FNX - First Nations Experience

First Nations Experience (FNX) is the first and only national broadcast television network in the United States exclusively devoted to Native American and World Indigenous content. Through Native-produced and themed documentaries, dramatic series, nature, cooking, gardening, children's and arts programming, FNX strives to accurately illustrate the lives and cultures of Native people around the world.
 

Created as a shared vision between Founding Partners, the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians and the San Bernardino Community College District, FNX is owned by and originates from the studios of KVCR-PBS San Bernardino. FNX began terrestrial broadcast in the Los Angeles area on September 25, 2011 and went national on November 1, 2014 via the Public Television Interconnect System (PBS satellite AMC - 21 Channel SD08), making the non-profit channel available to PBS affiliates, community and tribal stations, and cable television service providers across the country. 

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."

FNX is working diligently to obtain channel carriage in as many communities as possible across the United States. Currently, FNX is carried by 22 affiliate stations broadcasting into 25 states from Alaska to New York and has a potential viewing audience of more than 74.5 million households across the United States! Several additional stations have also begun streaming FNX digitally throughout their communities and states. More new stations are always coming on board, so stay tuned -- FNX may be available in your city very soon! If you'd like to get FNX carried in your community, please reach out to your local stations, cable and satellite service providers. I can't recommend FNX enough and best of all it is totally free!

Every Step You Take is a Prayer

The coronavirus has now arrived in many Native American communities. In an online strategy, Native women are working to heal their communities through virtual jingle dress dances. Umpaowastowin -- or Pat Northrup, as she's known in English, arranged an event and someone posted it on Facebook with the hashtag #jinglehealing. "Wear your jingle dress at home and be connected," the posting said. "Remember the reason we were given this dance."

According to Dan Kraker's coverage on Minnesota Public Radio, Native American women from Pennsylvania to Nebraska to Ontario to Northrup's apartment in northern Minnesota joined in. "This isn't just an Anishinaabe prayer. This is an "all-people-prayer," said Northrup, 70, who is Dakota, widow of the late Ojibwe author Jim Northrup. "The virus isn't going to have prejudice," she said. "It will affect all people. So that's what the prayers are for." 

Michele Hakala-Beeksma also danced, but in Duluth. "We literally say that dancing is prayer. That every step you take is prayer," she said. Hakala-Beeksma, a member of the Grand Portage Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe, started dancing about 15 years ago. She sewed about 150 copper cones on to her purple dress herself. "That tinkling sound, that kind of sounds like water, like rain -- that's the healing part that comes in. When you become a jingle dress dancer, there's a responsibility that comes with it. You're dancing for the healing of your people," she said.

The jingle dress dance originated with the Ojibwe people, or Anishinaabe, during the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic. There are different versions of the story about how the dance began. But they all include a little girl who was very sick. Her father had a dream about a dance that would make her better. She wore a dress lined with rows of silver cones. The sound of the jingles healed her. The sacred dance has since been taken up by women throughout Indian County, after it spread through the pow wow circuit in the 1980s.

Ojibwe women were defying the U.S. government when they developed the dance. At the time, the government forbade ritualistic dancing on reservations. So a century after that first pandemic when they danced as a prayer for healing, women from Minnesota and Wisconsin, Utah and Colorado, Kentucky and all around Canada -- danced again, praying for healing. 

Photo by JMacPherson

Coronavirus Moves Powwows Online

The names pop up quickly on Whitney Rencountre's computer screen, and he greets them as he would in person.

He spots someone from the Menominee Nation, a Wisconsin tribe that hosts competitive dancers, singers and drummers in traditional regalia in late summer.

"Beautiful powwow there," he says.

The emcee from the Crow Creek Sioux Tribe in South Dakota typically is on the powwow circuit in the spring, joining thousands of others in colorful displays of culture and tradition that are at their essence meant to uplift people during difficult times. Amid the coronavirus pandemic, the gatherings are taking on a new form online.

"Sometimes we have this illusion that we're in total control, but it takes times like this of uncertainty and the challenges of the possibility of death to help us step back and reevaluate," said Rencountre, a co-organizer of the Facebook group Social Distance Powwow, which sprung up about a month ago as more states and tribes advised people to stay home.

Normally this time of year, a string of powwows hosted by Native American tribes and universities would be underway across the U.S., with tribal members honoring and showcasing their cultures -- and socializing, like family reunions. The powwows represent an evolution of songs and dances from when tribal traditions were forced underground during European settlement, Rencountre said.

The pandemic has canceled or postponed virtually all of them, including two of the largest in the U.S. -- the Denver March Powwow and the Gathering of Nations in Albuquerque, New Mexico, held in April.

Social Distance Powwow has helped fill the void, quickly growing to more than 125,000 members.

Members from different tribal nations post photos and videos of themselves and loved ones dancing, often in their regalia. The page has become a daily dose of prayer, songs, dances, well wishes, humor and happy birthdays.

In one video, Jordan Kor sits in his vehicle after a shift at a San Jose, California, hospital emergency department. An old Dakota war song he learned as a child that can be a rallying cry was bouncing around his head. He pulls off his mask and cap and sings, slapping a beat on the steering wheel.

"The biggest ones, social distance, keep working in whatever it is that brings you joy and helps you keep connected," said Kor, who is Tarahumara and Wapetonwon Lakota. "And wash your hands!"

The page also hosts a weekly, live powwow with the organizers -- Rencountre, Stephanie Hebert and Dan Simonds -- assembling a lineup of volunteer drum groups, singers and dancers for the hours-long event. This past weekend, Rencountre patched people in from across the country on the live feed.

A marketplace on the site lets vendors showcase their paintings, beadwork, jewelry, basketry and clothing.

An online powwow lacks some of the grandeur of being in person and seeing hundreds of performers fill an arena for the grand entry. It doesn't have a roll call of tribal royalty, singers and champion dancers. And it doesn't have categories for competitive dancing.

But it offers a way to keep people connected.

"When we dance, we are dancing for prayer and protection," said member Mable Moses of the Lumbee Tribe in North Carolina. "No matter what we do, may the Lord always protect us whether we're living or dying."

Moses learned to dance later in life and now competes in the "golden age" category at powwows. In a video of her Southern Traditional dance, she moves around a dogwood tree in her yard slowly but with high energy.

"Even though I'm 72, I'm like 29," she said.

Moses said the dance meant to calm people helps her cope with the fear surrounding the coronavirus, and the difficulty of staying away from others.

Tribal members also are posting elsewhere on social media, including youth hoop dancers from Pojoaque Pueblo in New Mexico.

For those viewing for the first time, Rencountre encourages an open mind.

"We ask them to break down the wall, to feel the dances, to feel the songs, as you're watching," he said. "Don't think about it from a technical point of view. Understand the creation of these songs and dances comes from a place of uplifting."

Leiha Peters grew up doing jingle dress dance meant for healing. The dress is characterized by cone-shaped jingles typically made from the lids of tobacco cans. Now, she does beadwork for her children's outfits and is a Seneca language teacher.

She recently posted a video of two of her children and their cousins doing smoke dance in the living room of her home on the Tonawanda Indian Reservation northeast of Buffalo, New York. Its origins are mixed as a dance for men to bless themselves before they went to battle and a way to clear smoke from traditional homes called longhouses, she said.

Her children grow up knowing the respect and the protocol that accompany the dance and its songs. They also have fun with it, sometimes competing in the family's backyard to win cups of Kool-Aid or bags of candy, Peters said.

"For them, dancing is medicine on its own. It's everything to us," she said. "It's energy, it's athleticism, it's staying healthy and living a better life with food choices. It's not easy doing what they do."