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Image: Carol Emarthle-Douglas. "Cultural Burdens", 2015.Mixed media. Photo courtesy of the artist.

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By Sarah Elisabeth Sawyer, 2015 Artists in Business Leadership Fellow

A cultural exchange, an art form that transcends borders — weaving. At the Ka Ulu Lauhala O Kona gathering of basket weavers, Carol Emarthle-Douglas (Northern Arapaho/Seminole) was taught how to gather material from the hala tree, strip off the thorns and prepare the leaves.

She worked alongside Native Hawaiian weavers and a weaver from Australia. They wove bracelets, bookmarks, coasters and a fan in Hawaiian style.

This was a new style for Carol, a traditional/contemporary basket weaver who uses an old method — coiled basketry. This technique called out to her twenty years ago when she took a coiled basketry class. It’s challenging and time consuming, but it’s in her. She hopes her hands hold out a long time to perform the work, to continue sharing her culture, and other cultures.

Her basket The Gathering of Nations shows women in regalia holding their finest baskets. When the award-winning piece was on display, Carol watched weavers pick out the basket from their region. One little Navajo lady in traditional dress bent down, checked it out, and was satisfied. Cultures exchanged.

On Carol’s Best of Show basket at the Santa Fe Indian Market, Cultural Burdens, each of the 11 women represented their tribe by carrying a traditional basket hanging both inside and outside the main basket.

Carol spent the summer in Santa Fe for the 2016 School for Advanced Research Ronald and Susan Dubin Fellowship. It was a time of research, learning from other artists, and using a new technique in her work: beading directly on a coiled basket.

Always, though, she brings it home. Carol shares her fine art by teaching students in the Indian Education Program, Native homeless in the Seattle area, and elders through the Northwest Indian College. They in turn share weaving with their communities.

A beautiful exchange.

Carol Emarthle-Douglas is a 2016 Cultural Capital Fellow and a 2011 Artists in Business Leadership Fellow.

By Sarah Elisabeth Sawyer, 2015 Artists in Business Leadership Fellow

A simple stop for lunch with his hula halau (dance school) led to Kaloku Holt’s (Native Hawaiian) most rewarding experience as an artist. It happened at a restaurant on the Big Island when, over the radio, one of Kaloku’s original songs came on. The happiness it brought those around him showed he impacted people in a positive way. He will never forget that moment, fueling his drive to share the aloha spirit through his creations.

He didn’t always have that outlook.

Music wasn’t an option in Kaloku’s upbringing — it was an obligation. A lifestyle he was born into. As a young boy in Hawai’i, he reluctantly sang in the church choir, took piano lessons, even played the ukulele to entertain his mother in place of his family’s forever-broken car radio.

But his outlook on music, this obligation, changed as he grew up. It became a passion, an art. When he started his first band after high school, Kaloku knew there was no turning back. He was dedicated and eager to share the aloha spirit.

Now, he draws people from different cultures, backgrounds and walks of life together in one experience. His music touches hearts and souls. Whether as a solo artist, duet, full band, or emcee and featured singer in a Polynesian review show in Japan, Kaloku takes pride in sharing traditions of his ancestral Hawaiian home.

Art was passed down to him, and he passes it on to others. Kaloku teaches hula and ukulele to children and adults, shares his success and nurtures the next generation, equipping them to carry on the traditions of their ancestors. This brings a satisfying joy to his heart.

Kaloku appreciates his humble beginnings and the privilege to draw from his Hawaiian ancestry. Combined with the contemporary, he creates his distinct sound and shares the aloha spirit with the world.

"Take Me Back" is a song I wrote dedicated to all who are from Hawaii and have moved away from their home and for those who have visited or lived in Hawaii and always have a piece of Hawaii in their hearts. This recording was done in Honolulu, HI and performed as the duet, The Brothers Kaloku and Keawe.  - Kaloku Holt

Kaloku Holt is a 2016 Artists in Business Leadership Fellow.

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2016 JENNIFER EASTON COMMUNITY SPIRIT AWARDS

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 8

“It’s an honor to do the work we do in our communities, and that’s enough. But to think that someone would recognize us this way, bring us together and celebrate us, this makes our hearts full.”  — Community Spirit Award honoree David R. Boxley, Tsimshian.

Our hearts are still full with deep gratitude following the 2016 Jennifer Easton Community Spirit Awards. We are grateful for the support we received — from artists, community members, volunteers, businesses, sponsors, donors large and small, media, and local government. Together, we brought the celebration home to Rapid City to shine a light on what is working, and what has always worked, in Indian Country: The culture bearers and cultural assets that have been inextricably linked with the well being and livelihoods of Native Peoples for centuries.

The celebration drew the largest audience since the Community Spirit Awards began in 2000. We united in an evening of Collective Spirit®, joining the positive momentum building in our community around intercultural understanding. Through the generosity of the National Endowment for the Arts, our honorees reached more than 600 young people and adults with school visits and community appearances on the days before and after the Community Spirit Awards. And, for the first time, the chairman of the NEA attended the celebration. We were honored by the presence throughout the weekend of Chairman Jane Chu as well Clifford Murphy, director of the NEA’s Folk and Traditional Arts.

Local sponsors, including the Rapid City Convention and Visitors Bureau and the Rapid City Journal, helped us reach thousands of people through comprehensive media coverage locally, regionally and nationally. We were honored by Rapid City Mayor Steve Allender’s executive proclamation of Community Spirit Day. And, we were thrilled to partner with the Black Hills Powwow, which recognized our culture bearers during the Grand Entry on Saturday afternoon and whose dancers opened our performance that evening.

Thanks to so much support, we were able to surpass our fundraising goals leading up to the Community Spirit Awards. Funding supports First Peoples Fund programs that give voice to culture bearers across the country, helping them pass on their skills and knowledge within their communities. Together with our community partners, we provide professional and leadership development opportunities for Native artists — fellowships, grants, and entrepreneurial trainings. Our work is concentrated close to home, including Rolling Rez Arts and Dances with Words™, which bring our programs to youth and adults across Pine Ridge Reservation.

We have heard from many of you that the evening moved and awakened you. When she founded First Peoples Fund 20 years ago, Jennifer Easton set out to spread just this understanding and deep appreciation for the diversity and splendor of Native art and culture.

If you were able to attend, we hope you left the Performing Arts Center of Rapid City filled with the Collective Spirit® that emanated from the stage, from the crowd, and from the artistry on display during the art auction and performance.

Shortly after he returned home from the Community Spirit Awards to his Northern Cheyenne community in Lame Deer, Montana, honoree Phillip Whiteman, Jr. said,

“First Peoples Fund has helped my transformation as a performing artist, as a community service servant. It’s not what you accumulate, it’s what you give back to the circle.”

We hope we can count on you to remain in First Peoples Fund’s circle. Donate, follow us online, sign up for our eSPIRIT newsletter. Walk with us as we continue to live our mission to honor and support Native artists.

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Photo by Steve Peterson/www.stevepeterson.photo

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Washington, DC – On October 7-8, 2016, Jane Chu, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), will travel to Rapid City, South Dakota, where she will visit organizations that are actively engaging, serving, and promoting the arts in the Native American community. Chairman Chu will visit the Crazy Horse Memorial, participate in a Repatriation Ceremony at Tusweca Tispaye Lakota-Dakota-Nakota Language Summit, attend the Black Hills Powwow, and give remarks at the First Peoples Fund Community Spirit Awards.

On October 7, Chairman Chu will visit the world’s largest sculpture, Crazy Horse Memorial at the Indian Museum of North America. This monument depicts Crazy Horse, an Oglala Lakota warrior, riding a horse and pointing into the distance. The memorial was commissioned by Henry Standing Bear, a Lakota elder, and sculpted by Korczak Ziolkowski.

On October 8, Chairman Chu will participate in a Nation-to-Nation repatriation ceremony of Oglala Lakota cultural audio artifacts. During this ceremony, Chairman Chu, on behalf of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, will transfer Oglala Lakota audio artifacts (recordings of traditional music) to the Oglala Sioux Tribe and Oglala Lakota College. Chairman Chu serves as an ex-officio Board Member of the American Folklife Center. The American Folklife Center is digitizing the audio at no cost to the NEA or to the Oglala Sioux Tribe. Oglala Sioux Tribe President John Steele; a representative from Oglala Lakota College; and, Mike Carlow, founder and director of Tusweca Tiospaye and community liaison for The White House Initiative on Youth and Education at Pine Ridge will also participate in the ceremony.

Next, Chairman Chu will attend the Black Hills Powwow. The Black Hills Powwow is a significant American Indian cultural gathering, hosting hundreds of dancers, singers, artisans, and several thousand spectators from across several U.S. states and Canadian provinces. The Grand Entry will celebrate this year’s First Peoples Fund Community Spirit Awards recipients.

That evening, Chairman Chu will give remarks at the First Peoples Fund Community Spirit Awards Ceremony.  Each year, First Peoples Fund honors and celebrates exceptional American Indian, Alaskan Native, and Native Hawaiian artists who embody the Collective Spirit—that which manifests self-awareness and a sense of responsibility to sustain the cultural fabric of a community. First Peoples Fund chooses its Community Spirit Award honorees for their commitment to sustaining the cultural values of Native people. The First Peoples Fund is an NEA grantee and their FY 2016 grant is supporting the Community Spirit Awards ceremony and Rolling Rez Arts workshops.

Media should contact Judith Kargbo at kargboj@arts.gov if they would like to attend any of the site visits or request an interview with Chairman Chu.

ABOUT THE NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS

Established by Congress in 1965, the NEA is the independent federal agency whose funding and support gives Americans the opportunity to participate in the arts, exercise their imaginations, and develop their creative capacities. Through partnerships with state arts agencies, local leaders, other federal agencies, and the philanthropic sector, the NEA supports arts learning, affirms and celebrates America’s rich and diverse cultural heritage, and extends its work to promote equal access to the arts in every community across America. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the National Endowment for the Arts and the agency is celebrating this milestone with events and activities through September 2016.

SCHEDULE

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 7, 2016

1:45PM- 2:45PM                  

Crazy Horse Memorial Site Visit

Location: 12151 Ave of the Chiefs, Crazy Horse, SD 57730

Participants: Jane Chu, chairman, National Endowment for the Arts

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2016

9:00AM- 11:30AM              

Repatriation Ceremony at Tusweca Tiospaye Lakota-Dakota-Nakota Language Summit

Location:Rushmore Plaza Civic Center, 444 Mt Rushmore Rd, Rapid City, SD 57701

Participants: Jane Chu, chairman, National Endowment for the ArtS

John Steele, president, Oglala Sioux

Representatives from Oglala Lakota College

Mike Carlow, founder and director, Tusweca Tiospaye, and Community   liaison for The White House Initiative on Youth and Education at Pine Ridge

Lori Pourier, president, First Peoples Fund

12:30PM –1:30PM                

Black Hills Powwow

Location: Rushmore Plaza Civic Center, 444 Mt Rushmore Rd, Rapid City, SD 57701

Participants: Jane Chu, chairman, National Endowment for the Arts

Lori Pourier, president, First Peoples Fund

2016 Jennifer Easton Community Spirit Award Honorees

7:00PM- 9:00PM                

First Peoples Fund Community Spirit Awards

Location: Performing Arts Center of Rapid City, 601 Columbus St, Rapid City, SD 57701

Participants:Jane Chu, chairman, National Endowment for the Arts

Lori Pourier, president, First Peoples Fund        

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By Sarah Elisabeth Sawyer, Artist in Business Leadership Fellow 2015

They’ve spent over 50 years of marriage, art and living cultural practices of the Cherokee people in the heart of the Great Smoky Mountains in western North Carolina. This is where Butch and Louise Goings(Eastern Band of Cherokee) connect with everything and stay balanced in life. It’s what they teach. It’s the way they live.

When Louise was growing up, she watched her mother weave baskets and snip off bits of white oak. In the room scented with walnut and bloodroot dyes and white oak splits, Louise picked up the bits and was mindful where she stepped. If she cracked one of her mother’s white oak splits, she got a scolding.

Bit by bit, Louise wove little bread baskets. Her mother stressed that when she grew up and married, it would be her place to make baskets to help pay the bills. That would be her job.

But that was a long way off. Louise bought sodas and candies with the money she earned in those early years.

Louise’s bread baskets sold along with her mother’s to the Qualla Arts and Crafts Mutual Inc. (known as “the co-op”). They must have thought the bread baskets were her mother’s, which was quite a compliment. Louise’s mother was selected by the National Art Council to travel abroad and demonstrate her basket making.

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Her mother taught Louise and her seven siblings the Cherokee ways. She took them into the woods and showed them how to harvest materials they needed to make baskets. Her mother always emphasized that if they found a straight white oak with no blemishes, cut it down, made splints, gathered the dye plants, dyed the splints, and wove the basket, they were basket makers. If they used splints someone else made, they were basket weavers. Louise is a basket maker.

And she did marry. Butch and Louise have shared love and laughter for 52 years.

Butch is a carver. He started in high school, and carves figurines in buckeye, cherry, butternut, holly and black walnut wood. Later, he added stone carving. He studies a stone for awhile, and eventually sees the shape of an animal, object or person, and he knows what that stone will be.

Butch joined the co-op in 1960. Through the years, he’s volunteered on the board of directors, serving 14 years as president. The artists go through a rigorous process to become members. The co-op now has over 300 Cherokee artists, and Butch still encourages others through the membership process.

He learned about the needs of Cherokee basket makers from Louise’s mother. He helps them gather materials from their original homeland to weave with.

Her whole life, Tonya Carroll has seen Butch and Louise make her community a better place, and she wanted to give back to them. Nothing measured up except nominating them for the First Peoples Fund Community Spirit Award. When Tonya thinks of people who keep their community spirit alive, Butch and Louise are the ones that come to mind.

At stomp dances, Louise is cook, shell shaker, and Wild Potato clan mother. Butch keeps the grounds clean and ready for the next stomp. They donate art for local fundraisers. They teach at the schools and for the Cultural Summer Sessions. In these things, they help their people heal.

Too often, Butch and Louise see a focus on the tragic aspects of their history, but those represent only a small part. When the children ask about past injustices, prejudices and pains, Butch and Louise teach the positive that has come from their Cherokee roots. The Cherokee people are strong, intelligent and resilient.

This is what they passed on to their son and grandchildren, who are now weavers, carvers and weapon makers. Butch and Louise themselves continue to learn more about the artwork, history, culture and language. They believe you never stop learning and everyone is a teacher.

They ask nothing in return. They are happy just knowing their culture will live on.

Butch and Louise Goings are 2016 Community Spirit Award Honorees. Join us in celebrating Butch and Louise and the other honorees on October 8, 2016.

By Sarah Elisabeth Sawyer, Artist in Business Leadership Fellow 2015

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The January day is quiet, the mood somber, the air cold as a mountain stream. A hundred Native youth sit on the patches of grass in the snow and listen to the stories. When a time of silence comes, they listen for the cries of women and children who were shot in this place. Children like them, with their Cheyenne blood. Their ancestors. The tears come and bring healing.

When Phillip Whiteman Jr. (Northern Cheyenne) and Lynette Two Bulls (Oglala Lakota) initiated the Fort Robinson Outbreak Spiritual Run, it was not to traumatize the youth. It was to bring out the hurt and let it go, prepare to return home. The true interpretation of Lynette’s name is Woman who will lead and clear the way for the people. Philip is a traditional chief of the Northern Cheyenne Nation and lives on land his ancestors died for. The run honors the ancestors by remembering their sacrifices.

For two days, the youth are prepared for the 400-mile relay-style run. Now in its 20th year, this run has helped hundreds of youth reconnect with their heritage, culture and themselves. One of these youths was Cinnamon Spear. The run was one of the most important events in her unstable early life at home, and she continues to be involved with the run. She tells the youth, open your heart to the stories, the songs, the language. If you do, it will change your life. Her relationship with her mentors Phillip and Lynette has grown through the years. To Cinnamon, they are living representations of what the First Peoples Fund Community Spirit Award is designed to honor, and led her to nominate them for the award.

Inside replicated barracks at the historical Fort Robinson site in Nebraska, the youth anticipate the moment when the door will open. At 10:30 p.m. — in 1879 — their ancestors waited with a different yet same anticipation. The youth hug one another and say, we are going home.

The ancestors knew death likely waited on the other side of the door. Yet they still broke out. They ran from the barracks amidst rifle fire. Some got away. Most were killed.

At 10:30 p.m., these youth break out, jostling through the doorway, with the sounds of victory — clapping, shouting. The journey begins. They run.

The ancestors ran until they reached Antelope Creek, 22 miles northwest of the fort. Here, most were slaughtered. This is where the youth are brought before the run to hear and to heal.

The ancestors who escaped continued the run — a total of 400 miles — to their home.

For days, the youth run from sunrise until deep in the night through the Sandhills of Nebraska, the sacred Black Hills of South Dakota, and the mountains of Montana. They are going home.

The relay runners are followed by a caravan of buses and vans carrying chaperones, elders, and leaders of the event, keeping everyone safe. The youth run through snow, sunshine, the dark of night. The male runner holds the Eagle Staff and the female runner carries the Cheyenne Nation flag.

Today they are not running from gunfire. They run for the future.

For Phillip and Lynette, this is a part of their work, not only as artists but their lives. There is no separation between life and art, whether they are storytelling, teaching culture, singing songs, being spiritual and wellness advisers, dancing the grass dance, fancy shawl and jingle dress, or showing compassion to relatives. These things are art.

The youth run on and say, almost there. Almost home.

They arrive on the Northern Cheyenne reservation and come into Ashland, Montana, to the cheers, horn honking, and fist pumping of their families and friends. At 10:30 p.m.

This run is just one of the cultural preservation practices Phillip and Lynette have under their organizations, Medicine Wheel Model LLC (a right-brain, circular, holistic wellness model); Medicine Wheel Model—Beyond Horsemanship (a healing with horses program); and Yellow Bird (a grass-roots, nonprofit organization).

The Fort Robinson Spiritual Outbreak Run concludes with a time at the graveyard of the ancestors, the ones who made the original run home. A song, prayer, hugs, tears and a moment of silence, a final remembrance.

They are home.

Phillip Whiteman Jr. and Lynette Two Bulls are 2016 Community Spirit Award Honorees. Join us in celebrating Phillip and Lynette and the other honorees on October 8, 2016.

By Sarah Elisabeth Sawyer, Artist in Business Leadership Fellow 2015

A Dances with Words poet ended the “I Too Am American” session with his poem “You Call Me Indian.” At the Brave New Voices (BNV) competition in Washington, D.C., fingers snapped in approval during his performance, where Marcus Ruff (17, Oglala Lakota) alone represented North American Indigenous people. The audience was amazed at how different the Native voices and narratives were, yet still paralleled their own challenges and struggles. These bold young people from the Pine Ridge Reservation were valued. Their voices heard.

Lori Pourier (Oglala/Mnicoujou Lakota), president of First Peoples Fund, joined the Dances with Words (DWW) poets at the opening ceremony for the BNV competition at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Over the next few days, DWW competed with teams from around the country and the world, including Des Moines, Baltimore, Miami, and London.

The experience was unbelievable for Senri White (16, Oglala Lakota). The music, the intensity. The poems gave her goose bumps. The Baltimore team — her favorite — spit a poem about loss that stuck with her, the only poem that made her cry.

The Baltimore team was also Marcus Ruff’s favorite. He felt the energy within the language and imagery as the poets put their hearts and souls into their performances.

Ohitika Locke (17, Hunkpapa Lakota) met amazing people and loved the encouraging words the BNV participants gave. He was nervous, but thanks to the support, performed his poem well.

Once he started delivering his poem, Cetan Ducheneaux (16, Cheyenne River Lakota) felt at home once again. The sights, the spoken words, the people. Memorable.

The youngest poet, Sina Sitting Up (13, Oglala Lakota), shared her sweet heart with the team and leaders throughout their journey.

But for the DWW team, this wasn’t only a trip for an international poetry competition. They explored the nation’s capital for a week. It started with a VIP tour of the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI). They gathered in front of a collage of historical photos with the words We never gave up. This theme found its way into their poems at the BNV workshops and open mic sessions. They presented the NMAI with a Cheyenne River flag, a flag the museum didn’t have.

The DWW team, their leader and mentors — Brandie Macdonald (Chickasaw/Choctaw), Dawn (Denise) Moves Camp (Oglala Lakota), and Josh Del Colle — went to the NMAI Cultural Resources Center to examine collections and touch their history. Bustles, moccasin patterns. Treaties. They were grounded in the connection with their ancestors.

They visited the National Congress of American Indians at the Embassy of Tribal Nations. This broadened their understanding of nonprofits’ work to create and support movements in Indian country, and internship opportunities for young people. The Pine Ridge youth saw it as their embassy, comprehending what sovereignty means for Indian nations.

Food broadened the youths’ experience in cultural diversity. They embraced first-time experiences at an Ethiopian restaurant and discovered the blend of food and feeding their art at Busboys and Poets.

For downtime, the team relaxed on the grass-lined sidewalk of Washington Circle and practiced slam poetry with NMAI partner Keevin Lewis (Navajo). Keevin spit a poem for the first time.

Lunch at the NMAI opened dialogue with the executive director of the White House Initiative on American Indian and Alaska Native Education, Bill Mendoza (Oglala-Sicangu Lakota), about education in Indian country. The youth also spoke with the NMAI education department about ways to bring Dances with Words poetry to the NMAI.

The young poets returned to Pine Ridge, but their lives, families and communities won’t be the same. They experienced the nation’s capital with a brave community of poets. They’ve been transformed by the Dances with Words program, and are now transforming their world.

By Sarah Elisabeth Sawyer, Artist in Business Leadership Fellow 2015

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The class gathers and sits on mats to prepare for a lauhala weaving class. “Lauhala” simply means “leaf from a hala tree.” But this isn’t simply a craft class. There is protocol, an ancient way to approach this art that was taught to Duncan Ka’ohu Seto (Native Hawaiian) by master weavers of his time. Now Ka’ohu is a master weaver, and it is his turn to be the kumu, the teacher.

Ka’ohu’s students share stories while they work, and he joins in, though always watching carefully. When he sees a mistake made, he is the kumu. He corrects the error with humor and understanding. They laugh. There is a balance between firm and fun, because when Ka’ohu takes on students, he is responsible for them. He reminds them that it’s their turn. It’s their time. They stand on his shoulders.

Beyond the chants, protocols, and stories, the harvesting itself should be done correctly, as well as caring for Hawaiian resources. Ka’ohu wants the students to not only weave but reconnect with the legacy of their ancestors. This strengthens his community when they choose lauhala to express themselves as Native Hawaiians.

Elizabeth Ka’iulani In Takamori counts herself among the next generation of artists that Ka’ohu’s generation is building bridges for. She has known him as a Maoli Arts Month artist, Wailoa Art Gallery curator, teacher, and First Peoples Fund co-trainer. She knows him as a mentor, a quiet, humble giant with deeply rooted ancestral knowledge which is at the heart of why Elizabeth nominated Ka’ohu for the First Peoples Fund Community Spirit Award.

Only a generation ago — the generation of Ka’ohu’s grandmothers — lauhala was a part of Hawaiian households. Families gathered and went through the production process together to make floor mats or baskets. Today, families do not make time for this process. Ka’ohu wants to make the practice accessible for his communities.

Lauhala plays an important role in another part of his life’s work — repatriation, bringing home his ancestors’ bones that have been scattered around the world. Ka’ohu is a member of a Native Hawaiian organization called Hui Mālama I Nā Kūpuna O Hawai’i Nei. They have repatriated from institutions in the United States, Australia, Canada, Sweden, Switzerland, Scotland and the United Kingdom.

There was a great deal of discussion on the proper way to bring bones home with dignity. It was decided to wrap the bones and put them in lauhala baskets. Hala means to “pass on or die.” Lauhala baskets were appropriate for the task. Ka’ohu has made numerous burial baskets through the years.

Ka’ohu began as a student 30 years ago. Now he is a teacher, a kumu who is intimately familiar with Hawaiian styles and philosophies. He has incorporated it into his life and way of teaching his students. He wants them to have a clear path to follow, for them to become deeply rooted in ancestral knowledge. In this way, Hawaiians will always have lauhala mats to sit on while weaving.

Duncan Ka'ohu Seto is a 2016 Community Spirit Award Honoree. Join us in celebrating Duncan and the other honorees on October 8, 2016.

By Sarah Elisabeth Sawyer, Artist in Business Leadership Fellow 2015

Jennie Wheeler (Tlingit) gathers a family at the local church in her Native fishing village of Yakutat, Alaska, and teaches them to create their dance dresses, boots, and moccasins for the upcoming memorial potlatch. They talk and support one another. Sewing is therapeutic in these times when a love one has passed. That is why Jennie teaches the family to make the regalia long used by the Tlingit people. Memorial potlatches are still a vital part of her community and create an environment for healing.

She helps people grieve.

For over 30 years, art has been Jennie’s way of life. Among the Tlingit, one can’t separate art from living. They harvest the natural material God gave them and teach the younger generation to do the same. Part of daily living includes hunting, fishing, picking berries and gathering plants for medicines and teas. When the young people live the art — their way of life — there’s no place for the troubles that plague so many youth because of alcohol and drug abuse. Jennie was taught that you have to have good thoughts when you work.

Mary Goddard, a full-time Alaskan Native artist, witnessed first hand Jennie’s generosity and passion for her culture and community. Mary was privileged to receive her mother’s diligent teachings growing up, and still watches Jennie reach out to help others. The First Peoples Fund Community Spirit Award Mary nominated her mother for gave Jennie acknowledgement and help to continue teaching others.

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Most of Jennie’s work with deer and moose hides, seal skin, sea otter, furs, beads, spruce roots and grass involve making traditional pieces, especially for ceremonial and memorial potlatches. But Jennie also makes purses and cell phone cases. Mixing traditional and contemporary helps bridge the gap between the elders and youth of her community.

Youth are not the only ones with the desire and need to learn the art and way of life. Harvesting, sewing and weaving were discouraged during the boarding school years, so Tlingit elders today want to learn these traditional ways. Elders experienced resistance in the past from the clergy, but the church Jennie attends encourages the Native way of life. That is one reason she holds classes in the church. The sewing, the weaving, the place — all tools for healing. The elders are accepted and celebrated for who they are.

Preparations are complete for the next memorial potlatch. The family continues the healing process.

As Jennie’s parents taught her, “Do the best you can, then pass it on.”

Jennie Wheeler is a 2016 Community Spirit Award Honoree. Join us in celebrating Jennie and the other honorees on October 8, 2016.

By Sarah Elisabeth Sawyer, Artist in Business Leadership Fellow 2015  

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The grade school is filled with Native and non-Native students alike. Wrapped around an acoustic guitar with an eagle feather dangling from it, Jack Wallace Gladstone (Blackfeet Indian Nation of Montana) begins with a tale before singing a song that tells a story. As Montana’s Troubadour, he is an interpreter for understanding where his people have been, where they are, and where they are going. These songs provide context and history, and they instill a pride in Native students while developing a sense of appreciation for all. Because at the human core, everyone is indigenous. The human race.

In Jack’s song “The Builder,” he reminds students that the dance of life is the actions they take and the relationships they cultivate. It is for his long-standing dedication to the students that science teacher Patti Rae Bartlett nominated Jack for the First Peoples Fund Community Spirit Award. She has witnessed him work in half the school districts in Montana. A rich source of knowledge, he has gone beyond expectations in the 20-plus years Patti has known him, his music, and his storytelling. She sees the impact he's had on students that hold him in high regard.

Through stories and songs, he's taught students that they must commit to something greater than themselves. The only way to realize this is to be drug and alcohol free. Jack learned this lesson from someone early in his life.

His father, a World War II Navy veteran, was a heavy drinker. He wasn’t there for Jack. But his dad overcame his addiction, and many years later, he joined Jack on road tours. For ten years, he paid back — with interest — those lost years in Jack’s young life. Jack learned to appreciate his father from the standpoint of a brother. A dad. A friend. And a road manager. They did a lot of miles together.

It is through music, this language of the heart, that bridges are built, cultures are linked, lives are healed. In the schools, Jack teaches students through poetic lyrics that there is strength in unity. A single arrow snaps easily, but when bundled with the others, it can’t easily be broken.

Because of these students, Jack’s songs, his story, has a shot at immortality. Good art can live within the imagination of another generation. Oratory moves culture, moves through time and history and impacts the ideals and tells the story.

Jack’s story is now their story.

Jack Wallace Gladstone is a 2016 Community Spirit Award Honoree. Join us in celebrating Jack and the other honorees on October 8, 2016.  

By Sarah Elisabeth Sawyer, Artist in Business Leadership Fellow 2015

The 19th Annual Brave New Voices International Youth Poetry Slam Festival in Washington, D.C., is just around the corner for five courageous young poets from the Pine Ridge Reservation community. The First Peoples Fund-supported culture program — Dances with Words — has teamed Cetan Ducheneaux (16, Cheyenne River Lakota), Marcus Ruff (17, Oglala Lakota), Ohitika Locke (17, Hunkpapa Lakota), Senri White (16, Oglala Lakota), and Sina Sitting Up (13, Oglala Lakota) to represent Native youth at the high-energy, Olympic-style Brave New Voices poetry competition. Poets are “judged” by a panel of 5 judges based on the quality of the writing, the content of the piece, and the performance. This platform encourages youth to critically and creatively analyze their worlds, strive for excellence, and share their voices.

Youth Speaks — the organization behind Brave New Voices — fills a need for creative approaches to literary arts education and literacy development. Youth Speaks believes it’s crucial to provide spaces where youth can undergo a process of personal growth and transformation in a program that enriches their educational, professional, leadership and artistic skills.

This goal reverberates in Dances with Words. Within the program, mentors address the modern realities of Native youth navigating their lives in their communities on Pine Ridge.

Young people on the reservation don’t always have the opportunity to honestly share the things they want to say and may never feel it’s their time to say it. In Dances with Words, they are speaking, they are writing, they are sharing their everyday lives and how they relate to everyone around them. At the meetings, they talk about poetry or what is going on at the rez. They’ve found a part of themselves that has always been there. The Dances with Words youth on the Brave New Voices team have undergone transformations as individuals and as a family. They are change-makers.

“Son, I’ll pay you $20 to try out this poetry session.” Ever since Cetan Ducheneaux’s mom bribed him to attend the Dances with Words program, he’s loved poetry and the group. Three years later, he’s preparing for his third Brave New Voices competition.

The Dances with Words program impacted Cetan’s life by letting him express his emotions how he wanted, adding to his personal growth. For the Brave New Voices competition, he’s presenting a poem about alcoholism on the reservation. It’s an issue he sees every day, and he wants those with this problem to be helped.

The Brave New Voices team poem addresses issues Native people face in the U.S. today, including a portion on missing and murdered indigenous women. The second group poem is about the body shaming within the Korean-pop (k-pop) industry and how it’s also embedded within American culture.

The youth have studied select writings and documents, including Native American treaties with the U.S. government. They are challenged to think, to have an opinion. To share that opinion with the world in a bold way. To stand up and tell their story.

Nervous? Excited? The Dances with Words team is a blend of both as they prepare for the Brave New Voices competition at the nation’s capital in July, where they will join some of the most outstanding and outspoken youth poets from around the world.

These Native youth will be ready to share their voices.

Image: Marcus Ruff (17, Oglala Lakota) at the 2015 Atlanta Brave New Voices competition. Photo by FPF Staff.

In her studio this day, Valerie Veis (Montana Little Shell Band of Chippewa Cree) is able to choose what she will take up: a brush to paint with or reeds to weave. She chooses weaving. But Valerie no longer views this art the same way since her life-changing trip to Suitland, Maryland. There, she found a missing piece of herself.

Valerie begins weaving. Each basket begins with the base, the most important part of the basket design. Without a solid foundation, the basket won’t be stable. It won’t become strong.

The foundation of Valerie’s business was woven with the help of First Peoples Fund’s Artist in Business Leadership Program (2015 and 2016), along with an additional research grant in collaboration with the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI), Smithsonian Institution. With the research grant, Valerie was able to study Chippewa/Ojibwa basketry and beadwork, and also to review the extensive document archives of the Cultural Resource Center in Suitland. With this, her life was changed.

Valerie is a nontraditional basket weaver and painter, but her soul was touched so deeply by her Native roots, she couldn’t hold back tears during her art presentation to the NMAI staff. Someday, Valerie will become a traditional basket weaver.

Birch bark baskets meld into her work now, as will porcupine quills and traditional beaded designs. Her art is turning in a new direction, though still stable on its woven foundation.

In Valerie’s studio, she does her triple weave, working with round reed rattan. She cuts her own willow, dogwood and birch for basket handles. Her work is a reflection of the world around her on the Rocky Mountain Front in Montana. Each piece is a reflection of her, of her Native heritage, of her present and now of her future.

Valerie is whole and stable. She creates on a strongly woven foundation.

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