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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.  

Drum in hand, Sondra Simone Segundo (Haida) begins movement at the front of the classroom. The eager students are ready to learn a strict art form to create illustrations, as her people have done for thousands of years. Sondra sings in her Native language — songs passed down to her, and songs she has written for this and the next generation. She tells the students where she comes from: the Double Fin Killer Whale Crest, Raven Clan, and Brown Bear House.

Drum. Movement. Illustrations. Songs. Words. They all tell Sondra’s story.

These elements blend in her books. Killer Whale Eyes is a story from an inherited gift of imagination, but also from a tale passed down through 500 years of family history. As a contemporary Native, Sondra creates her own stories from ones passed down to her. In this way, she keeps the ancient way of storytelling alive. New songs, new stories. An old tradition.

With the support of First Peoples Fund, Sondra published another book, Northwest Coast Native: Formline Art Made Easy, to teach the art form of her Haida people. Formline is a highly intelligent system of interlocking shapes that create lines to define a subject, such as raven, bear, wolf. Northwest Coast Native people have practiced formline art for over 3,000 years to design, carve, paint.

This form is seen in works closest to Sondra’s heart, and in her illustrated books. Lovebirds: The Story of Raven and Eagle is based on her Haida grandparents’ lives. After 53 years of marriage, they passed on the same day in July 2000 of natural causes.

In the classroom, Sondra puts aside the drum to work with the students as they draw their first Haida designs. Her step-by-step teaching process makes every child feel successful and proud of his or her work.

Jeanne Jimenez, Haida elder and language specialist, calls Sondra “galaga,” a Haida word meaning “does a lot of good things.” And that is Sondra’s story.

“Haw’aa kuníisiis.

Thank you ancestors.

Díi kíl daguyáagang.

My voice is strong.

Hl t’asdla dagwçíihlda íitl’aa ñugíins.

I will work hard and finish our songs.”

~ Sondra Simone Segundo

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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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.

By Sarah Elisabeth Sawyer, Artist in Business Leadership Fellow 2015

David A. Boxley (Alaskan Tsimshian) studies the old pieces. He listens to the passionate voices of the old masters. Create us again. Use us again. Celebrate us again.

He emulates these old masters as he carves, designs, sings and dances for the preservation of their ancestral teachings and cultural practices. He learned the language of his people from his grandfather who raised him. As a father to his own children, David tries hard to follow his grandfather’s example.

He works with his sons in the art of the masters, in celebrating their life-ways through the performance group he founded, Git Hoan Dancers (People of the Salmon). David writes songs in his Native language, and the group creates their own performance props — carved masks, rattles and paddles. Young people bring these pieces to life through dance. They have performed throughout the United States, Canada and Europe, sharing the rich culture of the Tsimshian.

David carves in the old Tsimshian style. The totem poles he’s created are found at the National Museum of the American Indian, Walt Disney World, and Knott's Berry Farm, among other places. There are more than a dozen of his poles in his home village, the place where revitalization of culture begins. David’s pieces — bentwood boxes, rattles, masks, prints and panels — are in collections of the king and queen of Sweden, the emperor of Japan, the president of West Germany, the mayor of Chongging (China), and Microsoft. The House Front (The Man Who Held Up the Earth) at the Sealaska Heritage Institute in Juneau, Alaska, is a major permanent exhibit that works to educate and share the Tsimshian culture.

Most of all, David lives the culture. Young people follow along. They celebrate together. He teaches youth to emulate the masters as he has done. To not fear putting their work in galleries, shows, exhibitions, and on the Internet. They should not be afraid to create, use, and celebrate.

David A. Boxley is a 2013 & 2016 Cultural Capital Fellow and a 2012 Community Spirit AwardHonoree. Read more about his FPF journey here.

At the National Museum of the American Indian, Karis Jackson (Crow/Hidatsa/Arikara) browses the collections as part of a Crow delegation for the Recovering Voices program. The pieces created by her ancestors come alive with color and designs. She studies the traditional ways of their work. Then it happens — her heart and soul are touched when she has a vision for her next piece.

Some call it art. Karis calls it a labor of love.

At 10 years old, Karis sat at the kitchen table with her grandmother, who cut baby moccasins from buckskin. Her grandmother let Karis pick out the beads she wanted, and then they worked side-by-side. Her grandmother would lean over and answer questions, give Karis instruction or a quiet, “Yes, you do it like that.” Her grandmother taught for hours. Not only beading, but life lessons through stories.

Her grandmother is the one Karis talks to each day for the guidance she needs in beading. Her grandmother cautions Karis not to overdo her designs, but she also gives Karis permission to follow her own inspiration.

Though Karis’ style is more contemporary, she puts things together in traditional ways. She brings her own artistry to it. Each piece is one of a kind.

Some call it art. Karis’ grandmother doesn’t call herself an artist.

Karis never considered herself an artist either, yet she’s learned through First Peoples Fund of the opportunity to provide financially for her family as her beadwork is recognized as art. At the Heard Museum Guild Indian Fair and Market, two of her pieces took home first-place division awards.

Karis still beads for family, too. Her two young daughters dance, and she makes their regalia. Her oldest has expressed interest in beading. They might sit down this summer and work on something side-by-side.

Some call it art. Perhaps it can be called an art of love.

By Lori Pourier, President of First Peoples Fund

When Pat Courtney Gold (Wasco/Wishram) nominated Bud Lane III (Siletz) for the Community Spirit Award in 2009, she described him as a person who “honors the Creator in many ways; the medicine plants, basketry plants, the Siletz people and for all life.” Pat, herself an internationally known fiber artist, basket weaver and 2004 CSA honoree, understands the true meaning of community spirit. She understood that Bud — who was selected for the CSA and later became a member of the FPF board of directors — embodies that true meaning.

During a recent board meeting, we visited the Siletz Tribe on the Oregon coast, and First Peoples Fund staff and board members learned first-hand what drives Bud, in his role as a father, culture bearer, language teacher and tribal leader. Bud began our day by grounding us in prayer in the Siletz language. He surrounded us with a table full of beautiful baskets he had woven. In addition to spending the past 30 years restoring Siletz basketry, regalia and dances, Bud is committed to teaching Siletz language. The depth of his commitment to teaching other tribal members quickly became apparent when we learned he would be driving four hours round-trip to teach language lessons after our first full day of meeting.

Bud also shared a slideshow demonstrating the history of the Siletz tribe and 50 other tribes who by 1854 were forced to relocate along the Oregon coast and near present day Lincoln City. In that slideshow, we saw the roots of Bud’s own tenacity. We learned of the old people who fought to hold on to their ways after the signing of The Rogue River Treaty of 1862. The treaty guaranteed the tribes nearly 1 million acres of uninhabited timberland and coastal shoreline. Just 20 years later, most of the land would be taken illegally, first by executive order then by an act of Congress. The Dawes Act of 1887 would further divide remaining tribal land into individual allotments. By 1954 the Siletz tribe was terminated, meaning they lost their federal recognition, eliminating any trust responsibility held by the United States government. The Siletz tribe would not regain federal recognition until 1977 following a long struggle.  The Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians was only restored 3,600 acres of their original treaty lands. Hopeful Bud said, “It’s not 1 million, but it’s a start.”  

Following our board meeting, we accompanied Bud to the community center where their tribal archives hold more than 300 baskets and other ancestral items that found their way home. “To see our people making and proudly wearing ceremonial caps and work caps, carrying our children and grandchildren in our baby baskets, wearing bark capes and dresses, using traditional mats, and cooking and eating from baskets to me is preserving the very core of our collective tribal existence,” Bud said.  

As Bud held each basket with pride, I reflected on Pat Courtney Gold’s words, “He honors the Creator in so many ways.”  

Our day ended in the traditionally built dance house around a fire listening to Bud drum and sing the songs of the Siletz tribal ancestors. All of us left that day renewed in the collective spirit. As we parted ways Bud may not have known it but he left an unforgettable impression on each of us. And, as our family of Community Spirit honorees grows (nearly 100 this year) we are reminded of our responsibility to uphold our values and stay on our path. We at First Peoples Fund are fully committed to our three-year strategic directions: Investing in our own Collective Spirit® to adapt and grow for our future generations.

On a dark stage, flood waters are projected over Rosy Simas Guthrie (Seneca) and over her simple white prairie dress, a dress like her grandmother wore in boarding school. The floods meet a crinkled screen behind Rosy. Her shadow moves with it. She dances in her grandmother’s time and now. She moves with the images, the sensations, the memories. Voices echo Seneca words. Quadraphonic sounds of the land and water recorded in the area around the New York reservation fill the air.

Her grandmother’s letters are read. They are filled with humor, wisdom, and how the grandmother committed to hold on to her identity as a Seneca woman.

Every sound, every sight, every movement in We Wait in Darkness is healing.

Emotion is heavy beneath Rosy’s skin, but it never overtakes her. She is passionate in her approach to bring her people and her history together through dance. She transforms small movements or complete stillness into a captivating story.

This dance is a personal artwork of loss, family, perseverance and home. Rosy spent time researching more about Seneca culture and its matrilineal society, and unraveled her grandmother’s heartbreaking story. Rosy traveled to the New York reservation to speak with elders, to trace generational scars, to find what she needed to bring back for healing.

Rosy’s work is not to educate non-Natives about Native culture. It is to encourage the audience — no matter their race — to see Native people in a contemporary light and as a vital part of 21st century American art. Her choreographies express cultural and historical truths.

Dance is a way to translate Rosy’s stories into a form that draws out the memories deep inside everyone. It goes beyond watching a performance. The audience experiences a story, both Rosy’s and their own.

Rosy brings out a map of Seneca lands. She tears it up and passes the pieces around. It’s time to heal.

David Bernie (Yankton Sioux — Ihanktonwan Dakota) sits quietly in the noisy coffee shop while motion flows around him — the rhythm of the patrons, the sounds of good hip hop, the sights of life being lived by everyday people. This is part of his inspiration, the chance to watch and feel how he can impact the world with his art. Art comes from personal experiences and the collective lives of those in his community.

David ventures from the independent coffee shop, out to find the creative space he needs. Out in the wilds of the streets, he searches for stories behind the imagery. Story is what connects people to David as the artist.

On the streets, in his backyard or in the studio, David finds inspiration that breeds his thoughts. From thoughts spring the visuals he brings to life.

A while back, David met a man out of gas in the parking lot of a stale-blue store. David himself was broke down. The man entertained him with a guitar and stories and five little dogs. The man was stuck fifty miles from where he needed to be. No phone. No one to call if he did have one, but he managed to raise David’s spirits. David bought him a full tank of gas. When he offered to pay it back someday, David told him to pay it forward. David’s reward was more inspiration for his art.

David’s art addresses the relationship between historical and contemporary issues of his people. He lives and breathes Native identity. It is time to dispel ignorance and stereotypes. It is his time.

In the end, David hopes each piece he’s created will have its own identity, that it will not be solely about the one who created it. That others will be inspired.

A drum song leads the way, the drum carried and played by youths. Wayne Valliere (Lac du Flambeau Chippewa) follows, one hand gripping the birchbark canoe. But he doesn’t carry it alone. Nine adults and youths help carry the canoe, their hands touching it like a thousand other hands had when Wayne led the construction of the traditional Anishinaabe birchbark canoe.  

The group carries the canoe from the Lake Lac du Flambeau Public School through the sunshine to the shores of Lake Pokegama. Wayne had brought the canoe home from the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus to northern Wisconsin, where its materials had been harvested. The Wiigwaasi-Jiimaan: These Canoes Carry Culture project was designed to teach Wayne’s culture to students.

An elder told Wayne that their people are not losing the birch trees. The birch trees are losing them. So Wayne works to build canoes the way his ancestors did.

But he and his brother have developed techniques to make a stronger canoe, just as Wayne works to build a stronger generation. The Anishinaabe are an innovative people. If his ancestors had a chainsaw to cut down a tree, they would have used that. If they had a chance for a college education, they would have done that. They may no longer work with stone tools, but they are still Anishinaabe. The canoes Wayne builds are built with the hands of a Native.

They arrive on the shores of Lake Pokegama, where all of Wayne’s canoes find their way to, a lake his people have launched into for generations before him, and will for generations after him. He launches the canoe for this generation. These students carry culture.

This is why Wayne teaches birchbark canoe building to young tribal members and why he apprentices young adults who are strong enough to carry on the tradition. He doesn’t know how many canoes he has left in him, but his knowledge is secure in the next generation.

It’s time to go home. But where is that? Chris Pappan (Kaw) is from Flagstaff, Ariz. Now he lives in Chicago. But home for him is also Kansas, the ancestral homelands of his people, the people of the south wind.

Chris sees his culture in the ledger art of the past, a distinct form of historical prison art those before him created to tell the world about their home, their people, their ways. His ways. But the art is evolving, growing, connecting the world.

In the 1870s the Fort Marion prisoners — made up of Cheyenne, Kiowa, Comanche, Arapaho and Caddo warriors — became prolific ledger artists. Like them, Chris can take anything he has and turn it into art. He sees his style in theirs, connecting him to the past as he lives in the present and moves forward into the future. The future for him is a learning process of finding his way back home.

Kansas derives its name from the Kanza, or Kaw, people. In popular culture, Kansas is known as “no place like home.” Chris sees this from a different perspective, a much older one than the Wizard of Oz.

But Chris’ ledger art — the distorted images and displaced people spread across old maps — takes his home around the world. His art has brought invitations from places like the Kansas Historical Society, and Rainmaker Gallery in Bristol, UK.