 Native
American Village News
By The Associated Press
Native Alaskan artists get new gallery in NYC
By DAVID MINTHORN
Associated Press Writer
Sep 18 19:59
NEW YORK (AP) - The first showcase gallery outside Alaska for native
artists of the far north has opened in New York amid heightened interest
in the 49th state.
Gov. Sarah Palin's nomination as the Republican vice presidential
candidate thrust Alaska into the media glare like nothing since
statehood in 1959. Founders of Alaska House, New York, a gallery in
Manhattan's Soho district, say the opening was planned long before Sen.
John McCain announced the self-described hockey mom as his running mate.
Even so, anything about Alaska seems to be hot, including this new
venture into high-stakes art dealing. Some 300 people attended Monday
night's opening.
The more than 200 works represent the largest, most diverse
collection of contemporary Alaska native art and crafts ever shown
outside the state, according to gallery founder Alice Rogoff. They
include mixed-media paintings of Kodiak bears, feathered ceremonial
masks, wall hangings made from walrus innards, decorative sculptures
from stone, wood carvings and buckskin apparel, and baskets and textiles
woven from indigenous plants.
The highest-priced work, at $75,000, is a whale carving in white
marble by Larry Ahvakana. Among the largest is "Large Orange Secrets,''
a 5-foot-high study in mixed-media by Sonya Kelliher-Combs, for $17,000.
Dolls with ivory faces and swathed in fur are priced around $1,000.
Proceeds from sales will go to the Alaska Native Arts Foundation, which
helps support artists in remote villages across the state.
The works reflect the vast geography of Alaska and its varied native
groups, from the Bering Sea islands and the Arctic to the river valleys
of the interior and the forests of the southeast coast, and cities such
as Anchorage and Fairbanks.
Native artists work with the "byproducts of their daily lives --
whalebone, walrus tusks, animal skins, feathers, grass, wood and roots,
to name a few,'' according to Alaska House brochures.
A film projected on a wall screen in the two-level gallery shows the
natural splendor of Alaska's mountains and glaciers, rivers teeming with
fish, polar bears on the ice cap, caribous in the tundra and native life
sustained by hunting and fishing. It's part of the Alaska House
educational program on global warming.
In remarks at Monday night's opening, U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski,
R-Alaska, underlined the impact of native art on all Alaskans, saying
the works represent "who we are'' and reflect "examples of our
culture.''
A half-dozen prominent artists accompanied their works to Alaska
House. Many of the motifs have spiritual significance and reflect a
strong bond with nature.
Perry Eaton, of the Sugpiaq Alutiiq people of Kodiak Island, showed
bird masks carved from wood, decorated with feathers and colored with
natural pigments. Priced in the $30,000 range, these masks combine
traditional shapes with contemporary forms and have a whimsical quality.
"Notice how the bird lips are sealed. In our culture we don't want to
chatter too much,'' he explained.
The masks are highly decorative, museum-quality works. They are also
used in traditional rites, such as storytelling and funerals, in which
they are burned after the mourning period.
Mixed-media artist Alvin Amason of Anchorage has a half-dozen works
at Alaska House, including show-stopper oil portraits of the ferocious
Kodiak bears from his boyhood home, priced from $14,500 to $38,000.
Amason, former director of the Native Art program at the University
of Alaska, said he counseled students against fastening on concepts such
as "preservation'' and "tradition,'' which can smother creativity.
Instead, his portrayals of traditional subjects such as bears and
walruses are executed with the eye and techniques of a modernist. "I
always was interested in artists like Willem de Kooning,'' Amason said.
Masterworks of earlier native Alaskan eras are in permanent
collections of the American Museum of Natural History in New York, and
the National Gallery of Art and the National Museum of the American
Indian in Washington, as well as in European museums.
On the Net:
http://www.alaskahouseny.org/alaskahouse/index.aspx?ModuleID=6
Study looks at tribal health
By The Associated Press
Sep 25 01:31
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) - A medical study led by a University of Oklahoma
health researcher shows that American Indians have more strokes and a
higher fatality rate from their first stroke when compared to whites and
blacks.
"Smoking, high blood pressure and a lack of exercise can be major
predictors of a stroke, and those risk factors are significant in
American Indians,'' said Dr. Ying Zhang of the OU Health Sciences Center
in Oklahoma City.
Zhang and colleagues analyzed 4,549 middle-aged and older people in
the Strong Heart Study involving 13 American Indian tribes or
communities.
It is the largest epidemiologic study of cardiovascular-related
disease in American Indians, according to OU officials.
Findings were published online this week in "Circulation: Journal of
the American Heart Association.''
A stroke occurs when the blood supply to part of the brain is
suddenly interrupted, or when a blood vessel in the brain bursts,
spilling blood into the spaces surrounding brain cells. Brain cells die
when they no longer receive oxygen and nutrients from the blood, or
there is sudden bleeding into or around the brain.
About 25 percent of people who recover from their first stroke will
have another stroke within five years.
The stroke study, that was launched in 1989, showed that American
Indians had a stroke fatality rate 1.5 times higher than the rates found
in other U.S. populations.
Steve Young, chief of preventive heath for the Choctaw Nation in
Talihina, said American Indian leaders must work to combat obesity and
smoking. People have choices, "they don't have to be overweight or start
smoking cigarettes,'' Young said.
"It's a lot easier to start a good habit than stop a bad habit,''
Young said.
Symptoms of stroke include sudden numbness or weakness, especially on
one side of the body, sudden confusion or trouble speaking or
understanding speech, sudden trouble seeing in one or both eyes, sudden
trouble walking and sudden severe headaches with no known cause.
Information from: The Oklahoman, http://www.newsok.com
Ellis Island adding histories of Indians, slaves
By ULA ILNYTZKY
Associated Press Writer
Sep 24 17:01
NEW YORK (AP) - Ellis Island is expanding its story of U.S.
immigration history, including for the first time Native Americans and
African slaves and adding modern arrivals.
A new center being created within the Ellis Island Immigration Museum
will tell the history of arrivals both before and after the peak
immigration era in the United States of 1892 to 1954, the Statue of
Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation said Wednesday.
The story of the migration to America "goes back to the beginning of
the country and comes up to the present. So there were a good number of
people whose stories weren't told at Ellis Island,'' said Stephen
Briganti, the foundation's president and chief executive.
The center, he said, will "cover the entire gamut of the populating
of America.''
Exhibits will include Native Americans, Europeans who landed on the
Eastern seaboard from the 1600s through 1892, Africans brought here
forcibly by slave traders and today's immigrants from around the globe.
"It's an important story to tell because Ellis Island is a symbol of
inclusion, it's a symbol of diversity and that's what this country is,''
Briganti said.
When the Peopling of America Center is completed in 2011, the full
museum will be renamed Ellis Island: The National Museum of Immigration.
Interactive exhibits will trace how waves of immigration changed
American towns and will allow visitors to trace their family's history.
The $20 million, 20,000-square-foot center, designed by Edwin
Schlossberg of ESI Design, will use space that had been an existing
gallery and an adjoining building used by museum staff.
Briganti said the foundation has met more than 75 percent of its
fundraising goal.
On the Net:
The Peopling of America Center: www.peoplingofamerica.org
The State of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation:
www.ellisisland.org
US House approves expansion of Trail of Tears
By The Associated Press
Sep 23 04:00
WASHINGTON (AP) - Lawmakers want to double what is now recognized as
the historic Trail of Tears -- the route the Cherokee Indians took when
they were forced from their homes and marched westward to reservations
in the 1820s and 1830s.
A bill approved Monday by the U.S. House would add about 1,500 miles
of "previously undocumented'' routes to the Trail of Tears National
Historic Trail followed by the Cherokee when they were taken from their
ancestral homelands in the East and marched to reservations on the Great
Plains.
The bill, introduced by Rep. Zach Wamp, R-Tenn., now goes to the
Senate.
Wamp said Monday the additional 1,500 miles result from further
research of military journals, newspaper accounts and vouchers.
One path that would be added stretches from Fort Payne, in
northeastern Alabama, through Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri, Arkansas
and Oklahoma. Another route started at Charleston, Tenn., and went
through Arkansas.
The added areas "more fully reflect this tragic saga of a proud
people's forced removal,'' Wamp said.
An estimated 4,000 American Indians died during the removal to Indian
Territory in what is now Oklahoma.
Chad Smith, principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, said in a
statement released by Wamp's office that the bill marks "the lessons we
can learn from one of the darkest moments in U.S. history.''
Wamp's office also released a statement from Michell Hicks, principal
chief of the Eastern Band of Cherokees, saying the measure helps
"provide an educational experience which will strengthen our future.”
Va. tribe recognition to be considered
By The Associated Press
Sep 25 07:49
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) - A U.S. Senate committee will hear testimony on
federal recognition of six Virginia tribes.
Governor Tim Kaine is scheduled to address the Senate Committee on
Indian Affairs at the hearing Thursday in Washington. Senator Jim Webb
is also scheduled to speak.
The committee will consider the Thomasina E. Jordan Indian Tribes of
Virginia Federal Recognition Act. The House of Representatives approved
the bill last May but the measure is awaiting Senate action.
Virginia tribes have sought recognition since the 1990s. Tribal
leaders with the Eastern Chickahominy, Chickahominy, Upper Mattaponi
(MATT'-ah-poh-NYE'), Rappahannock, Monacan and Nansemond tribes say
federal recognition could entitle them to federal aid.
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