CALLING ALL Native or Indigenous writers and artists

For Summer 2010, The Florida Review will publish a special issue focusing on new American Indian writing. The Florida Review welcomes submissions of poetry, flash fiction, short fiction, creative nonfiction, graphic narrative, and art from Native or Indigenous writers and artists. Deadline: December 5, 2009.

http://floridareview.cah.ucf.edu

NATIVE AMERICAN DAY (Last Fri. of Nov.)

NOVEMBER IS NATIVE AMERICAN HERITAGE MONTH:
PRIDE IN OUR HERITAGE, HONOR TO OUR ANCESTORS:

Real Culture

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Some do's and don'ts in representing Native American culture

AR Sakaeda, who wrote one of my favorite essays for Exploring Race last year, sent me an email recently about issues to consider in representing Native Americans. Because Thanksgiving is a popular time for teaching students about Native Americans, here’s a list of guidelines that come from Oyate, a Native organization that wants to make sure the history of Native Americans is portrayed with honesty and accuracy.

Over the years, more schools have been eliminating the practice of kids dressing up as Indians, but apparently there is still much resistance. The Tribune covered a Skokie school in 2003 that decided to discontinue the costumes. That same year, the YMCA also decided to end its "Indian Guides and Princesses" program.

Tell me what you think about the list:

• Do present Native peoples as appropriate role models with whom a Native child can identify. Don't single out Native children, ask them to describe their families' traditions, or their people's cultures. Don't assume that you have no Native children in your class. Don't do or say anything that would embarrass a Native child.

• Do look for books and materials written and illustrated by Native people. Don't use ABC books that have "I is for Indian"' or "E is for Eskimo." Don't use counting books that count "Indians." Don't use story books that show non-Native children "playing Indian." Don't use picture books by non-Native authors that show animals dressed as "Indians." Don't use story books with characters like "Indian Two Feet" or "Little Chief."

• Do avoid arts and crafts and activities that trivialize Native dress, dance, or ceremony. Don't use books that show Native people as savages, primitive craftspeople, or simple tribal people, now extinct.

• Don't have children dress up as "Indians," with paperbag "costumes" or paper-feather "headdresses." Don't sing "Ten Little Indians." Don't let children do "war whoops." Don't let children play with artifacts borrowed from a library or museum. Don't have them make "Indian crafts" unless you know authentic methods and have authentic materials.

• Do make sure you know the history of Native peoples, past and present, before you attempt to teach it. Do present Native peoples as separate from each other, with unique cultures, languages, spiritual beliefs, and dress. Don't teach "Indians" only at Thanksgiving. Do teach Native history as a regular part of American history.

• Do use materials which put history in perspective. Don't use materials which manipulate words like "victory," "conquest," or "massacre" to distort history. Don't use materials which present as heroes only those Native people who aided Europeans. Do use materials which present Native heroes who fought to defend their own people.

• Do discuss the relationship between Native peoples and the colonists and what went wrong with it. Don't speak as though "the Indians" were here only for the benefit of the colonists. Don't make charts about "gifts the Indians gave us."

• Don't use materials that stress the superiority of European ways, and the inevitability of European conquest. Do use materials which show respect for, and understanding of, the sophistication and complexities of Native societies.

• Do use materials which show the continuity of Native societies, with traditional values and spiritual beliefs connected to the present. Don't refer to Native spirituality as "superstition." Don't make up Indian "legends" or "ceremonies." Don't encourage children to do "Indian" dances.

• Do use respectful language in teaching about Native peoples. Don't use insulting terms such as "brave," "squaw," "papoose," "Indian givers," "wild Indians," "blanket Indians," or "wagon burners."

• Do portray Native societies as coexisting with nature in a delicate balance. Don't portray Native peoples as "the first ecologists."

• Do use primary source material--speeches, songs, poems, writing--that show the linguistic skill of peoples who come from an oral tradition. Don't use books in which "Indian" characters speak in either "early jawbreaker" or in the oratorical style of the "noble savage."

• Do use materials which show Native women, Elders, and children as integral and important to Native societies. Don't use books which portray Native women and Elders as subservient to warriors.

• Do talk about lives of Native peoples in the present. Do read and discuss good poetry, suitable for young people, by contemporary Native writers. Do invite Native community members to the classroom. Do offer them an honorarium. Treat them as teachers, not as entertainers. Don't assume that every Native person knows everything there is to know about every Native Nation.

Tribune Article

TWO-SPIRIT

The Navajo used the word “nádleehí” to describe people who embodied both masculine and feminine traits. They were among the hundreds of Native communities that celebrated and revered tribe members who lived outside binary male/female restrictions. As today’s Native communities fight to revitalize the culture that was beaten out of them, gay and transgender Natives are reclaiming this aspect of their ancestry by identifying as two-spirit –- a unifying term that serves as a catch-all for the many variations of sexuality and gender identity.

Two-spirit people were seen as a gift in Native American culture, viewed as a third gender with a heightened spiritual connectedness and a significant role to play. However, the forced Western colonization injected tribal communities with strong anti-gay attitudes that, for the most part, continue to reign supreme today. As two-spirits try to reclaim their historical culture, it is vital for the LGBT community to start paying attention to history as well.

I had the honor of speaking with seasoned two-spirit activist Richard LaFortune, whose wisdom made it painfully clear how shortsighted the LGBT civil rights movement has become. While much of the current focus is on the state-by-state status of legal relationship recognition, LaFortune reveals that many Native cultures enjoyed marriage equality for same-sex couples well before European settlers arrived. It isn’t surprising that anti-gay activists didn’t bother to consult Native American history before constantly regurgitating “marriage has always been between one man and one woman” talking points.

NATIVE AMERICAN HERITAGE DAY

This Friday, November 27, we celebrate the second ever national Native American Heritage Day, to honor the original native residents of this great land.

Amid the" Thanksgiving", football, and life this week, lets take some time to recognize Native American Heritage Day.

Haiku (Anti-Thanksgiving)

Truth Of Thanksgiving, I Am Not Saying Thank You, You Are Not Welcome.

Leticia Miranda

Leticia Miranda

Check Out the 2010 Miss Indian Transgender Arizona Pageant

Here is some good news to get through the rest of your hump day.

This December 13, Arizona’s Native community will be choosing this year’s Miss Indian Transgender Arizona.

Trudie Jackson, the director of the pageant, says the point of the pageant is to bring visibility to transgender people in the Native community and the issues they face. She said to NativeOut in an interview:

There are numerous issues that affect transgender people in their everyday life. One of the most challenging of these issues is gender identity. Some girls don’t know how to come out to their families, who reside on the reservations, about their lifestyles. When girls come to the city they are able to be themselves, instead of living in the closet. Another issue is employment. Since most girls are unable to be themselves in the work place, they have to find an alternate way of surviving in the city. Stigma is another issue affecting transgender women since the majority of the general population is not educated about transgenderism; they automatically assume they are “men in a dress.”

Check out the video below from 2007’s Miss Indian Transgender crowning.

Inupiaq woman wins major writing award

Inupiaq woman wins major writing award

Poet Joan Kane, an Inupiaq Eskimo woman, received the prestigious Whiting Writers' Award. (It comes with $50,000!)

"My husband jokes that he's probably the only start-up lawyer whose practice is being kept afloat by his poet wife," she said.

Some of the money will buy health insurance, she said.

She'd also like to take her children and her mother to King Island, an expensive and difficult proposition.

The remote settlement in the Bering Sea was abandoned under pressure from the government in the 1950s. Memories of the deserted village contribute to overtones of loss and change that haunt Kane's poems. King Islanders retain a strong sense of identity with the place, though members of the younger generation -- including Kane herself -- have never been there.

Kane hopes to visit small communities in the future, to talk about writing and "bring books to others."

"As a writer, you have to be concerned when you see all of these towns without bookstores," she said.

Feministing.com

Pure/Pour/A Priori

full moon’s rays spill

a skeleton path on water

tell me the spell

you held me under

simpler to undo

than the first split steps

I took towards you.

Wrath and swell

of the silt-black sea

heavy and mute

with the weight

of so much ice melting

returns agency

to me, and ease.

Eyes travel,

trace along the shape

of pure coincidence;

sere white falls hued

through night air,

valuable, and silvers

on the waves.

Shafts of light

unravel, reeling

towards shore: shine

relearns its shadow image

and I relearn more.

I can scarcely scrape

and scratch my eyes

across the moon’s rough

surface. To conjure

this drag and chase down

the fixed spines of time

and the firm arrival

at some great vein

of truth appears

difficult. My own

divinations, though, draw

me down the coast

and raise my eyes high

despite the bone-bright

glance of the naked

skeleton path on the water.

— By Joan Kane