Sunday, January 28, 2024
Climate-Endangered Tribe Sues Louisiana
Sunday, January 21, 2024
Environmental Victory for Alaska Natives
Sunday, January 14, 2024
Native Actor Lily Gladstone Makes History
Sunday, December 10, 2023
Life is a Walking
Sunday, September 10, 2023
Let's Stand Again With Standing Rock
Sunday, August 6, 2023
The Pueblo Jewelers of the Southwest
The Pueblo jewelers traveled south to the Gulf and west to the Pacific for shell when they couldn't trade for it. Jet and red colored rock was found nearby and used in mosaics and other jewelry. Eventually coral was introduced by the Spanish and replaced the red rock. These colorful stones were made into beads and mosaics for decoration and ceremonies.
The people of Santo Domingo became known for making the best disc beads and, along with the Zuni people, for producing the best inlay in turquoise, jet, shell and coral on shell and wood bases. The jewelers of Santo Domingo still produce the finest handmade beads and mosaics. Many of their children acquire drills and learn to make beads at a very young age. You can shop online for authentic Pueblo jewelry at PuebloDirect.com.
Sunday, July 30, 2023
The Pueblo Potters of the Southwest
Sunday, July 23, 2023
The Sweat Lodge Ceremony
In September of 1991, I began hosting a weekly teaching sweat lodge ceremony on four acres of secluded, unimproved forest land that my wife and I owned near Bend, Oregon. The ceremonies were conducted by Wasco elder Les Thomas and Oglala Lakota elder Don Fasthorse. Many people gathered to learn, and then left the group to teach others. The sweat lodge or inipi is as a spiritual purification ceremony of rebirth, rejuvenation, emotional release and awakening. The ceremony serves to cleanse the body, mind and spirit while opening a path of communication between the spiritual and earthly realms. The intense heat generated by steam created from pouring water onto heated rocks is meant to encourage a sweating out of toxins and negative energy that create imbalance in life. Sweat lodge ceremonies are traditionally held for a variety of reasons: before warriors go into battle, before and after major rituals like vision quests or for personal purification.
Sweat lodges are unique dome-shaped structures approximately four to five feet high at the center. They are constructed from supple willow branches and covered with rugs, furs and blankets. When a sweat lodge is built according to tradition, it looks like the body of a turtle. This is because the structure represents Turtle Island or Mother Earth. Entering the lodge symbolizes going back into the womb. It provides a safe and secure place to pray for self, others and all our relations. During the ceremony, spirits are invoked, drums are played and songs are sung. Spirits will enter and sing along with the participants and may even talk to them as well. If a person is not ready to hear the spirits, the spirits may not let that person hear them. Only those who are ready to hear the spirits may hear them because that is how compassionate the spirits are.
The Lakota term for sweat lodge is inipi, which translates to "Stone People Lodge." The Stone People, who are often referred to as the "grandfathers," come from the womb of our Mother Earth. The purpose of the inipi is to return to the womb of Maka (Earth) to be recreated. The Stone People become alive again when their spirits come into the Stone People Lodge. Then you can visit with them and tell them your problems. Then the power that pollutes our mind can be released. The fire from the womb of the Earth Mother will come in and destroy bad thoughts and words. Only good thoughts and words will remain. The spirits of the Stone People return our power to us. That's what Spirit does -- the Stone People, fire, water and green (the plants). The inipi is a place of healing, of purification and of prayer for all life.
A sweat lodge typically has four doors (or rounds) to the four directions (or winds), represented with colors, spirit guides and different elements. The number four has long been considered a sacred number in shamanism and Native American spirituality. All events and actions are based on this number because everything was created in fours. The Great Mystery reveals itself as the powers of the four directions, and these four powers provide the organizing principle for everything that exists in the world. There are four winds, four seasons, four elements, four phases of the moon, four stages to humanity's spiritual evolution, and so on.
The whole process is modeled after the Medicine Wheel, which is a universal symbol that can be found in many Indigenous cultures around the world. The Medicine Wheel represents the natural cycles of life and the basic way in which the natural world moves and evolves. The Medicine Wheel represents the archetypal journey each of us takes in life. This journey has four stages or rounds, each associated with a cardinal direction. Four rounds signify fullness, wholeness or completion.
Sunday, June 4, 2023
Traditional Water Drums
Water drums are used all over the world, including African music and American Indian music, and are made of various materials, with a membrane stretched over a hard body such as a metal, clay or wood. The Native American Church uses a black iron kettle with three tripod legs. The leather drum head is soaked in water before being stretched over the kettle. Clay pot drums were common among many eastern and southern tribes in the ancient days, those of the South using a semicircular-shaped bowl with legs. The pottery water drum of the Pueblo Indians is a vase-shaped pot with a flared out top. Pueblo water drums vary in size from small pots holding a gallon of water up to huge ones measuring thirty or more inches in diameter. These are filled about one-fourth full of water and the wet hide is tied over the top. When not in use the tanned drumhead and rawhide thong for tying it are kept inside the pot.
Wooden water drums are the traditional percussion instrument for the Native American Anishinaabe (Ojibwe), Ottawa, Potawatomi, Huron and Iroquois peoples. The Eastern Woodland tribes made far greater use of water drums than any other Native peoples, and attached a greater significance to them. To the Anishinaabe and their many neighboring tribes, the water drum is a true medicine drum of great power, the sacred drum of the Midewiwin or Grand Medicine Society, which is at the core of Anishinaabe religion. Water is synonymous with life, hence it adds great potency to the water drum. Its sacred sound is regarded as one of the most effective ways of establishing connections with the spirit realm, since it travels through space, permeates visual and physical barriers, and conveys information from the unseen world. It is widely used today in traditional Longhouse social dances and ceremonies.
Wooden water drums are made either by hollowing out a solid section of a small soft wood log, or assembled using cedar slats and banded much like an old keg. The drum is filled about one-fourth full of water and a wet leather hide is stretched over the top. For detailed instructions on crafting, tuning and playing water drums, download the free eBook, How to Make Drums, Tomtoms, and Rattles by Bernard S. Mason. This classic 1938 edition is now a free public domain eBook.
Sunday, May 28, 2023
The Drum Makers of Cochiti Pueblo
Sunday, April 23, 2023
The Pueblo Moccasin Makers
Sunday, April 9, 2023
Pass the Pipe
Sunday, March 26, 2023
Court Case Threatens Native Sovereignty
Sunday, March 12, 2023
FNX - First Nations Experience
At the ceremonial unity launch of FNX in February 2011, Cherokee actor Wes Studi confessed he didn't see this coming. "Thank you for proving me wrong," Studi said, speaking at the KVCR/FNX studios in San Bernardino, California. "I once said that I didn't think in my lifetime I'd see a TV channel dedicated to Indian people like you and me, people who are rarely seen on screen in authentic ways. We're making history with this powerful new media tool. This is something I can tell my grandchildren about -- I'll tell them I was there when it launched."
San Manuel Tribal Chairman James Ramos said FNX is "fulfilling a dream our ancestors had ... using the resources we have built through gaming. It's important that people know what our ancestors had to go through so we could be here today. It's time for us to change negative perceptions about indigenous peoples in mainstream audiences. We need to stand together as one voice and make things better for our people."
Ramos added context from his own tribe's past. "There was a time in California's history when there was an effort to get rid of Indian people; we were shot and killed here in the San Bernardino Mountains," Ramos said. "Many people never heard that story, and today some people don't want to talk about that history. But it's important that we do so that we can learn from the past and move forward working together for a better future."
Sunday, March 5, 2023
Remembering Indigenous Rights Advocate James Abourezk
Sunday, January 8, 2023
However Wide the Sky: Places of Power
Pierce worked with tribal leaders to film on the land. The areas chosen are: Chaco Canyon, Bears Ears, Zuni Salt Lake, Mount Taylor, Pueblo of Santa Ana, Taos Blue Lake, Mesa Prieta and Santa Fe. These places intimately connect the people and their beliefs to the natural world. This is their story, of the land and who they are. Pierce says the concerns about the use, misuse, development, drilling and mining of scared places in New Mexico began a conversation between Silver Bullet Productions and tribal leaders about the importance of education in 2016.
Sunday, November 27, 2022
Second Annual Wopila Gathering
So I hope to see you there! And please extend this invite to those you love by clicking the social share icons -- to Facebook, Twitter, and email -- on our Wopila Page. Let's continue to grow the circle of support and come together to honor, inspire, and activate! Stay tuned for more info soon.
Co-Director and Lead Counsel
The Lakota People’s Law Project
Sunday, October 16, 2022
Meeting Author William S. Lyon
Sunday, September 4, 2022
The Origin of Disease and Medicine
Sunday, July 17, 2022
Words Are Monuments
• 10 racial slurs
• 52 places named for settlers who committed acts of violence against Indigenous peoples. For example, Mt. Doane, in Yellowstone, and Harney River, in the Everglades, commemorate individuals who led massacres of Indigenous peoples, including women and children.
• 107 natural features that retained traditional Indigenous names, compared with 205 names given by settlers that replaced traditional names found on record.
While the Department of the Interior has established a task force to address derogatory place-names, the agency has faced some criticism for what Washington State officials and area tribes are calling a rushed process, with proposed replacement names that are largely colonial.
• Why place names matter and how the movement to 'undo the colonial map' relates to other movements that reckon with American history -- to topple Confederate and colonial monuments, decolonize museums, and overhaul school curricula;
• The relationship between language and ideology, and the power of place names in encoding a way of seeing, understanding, and relating to the land;
• How campaigns to re-Indigenize place names on federal lands are not just about making public lands more inclusive, but are stepping stones on the path to Indigenous co-governance and land rematriation;
• The global reckoning with colonial and imperialist history, including successful and ongoing efforts to replace colonial place-names in New Zealand, India, Palestine, South Africa, and beyond.