WASHINGTON – The Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian will open the “Nation to Nation: Treaties Between the United States and American Indian Nations” exhibit Sept. 21 during the museum’s 10th anniversary on the National Mall.
The exhibit is the museum’s most ambitious effort yet, presenting the Native nations’ individual treaties side-by-side in their largest historical collection ever presented to an audience. The exhibition focuses on eight treaties representing the approximately 374 ratified between the United States and the Native nations, on loan from the National Archives. Each document details and solidifies the diplomatic agreements between the United States and the neighboring Native nations.
More than 125 objects, including art and artifacts, from the museum’s collection and private lenders will be featured, including the Navajo blanket owned by Gen. William Sherman, a collection of Plains nations pipes and beaded pipe bags, peace medals given to Thomas Jefferson and George Washington and the sword and scabbard of Andrew Jackson.
Video installations, archival photographs, wampum belts, textiles, baskets and peace medals highlight each historical moment and help tell the story of the early ancestors of the Native nations and their efforts to live side-by-side at the birth of the United States.
The exhibit will be on display through Sept. 1, 2018. The NMAI’s hours are 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. daily. It is closed on Dec. 25. Admission is free. The museum is located at 4th St. and Independence Ave. SW.
Seattle, WA (9/3/2014) – Cabin Games emcee Redskin is gearing up to release a new mixtape titled Big Red, in which he spits hard-hitting rhymes over 14 classic Notorious B.I.G. instrumentals. This tribute to Biggie has been in the making for quite some time, and Redskin did not take the challenge of paying homage lightly, attacking each beat with the same calculated force and delivery as the last. With select features from Pez Paradise and Mya Rose, and mixing by Cabin Games producer Kjell Nelson, Big Red builds on the rapidly growing catalogue of dope music coming out of the Cabin.
The cover art for the mixtape features both the legendary Biggie Smalls and Redskin himself, and was designed by Native American artist Steven Judd. The project will be released on September 11th, 2014.
Cabin Games is a new music label co-founded in Seattle by Rich Jensen, former Co-President of Sub Pop Records, and Redskin, a Tulalip Tribal member. Current artists include Silas Blak, Hightek Lowlives, Pigeonhed, Richie Dagger’s Crime, Redskin, Yardbirds and Steve Fisk.
For bookings and more information about Cabin Games:
Wanda Sykes will kick off a 15-show fall tour at Tulalip Resort Casino this weekend.
The veteran stand-up comedian will play Friday and Saturday night sets in the Orca Ballroom, where she most recently performed in May 2013.
“I’ve been there several times, and I keep going back,” Sykes told The Herald. “It’s a loud room. It’s not a theater setup — it’s kind of like a banquet room. We get people close together.”
Sykes, 50, is using the tour to workshop material for her next comedy special.
“A big hunk of it I already have worked out, now it’s putting the polish on,” she said. “It’s polish, that’s what it is.”
While she’s never shied away from political humor in the past, Sykes claims she’s been less interested in current events since she and wife Alex Sykes had twins in 2008.
“Once you become a parent, you just don’t have time,” she said. “And when you do have time to watch TV or read, you just want something dumb. You want to let your mind take a break. I watch the news, I’m looking at stuff in Iraq and ISIS. It literally hurts my brain.”
Lately she sticks to detective and crime shows when it comes to TV.
“At least that stuff gets solved,” she said. “They have answers for it.”
She took this summer off to spend time with her family, but she admits she was still working.
“You never shut the brain off as far as thinking of funny stuff,” she said. “That’s where I draw the comedy from — from real life.”
That doesn’t mean she was cracking her family up. When asked if her kids think she’s funny: “They find me entertaining, I’ll put it that way.”
Like many stand-up comics who have moved into TV and film, Sykes still considers herself a comedian above all else. It’s what she did for a decade before hitting the screen in “The Chris Rock Show.”
“I got the opportunity to write for Chris, it was like, ‘Oh yeah, definitely,’” she said. “Then they put me in front of the camera, and that took it to another level.”
She won an Emmy with the writing team on “The Chris Rock Show.” Since then she’s acted in Hollywood comedies, voiced characters in animated movies like “Rio” and “Ice Age: Continental Drift” and had recurring roles in “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and “The New Adventures of Old Christine.” She now plays Senator Rosalyn DuPeche on the Amazon original series “Alpha House.”
In 2012, Sykes dove into the business side of things by co-founding Push It Productions. The move allowed her to become an executive producer of NBC’s “Last Comic Standing” as well as launch a show about women in comedy on the Oprah Winfrey Network.
“Developing and producing and doing things behind the camera, putting other talent out there, that was one thing that I wanted to do,” she said. “We’re doing that now.”
Still, she says she loves being in front of the camera and wants to eventually be the lead in a big movie.
“If I could just get one of those superhero movies, man! That would be awesome,” she said.
Some entertainment writers have suggested that Sykes be considered for “Ghostbusters 3” — rumored to be an all-female reboot of the sci-fi comedies of the 1980s — but she wasn’t familiar with the prospect.
“Oh, really? Awe, boy. I haven’t seen that,” she said. “I would love that!”
Doors at 7 p.m. and show at 8 p.m. both nights. 21+. 10200 Quil Ceda Blvd, Marysville.
TULALIP — They toured alongside John and Tom Fogerty during the 1960s as the driving rhythm for Creedence Clearwater Revival, and they’ll be performing at the Tulalip Amphitheater Sunday, Sept. 7.
Credence’s original drummer, Doug “Cosmo” Clifford, and bassist, Stu Cook, perform as Creedence Clearwater Revisited — a tribute band.
“We take the music seriously, but we don’t take ourselves seriously,” Clifford said. “It’s a recipe for a good time.”
In 1995 Cook and Clifford formed Credence Clearwater Revisited to pay tribute to their original sound.
Sometime before that, Clifford was living on the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe, and Cook was residing in California. The two thought about relocating to some place in California. When reunited in the same state, Cook and Clifford jammed for a bit but that grew old quickly, and the two committed to a new project.
The project started out small, but grew in popularity and were eventually promoted by a friend.
“We were doing private shows for about three or four months just as something to do,” Clifford said. “The shows went well.”
Now the band tours nationally and internationally for rock and roll and CCR fans.
Though Revisted stays true to its classic sound, the kind of music is still relevant to the “single-digiters,” Clifford said.
“We have more young fans than older fans, and we continue to bring in younger fans,” Clifford said. “We do get a lot of airplay on the classic rock stations.”
Clifford and Cook look forward to spending some time in the Pacific Northwest.
“We certainly have been around the Northwest. It’s a beautiful place,” Clifford said. “There’s lots of rain, and we got the ‘rain song,'” he said, referring to Who’ll Stop the Rain?”
Wendy Red Star’s great-grandfathers played themselves in the 19th-century vaudeville show Buffalo Bill’s Wild West & Congress of Rough Riders of the World. They also played themselves, or not, in a human-zoo-style exhibit at the St. Louis World’s Fair. Now Wendy Red Star has curated the first-ever all-Native contemporary art exhibition at Bumbershoot, on the grounds built for Seattle’s World’s Fair in 1962—which was not immune from such exoticizing expos, creepily featuring Japanese “feminine pearl divers” in an “authentic Japanese village.” Her title for the Bumbershoot show is itself an appropriation: Wendy Red Star’s Wild West & Congress of Rough Riders of the World.
“This is our chance now, to show what we want to show, how we want to be represented,” she says in a phone conversation from Portland, where she lives. She grew up on the Crow reservation in Montana, the daughter of a proud Crow man and a proud Irish American nurse. The two met on the reservation, where Wendy grew up called a “half-breed” without any malice at all. Her sister, Chelsea, is Korean, born in Korea and dropped on the proverbial stoop of an orphanage, the story goes. While serving as a nurse in the US military in Korea, Wendy’s mother adopted Chelsea as an infant—years before the independent Irishwoman moved to the Crow reservation for another nursing job, and met Wendy’s father.
Chelsea became the last of the Crow speakers. She came home from preschool singing Crow songs and responding to her father in Crow; by the time Wendy was born, there was only English at preschool. Chelsea still dreams in Crow.
From that history, Red Star spins art that provokes, remembers, jokes, and reinterprets. The other 10 artists she’s chosen for Bumbershoot are her “dream team,” their work ranging from photography to video games to painting and beyond. There is no “Native style” here, none of the fixed aesthetic that often attends even contemporary group exhibitions by Native artists in museums and galleries. Da-ka-xeen Mehner, for instance, is showing 11 Years of Beards, which is literally his hair. It just happens to grow in half-blond and half-brown, due to a scar on his chin, and he happens to be Tlingit/N’ishga and white. Another artist, Skawennati, made a video game where futuristic characters can revisit historical moments, just not change them. A Mohawk warrior from the future can witness a massacring of Mohawks in the past.
Don’t trip over Custer. The foolish US Army commander who died along with all his men in the 1876 Battle of Little Bighorn will be lying dead on the gallery floor, in a life-size sculpture by Demian Diné Yazhi’. Playing on a wall will be Peter Morin’s video compilation, on endless repeat, of all the sequences of Pocahontas’s animated hair waving in the Disney wind in the Hollywood cartoon. John Feodorov made a giant warbonnet for the middle of the gallery. Another artist, Tanis S’eiltin, uses found photographs of her mother visiting the Seattle World’s Fair to stage a re-creation.
Red Star’s own career is on fire, but this is the very first time she’s shown in Seattle. In the last year, she’s had four solo museum exhibitions. Her work is part of a traveling group show now in Paris that next spring goes to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. It’s a show that combines artifacts and new art. “When else do you get to collaborate with your ancestors?” Red Star says. The group show includes her celebrated Four Seasons series, a quartet of photographs in which she poses in majestic Crow regalia in the midst of fake nature: cheesy landscape paintings for backdrops, thrift-store objects for props, including a blow-up deer. The portraits are deadpan, contemplative.
She made those in 2006; now she’s tackling history directly. For a coming show at the Portland Art Museum, she’s commissioned custom stuffed animals based on drawings a Crow chief made in 1880. Medicine Crow was one of seven Crow chiefs essentially kidnapped in Washington, DC, until they signed over railroad rights on their land. While there, the US agents took them to the zoo, where they came across caged animals native to Crow country—and those are what Medicine Crow drew. The drawings, photographs, and stuffed animals will join a traditional Crow jacket from the museum’s collection that resembles one worn by the delegation.
For Saint Louis Art Museum, Red Star made Crow dresses bedecked with prestigious elk teeth. She finished them at the last minute and shipped them to the museum without getting to try them on. When she met the dresses in St. Louis, she told the curator she had to put one on. “The two museum installer guys were so mortified that they had to leave,” she says, cracking up. “When I did that, it felt like all the objects in there were having a good laugh, because they don’t get that treatment, they don’t get to see their community.”
For Bumbershoot, Red Star is restaging a famous photograph taken of John Lennon and Yoko Ono during their media-frenzied 1969 Bed-ins for Peace. Red Star and a friend replace the couple, but wearing warbonnet headdresses, while touting the message of peace. “I know we’re the only all-Native exhibition there,” Red Star said. “I guarantee we’re going to see some hipsters in headdresses.”
Native Americans represent just one per cent of the US population and some languages have only one speaker left. Now a new generation is fighting to preserve the culture.
Meet the women leading that fight:
Evereta Thinn Age: 30 Tribe Affiliation: Diné (Navajo) Occupation: Administrator at a Shonto School District
When Evereta entered college as the only Native American in her English 101 class, it was at that moment she realized that she needed to speak up and not be that stereotypical ‘shy’ Indian that keeps to herself. She started bywriting an essay in that very class about living in ‘two worlds’; living in the traditional world and living in the modern world and how Native Americans need to find that balance in today’s society. ‘Knowing who you are as a Native, know the teachings from your elders and engraining them as you go out into the modern world is how you maintain that balance’. She further explains that ‘once the language fades, the culture will slowly start to go too. If the younger generations cannot speak the language, how will they be equipped to make decisions on policies and protect our tribes in the future?’ She aspires to start a language and cultural immersion school for the Diné (Navajo) people.
Alayna Eagle Shield (left) and Tonia Jo Hall (right) Age: 24 Tribe Affiliation: Lakota & Arikara Occupation: Teacher in the Lakota Language Nest Head Start program/Medical student
Alayna currently holds a seat in the National Native Youth Cabinet under the National Congress of American Indians (CNAI). Three key issues that she addresses on behalf of the Native youth population are the importance of language and culture, bullying, and lack of education. Her passion to keep the language alive stems from her father being one of the few fluent Lakota speakers. He chose not to speak it to her as a child, but as she grew older, she understood the importance of keeping the language alive. ‘Speaking your language is a guide to knowing who you are as a Native’, says Alayna.
Shawn Little Thunder Age: 26 Tribe Affiliation: Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe Occupation: Poet / Singer / Songwriter
Growing up, Shawn was severely shy and timid. It wasn’t until after graduating high school that she was urged by a musician friend to be featured in one of his songs. This was a freeing moment for her and a new outlet to express herself. She began to write poetry and join local talent shows. While holding a work position at a teen group home, Shawn encouraged the teens to keep a journal and write how they felt. Most of what the teens wrote was poetry and songs so Shawn began a poetry workshop that led to an open mic at the group home. She decided to expand her efforts and encourage others to speak freely at local events and pow wows. Rez Poetry: ‘Wičhóiye Wašaka’ (Strong Words) was the name she coined for her events. ‘That’s what I want to do, empower other Natives, especially the younger generations’.
Sage Honga Age: 22 Tribe Affiliation: Hualapai, Hopi & Diné (Navajo) Occupation: Server at W Hotel in Scottsdale, Arizona
Sage earned the title of 1st attendant in the 2012 annual pageant, Miss Native American USA. From that point forward, she has been encouraging Native youth to travel off the reservation to explore opportunities. In Native American culture, knowledge is power and the youth are encouraged to leave the reservations, get an education and then come home to give back to your people. ‘My tribe, the Hualapai people, is so small that I want to be a role model to show my community and youth that it is possible to come off our land and do big things’.
Juliana Brown Eyes-Clifford Age: 23 Tribe Affiliation: Oglala Lakota & Samoan Occupation: Musician, photographer, film maker, artist
Juliana and her husband, Scotti Clifford, have formed the band, ‘Scatter Their Own’ (which is the English translation for the word Oglala). They travel to various Indian reservations and other parts of the country to play their music. They are self-taught, cannot read music and play what comes out naturally from their hearts. Juliana is inspired to play for the youth and inspire them to branch out and learn about the arts and music which are topics not generally exposed on the reservation. The songs they write are about Mother Earth, social justice and about the Native American culture.
Kelli Brooke Haney Age: 33 Tribe Affiliation: Seminole, Creek and Choctaw Occupation: Musician / Artist
As the daughter the internationally recognized Native American artist and former Chief of the Seminole Nation, Enoch Kelly Haney, it’s no shock that artistic and bold talent radiate from the ever-inspiring Kelli Brooke. In the early 2000s she formed a rockabilly band with her best friend called The Oh Johnny! Girls and also has a solo music project called Hudson Roar. Kelli grew up in a household where her parents spoke Seminole Creek as the first language. She is also the mother to a sweet five-year old boy, Jack, and expresses the importance of raising him with Native American traditions as well as encouraging him to embrace his own artistic talents.
Juanita C. Toledo Age: 28 Tribe Affiliation: Walatowa-Pueblo of Jemez Occupation: Works for the Community Wellness Program on Jemez Pueblo Reservation
Growing up, Juanita was valedictorian of her charter school, President of the Native American Youth Empowerment (NAYE) group, and on the executive committee of UNITY (United National Indian Tribal Youth Organization). During college things changed dramatically for Juanita. She felt the pressure of life and quickly fell into depression, anxiety and succumbed to drugs and alcohol after dealing with a very traumatizing family event. ‘It was the worst time of my life; I really thought I was going to die and I wanted to die’. In 2012, she had a turning point. ‘I started to believe in my dreams and in myself again.’ She ran for Miss Indian World, one of the most prestigious honours a Native American woman could receive. Although she didn’t take the title, her tribal community was extremely proud of her representation. Today, she works for the Community Wellness program on her reservation and has truly influenced positive changes in the program and in her community.
See more images and read the full story in the September issue of Marie Claire.
Read more at http://www.marieclaire.co.uk/blogs/547176/meet-the-generation-of-incredible-native-american-women-fighting-to-preserve-their-culture.html#MWbYWw3Kys2cYPEv.99
Chaske Spencer plays an alcoholic Blackfoot Indian man whose wife has run away in “Winter in the Blood,” set in Montana. Credit KBD Photography/Kino Lorber
‘Winter in the Blood,’ a Drama About Alcoholism
By JEANNETTE CATSOULIS
WINTER IN THE BLOOD
Opens on Wednesday, Aug 20, 2014
Directed by Alex Smith
and Andrew Smith
1 hour 38 minutes; not rated
Like its broken antihero, an alcoholic Blackfoot Indian named Virgil First Raise (Chaske Spencer), “Winter in the Blood” lacks energy and volition. What it doesn’t lack is compassion, either for the wounds of childhood or the trap of ethnicity.
Filming in their home state, Montana, the brothers Alex Smith and Andrew Smith (adapting a 1974 novel by the Native American writer James Welch) sweat to translate Virgil’s existential pain into a visual narrative. Scenes dissolve and bleed into one another as he staggers between a small, arid town and the farmhouse he shares with his tart-tongued mother and his silent grandmother. Rarely without a flask or bottle at his lips (we first meet him passed out in a ditch), Virgil has a bloated, tipsy gait and a lost-boy look. He also has a runaway wife and a black hole where his identity should be.
Similar to the brothers’ previous feature, “The Slaughter Rule” (2002), “Winter” buckles beneath male conflict and heavy-handed metaphors. But the cinematographer, Paula Huidobro, captures the Montana plains and infinite skyline in wide, lyrical sweeps, while gauzy cross-fades parallel the ebb and flow of Virgil’s memories and hallucinations. Real and surreal weave together, and an impeccably chosen soundtrack — by, among others, the Heartless Bastards and Robert Plant — reinforces a mood that veers from dreamy to violent with shocking suddenness.
The journey from page to screen may have battered Mr. Welch’s novel, but its lamenting heart beats loud and clear.
Aug 18 (Reuters) – Veteran musicians Willie Nelson and Neil Young are teaming up for a benefit concert in Nebraska to raise funds in the fight against land being sold for the Keystone XL oil pipeline project, charity organization Bold Nebraska said on Monday.
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Nelson, 81, and Young, 68, both known for their ties to country rock and folk music and their environmental activism, will perform at the “Harvest the Hope Concert” on Sept. 27 at a farm near Neligh, Nebraska.
The farm is owned by Art and Helen Tanderup, who are campaigning against selling their land to TransCanada Corp to lay a pipeline that would carry crude oil from northern Alberta to refiners in Texas.
“Our family has worked this land for over 100 years. We will not allow TransCanada to come in here and destroy our land and water for their profit,” said Tanderup.
The concert is being hosted by Bold Nebraska along with Indigenous Environmental Network and Cowboy & Indian Alliance, comprising agricultural and tribal landowners who believe the pipeline will negatively impact the environment.
The Nebraska Supreme Court will hear arguments next month in a dispute over the planned 1,200-mile (1,900 km) planned route for the controversial $5.4 billion pipeline. A court ruling is not expected until 2015.
(Reporting by Piya Sinha-Roy in Los Angeles; Editing by Leslie Adler)
