exhibit; a performance stage; a “living history” area for cultural and arts demonstrations; a Native food court, which will serve as a place to eat and a teaching forum; permanent facilities for dozens of artists to display and sell their work; and an 1860s-era tipi village. The center will also serve as the departure point for day and multi-day tours to visit the state’s Indian reservations and historic sites. The group hopes to have the facility functioning by late summer 2007.

ATTA, launched in 1993, already has a Web site extolling the many Native attractions of South Dakota. The site includes means for booking custom tours and details on the state’s tribes, Native artists, and tribal hunting and fishing opportunities. Details: www.attatribal.com.

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A Box of Wonders

White Buffalo (Comanche/Hispanic), a.k.a. Mike Perez, has “birthed” his dream child. The adopted member of the Navajo Nation notes, “This box is kind of like one of my children. I’m emotionally involved in it, and will never do anything like it again—it’s my best child.”

The box he refers to is a stunning work in 16-gauge plate silver studded with 740-carat Kingman Mine turquoise, walrus ivory, Mediterranean oxblood coral, opals, mother of pearl, wood veneer, and three carats of diamonds. The box portrays various scenes from the sacred Navajo Yei-be-chai ceremony.

An estimated 2 million chisel strokes went into the 21 figures and background decorative motifs in the work; the artist wore out 12 chisels over a four-year period. The box includes handmade gold and silver screws and Stone Cabin turquoise handles (one can be removed and worn as a pendant). All in all, it is an amazing display of artistry, and its solid construction reveals the engineering background of the Stanford University graduate.

The box was originally commissioned by retired teacher Jim Gillen, who now notes, “I hate to part with it, but I can’t afford to own it now that it’s done.” It will be displayed at this summer’s Gallup Intertribal Indian Ceremonial. Details: 651/565-4710.

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music notes
Here’s an earful of music news. Martha Redbone (Shawnee/Choctaw/ Blackfeet) has been a busy bee lately, performing with the Native rock band Redbone; playing several times in England, where her work from her latest CD Skintalk is getting lots of airplay; collaborating with Keith Secola (Anishinaabe) on the song “Indian Drum” for a Peter LaFarge tribute CD and a Christmas song Secola wrote for an upcoming release; and opening for the Neville Brothers—you go girl! Arigon Starr (Kickapoo) has released a new CD of 18 tunes drawn from her recently enacted one-woman play, The Red Road. She does all the vocals, from country western through punk, but recruited an A-list group of musicians to perform with her. Johnny Whitehorse (Apache) has released his initial self-titled CD from Silverwave Records, produced by Robert Mirabal (Taos Pueblo), composed largely of super soothing flute-based melodies. A single, “Stand Up to the Gun” by rapper Shadowyze (Creek) is the theme song of the film Murder on the Border, now on DVD. Later in 2006, look for the CD Out of the Ashes by new artist Shelley Morningsong (N. Cheyenne), who was signed by Silver Wave Records in March. She is expected to become a major figure in Native music. The excellent R&B singer Jovanii Nez (Navajo), best known as Jaynez, met last winter with First Lady Laura Bush and U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to discuss gang violence and drug and alcohol prevention programs. The motivational speaker, activist, musician and producer has been working on a CD with Keith Secola that includes significant Native youth input, and polishing up the debut album release by the AZ-Iconz on his Dream1 label. The fine singer Qua’ Ti’ Si (Cree) recently finished a single with Jimmy Lee Young and Felipe Rose (formerly of Village People) titled “AnDuhyaun” dedicated to ending violence against women. She is also busy on a new CD, Sticks That Made Thunder and plans to tour Australia and portions of Canada. A. Paul Ortega (Mescalero Apache) set the early standard for outstanding music from a Native perspective, with a simple acoustic guitar, a bass drum and occasional harmonica accompaniment to his Native and English lyrics. Canyon Records recently re-released Two World/Three Worlds containing 13 Ortega classics. And, we’ve received an interesting CD titled Full Moon: Totem Voices of the Medicine Wheel performed largely by Chief Dancing Thunder (Susquehannock) which is said to induce a shamanic trance through its simple but powerful combination of chants, drums and occasional bell tones. Produced in Germany by Singing Frog Music (www.singingfrog.com).

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Native Youth Art Camp Launched

From July 24 through Aug. 4, some 14 lucky Native students from the Four Corners area will be engaged in a summer art camp organized by San Juan Community College and sponsored by the Farmington, New Mexico Rotary Club.

The first week will be spent on the school campus with weaving demonstrations, a painting workshop led by James Joe, and visits to the nearby studios of sculptor Oreland Joe and painter Aaron Freeland. In the second week, the students and college coordinator Cindy McNealy will take to the road, visiting museums and artists in Taos, Santa Fe and the Jemez area, including the David Dear Studio, Graphic Impressions, the Harwood Foundation and the Wheelwright Museum. They will then return to the college to complete their projects and mount an exhibition at the school’s Henderson Fine Arts Gallery.

“We’re hoping to make it an annual event,” notes McNealy. “The response from students and artists has been very encouraging.” Details: 505/566-3464.

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Shards

The Tribeca Film Institute in New York selected a documentary film, Waterbuster, by J. Carlos Peinado (Mandan/Hidatsa/ Arikara) portraying the flooding of immense swaths of Native lands in the Missouri River Valley in the 1950s as one of the premier films of its May film festival. Other Native filmmakers so honored included Sterlin Harjo, Elizabeth Day and Reaghan Tarbell.

Gregg McVicar, longtime host of the popular radio music program Earthsongs, produced by the Koahnic Broadcast Corp., passed his musical torch to Shyanne Beatty (Hangwichin Athabascan) in May. Beatty grew up in the remote community of Eagle, Alaska listening to radio.

The Native American Theater Project of Rough Rock High School on the Navajo Reservation in Arizona will be one of the 50 groups representing the United States at the immense Fringe Theater Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland in August. It is the first Native theater troupe to be invited to appear at the prestigious festival. The group will present an original script by writer/director David Shorey (Ojibwe) performed by Navajo actors Kayla Haley, Violetta Sam and Andrea Woody. Details: 928/728-3334.

Nakota LaRance (Hopi/Assiniboine), age 16, appeared on The Today Show on April 18, following his selection by First Americans in the Arts as Best New Actor for his role in Into the West and repeating as best teenage hoop dancer at the annual World Championship Hoop Dance Contest.

Canyon Records artist Delphine Tsinajinnie (Navajo) was selected as one of Arizona State University’s Alumni of the Year for her work in promoting the Navajo language in her recordings and her many other activities.
Joe Baker (Delaware) was selected as one of the five 2005 Piper Fellows by the Virginia G. Piper Charitable Trust. Baker, the Lloyd Kiva New Curator of Fine Art at the Heard Museum in Phoenix, will spend part of his sabbatical in New York and Santa Fe writing a curatorial essay, “Remix: New Modernities in a Post Indian World,” for an exhibition to open in 2007 at the National Museum of the American Indian’s Heye Center in New York.

The American Composers Forum of St. Paul, Minnesota has received a $50,000 grant from the Joyce Foundation of Chicago to support the commission of a new concerto for guitar and orchestra by Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate (Chickasaw) that will incorporate traditional Chickasaw and Lakota music.

Paulita Aguilar (Santo Domingo Pueblo) has been appointed the first curator of the Indigenous Nations Library Program at the University of New Mexico. The program is building a collection of books and videos focused on tourism, language revitalization and Indian gaming.

On May 3, the Abenaki Tribe of Vermont received formal recognition by the state government, an important milestone in the revival of this once-powerful people.

Five American Indian potters are opening European eyes to the cutting-edge, contemporary possibilities of their age-old medium. Some 50 works in clay by Nathan Begaye (Navajo), Susan Folwell (Santa Clara Pueblo), Christine McHorse (Navajo), Virgil Ortiz (Cochiti Pueblo) and Diego Romero (Cochiti Pueblo) are being exhibited through Sept. 3 at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam in a show titled Free Spirit. The show was organized by Garth Clark of New York City, and includes a richly illustrated catalog.

Dancer and musician Patrick Shendo-Mirabal (Jemez/Taos) is not as well known as his brother, musician Robert Mirabal, but he will be. He recently directed the original music he composed for the presentation of the play Stone Heart at the Autry National Center in Los Angeles, and is performing with Spirit: The Seventh Fire. He previously composed and performed the music for the Santa Fe production of N. Scott Momaday’s play The Indolent Boys.

Cornell University has received a $250,000 federal grant to help conserve its valuable Native American collection, which includes 40,000 rare books and archival records regarding the history and ethnology of Native peoples of the Northeast and the Americas as a whole. The collection, largely donated by the Huntington (New York) Free Library, has been appraised at $8.3 million.
John Herrington (Chickasaw), the first Native American astronaut, has left NASA to join a commercial space development company Rocketplane Limited, Inc.

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passages
After a long battle with diabetes, artist Robert Rosebear (Ojibwe) passed away on March 28. The well-known pipemaker and pipestone carver studied the Japanese art of netsuke carving (miniature forms), and his work is found in museums around the world, including the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Field Museum in Chicago and the Beijing Art Museum.