WSU President Elson Floyd to Speak
EVERETT, Wash. – Washington State University President Elson Floyd will be the keynote speaker at the Everett Community College Foundation benefit breakfast at 7:30 a.m. April 23.
The breakfast, which raises money to support student scholarships and college programs, is at EvCC’s Student Fitness Center, 2206 Tower St.
To attend, RSVP by April 19 to foundation@everettcc.edu or by calling 425-388-9434. There is no charge for the breakfast; attendees will be given an opportunity to contribute to the EvCC Foundation.
“EvCC develops the talent that our business community needs now more than ever,” said John Olson, executive director of the EvCC Foundation. “Support for the EvCC Foundation is an investment in the future well-being of both the students and the communities in Snohomish County.”
The breakfast is part of the EvCC Foundation’s efforts to increase the number of student scholarships, emergency loans and grants. The Foundation is also working to seek out equipment and support to ensure students have the technology they need in the classroom.
The EvCC Foundation, in partnership with corporations, businesses, foundations, and individuals, is committed to continuing the college’s tradition of serving as the region’s leading provider of academic and technical education.
April 2013 Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture Seattle, WA
First Woman. Yellow Cedar. By Luke Marston. Photo by Armstrong Creative.
Seattle – The Burke Museum is pleased to offer a variety of programs featuring the groundbreaking artwork of Coast Salish artists. In April, attend a discussion panel with practicing artists, see art demonstrations and talk to artists about their work, and view Coast Salish art from the Burke Museum collections.
Discussion Panel: Coast Salish Art in the 21st Century Friday, April 5, 2013 • Kane Hall 120, UW Campus • 7 pm
Coast Salish artists are using computer graphics, laser cutters, and glass hot shops, as well as adzes, knives, and looms to bring traditional forms into the 21st century. Join a panel of artists lead by Shaun Peterson as they share the challenges and rewards of transporting the vision of their grandparents into the modern world.
Panelists include artists Heather Johnson-Jock, lessLIE, Luke Marston, and Danielle Morsette.
FREE for all and open to the public. Pre-registration recommended. Reserve your seat today at www.burkemuseum.org/events.
Special Event: Coast Salish Art & Artists Day Saturday, April 6, 2013 • Burke Museum • 10 am – 3 pm
Explore artwork and demonstrations by notable Coast Salish artists in mediums such as weaving, sculpture, and print-making. Attend film screenings, and try your hand at a communal weaving piece on a large loom.
Art demonstrations include:
Coast Salish weaving on tabletop and upright frame looms
Cedar bark basketry weaving
Hand spinning yarn with a spindle whorl
Acrylic on paper pieces
Film screenings of Teachings of the Tree People: The Work of Bruce Miller and Killer Whale and Crocodile
Participating artists include Bill and Fran James, Heather Johnson-Jock, lessLIE, Luke Marston, Danielle Morsette, and Karen Reed.
Included with museum admission; FREE for Burke members.
Coast Salish Art programs are supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts and 4Culture.
Weekend Activities @ the Burke: Coast Salish Art Saturdays & Sundays in April • Burke Museum • 11 am – 3 pm
Every weekend in April, enjoy Coast Salish art activities at the Burke. See Coast Salish weaving pieces not normally on display, and try your hand at a large weaving loom. Also enjoy guided exhibit tours every Saturday at 1 pm.
Included with museum admission; FREE for Burke members.
The Burke Museum is located on the University of Washington campus, at the corner of NE 45th St. and 17th Ave. NE. Hours are 10 am to 5 pm daily, and until 8 pm on first Thursdays. Admission: $10 general, $8 senior, $7.50 student/ youth. Admission is free to children four and under, Burke members, UW students, faculty, and staff. Admission is free to the public on the first Thursday of each month. Prorated parking fees are $15 and partially refundable upon exit if paid in cash. Call 206-543-5590 or visit www.burkemuseum.org. The Burke Museum is an American Association of Museums accredited museum.
To request disability accommodation, contact the Disability Services Office at: 206.543.6450 (voice), 206.543.6452 (TTY), 206.685.7264 (fax), or email at dso@u.washington.edu. The University of Washington makes every effort to honor disability accommodation requests. Requests can be responded to most effectively if received as far in advance of the event as possible, preferably at least 10 days.
Burke Museum
Sat., Apr. 6, 2013 | 10 am – 3 pm
Included with museum admission; FREE for Burke members
Join the Burke Museum for a special day about Coast Salish art. Explore the incredible artwork of local Native American artists, who are experts in mediums such as weaving, sculpture, print-making, carving, and more. Talk with practicing Coast Salish artists and watch demonstrations of their work. Attend film screenings throughout the day in the Burke Room, and try your hand at a communal weaving piece on a large loom.
Art demonstrations include:
Coast Salish weaving on tabletop and upright frame looms
Cedar bark basketry weaving
Hand spinning yarn with a spindle whorl
Acrylic on paper pieces
Film screenings of Teachings of the Tree People: The Work of Bruce Miller and Killer Whale and Crocodile
Participating artists include Bill and Fran James, Heather Johnson-Jock, lessLIE, Luke Marston, Danielle Morsette, and Karen Reed.
Coast Salish Art programs are supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts and 4Culture.
By Rick Kearns, Indian Country Today Media Network
For some indigenous people of Venezuela, President Hugo Chavez was someone they could count on and love and many indigenous Latin Americans expressed those same feelings last week.
Indigenous people in Venezuela and throughout Latin America were among the millions of people mourning the death of President Chavez of Venezuela, a man who helped change the nation’s constitution to protect indigenous rights and who returned more than 4 million acres of land to many tribes among other accomplishments.
Messages of solidarity and condolences came quickly after the news of Chavez death on Wednesday, March 5, after a two-year battle with cancer.
On that same day, the most famous indigenous leader in this hemisphere, his friend and ally, President Evo Morales of Bolivia stated, “It hurts us. We are devastated.”
“My brother in solidarity,” Morales continued in a government press release, “a revolutionary Latin American compatriot who fought for his country, for the big country of Simon Bolivar, a comrade who gave his life for the liberation of the Venezuelan people, of the people of Latin America.”
Indigenous leaders from other countries such as Ecuador and Brazil sent condolences through traditional and social media.
“I feel enormous sadness,” stated Humberto Cholango, President of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE in Spanish), the largest indigenous coalition in that country.
“He will live on as an example of the struggle against imperialism,” Cholango added.
Another indigenous Ecuadorean leader, Delia Caguana, President of the Indigenous Movement of Chimborazo, issued a strongly worded press release through Facebook.
“Our deepest feeling of solidarity for his family and the Venezuelan people,” Caguana stated, “for the loss of a valiant leader such as the Comandante Hugo Chavez Frias…his vocation to seek a change for the most vulnerable people of his beloved country, his clear and firm ideas of revolution deeply touched the hearts of Venezuelans, Latin Americans and even the whole world for his confrontations with and questioning of the groups in power that sought their own profits with no concern for the destruction of Pachamama (Mother Earth).”
Marcos Terena, an internationally known indigenous activist from Brazil also posted on Facebook that, “From our hearts, respect and solidarity to the people of Venezuela and the Indigenous Peoples on the death of Chavez.”
While these messages of solidarity and condolence came from various Indigenous Peoples, there were also articles and essays published by indigenous Venezuelans, also through traditional and social media.
Jayariyú Farías Montiel, editor of the award winning indigenous newspaper Wayuunaiki, published a column entitled The Indigenous People Weep for Chavez on Thursday, March 6th, recounting the history of Chavez advocacy for indigenous people starting in 1998.
“During the presidential campaign of 1998, diverse indigenous leaders exposed the situation to him, of the exclusion of the Indigenous Peoples from power, he was very moved by this,” Montiel wrote, “and he was clear in his ideals for justice and promised to change that reality.”
Montiel noted that upon reaching the presidency in 1999, Chavez named an indigenous woman, Atala Uriana, as his Minister of the Environment, “…putting her into his cabinet leaving the entire continent perplexed by this.”
His first act as president was one of inclusion, she continued, but his second act would leave a strong imprint on the country: the creation of a constituent assembly that would go on to create a new Constitution. It was in this new document that indigenous rights were protected. Article 119 of the new constitution for instance, recognizes the social, political, and economic organization of indigenous communities, as well as their cultures, languages, rights, and lands. Specifically, land rights were defined as collective, inalienable, and non-transferable.
Montiel also pointed out that “The political participation was solidified in an immediate way following the new Constitutional precepts and three indigenous representatives…initiated, along with the president a legislative path that opened the way for other laws.”
The new laws also allowed for the granting of land titles, over 12 years, of 4,472,589 acres of land to indigenous communities throughout Venezuela.
But for Kenami Padron, a Jivi member of the National Assembly, Chavez accomplishments had an emotional impact. On Facebook, Padron published a photo of her then 5-year-old cousin being held by Chavez who was wearing indigenous necklaces and smiling (at an event in the Amazonian town of Alto Orinoco in 2003).
When asked for permission to use the photo, Padron said, “yes, but I hope it will be used in a way that shows the work of love that Chavez did for the indigenous people. We will never forget the loyalty of the comandante of the Indigenous Peoples, Father of the country.”
OLYMPIA — Washington voters may get the final say on whether the state expands background checks on gun sales, as proponents said Tuesday a public vote was necessary to move the idea forward.
Rep. Jamie Pedersen, D-Seattle, said the referendum proposal was necessary in order to secure enough votes to pass the measure out of his chamber. If the measure is approved in both chambers, Pedersen said he expects the National Rifle Association leads an effort to stop it.
“I feel a pretty good amount of confidence that it works and that we can defend it at the ballot box,” Pedersen said.
Gun buyers currently must undergo a background check when they purchase a weapon from a federally licensed firearms dealer. Pedersen’s proposal, crafted in conjunction with Republican Rep. Mike Hope, would extend background checks to cover private gun transactions.
Under the bill, people who already have proper law enforcement credentials or a valid concealed pistol license would already have the proof needed to complete a private gun purchase. Those who don’t have such documentation could go to a licensed gun dealer or local law enforcement agency, then pay a fee and get a background check.
Hope, a Seattle police officer, has expressed concern that criminals are bypassing the current system of background checks and acquiring guns through private transactions. He said the proposal won’t stop gun violence but would make it harder for criminals to get weapons.
The state House is expected to take up the plan Tuesday afternoon. It would then have to get through the state Senate, including a committee controlled by gun-friendly lawmakers.
Poet enthusiasts gathered at the Tulalip Hibulb Cultural Center on March 7th to listen to guest poet, Raven Hunter. Her bold and truthful poetry drew the audience into her introspection of love, loss, and pain.
“There is nothing else in the world more intimidating, and yet so fulfilling, than the truth. When you tell the truth, it doesn’t matter who denies it or who accepts it. The truth is the truth and these are my truths,” said Hunter, who hopes that through her poetry, people will understand what it’s like to walk in her shoes. “This is how I want to portray my poetry, because it isn’t just poetry, it is my life story.”
Twenty-four year-old Hunter is a Jamestown S‘Kallam Tribal member with a Hispanic background. Growing up in Sunnyside, Washington, a Hispanic agriculture community, her father, grandfather, uncle, and sister helped shape the women she is today.
Raising her siblings forced a young Hunter to grow up fast, and writing became a way for her to cope with the absence of her mother.
“Poetry is a release because I wasn’t allowed to show my emotions as a child. I turned to writing and reading because you can get lost in words; they are endless,” said Hunter.
Hunter enjoyed creating funny skits and short stories, but after reading one of her sister’s poems about looking outside of yourself and caring for others, she became inspired to write her own poetry. She wrote about a boy and a friend caught a love triangle. At the age of 14, Hunter began sorting through a tangle of deep emotions through writing.
“Some people cry, some people cut themselves, some people turn to drugs, some people turn to God, and I turn to truth,” said Hunter.
Now in 2013, having suffered through the loss of loved ones and a recent break-up, Hunter has reached a point in her life where she feels it’s important to discover who she really is.
“I have been lost for so long and now I have the chance to be found, and it intimidates me,” said Hunter
Her love of nature developed into an interest in ethnobotany, the study of culture and plants and the relationship that exists between them. “I have always known I’m supposed to be a healing person, as early as I can remember,” said Hunter.
Through her written work, she hopes someday, when she has children, they can look back and see that they can overcome life’s struggles and be a survivor.
“I was thinking what I want my legacy to be; I want to give something to my children so when I’m on my death bed, I can say that I gave something that was worth giving to them, that is not of this material world,” said Hunter.
For more information on future poetry series or other series at the Tulalip Hibulb Cultural Center, please call 360-716-2600 or visit www.hibulbculturalcenter.org.
March 12, 2013 (SEATTLE) – Brown Paper Tickets, the Seattle-based event registration and ticketing company, is launching a National Make Radio Challenge during South-by-Southwest (SXSW) today to bring awareness and guidance to nonprofits eligible to apply for a low-power FM (LPFM) radio license, in preparation for a once-in-a-lifetime application window being offered by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) this fall.
“Now is the time for nonprofits to prepare their application to own a part of the public airwaves,” said Sabrina Roach, a Doer specializing in public interest media for Brown Paper Tickets. “Most traditional media have not included the LPFM application window in news coverage, and the majority of groups eligible to apply are not aware that this opportunity exists. This is a problem, because the application will take about three months to complete.
“The National Make Radio Challenge is needed to make groups aware of the opportunity, to inspire them to think about how they could use the power of radio to serve their communities, to guide them to resources that make building and operating a radio station realistic, and to help them to organize and successfully complete the application in time,” Roach said.
Brown Paper Tickets began helping Seattle community groups and nonprofits learn about the LPFM opportunity in November, and several are now applying for the license. The lessons learned and resources found from that experience are now being shared nationally to help all of the nation’s largest cities to fill every available LPFM frequency with a qualified applicant.
This will be the first time that LPFM licenses will be awarded in large urban markets, and likely the last time that they will be awarded at all, making the Oct. 15 application window an important opportunity for nonprofit community groups to reach larger audiences. Some potential uses for LPFM would be for recruiting volunteer and financial support, organizing, telling stories that don’t make it to commercial media, publicizing meetings and events, serving as resource for youth education, hyper-local community news, exposure for local artists and musicians, and much more.
“Our hope is that community groups take up the challenge and use the public airwaves for public good,” Roach said. “An additional benefit would be in helping to correct the lack of diversity in media ownership, in that 87 percent of all radio stations are owned by Caucasians, 6 percent are owned by women and 7 percent by people of color, which influences the programming heard on the public airwaves.”
Seattle and Austin LPFM Toolkits have been published at http://community.brownpapertickets.com/Doers/index.html. “We have been able to identify more than $6 million in public funding that is appropriate for nonprofits applying for LPFM to compete for in both cities,” Roach said. “We can guide nonprofits on how to find public funding to help them to make radio in many communities.” A national LPFM Toolkit with step-by-step instructions on how anyone can successfully apply for and fund their goal of building and operating a LPFM station will be published online during the Journalism That Matters conference in Denver, Colo., on April 3.
The National Make Radio Challenge event will be from 11a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Gibson Guitar Showroom, 3601 S. Congress, and is open to the public with an RSVP at http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/347626. The event will feature a panel of local and national media policy advocates and music industry professionals from the Future of Music Coalition, the Austin Creative Alliance, and more.
Hollis Wong-Wear, a singer in The Flavr Blue, writer and creative producer who currently performs with Macklemore and Ryan Lewis and produced the video for their #1 Billboard hit, “Thrift Shop,” will appear on the National Make Radio Challenge panel. She will be also be posting a series of candid photos and videos of musicians between sets at SXSW sharing their opinions about what LPFM means to those who make music. These photos and videos will be featured on Twitter, (@BPTMakeRadio), Instagram (lpfmmakeradiochallenge), and Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/pages/Make-Radio/564024070285609?fref=ts)
Brown Paper Tickets supports the proliferation of LPFM because of its Not-Just-For-Profit business model, which translates “paying it forward” into sustainable commerce while building a better world. “Brown Paper Tickets commits 5 percent of all profits to building healthy communities, and we believe that LPFM is an important and powerful tool in that mission,” said Roach.
About Brown Paper Tickets: Brown Paper Tickets (http://www.BrownPaperTickets.com), the Not-Just-For-Profit ticketing company, revolutionized the industry by putting free, professional tools for ticketing any-sized gathering on the Internet, and continues to champion the rights of ticket-buyers with the lowest fee for the most service in the industry. The company donates 5 percent of the profit from each ticket sale to build communities and nonprofits, pays its employees to work 40 hours each year for the cause of their choosing, and employs a team of “Doers,” experts in industries such as music, new media, makers, roller derby and more, to fix, improve and revolutionize the communities where we live, work and play.
On Thursday, March 7, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian announced five new members to its Board of Directors, for a three year term each.
The five are:
Governor Bill Anoatubby, Chickasaw
Margaret L. Brown, Yup’ik
Dr. Brenda Child, Ojibwa
Lance Morgan, Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska
Chief Gregory E. Pyle, Choctaw
“We look forward to working with this new group of board members who bring a depth of experience and deep knowledge of working with Native constituents and communities. They will be essential in helping to determine future directions taken by the museum,” said Kevin Gover, Pawnee, director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in a museum press release
Governor Bill Anoatubby has been the leader of the Chickasaw Nation, located in Ada, Oklahoma, since 1987. Under his leadership, the Nation has opened the Chickasaw Cultural Center, the Chickasaw Nation Medical Center, the Chickasaw Nation Aviation and Space Academy and several senior citizen centers. The Nation has improved the lives of tribal citizens by focusing on health care, youth programs, education and elder services. Anoatubby has been on several commissions, boards, and councils on the local, state, regional and national level, including the InterTribal Council of the Five Civilized Tribes, the board of directors for the Ada Chamber of Commerce, the Oklahoma Indian Affairs Committee and on the board of trustees for the Morris K. Udall Scholarship and Excellence in Nation Environmental Policy Foundation, Agencies and Commissions program.
Margaret L. Brown recently retired as the president and chief executive officer of the Cook Inlet Region, Inc., an Alaska Native Corporation located in Anchorage, Alaska. In her position, Brown was responsible for the development and implementation of the company’s corporate strategies, Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian programs and policies and procedures. She oversaw all the company’s business operations and was the primary contact with the company’s stakeholders. Brown currently serves on the national board of the Trust for Public Land, the Student Conservation Association and the Alaska Native Heritage Center. She also serves on advisory boards for Alaska Airlines and the University of Alaska Anchorage Honors College. Brown is a 1992 YWCA Woman of Achievement recipient, a 2008 fDi Magazine business personality of the year, a 2009 Alaska Business Hall of Fame laureate and the 2012 Athena Award recipient.
Brenda Child, Ph.D., is a professor of American Studies at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. She is a well known expert on the American Indian boarding school experience and has written several books on the subject Away From Home: “American Indian Boarding School Experiences, 1879-2000,” “2000 and Boarding School Seasons: American Indian Families, 1900-1940, 1998.” She serves on the editorial board of Ethnohistory. She has served as a member of the Native American Council at the Eiteljorg Museum of Art in Indianapolis, Indiana and on the Executive Council of The Minnesota Historical Society.
Lance Morgan is president, chief executive officer, and co-founder of Ho-Chunk, Inc., the award winning economic development corporation owned by the Winnebago Tribe. Ho-Chunk, Inc. aims to promote economic self sufficiency for the Winnebago Tribe and its members by creating jobs through its joint ventures and investments, including hotels, convenience stores, web sites and a temporary labor service provider. The company currently employs over 1,400 workers in ten states and three foreign countries, operates 18 subsidiaries, and has revenues in excess of copy95 million. Ho-Chunk, Inc. also founded and funds a non-profit corporation that provides supplemental capital to individuals and businesses. Morgan is also the managing partner in the law firm of Fredericks, Peebles and Morgan, LLP; he specializes in Indian law and economic development issues.
Chief Gregory Pyle has been the leader of the Choctaw Nation, headquartered in Durant, Oklahoma, since 1997, after serving more than 13 years as assistant chief of the Nation. Under the leadership of Chief Pyle, the Choctaw Nation has put families first, with priorities on education, health and jobs. The Nation’s efforts in economic development have resulted in many profitable tribal businesses such as gaming centers, manufacturing plants and travel plazas, creating numerous jobs and funding tribal programs. Education milestones include the Choctaw Language Program and increasing the scholarship program to serve 5,000 students. Pyle serves on the Inter-Tribal Council of the Five Civilized Tribes, served as the President of the Oklahoma Area Indian Health Board, was a member of SI-435-2008 the National Indian Health Board, and serves on the Board of Directors of Landmark Bank and Durant Chamber of Commerce.
The museum is governed by a 25 member board of trustees, which meets three times a year. Each appointment is three years. The chair of the board is Roberta Leigh Conner, Confederated Tribes of Umatilla, of Pendleton, Oregon. Smithsonian Secretary Wayne Clough and Under Secretary for History, Art, and Culture Richard Kurin are on the board as ex-officio members. Eighteen of the current members are Native American. For more information, go to AmericanIndian.si.edu.
By Alyssa Landry, Indian Country Today Media Network
Dennis wants to photograph people in their home environment, which means he needs a big truck. (Vanishing Cultures Project)
A two-story-high photograph of Joe Yazzie towers over the viewer—every scar, wrinkle and hint of emotion on his face magnified. That face, larger than life, is the very essence of a Navajo man caught between traditional and modern worlds.
Yazzie’s portrait will greet the curious who come to see what promises to be the largest photo exhibit in history—not in terms of the number of photos, but in the size and resolution of those photographs.
Chicago-based photographer Dennis Manarchy is making photographs that dwarf most other prints: at 24 feet tall and with a resolution of 97,000 megapixels, he hopes each portrait will tell the story of one of America’s vanishing cultures.
“We’re going to start the exhibit with my portrait of Joe Yazzie, who is Navajo,” Manarchy says. “When you walk into the exhibit, you’ll see Joe. Your head will be smaller than his pupil. As you approach, you will be engulfed by him.”
That “total cultural immersion” is what Manarchy has in mind for the exhibit, which has been in the works for 12 years. “You’ll remember this for the rest of your life,” he says.
Manarchy plans to unveil his supersize, traveling exhibit, Vanishing Cultures: An American Portrait, by 2014. The exhibit space, which will be about two-thirds the size of a football field, will show America a snapshot of itself, Manarchy claims—a snapshot taken before some of the most precious and endangered cultures in the country deteriorate further.
“Portraits are powerful,” he explains, “but they are so much more powerful with stories. In America, there are essential cultures that are vanishing. The people aren’t vanishing, but the cultural identification is vanishing.”
Take Yazzie, for example. Born near Gallup, New Mexico, he attended boarding schools in which he was forbidden to use his native language. After boarding school, he relocated to Chicago, then was drafted into the Army during the Vietnam War. In the process, Yazzie lost much of his Navajo culture. “When you leave your culture, when you’re very young and you move to the city, then when you go home, you don’t fit in,” Yazzie says. “You miss what you were supposed to be, what you were supposed to learn from your parents, your grandparents, the medicine men.”
Yazzie (Dennis Manarchy)
Yazzie married an Italian woman after his wartime service. His two sons had little interest in the Navajo culture, and his 8-year-old grandson has no knowledge of it. “We are losing our tongue, our songs, our culture, our heritage,” he says. “It will not be brought back.
“This project is really about a face that’s going away soon,” Yazzie says. “They’re saying, You better get to know this face because you’ll never see it again. And it’s not just the face, but the story behind it.”
The portrait of Yazzie, 70, a graphic artist in Chicago, represents one of 50 cultures Manarchy hopes to capture on film during a year-long journey that will take him from the Inuit people in Alaska to the Cajun communities in the swamps of Louisiana. The project will include about a dozen American Indian tribes, many of which are experiencing loss of culture and language at alarming rates as the younger generations move to cities.
Manarchy is focusing on cultures that are intact and represent an important chunk of American history. His itinerary includes stops among the Amish of Pennsylvania, railroaders of West Virginia, cowboys of Idaho, motorcyclists of South Dakota and blues women of his hometown of Chicago. Tribes on the itinerary include the Chickasaw and Shawnee in Tennessee, the Comanche Nation in Texas, Taos Pueblo in New Mexico, Hopi in Arizona, Navajo in Utah, Northwest Indians in Washington, Blackfoot in Montana, Cheyenne in Wyoming, the Inuit in Alaska and the Pine Ridge Reservation.
Manarchy and his team plan to stay for a week or two each in 25 to 35 locations, shooting portraits of people representing 50 unique cultures that are being swallowed up or homogenized.
“The purpose of the project is to go to the home environments of different cultures,” project director Chad Tepley says. “Most of these people won’t travel 10 to 15 miles from their homes in their lifetimes, so it’s really important to get the camera to them.”
Manarchy, a commercial photographer with decades of experience, is looking to tell the stories behind every photo, and to preserve cultures with the biggest snapshots he can manage. For that, he insists he needs a big camera. His will fit snugly inside a semi-trailer and produce negatives that are six feet tall.
He also plans to produce documentary films and other educational materials about every culture he encounters. The finished exhibit will include portraits, filmed footage, the negatives and the giant camera itself, which weighs about one ton. “This will be a powerful educational tool,” Tepley says. “It will be a visual social studies class with videos of the cultures. It will be a very powerful way to show children what’s out there.”
The exhibit will be particularly poignant when it comes to teaching children about American Indians, Tepley says. The federal government recognizes 566 American Indian tribes today, though many children grow up believing tribes are the stuff of history or folklore. “They are not aware of the role these people played or the true perspective of how tribes have evolved,” Tepley adds.”
During the planning of the project, Tepley and Manarchy researched tribes to pinpoint the ones whose cultures were most intact. They enlisted help from an advisory committee, including members of several different
Chandra Brown, Gullah Geechee (Dennis Manarchy)
American Indian tribes who are offering cultural advice and will introduce him and his camera to Native communities.
By its nature, the project is bringing various cultures together, says Wendy White Eagle, Ho-Chunk, a project advisor. “I think the conversation today is more important than ever about how everyone is connected,” she says.
Although the exhibit will preserve the cultures as they are being expressed now, the project is not meant to discount future generations who will continue to celebrate tradition. “The world is evolving, not [so] much vanishing,” White Eagle says. “There are people coming behind them, and the expression of the culture might be different, but the core values might not be.”
Opening day of the exhibit still is about two years in the future. He is raising money to pay for the journey, which he estimates will cost more than copy7 million—he and his team hope to embark on the 20,000-mile, cross-country expedition by spring. He will spend a minimum of one year traveling and shooting, then at least six months editing before his exhibit opens in Chicago. Manarchy hopes to have 500 to 600 giant portraits to choose from when setting up the exhibit. He knows that each portrait will tell a story.
“All we really have is our stories,” says Nora Lloyd, Ojibwe, another advisor for the project.
Lloyd, who also posed in front of the camera, praises the project because of its ability to preserve history. She does, however, have some trepidation about seeing a 24-foot-tall reproduction of her face. “Dennis is doing a huge service by preserving things that people otherwise would never hear about, and in an enormously dramatic fashion,” she says. “A face with wrinkles and imperfections makes more interesting subjects. It really does show the essence of someone.”
Courtesy image. Arlington Police recently posted this security camera footage screen-cap on www.CanYouID.me, of a suspect who passed a counterfeit $50 bill at the Union 76 Gas Station at 2513 State Route 530 in Arlington on Jan. 15.
Source: The Marysville Globe
In a modern spin on the “wanted” posters of the Old West, local police departments are using a new website — www.CanYouID.me — to help identify unnamed suspects.
In the wake of the Marysville Police Department’s recent success with the program, the Arlington Police Department has posted a notice of its own on the site — at http://canyouid.me/blog/2013/03/arlington-police-department-case-no-13/apd130130 — asking web surfers if they recognized the suspect in a security camera footage screen-cap who passed a counterfeit $50 bill at the Union 76 Gas Station at 2513 State Route 530 in Arlington on Jan. 15.
The website hosts photos taken via video surveillance cameras in stores and other locations. With purported crimes ranging from credit card theft to robbery, suspects are shown on the website’s main page in the hopes that someone can help put names to their faces.
“The CanYouID.me website now provides a practical tool for law enforcement to partner with the public, to help hold criminals accountable for the crimes that impact our community,” Marysville Police Officer Dan Vinson said.
Marysville Police responded to a report of a shoplifter leaving the Marysville Kmart store with $11,338 in jewelry stolen from a locked display case. Unable to identify the suspect, detectives turned to CanYouID.me for help. Two citizens identified the suspect through the photos posted on the site, and he has since been charged, according to Marysville Police Detective Craig Bartl, who inherited the case from Vinson, who was on detective duty at the time.
CanYouID.me allows anyone who recognizes a suspect in a photo to contact the investigating agency through email with just a simple click. Anonymous tips are also welcome. Since its development by a Lake Forest Park detective in July of 2010, the website has helped identify 20 suspects, with 43 participating agencies and 148 detective signed up with the site. The city of Arlington website will link to its entries on CanYouID.me under its police department link at http://arlingtonwa.gov/index.aspx?page=86.
“The media is very helpful on big cases, but we’ve got tons of lesser crimes that aren’t going to make the evening news, and this is another outlet for that,” Arlington Police Sgt. Jonathan Ventura said. “This goes along with [Arlington Mayor Barbara Tolbert’s] focus on community outreach and embracing social media, because we can’t do this without the public’s help. It’s just a great tool.”
