OKLAHOMA CITY — Statues, paintings and other artwork by the late Chiricahua Apache artist Allan Houser will be on display across the state this year to honor the 100th year of his birth, including five monumental-sized sculptures that are being installed at the state Capitol this week.
Installation of the five bronze statues will begin Wednesday at the Capitol’s east entrance, where two large sculptures entitled “Morning Prayer” and “Singing Heart” will be erected. Two more will be installed at the west entrance, along with a fifth piece that will be placed on the north plaza. All five will be on display through December.
Additional Houser exhibits are planned throughout 2014 in Duncan, Norman, Oklahoma City, Stillwater and Tulsa.
Houser, who died in 1994, was a renowned Native American artist and among the most influential of the 20th century. Oklahoma’s license plate depicts Houser’s “Sacred Rain Arrow” and his sculptures greet visitors to the Oklahoma Capitol, the University of Oklahoma in Norman and the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa.
Born to Apache parents who were brought to Fort Sill as prisoners of war, Houser, born Allan Haozous, was symbolic of the first generation of American Indians forced to make a transition into the white culture, said Bob Blackburn, director of the Oklahoma Historical Society.
“He changed Indian art in America,” Blackburn said. “He’s the pivot point from advocating Indian art as a way to make a living to an expression of their own imagination and observations.
“He really gives many Indian artists their ability to express themselves in their own individual way.”
Houser’s nephew, Jeff Haozous, the chairman of the Fort Sill Apache Tribe, said his uncle was a talented and productive artist who also spent decades teaching art to younger generations of artists.
“He’s an inspiration based on what he was able to achieve,” Haozous said. “As a nephew and a tribal member, it’s something I’m really proud to see his art getting such recognition.”
Haozous said 2014 is significant for the tribe because it marks the centennial of the tribe’s freedom following the imprisonment of its members, who were among the last to engage in battles with the U.S. Army.
“They had been living on Fort Sill as POWs, and now they were free Apaches,” Haozous said. “That is of huge significance to us, and as a tribal leader, that is the most significant thing to happen this year.”
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Online:
Allan Houser: Oklahoma perspective: www.okhouser.org
Read more here: http://www.theolympian.com/2014/01/13/2928685/houser-sculptures-to-be-installed.html#storylink=cpy
Death. Family. Loss. Love. Wealth. Poetry. Spirituality. Genocide. Prejudice. Sherman Alexie’s new poetry collection, “What I’ve Stolen, What I’ve Earned,” demonstrates the National Book Award-winning writer’s ability to tackle big themes, weaving them together in the context of his Indian identity and with his wry, unapologetic sense of humor.
And he wastes no time doing it. Alexie takes on all these topics in the collection’s first poem, the wide-ranging and powerful “Crazy Horse Boulevard,” always through the lens of his Indian identity (a member of the Spokane Tribe, he uses the term “Indian” almost exclusively). He addresses being Indian in a white world (“Most of the people who read this poem will be white people”), as well as within Indian culture, on and off the reservation (“Among my immediate family, I’m the only one who doesn’t live on the reservation. What does that say about me?”). The poem brings historical prejudices into a modern context, and Alexie calls things as he sees them, especially when it comes to the choices people make from what he sees as places of luxury (“If my sons, Indian as they are, contract some preventable disease from those organic, free-range white children and die, will it be legal for me to scalp and slaughter their white parents?”).
The focus on racial and cultural identity comes through strongest in the book’s first section. “Happy Holidays” pointedly discusses the complicated relationship modern Indians have with American holidays. “Sonnet, with Slot Machines” wrestles with the politics of Indian casinos and issues of gambling.
“Slot Machines” is one of many so-called “sonnets” in the book; the poems comprise the second section and are scattered throughout the others. In labeling these poems sonnets, Alexie initiates a conversation about form, forgoing the traditional 14-line rhyme and metrical structure and instead following formulas of his own. This reinvention of form allows Alexie to stay true to his own voice, never sacrificing his natural vocabulary for the sake of someone else’s definition of “poetic.” Yet Alexie pays homage to formal poetry and to his literary forbears by recognizing the significance of the form’s constraints while giving it his own spin.
Whatever form he uses, Alexie stays true, too, to his own style of storytelling. And “What I’ve Stolen, What I’ve Earned” is, at its core, a book of stories, told piecemeal, which hit the reader with their poignancy in the way Alexie weaves the seemingly disparate pieces together. In “Sonnet, with Tainted Love” he does this with a missing persons case, nightmares and the movie “Dirty Dancing.” “Hell” links Dante, Jimmy Durante, Moses and a fear of heights.
At 156 pages, it’s lengthy for a poetry collection, and the book does drag at times. (“Phone Calls from Ex-Lovers,” for example, probably doesn’t need to list all top 100 songs from 1984. Surely 10 would have made the point.)
But the slow moments are overcome by the tenderness of “Steel Anniversary,” by the undeniable momentum of “The Naming Ceremony,” and by the sledgehammer truths that catch us off-guard, the laugh-out-loud surprises and the utter honesty with which Alexie delivers it all.
“What I’ve Stolen” creates a world that, to borrow a line from “Sonnet, with Tainted Love,” “is equal parts magic and loss,” and it’s a book worth savoring to the final line.
Golfers and other visitors to the Salish Cliffs Golf Course on the Squaxin Island Indian Reservation are greeted by two Coast Salish totem poles that frame sweeping, territorial views of the Kamilche Valley.
A welcome pole, right, originally carved for the Port of Olympia 15 years ago, has found a home at the Salish Cliffs Golf Course on the Squaxin Island Indian Reservation, shown Friday. TONY OVERMAN/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
The shorter — 36 feet — and less colorful carving is a welcome pole that has a long and contentious history, dating to 1997 when the Port of Olympia contracted with Squaxin Island tribal member, carver and fisherman Doug Tobin to carve a totem pole for the port’s new Port Plaza on the shores of Budd Inlet.
Along the way to completion, the pole’s fate became entangled in Tobin’s past, which included a manslaughter rap in a 1986 murder-for-hire scheme that took the life of Olympia’s Joanne Jirovec.
I visited the welcome pole this week with Russ Lidman, a retired Seattle University professor, Olympia resident and president of Temple Beth Hatfiloh.
Lidman for years used the welcome pole case history as a teachable moment for students in the university’s master’s program in public administration. A retrospective review of the case looks like a television drama co-starring whipsawed port commissioners, a port director torn in several directions, angry citizens, the local newspaper that early on gave the story less attention, and a talented Native American artist, who happens to be a habitual criminal.
“It’s a really good case study from the point of view of public administration,” Lidman said. “Real screw-ups like this require a lot of actors dropping the ball.”
Examples include:
• The Port of Olympia in the 1990s lacked a transparent, formal process for spending money on public art. They settled on Tobin to carve a Coast Salish welcome pole for the Port Plaza without fully vetting the artist’s criminal background or considering the potential for backlash from friends of Joanne Jirovec.
• The Olympian didn’t write in detail about the contract, or the artist and his criminal past, before the contract was signed. If I remember right — and I covered the port at the time — the newspaper, along with port officials and Squaxin Island tribal leaders, figured Tobin had served his time — albeit less than six years — on the manslaughter charge and deserved a second chance.
• Tobin, who had plenty of help carving the pole — he did only about 15 percent of the work — missed his contract deadline of February 1998 and didn’t complete the pole until 2000. Months would go by without any work performed on the pole. He missed deadlines for performance payments spelled out in the contract, but port officials figured there would be more to lose than gain by canceling the contract.
Later, it became clear why Tobin fell so far behind. While Tobin was under contract to the port, he was also the ringleader of a major geoduck and Dungeness crab poaching ring in South Puget Sound.
• The back of the pole needed to be hollowed out and strengthened with a beam and structural supports to keep it from cracking. It sat enshrouded in a port warehouse for another two years.
That gave state and federal fish and wildlife enforcement officers time to build their poaching case against Tobin, someone they had used as an undercover informant for years before they knew the full extent of his own criminal enterprise.
In February 2002, the port was close to erecting the welcome pole. But on March 18, Tobin was arrested for the theft of geoducks valued at $1.2 million. In 2003, he received a 14-year prison term, nearly twice his sentence in the Jirovec case, and the stiffest poaching penalty in state history.
Soon after the news of Tobin’s arrest broke, friends of Joanne Jirovec descended on the port, demanding that the port scrap its plans to erect the pole to welcome people to the Olympia waterfront. They called the plan an insult to the memory of the slain woman.
• The Port Commission appointed a six-member citizens panel for advice. The panel voted 4-2 to install the pole, but the port commissioners, feeling the heat from the friends of Jirovec, ignored the recommendation.
Port Executive Director Nick Handy tried to sell the pole to the Squaxins, but they declined. Eventually the pole was sold for $30,352 in 2004 to a Seattle art collector, who in turn donated it to the Burke Museum of Natural Culture and History at the University of Washington.
Museum officials initially planned to erect the pole on the university campus, but they, too, deferred action. As the pole sat in limbo, Squaxin tribal members scrubbed every inch of the pole with spruce boughs to cleanse it of any negative energy associated with its past.
In 2005, the museum’s Native American Advisory Board recommended that museum officials contact the Squaxin Island Tribe to see whether they would like to borrow the pole.
The pole sat in storage at museum for several years. Finally, in 2011, the tribe and the museum entered into a 99-year loan agreement, which is reviewed every two years. The tribe brought the pole to the reservation and added it to the entrance to its new golf course.
The welcome pole and adjoining totem pole stand alongside a flag pole that flies both Old Glory and a Squaxin Island tribal flag. There are no inscriptions or plaques describing either pole’s story.
Tribal council member Ray Peters talked to me briefly Thursday about the welcome pole. I think he’d rather talk about the award-winning golf course. But he did shed a little light on the tribal council’s decision to embrace the pole.
“The pole isn’t Doug Tobin’s pole,” Peters said. “A lot of notable artists had a hand in carving and designing the pole.”
Several people familiar with the pole said they were glad it finally found a home, including former Secretary of State Ralph Munro, who served on the port advisory committee all those years ago, and voted to erect the pole at the Port Plaza.
“I’m glad to see the pole up,” he said. “For some people it evokes bad memories, but it’s a beautiful piece of Squaxin art that has inspired a lot of young tribal carvers.”
“We’re pleased that the pole has found a home,” added Burke Museum director Julie Stein.
“I’m glad it’s away from the university,” said Barbara Brecheen a good friend of Jirovec, upon learning the fate of the pole. “I’m surprised the tribe wanted it, but I guess it makes sense.”
I’ve thought long and hard about this column ever since I learned what happened to the welcome pole. I’ve come to the conclusion that the public has a right to know what happened to it. Public money was used to carve it. I’ve also concluded it’s time to separate the art from the artist, to let the art have a life of its own.
“I hope your column doesn’t open up old wounds,” Peters said.
I hope so, too. I don’t think it will.
John Dodge: 360-754-5444 jdodge@theolympian.com
Read more here: http://www.theolympian.com/2014/01/12/2926674/benighted-totem-pole-finds-a-home.html#storylink=cpy
Native Arts and Cultures Foundation (NACF) President and CEO T. Lulani Arquette is visibly moved as she describes how the audience responded to the innovative work of Christopher Kaui Morgan at the 2013 Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement Conference. “There was a palpable thrill in the room, a sense that we were witnessing something new and exciting. This is the kind of work we want to encourage,” she says. Not yet four years since it began funding, NACF has made significant investments to nurture native artistic expression, celebrate culture and engage communities. These investments help keep tradition alive — but also help indigenous artists push past old forms and break new ground.
That clearly is what makes the work of NACF so significant. This isn’t just about feeding struggling artists. Underlying everything NACF does is the conviction that native artists and culture-bearers play a vital role in enlivening the community. Through its mission and its outreach, its grants and the platforms it provides for creative expression and collaboration, NACF attests to the importance of the artist as both voice and conscience, healing and keeping alive the hope of a better, more just world.
Native artists cannot always turn swords into plowshares. But they at least give us the beauty of art in place of the brokenness that we see all around us. Native artists, like artists everywhere, give so generously to us all simply through their creativity. We owe it to them — and to ourselves — to give back in some measure what they have given us in priceless cultural treasure. –Arquette
NACF hopes that those who wish to put their wealth to work will see in the work of the Foundation the prospect of a return on investment that is more significant than what the market can offer. Founding NACF Board Member Elizabeth A. Woody (Navajo/Warm Springs/Wasco/Yakama) explains: “The act of giving was part of the ‘gifting economy’ of the Northwest where one’s wealth was measured by generosity, good work and a good heart.” That’s not unlike the spirit that moves those who engage in philanthropy. Thanks to that spirit of giving, donors across the country have allowed NACF to help 85 Native artists and organizations across 22 states. Awardees were part of over 300 events and activities, creating opportunities for 46,000 participants and taking the beauty and power of Native arts and cultures to nearly 850,000 people.
Individual Fellowships
Individual grants of up to $20,000 each help native artists continue to practice what has been handed down to them while also moving beyond to open up new ways of seeing the world. Time-honored ways of defining our shared humanity are preserved while new prisms are created through which to see and understand. Powerful voices are amplified in visual arts, music, dance, literature, film and traditional arts.
Community-Based Initiatives
People are not generally aware of the urgent need to map and secure ancestral arts and practices before they are lost forever. Nearly $380,000 has been given to grantees, some tied to universities, for this purpose. Apprenticeships, teaching, participation in youth programs and festivals also help ensure the transmittal of traditional skills to the next generation. This support seeds the ground for ongoing collaborations and exchanges, such as residencies, arts conferences and dialogue across native art disciplines.
Capacity-Building Initiatives
NACF creates partnerships between artists, tribal entities and nonprofit organizations. The spirit behind these partnerships is the recognition that the work of the artist is a lens through which to help the community understand and engage collaboratively in addressing issues vital to the well-being of the community.
Proven leadership in offering broad-based arts services including arts grants, professional development for artists, and market opportunities for Native artists has led NACF to make an investment of nearly $300,000 in organizations positioned to help artists in these ways. In Hawai`i, the Pa`i Foundation received a NACF grant to support their work as part of a group dedicated to recovering the language, cultural traditions, healing practices, voyaging, and agricultural practices of the Native Hawaiians, now a minority in their ancestral land.
Arquette is particularly proud to see artists in her native Hawai`i recognized, and is gearing up to announce new initiatives in 2014.
“Our grants go towards helping artists address issues such as cultural equity, land and water rights, food sovereignty, and Native knowledge,” she said. NACF artists received a Bessie Award for Outstanding Dance Production, had an exhibit at the 18th Biennale of Sydney, Australia, and are taking their film to the national festival circuit and PBS. “This kind of recognition inspires others to help keep the arts alive through their own artistic endeavors — or through their financial support,” she added.
The NACF website offers several examples of the work of artists NACF has supported. “We need the voices of our Native artists and culture-makers. They help make us wiser and more compassionate towards each other, ” said Arquette.
Tulalip rapper ‘Komplex Kai’ is set to perform with a live band at the Tulalip Resort Casino’s Canoes Cabaret Room on Jan. 15. — image credit: Courtesy photo.
TULALIP — Kisar Jones-Fryberg’s musical alter ego has been largely dormant since the passing of his aunt in 2010, but on Wednesday, Jan. 15, “Komplex Kai” will take another step toward his revival at the Tulalip Resort Casino’s Canoes Cabaret Room, where he’s slated to perform a free show with a half-dozen-member live band from 10 p.m. to midnight.
“I started producing albums when I was 15, but I was already writing lyrics and putting them to beats when I was 10 or 11,” said Kai, a Tulalip rap artist who’s produced six albums over the course of the past decade. “I’m an MC, but my work is drawn from a Native perspective. I’m guided by Native traditions, but they’ve been modernized, because between the resettlement and the segregation of our people, we lost so much.”
This complex dichotomy between the history of his people’s culture and the world in which he now lives drives much of Kai’s output, as does his desire to leave behind a worthy legacy.
“Every album is something that my great-grandkids will be able to look back on and say that I did,” said Kai, who has four children already, with one more on the way. “I don’t want to downplay the importance of our traditions, but by the same token, my culture is rooted in the present day, and what it means to be Native here and now. This is my way of expressing my own existence in 2014, and it doesn’t make me any less Native or Tulalip.”
Kai recalled an exchange with an older man, who had asserted that he shouldn’t be proud of having grown up on a reservation, and explained his own mixed feelings in response.
“He pointed out that our people had been placed in reservations as prisons, and I understand that, but that’s still where we come from,” Kai said. “You can’t downplay or dismiss where we’ve come from, or what we’ve lived. It’s where tradition meets experience. I’ve got to be proud of where I’m from.”
To that end, the Komplex Kai band will be playing a mix of original songs and covers, following an 8-10 p.m. comedy show in the Canoes Cabaret Room, and those who are interested in checking out his music need look no further than Facebook and iTunes under “Komplex Kai” to find all of his albums and songs online.
“My grandma was my first manager,” Kai said. “I wasn’t even going to pursue music as a career, but now, I’m all for positivity and creating opportunity.”
Producer Sherman Alexie in attendance on Thursday night!
Both directors in attendance Thursday, Friday, Saturday!
Cast & crew in attendance!
(Alex and Andrew Smith, United States, 2013, 105 min)
Virgil First Raise wakes in a ditch on the hardscrabble plains of Montana, hungover and badly beaten. He sees a shocking vision: his father, ten years dead, lying frozen at his feet. Shaken, Virgil returns home to his ranch on the Reservation, only to find that his wife, Agnes, has left him. Worse, she’s taken his beloved rifle. Virgil sets out to town find her— or perhaps just the gun— beginning a hi-line odyssey of inebriated and improbable intrigues with the mysterious Airplane Man, his beautiful accomplice, Malvina, and two dangerous Men in Suits. By embracing— and no longer fleeing— his memories, Virgil is finally able to thaw the ice in his veins.
The mission of Longhouse Media is to catalyze indigenous people and communities to use media as a tool for self-expression, cultural preservation, and social change.
Northwest Film Forum partners with Longhouse Media to present this ongoing series showcasing emerging talents in indigenous communities. This exciting program exemplifies how Native American and indigenous filmmakers are at the forefront of the industry, successfully establishing a dialogue and creating images that are challenging and changing long established cultural attitudes towards indigenous culture.
Tulalip Casino & Resort Salmon On a Stick is a traditional preparation method for slow-roasting salmon on iron wood sticks over wood coals. The method is at least several centuries old and is part of a rich tribal heritage for the Pacific Northwest’s Coast Salish peoples.
Long before the “100-mile diet” became the trendy new way to eat, Native American people of the Pacific Northwest were immersed in this way of eating. And little wonder, for they lived in an environment that was astonishingly bountiful. Forests overflowed with deer, elk, berries, flowers, seeds and greens. Seas and rivers teemed with salmon, prawn, crab and other nourishing plant and animal life. Shorelines were rich with clams, oysters and seaweed.
Salmon n’ Bannock Sous Chef Kyle. The fine-dining restaurant serves wild fish; free range, grass fed and/or organic meat; bannock made fresh daily, and other culinary deights inspired by a variety of First Nations traditons. (Hans Tammemagi)
Food was central to traditional life and was especially enjoyed at feasts and potlatches, where platters boasted salmon, oolichan (a small, oily member of the smelt family), venison, bannock, wild berry jams and much more. For Native people, food is what connected them to family, community and even the afterlife.
Then came the white man, and everything changed. In today’s era, food, generally processed, is purchased at supermarkets or fast-food outlets. Nutrition is too often replaced by sugar, salt and glitzy packaging. And, as is well documented, the health of Native peoples has slowly spiralled downward.
But there is good news: traditional foods are making a comeback. Even better, the old dishes are being infused with modern culinary innovations to make tasty, attractive, and of course, healthy cuisine.
I was in the Salmon n’ Bannock Bistro in Vancouver, British Columbia with a Haida canoe suspended from the ceiling and Native art adorning the deep red walls. The server placed an attractive appetizer platter from the ‘Land and Sea Feast’ menu on the table. I popped a spicy game chorizo sausage into my mouth … wonderful! Then I savored Indian candy — smoked salmon covered with a maple syrup glaze. I spread barbequed salmon mousse on bannock and ladled blueberry chutney onto a piece of bison carpaccio.
Inez Cook, Nuxalk Nation, the co-owner and manager of Salmon n’ Bannock in Vancouver (Hans Tammemagi)
With my mouth full, it was hard to speak, so I listened to Inez Cook, Nuxalk Nation, the co-owner and manager of this fine-dining restaurant, which is winning accolades on the hotly competitive Vancouver cuisine scene. “My bistro is unique. It’s the only restaurant in Vancouver that offers 100 percent First Nations’ food, and it’s staffed entirely by Native people,” she said. “I’m very proud of First Nations’ food,” she continued. “It’s great. I want to shout out: ‘Try it! Eat it!’” I acquiesced and speared a piece of musk ox prosciutto. Delightful!
The bistro opened in 2010 and has slowly gained a following. “None of our food contains preservatives or additives,” Cook said. “Nothing is raised in factory farms or is genetically modified. We source all fresh and wild foods so it’s very healthy.”
“The most popular dishes are salmon, barbequed or smoked, and deer shank with red wine gravy,” Cook said. These are paired with wines from Nk’Mip Cellars, a Native-owned and -operated winery in the Okanagan Valley, central British Columbia.”
When I remarked that the menu featured mostly fish and meat, Cook answered with a laugh, “Yes, Natives think that vegetarians are just lousy hunters.”
The “Bounty Bowl” at The Blackfish Salmon Grill (Tulalip Casino & Resort)
At present, unfortunately, eating establishments offering traditional Native food are rare. The Blackfish Salmon Grill at Tulalip Casino & Resort, north of Seattle, Washington, is one of the exceptions. “We are not a strictly Native cuisine restaurant,” explained Chef David Buchanan, “but rather, our style is innovative Pacific Northwest influenced by traditional tribal culture and cuisine.”
Wild salmon cooked on Tulalip hand-carved, ironwood sticks over an alderwood fire is very popular. Other menu items include an appetizer of clam fritters (from a Tulalip tribal elder recipe), local root vegetables, corn cakes and fresh berry soufflé. Typical ingredients include local clams, Alaskan prawns, many varieties of oysters, Alaskan halibut, wild Steelhead, blueberries, blackberries, hazelnuts, wild chanterelle and morel mushrooms.
“We strive to put a little twist on every dish, to make it our own. For instance, our crab cakes have roasted fresh sweet corn and apple-smoked bacon in them and are served with three sauces and an apple-watercress salad,” Buchanan explained.
The Blackfish Salmon Grill is like a Longhouse with large beams accenting the ceiling and a long, beautiful natural wood community table in the center of the room. The focal piece is an open fire pit on which on which the Salmon on a Stick is prepared.
Buchanan said “I am especially intrigued by how in Native culture the entire process of a meal is so holistic. Thanks is given for the return of the salmon each year and for the sustenance it gives. Thanks and a prayer are also given for the wood when it is harvested to carve the Ironwood sticks used for roasting the salmon. Those who prepare the meal should do so with good intent in their hearts. The meal is a time for sharing with friends and family, and being thankful for those who helped catch and prepare the food.”
But those living in the Seattle area don’t need to go to a fancy restaurant to enjoy Native food. Instead, they can use Facebook to track down the current location of Off the Rez, the first Native American food truck in the country. Pale blue in color, the truck serves up a variety of Native fry breads of which the three-taco combo with pork, beef and chicken fillings is reputed to be outstanding.
The ‘Land and Sea Feast’ platter at Salmon n’ Bannock in Vancouver (Hans Tammemagi)
There are two smaller but notable Native eateries. The Riverwalk Café at the Quw’utsun Cultural Centre in Duncan, BC, on Vancouver Island. Situated on the banks of the Cowichan River, a heritage river with three salmon runs each year, the Café features such delicacies as smoked and candied salmon, clams and octopus. The Riverwalk Café is open only for lunch from June to September.
The Thunderbird Café is part of the Squamish Lilwat Cultural Centre in Whistler, BC. It is open year-round but only to 5 p.m. Its Indian Taco with venison chilli and bannock is reputed to be truly man-size. Other favorites are salmon chowder and smokies made of wild boar and bison. They also make a venison pemmican with local berries and nuts.
While waiting for more restaurants to offer traditional Native cuisine, you may decide to cook at home with friends. Thanks to Dolly and Annie Watts, a mother and daughter team, you can do just that, guided by their book, Where People Feast – An Indigenous People’s Cookbook. The cookbook, one of the few that focuses on west coast Native cuisine, appeared in 2007 and was an instant hit, winning rave reviews and the Gourmand Award for best local cuisine book in Canada. Where People Feast is crammed with easy-to-follow traditional and modern aboriginal recipes, from hot buttered halibut to juniper berry sauce to bannock and also includes methods for smoking and drying wild game, preparing seafood and preserving berries.
A champion of traditional Native food is Chef Ben Genaille, a Cree, who moved from Manitoba to the west coast about 20 years ago where he has worked at several top restaurants. He’s passionate about Native dishes, preparing them using contemporary methods and presenting them with modern flair. He established an Aboriginal Culinary Program at Thompson River University, Kamloops, British Columbia, the only one in North America.
The Aboriginal Culinary Arts Certificate Program integrates an understanding and appreciation of the important value food plays in Aboriginal culture. (Thompson Rivers University)
In 2012, Genaille led a team of five young west-coast Native chefs to the World Culinary Olympics in Germany. “I’m very proud of them. They worked hard and trained for five years for the competition,” he said. “We focussed on Pacific Northwest ingredients and showed the world that First Nations cuisine is at the cutting edge of local food.” Dishes that caught the judges’ eyes included oolichan oil in dessert, herring eggs in soup and a platter with five types of salmon, each prepared a different way.
Chef Genaille is an unabashed supporter of Native cuisine. “It all hinges on getting talented young chefs,” he stresses. “We must strive to give them pride and passion. And that’s happening. As these young chefs develop, traditional Native food will grow in popularity.”
Where People Feast – An Indigenous Peoples’ Cookbook
The cover of the book Where People Feast (Arsenal Pulp Press)
Preheat oven to 350°F (180° C). Crush the berries, garlic, cayenne pepper, cumin seeds, and onion flakes in a mortar. Rub the crushed spices onto the roast and then pan-sear the roast in a hot frying pan with the oil to lock in the juices. Put roast in a roasting pan and add the boiling water, then roast for 1 hour, basting at least 4 times. Makes 3 servings.
The new book on how congressional staffer Forrest Gerard and Sen. Henry Jackson changed national policy for Native Americans Cover by JiaYing Grygiel
A new book by former “Seattle Post-Intelligencer” Editorial Page Editor Mark Trahant tells how Sen. Henry M. Jackson, an advocate of policies that could have killed Native Americans’ cultural heritage, changed while working with a Native American congressional staffer.
The following registers a 10 on the chutzpah meter, the platinum standard for subjective book reviews: Noodling a volume about a critical period in the struggle for Indian self-determination — a publication supported by a foundation that I’m involved with — that analyzes the legacy of one of my long-deceased family members. Hmmm.
With this history, Trahant, the former editorial page editor of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, sets the burst of 1970s legislative progress affecting Indian Country within the broader context of major misfires, in particular the odious policy of “termination” that aimed to liquidate tribal sovereignty across the land.
Forrest Gerard, an unsung congressional insider and member of the Blackfeet tribe (who eventually became an assistant Secretary of the Interior during the Carter administration), is the tale’s hero. Gerard had the credibility, bureaucratic savvy, and political smarts to convince his boss, the bete noire of Indian Country, that it was time for a wholesale shift.
Henry “Scoop” Jackson is the boss and Interior Committee chairman, the unmovable senator who moves. And Abe Bergman, the Seattle pediatrician and star of Ric Redman’s The Dance of Legislation, is the gadfly finagler for Indian healthcare. Throw in presidential ambitions, Bobby and Ted Kennedy, George McGovern, James Abourezk, an Oklahoma senator’s wife, turf battles, the National Congress of American Indians, and the farsighted (you heard me) leadership of Richard Nixon and his aide, former Seattle land-use attorney John Ehrlichman. The first line of Trahant’s book could have been, “No one could have made this stuff up.”
Termination was conceived during the Truman Administration and found full expression during the Eisenhower years. The mission was to assimilate American Indians by paying off outstanding claims and neatly extinguishing — terminating — the special government-to-government relationships.
There was a progressive, fix-it undercurrent to the new paradigm that resonated with members of both parties, although most leaders in Indian Country knew that termination spelled cultural genocide. Jackson, who helped create the Indian Claims Commission in the 1940s in a similar fix-it vein, quickly embraced termination. In 1958, he sponsored the Senate companion bill to the notorious House Concurrent Resolution 108 that enshrined the policy.
At the time, most Indian issues fell within the purview of the Senate’s Interior Committee, which conflated America’s first inhabitants with questions of natural resources, territories, and national parks. It was a systemic reality reflecting the federal government’s patronizing approach: Just lump Indians in with minerals, mines, and public lands.
The beginning of a sea change came with New Mexico Sen. Clinton Anderson’s failure to stop the return of Blue Lake to the Taos Pueblos. With even President Nixon and Colorado’s Rep. Wayne Aspinall advocating the return of the sacred lands, Anderson came up with an ill-considered last hurrah, a bill to give the Taos Pueblo Indians use of the area while denying them the title to it. Scoop, Anderson’s successor as Interior chairman, unwisely followed his mentor’s lead (the transfer was, nevertheless, approved in a 70-12 vote). Trahant frames this as an issue of personal loyalty within the gentlemen’s-club culture of the United States Senate (Disclosure: In the 1960s, Anderson introduced his recently divorced twenty-something secretary to a middle-aged Scoop. At least one of its byproducts is grateful for that).
Scoop’s voting on the Taos Pueblos’ question is a stickler, one that fuels cynicism about American politics. Consider, similarly, Sen. Dan Inouye’s support a few years ago for opening the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge to oil exploration. Was it a thoughtfully considered move or evidence of brotherly piety for Ted Stevens? Both? Loyalty shouldn’t trump the greater good, we know. We also know that men aren’t angels and governing involves compromise, sometimes too much, in fact.
“Our grants go towards helping artists address issues such as cultural equity, land and water rights, food sovereignty, and Native knowledge,” she said. NACF artists received a Bessie Award for Outstanding Dance Production, had an exhibit at the 18th Biennale of Sydney, Australia, and are taking their film to the national festival circuit and PBS. “This kind of recognition inspires others to help keep the arts alive through their own artistic endeavors — or through their financial support,” she added.
