2009 Cultural Capital

Mike One Star, Sr.

Sicangu Lakota
Archery and Bowyer

Project Description:

Lakota artist, Mike One Star, Sr., has practiced the art of Lakota archery for over forty years. Knowing that today’s youth still possess their ancestral ability to master the bow and arrow, Mike provides both archery and bowmaking classes. Mike successfully completed 8 archery workshops and demonstrations in South Dakota during his Cultural Capital Fellowship year with First Peoples Fund. The workshops alone drew in over 200 youth. As a result, Mike has noticed a drop in gang involvement and drug use for the youth that participate in his workshops.

Richard Horn

Blackfeet
Traditional Blackfeet Art

Project Description:

Richard Horn, Blackfeet, uses all natural materials to create a wide variety of traditional game pieces, pipestone work, parfleche work, carvings, bow making, rattles and dance regalia. Richard has taught these art forms in classes in various Blackfeet schools. Part of Richard’s project was to create a 12x12 free standing storage shed for his materials and a working space. His community was so supportive of his grant project that as a result he was able to construct a 16x16 cement floor building, with their donation of over $7,000 of in-kind services. He is now in a position to teach small groups intricate craft work in his own space.

Anna Brown Ehlers

Tlingit
Chilkat Weaver

Project Description:

Anna Brown Ehlers, Chilkat weaver from Alaska, former Community Spirit Award and Artist in Business Leadership artist, created a 9x7 Chilkat weaving. This is four times larger than a traditional blanket and required over 1,100 linear feet of Chilkat warp. Chilkat weaving is a dying art form. Anna included the help of 19 tribal members in the making of this blanket. She plans to unveil it in Klukwan and then Juneau. As a result of this Cultural Capital grant, she was awarded $12,000 from the Rasmusan Foundation to continue to study and work in Chilkat weavings.

Ron Paquin

Saulte Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa
Birch Bark Canoes and Baskets

Project Description:

Ron Paquin, Saulte Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa, a birch bark canoe maker from Michigan, created a DVD along with a written guide on how to not only make a canoe but how to gather the materials. The booklet includes Ron’s stories of canoe making, a language dictionary relating to canoe making and a few activities for kids. Initially 200 copies are being distributed free to 12 tribes in Michigan; the remaining will be sold to help support his art business.

Sadie Buck

Tonawanda Seneca
Singer/Performer

Project Description:

Sadie comes back to First Peoples Fund after being honored through the Community Spirit Awards in 2007 to do research on Tonawanda social dances. Recently, the tribe’s administration buildings burned to the ground. The Tribe lost everything, including the school and all of its materials. Sadie is committed to recreating curriculum materials for the school, as they have little to nothing to work with in terms of curriculum and basic supplies.

Chloe French

Tlingit
Weaver

Project Description:

Chloe will collaborated with master weavers who have made the ravenstail robes, learning the intricacies of techniques necessary for weaving sea otter pelt. She will also learn the ancient designs and stories connected to these robes. In Alaska, she will worked as an apprentice to Marie Laws, possibly the only Native woman in the last 100 years who’s woven a sea otter robe. She shares what she has learned with a group of women who currently meet weekly at her home where she teaches weaving, button robe making and beading. With the purchase of a new Spinning Wheel, Chloe’s finished robe will travel with her to Russia to compare and study the largest collections of sea otter robes in the world.

Linley Logan

Onondowaga Seneca
Ceremonial Music Archivist

Project Description:

Linley, a multi-media contemporary artist, was bestowed the title as a faithkeeper for the deer clan by the Tonawanda Longhouse clanmothers over fifteen years ago. Faithkeepers are responsible for ensuring that their ceremonies are fulfilled and their traditional knowledge is maintained in passing it on to their next generations. He has researched, documented and archived seven collections of their ceremonial music in order to strengthen specific ceremonial and medicine society knowledge. He is currently assisting Iroquios in the Pacific Northwest in learning songs, dances, and language. Linley used his grant to now share the digital recording with the Life Ways Learning school, which is the Chief’s Council and longhouse supported formal program effort to teach their children the language and Longhouse traditional way of life.

Nora Noranjo Morse

Tewa of Santa Clara Pueblo
Installation Art

Project Description:

Nora worked hand-in-hand with her son, Zakary Naranjo-Morse, and several young filmmakers to direct and produce a 25 minute film, “Common Ground”, which profiles the lives of four Native youth from across the country. This documentary is a ground-breaking piece that brings to light relevant and pressing issues facing Native youth today and is grounded by the youth’s invaluable insights into conflict resolution. The Cultural Capital Fellowship allowed these filmmakers to tour the southwest with this film, engaging local native youth in profound, yet relevant dialogue on issues unique to today’s youth.

David Shorey

Ojibwe
Playwright

Project Description:

David, a playwright and director, has taught drama on the Navajo Nation for over twenty years and is the founder and head of the Native American Theatre Project at the Rough Rock Demonstration School in Rough Rock Arizona (which has be long recognized for its focus on cultural identification and Native language learning.

David’s drama students have performed across the United States and Europe in the Edin burgh Fringe Festival in Scotland, the world’s largest theatre festival. David put on a reservation wide fine arts program involving four Navajo Nation reservation schools in performance poetry, theatrical arts, Native dance, film and Native music. The project will help sustain Native language, culture and traditions, bringing together a reservation-wide surge of empowerment, creativity, and a renewed sense of traditional identity for Native youth.

Edward Wemytewa

Zuni
Traditional Storyteller, Visual Artist

Project Description:

Edward produced a storytelling script to be performed by a multi-generational theater group and to introduced young adults into the Idiwanan An Chawe Storytelling Theater work and language revitalization. This new script is a sequel to a previous story entitle “Splitting of the Tribe” and will address the ancient question, “What happened to the rest of the Zuni Tribe that went south to ‘The Place of Forever Summer” (Mexico) in ancient time?’ Works in progress is a script and a series of oil paintings to provide support in telling the story.