This Time, the Indians Tell Their Own Story

TULSA, Okla.

Chuck Foxen

From left, Jeri Arredondo, Tamara Podemski and Cody Lightning in “Four Sheets to the Wind.”

The writer and director Sterlin Harjo.

IT would be tough organizing a respectable traffic jam in this part of town, especially in the dead heat of a summer afternoon. So the motley collection of cars, vans and movie equipment — and the tiny trailer advertising “Indian Tacos” — that have been assembled for a film shoot draw the kind of attention they never could in Hollywood or New York.

But this isn’t Hollywood or New York. The sound department, so to speak, is set up in the shade of a corrugated iron awning, outside a bar that looks as if it were decorated by a tsunami carrying a load of uncapped Sharpies. The producers, Chad Burris and Ted Kroeber, are lugging folding chairs around. But then everyone is doing something that isn’t in his or her job description. Shooting comes to a halt for the passing of the occasional tractor-trailer because the production can’t close the streets. (“Not without paying cops $300 a day to do it,” Mr. Burris said.) A few days earlier, an apparently inebriated man fell off his porch across the road from the set, crying: “Kill my life! Kill my face!” The crew wanted to work it into the script.

“Four Sheets to the Wind,” the debut feature by the writer and director Sterlin Harjo, is a coming-of-age story, set in Tulsa and nearby Holdenville. Almost the entire cast and many of the crew members are American Indians. “Among ourselves,” said Mr. Burris, an Oklahoma native and Chickasaw, “it’s more like ‘Induns.’ ” Not coincidentally, interpretations and definitions become knotty factors in an Indian movie, something rare enough that unfair expectations and obligations naturally attach themselves to it.

Racism apology offered

"'Wizard of Oz' writer's descendants sorry for author's words, attitude

By Angela Mettler
American News Writer

Mac Hudson of Tucson, Ariz., spent much of August apologizing for things he didn't do.

Hudson is L. Frank Baum's great-great-grandson. Most people know Baum as the author of 'The Wizard of Oz.'

Baum lived in Aberdeen from 1888-91. In December 1890, Baum wrote editorials in his newspaper, the Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer, calling for the extermination of American Indians.

Hudson felt the need to apologize for Baum's intolerant words and attitude, so he traveled in western South Dakota this August with his wife, Amy Schwemm; his cousin Gita Dorothy Morena of San Diego; and his friend Vic Runnels of Aberdeen.

'It's important that we acknowledge the racism of the past and look for opportunities to correct the racism of today,' Hudson said.

While working toward a master's degree in American Indian studies in college, Hudson wrote his thesis on Baum. He first came across Baum's editorials during his research for the thesis.

'When I first read that, I was quite horrified about it and wanted to know more,' he said.

Hudson's research revealed that Baum lived in a time period where racism was commonplace. In fact, Baum's editorials coincided with the Wounded Knee massacre.

Runnels' uncle was a survivor of Wounded Knee. Runnels first heard of the editorials while presenting workshops on how racism affects individuals and communities.

Hudson and Runnels met through Aberdeen native and historian Sally Roesch Wagner. Wagner's mother had a friend named Matilda Jewell Gage, who was Baum's niece.

'If it wasn't for Sally and Vic, none of this would have happened,' Schwemm said.

Hudson, Schwemm, Morena and Runnels visited Wounded Knee, Cheyenne River, Eagle Butte and Rapid City to apologize to descendants of Wounded Knee survivors.

'To them, it was a very historic occasion,' Hudson said.

Nobody knew if the descendants of Wounded Knee survivors would accept the apology, but they did. Hudson said he never encountered anger; rather, he and his three fellow travelers were welcomed.

'It's a very humbling experience,' he said.

He hopes the apology was a start to mending the physical and emotional wounds brought on by racism.

'It seemed possible that healing could occur from this, and if that happens even a little bit, it's worth it,' Hudson said."

Racism apology offered

'Wizard of Oz' writer's descendants sorry for author's words, attitude

By Angela Mettler -
American News Writer

Mac Hudson of Tucson, Ariz., spent much of August apologizing for things he didn't do.

Hudson is L. Frank Baum's great-great-grandson. Most people know Baum as the author of "The Wizard of Oz."

Baum lived in Aberdeen from 1888-91. In December 1890, Baum wrote editorials in his newspaper, the Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer, calling for the extermination of American Indians.

Hudson felt the need to apologize for Baum's intolerant words and attitude, so he traveled in western South Dakota this August with his wife, Amy Schwemm; his cousin Gita Dorothy Morena of San Diego; and his friend Vic Runnels of Aberdeen.

"It's important that we acknowledge the racism of the past and look for opportunities to correct the racism of today," Hudson said.

While working toward a master's degree in American Indian studies in college, Hudson wrote his thesis on Baum. He first came across Baum's editorials during his research for the thesis.

"When I first read that, I was quite horrified about it and wanted to know more," he said.

Hudson's research revealed that Baum lived in a time period where racism was commonplace. In fact, Baum's editorials coincided with the Wounded Knee massacre.

Runnels' uncle was a survivor of Wounded Knee. Runnels first heard of the editorials while presenting workshops on how racism affects individuals and communities.

Hudson and Runnels met through Aberdeen native and historian Sally Roesch Wagner. Wagner's mother had a friend named Matilda Jewell Gage, who was Baum's niece.

"If it wasn't for Sally and Vic, none of this would have happened," Schwemm said.

Hudson, Schwemm, Morena and Runnels visited Wounded Knee, Cheyenne River, Eagle Butte and Rapid City to apologize to descendants of Wounded Knee survivors.

"To them, it was a very historic occasion," Hudson said.

Nobody knew if the descendants of Wounded Knee survivors would accept the apology, but they did. Hudson said he never encountered anger; rather, he and his three fellow travelers were welcomed.

"It's a very humbling experience," he said.

He hopes the apology was a start to mending the physical and emotional wounds brought on by racism.

"It seemed possible that healing could occur from this, and if that happens even a little bit, it's worth it," Hudson said.

Racism apology offered

'Wizard of Oz' writer's descendants sorry for author's words, attitude

By Angela Mettler
American News Writer

Mac Hudson of Tucson, Ariz., spent much of August apologizing for things he didn't do.

Hudson is L. Frank Baum's great-great-grandson. Most people know Baum as the author of "The Wizard of Oz."

Baum lived in Aberdeen from 1888-91. In December 1890, Baum wrote editorials in his newspaper, the Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer, calling for the extermination of American Indians.

Hudson felt the need to apologize for Baum's intolerant words and attitude, so he traveled in western South Dakota this August with his wife, Amy Schwemm; his cousin Gita Dorothy Morena of San Diego; and his friend Vic Runnels of Aberdeen.

"It's important that we acknowledge the racism of the past and look for opportunities to correct the racism of today," Hudson said.

While working toward a master's degree in American Indian studies in college, Hudson wrote his thesis on Baum. He first came across Baum's editorials during his research for the thesis.

"When I first read that, I was quite horrified about it and wanted to know more," he said.

Hudson's research revealed that Baum lived in a time period where racism was commonplace. In fact, Baum's editorials coincided with the Wounded Knee massacre.

Runnels' uncle was a survivor of Wounded Knee. Runnels first heard of the editorials while presenting workshops on how racism affects individuals and communities.

Hudson and Runnels met through Aberdeen native and historian Sally Roesch Wagner. Wagner's mother had a friend named Matilda Jewell Gage, who was Baum's niece.

"If it wasn't for Sally and Vic, none of this would have happened," Schwemm said.

Hudson, Schwemm, Morena and Runnels visited Wounded Knee, Cheyenne River, Eagle Butte and Rapid City to apologize to descendants of Wounded Knee survivors.

"To them, it was a very historic occasion," Hudson said.

Nobody knew if the descendants of Wounded Knee survivors would accept the apology, but they did. Hudson said he never encountered anger; rather, he and his three fellow travelers were welcomed.

"It's a very humbling experience," he said.

He hopes the apology was a start to mending the physical and emotional wounds brought on by racism.

"It seemed possible that healing could occur from this, and if that happens even a little bit, it's worth it," Hudson said.

Children's Books - New York Times

MALIAN'S SONG

By Marge Bruchac.

Illustrated by William Maughan. Unpaged. The Vermont Folklife Center. $16.95. (Ages 6 to 10)

CROSSING BOK CHITTO
A Choctaw Tale of Friendship and Freedom.

By Tim Tingle.

Illustrated by Jeanne Rorex Bridges. Unpaged. Cinco Puntos Press. $17.95. (Ages 8 to 12)

THE OLD AFRICAN

By Julius Lester.

Illustrated by Jerry Pinkney. 79pp. Dial Books. $19.99. (Ages 9 and up)

IN the elementary classroom, at least, multiculturalism has succeeded. Schoolchildren now learn about the American journey as the coming-together of diverse cultures, with not just Pilgrims but Native Americans and Africans and, more recently, Latinos and Asians walking along the national trail. Even in this updated version, ours is a triumphalist travelogue: from slavery to freedom; from poverty to riches; e pluribus, unum. Sure, the new children’s literature suggests, we have our problems, but eventually we gather everyone with us into the future.


Three new children’s books radically challenge this myth, with alternative narratives and alternative dreams. In each, the journey of escape leads not into a bright American future, but out of an American nightmare. As a slave puts it in “The Old African ” (2005), by Julius Lester, “I don’t know what’s in Africa, but I sho’ know what’s here. . . . I believe I’ll take a chance on what I don’t know rather than to keep on living with what I do.” This is the classic voice of the American immigrant, reversed.

Unlike the multicultural mythos of America, these brilliant books are not feel-good, not melting-pot optimistic. They are as difficult as the real histories they tell, and they insist not only on diversity but on difference. They force parents and teachers to confront just how harsh a truth we can teach our children.

American Indian Writing, Seen Through a New Lens

LEECH LAKE RESERVATION, Minn. — The novelist and critic David Treuer of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe here does not look like the received image of a Native American. With his pale skin and brown hair, many people would not even take him for an Indian.

Nor, Mr. Treuer noted as he sat in a faded bar on the Leech Lake Reservation, does his résumé sound like the stereotype of the Native American.

Now 35, he was educated at Princeton (as were his two brothers; they were inspired to apply there by the movie “Risky Business”), and is an English professor at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. His mother, an Ojibwe tribal judge, met his father, a Jewish Holocaust refugee from Austria, when he was teaching high school on the reservation.

“My life will rarely be interpreted as Indian unless I translate it myself,” Mr. Truer said.

But in two books to be published later this month by Graywolf Press, he is mounting a challenge to the whole idea of Indian identity as depicted by both Native and white writers.

“Native American Fiction: A User’s Manual” is a kind of manifesto, which argues that Native American writing should be judged as literature, not as a cultural artifact, or as a means of revealing the mystical or sociological core of Indian life to non-Natives.

“He’s exploring and revealing a truer history of Native Americans,” said Toni Morrison, his former professor at Princeton. “We tend, even now, to like ethnic literature to contain our notion of what the iconography is.”

Four decades after Wave Hill, Aborigines in renewed battle for land rights

Forty years ago next week, Vincent Lingiari led 400 Aboriginal stockmen and their families in a mass walk-out off Wave Hill, a remote cattle station in the Northern Territory, owned by a British beef baron, Lord Vestey.

The black workers, who were renowned as superlative horsemen and for their skill in handling cattle, wanted equal pay and conditions with white employees. But what began as a straight industrial dispute turned into something much bigger: the birth of the Aboriginal land rights movement.

The protesters, who were Gurindji people, stayed out on strike for eight years, setting up camp 11 miles from Wave Hill, at a waterhole known as Daguragu. They demanded the return of their ancestral lands, and their actions seized the popular imagination, evolving into a national campaign for indigenous land rights.

After the company, Vesteys, finally gave in, the Labour prime minister, Gough Whitlam, travelled to Wave Hill, where he poured a handful of red dirt into Mr Lingiari's outstretched palm. The gesture signalled the restitution to the Gurindji people of the title to 1,250 square miles of their traditional lands.

6 Native Nations, and None Have a Word for ‘Suburbia’

CALEDONIA, Ontario, Aug. 10 — Blame it on the American Revolution.

At the time, six Indian tribes that had lived for centuries in what is now upstate New York sided with the British Crown, lost and were forced from their lands. For their troubles, however, Britain granted them a paradise rich in moose and deer, across the new border, in southern Ontario.

Today the game are largely gone. The wilderness has been transformed into suburban sprawl. The once pristine lands of the so-called Six Nations Reserve have been whittled away.

This year, one more housing development on the edge of town was one too many, and the Native Canadians decided to make a stand.

Since February, hundreds have blockaded roads, set bonfires, confronted the police with bags of rocks and lacrosse sticks, cut the maple leaf out of a Canadian flag and refused to obey court orders to vacate. During the height of tensions, a van was driven into a power station and set on fire, leaving residents in the dark for days.

The protests have become the knottiest of Canada’s many native land disputes and paralyzed the local economy.

“Some businesses are down 30, 40 percent,” said Neil Dring, who publishes a weekly newspaper here. “This has really hurt.”

For the Native Canadians, however, the dispute is a matter of mending a broken promise by the government to manage the land on their behalf. “Through the years, our people said, ‘You can come here, you can settle here,’ but that didn’t mean they could take over,” said Hazel Hill, who lives on the reserve.

Police officers brought in from all over the province now watch the occupied site around the clock, while town residents whose backyards border the land must show identification to be allowed down their street.

Confrontations have been laced with racial slurs and crude signs. Native Canadian protesters have surrounded the site with traditional flags, and many don fatigues when tensions are at their highest.

Ancient Peruvian Artwork Found in London

LONDON (AP) -- Fashioned from a sheet of embossed gold and centuries old, a prized headdress renowned as Peru's equivalent of the "Mona Lisa" has been seized by police.

With a feline face at its center and eight curving tentacles, the ancient artifact -- which collectors claim could be among Peru's most valuable treasures and worth close to $2 million -- has been kept from public view for as along as a decade. Police said Thursday that it was found hidden in a dusty cabinet of a London law firm.

Specialist art detectives seized the antiquity in a raid on the central London lawyer's office after a lengthy investigation into looted works, the capital's Metropolitan police said.

Officers said the golden headdress was made in the image of an ancient sea god and could date back to around 700 A.D., making it a prized example of artwork by the Mochica civilization that inhabited northern Peru.

Detective Constable Michelle Roycroft said the work had been seized on Monday, and that officers hoped to hand the valuable over to Peruvian authorities at a ceremony at London's Scotland Yard on Aug. 29.

Tribal teens use film to tell the stories of who they are

EVERETT - The spotlight was on Aaron Jones, 13, and he shifted from one foot to another.

"Um, thanks," he said, and thrust the hand-held microphone back toward the podium onstage at the Historic Everett Theatre.

He and his brother, Derek Jones, 17, collected their armfuls of awards and hurried toward a small keyboard at stage left. Derek sat down and began playing a musical diversion during intermission at the first-ever Tulalip Film Festival awards ceremony.

For many American Indians, attention from the world outside the reservation boundaries can be fearsome. Mainstream video cameras capture poverty, suicide or corruption.

When Indians turn their own cameras on themselves, the picture is very different.

The 20 films submitted to the Tulalip Film Festival, which ended Friday, refused to gloss over the challenges on reservations, but they didn't abandon their characters there.

In one film, young Indians escape to Montana's backcountry for a leadership camp. In another, women discuss how they look and feel different than non-Indians.

Puppets share the tribal legend of "Deer and Changer" in both English and Lushootseed, the traditional language of the Tulalip Tribes.

A boy's father turns to alcohol to cope with the death of a friend.

One by one, stereotypes of tribal culture are challenged.

"By charging the youth with the skills necessary to tell their own stories and to put those images out in the media in our own way, the broader public will see native persons the way we see ourselves, with all the cultural complexities," American Indian filmmaker Tracy Rector said.

Rector is director of Longhouse Media/Native Lens, a Seattle-based nonprofit that trains American Indian teenagers around the state in digital film. Her organization submitted three of the festival's 20 films.

Museums Establish Guidelines for Treatment of Sacred Objects

When the Blackfoot Nation approached the Denver Art Museum about borrowing a horse shawl for a ceremony a few years ago, the museum faced a quandary. Curators were eager to oblige, but they worried that the ritual would expose the early-20th-century relic to the damaging effects of horse sweat. After a delicate negotiation, a compromise was reached: The tribe would use the object in the ceremony without actually putting it on the horse.

The story is not unusual. As American Indian and other groups have become increasingly assertive about guarding their cultural heritage, museums have struggled to strike a balance between the traditional practice of collecting indigenous objects as art and the often competing interests of the people whose ancestors produced them. In many cases federal laws have enabled tribes to reclaim works outright.

Now the issue has become pressing enough that the leading association of art museums is asking its members to take “special consideration” when dealing with what it terms sacred objects. In guidelines be released today, the Association of Art Museum Directors calls on museums to consult with indigenous groups to determine what works might fall into this category and to accommodate the wishes of these groups as far as possible in displaying, conserving and even discussing these works on museum labels and in catalogs.

The guidelines, which have been approved by the association’s membership but are not binding, are intended to apply to indigenous and other religious groups both inside and outside the United States, including American tribes that have not been federally recognized.

The recommendations exceed the requirements set by the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, known as Nagpra. That law, which specified the criteria under which groups could reclaim burial remains and objects deemed to have special sacred or cultural value, applies only to federally recognized tribes. And in cases when objects did not have to be returned, museums did not have to collaborate with tribes on their
care.

For Sacred Indian Site, New Neighbors Are Far From Welcome

STURGIS, S.D., Aug. 2 — Robert Simpson pieces together a living, building ranch fences and riding saddle broncs at rodeos. When things get tough, he says, he makes a trip from his home in Montana to the Black Hills of South Dakota, where he can practice the traditional ways of his tribe, the Northern Cheyenne, with four days of fasting and praying on a bed of buffalo robes and sage atop Bear Butte.

“Spirits come and hear your prayers,” Mr. Simpson said. “You can regroup from everyday life, and get your marbles together. It’s peaceful.”

But Bear Butte, which dozens of tribes hold as one of the most sacred sites in North America, is getting a new neighbor: a giant biker bar and campground are under construction about two and a half miles away. They are scheduled to open this weekend, in time for the annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, one of the country’s largest biker events, which officially starts Monday.

The potential for rock music, roaring motorcycles and thousands of people drinking near the striking volcanic Bear Butte formation has brought American Indians from around the country to an encampment on the treeless plains near here. They plan to march into downtown Sturgis on Friday to demonstrate their concerns to the bikers already gathering for the rally.

Organizers said that about 2,000 Indians and their supporters were expected to take part. Nearby Pine Ridge Indian Reservation was the site of the Wounded Knee standoff in 1973, and some participants are veterans of that protest. Some religious groups, including the Mennonite Central Committee at Pine Ridge, have also become involved.

“We need integrity in our ceremonies here, and it requires a certain amount of quiet,” said Alex White Plume, president of the Oglala Sioux tribe at Pine Ridge, as he stood at the hot, windy encampment at the base of the butte about five miles from here. A small buffalo herd still roams the land.

Tribes Call for Removal of Dams That Block Journey of Salmon

SEATTLE, Aug. 2 — Indian tribes along the Klamath River rallied in Portland on Wednesday for the removal of four hydroelectric dams that block salmon from spawning in their historic habitat upriver, and they said they intended to pressure the governors of Oregon and California to help push for removing the dams.

The Yurok and Karuk tribes in California and the Klamath tribes of Oregon also said public comments by Bill Fehrman, the new president of PacifiCorp, the power company that owns the dams on the Klamath, reflected new potential for a settlement in one of the most enduring disputes at the nexus of fishing, farming and power supply in the Northwest.

Mr. Fehrman, in a statement released Wednesday, said: “We have heard the tribes’ concerns. We are not opposed to dam removal or other settlement opportunities as long as our customers are not harmed and our property rights are respected.”

While the tribes cast the statement as signaling a shift, Dave Kvamme, a spokesman for the company, said Mr. Fehrman’s statement, in a news release timed to coincide with the rally, was simply his first public comments reflecting a longstanding company policy.

He said that Mr. Fehrman, who became president this year, when PacifiCorp was bought by MidAmerican Holdings Company, a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, has been frequently meeting with tribal leaders and that “he and the tribes have connected on some level.”