courtesy NBC Jackie Pierson says she put on a lot of weight after her father was diagnosed with cancer in 2004.
Indian Country Today
Jackie Pierson, 36, is a former high school athlete and mother of two. She also weighs 291 pounds, and would rather not. She’ll be competing in the next season of the NBC show The Biggest Loser, which begins September 11.
This edition of the series has a theme of “Glory Days,” and features sports stars who are well over their fighting weight. Two former NFL players are among the contestants, as is former professional tennis player Zina Garrison. Pierson, who originally hails from Winnipeg, Manitoba, and is Sagkeeng First Nation, didn’t get to the professional level, but her athletic resume is impressive. According to the official NBC website:
She was a high school basketball player who won multiple MVP, All-City and All Star awards, was captain of her team when they won the state championship and was named MVP for that game. In addition, she was a high school volleyball player and captain of her high school varsity team for two years in a row; played soccer, baseball and rugby; and threw the javelin in high school. Pierson was on track to a successful college basketball career when an ankle injury ended her dream of continuing to play.
Pierson currently lives in California, but early buzz on social media shows strong support from Winnipeggers for their hometown sports hero.
If you listen closely, you can hear Dan Cornelius singing his favorite Willie Nelson theme song—“I’m on the road again…”—as his Mobile Farmers Market vehicle heads down the highway.
Cornelius, of Wisconsin’s Oneida Nation, is general manager of a three-month-long, 10,000-mile foodie road show designed to showcase Native American foods in conjunction with a reconnection of tribal trade routes. “A lot of native communities are remote, literally food deserts, and don’t have good access to healthy traditional fresh foods. Part of our mission is to access food resources, take those great products and distribute them as part of a tribal trade reintroduction,” he says.
“There’s a lot of product that is traditionally grown, harvested and processed—lots of time and labor that goes into that—but the traditional foods aren’t made available to the general public as a sustainable economic resource.”
The interest is there, but the connection still needs to be made. “It’s about health issues, maintaining our traditions, and turning the effort into a form of economic development by selling excess product for profit.”
The “Reconnecting the Tribal Trade Routes Roadtrip” is an effort to bring attention to the unique Native food products and artwork from across the country. The Mobile Farmers Market van started the roadtrip in mid-December when it picked up wild rice, maple syrup, and other products in northern Minnesota. The roadtrip officially kicked off in early January, making the drive from Wisconsin to Louisiana before heading to Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arizona, and the West Coast. The trip then visited Montana and the Dakotas en route to concluding during March back in Minnesota. (Intertribal Agriculture Council)
The Mobile Farmers Market traveled across the country earlier this year as part of the Intertribal Agriculture Council‘s efforts to improve Indian agriculture by promoting Indian use of Indian resources. “Prior to our founding in 1987, American Indian agriculture was basically unheard of outside reservation boundaries,” notes the group’s web page.
”The Mobile Farmers Market utilized a large capacity fuel-efficient cargo van to transport a number of products across a region, all the while providing support to start farmers markets in interested tribal communities,” says Market Manager Bruce Savage. The vans’ insulated interior lining ensured correct temperature control, and a chest freezer allowed for transport of frozen goods.
“For a variety of reasons, traditional native products are frequently difficult to obtain, and the Mobile Farmers Market hoped to change that by making things more accessible to tribal communities,” says Cornelius. In the Pacific Northwest, canned and smoked salmon were frequently obtainable items while the Southwest offered up cactus buds and syrup. The Great Plains provided a prairie-grown protein-packed wild turnip. In the Great Lakes region it was sumac berries. “Soak them in water, add honey or syrup, and you get a tea-like lemonade that you won’t find commercially,” Cornelius says.
Coyote Valley Tribe’s community and Head Start garden and greenhouse (Intertribal Agriculture Council)
Success of the project was contingent on cultivating supportive relationships with local partners and that part of the plan came together nicely, very reminiscent of the early trade and barter days.
“Trade routes once connected regional tribes across the continent where different local areas produced unique resources,” says Cornelius. “As an example, the Objiwe exchanged meat and fish for corn from the Huadenosaunee in the Northeast. And, of course, the Three Sisters combination of corn/beans/squash gradually moved from South and Central America throughout all of the North American Continent. “
The Reconnecting the Tribal Trade Routes Roadtrip got underway in December 2013 by first picking up wild rice, maple syrup, and other products in Minnesota before heading off to Wisconsin, Louisiana, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arizona, and the West Coast and finally heading home to Minnesota earlier this year via Montana and the Dakotas.
The Mobile Farmers Market’s main focus is food, but it also supports Native artisan by carrying a small selection of jewelry, crafts, and artwork. Pictured here: inlaid earrings from Santa Domingo Pueblo. (nativefoodnetwork.com)
As Cornelius and crew bought and sold the wares of North America’s indigenous communities, the grocery list grew to include tepary beans from the Tohono O’odham people to chocolate produced by the Chickasaw Nation.
The mobile van discovered a gold mine at Ramona Farms in Sacaton, Arizona, on the Gila River Indian Reservation. Ramona and Terry Button have been growing crops for small ethnic grocers on the reservation for over 40 years and still have plenty to share with the outside world, everything from Southwestern staples like garbanzo and Anasazi beans to white Sonoran and Pima club wheat as well as alfalfa and cotton.
“Part of our mission was to build an awareness and an excitement of all the things available ‘out there’ and we succeeded,” Cornelius says. “One of the great things about our initial effort (discussions are currently underway to find funding for more vans and an increased regional visability) was the ground level opportunity to talk with community growers face-to-face discussing products, challenges, and opportunities to introduce traditional items to a larger world.”
The Mobile Farmers Market in Southern Oregon (Intertribal Agriculture Council)
This photo taken July 21, 2014 shows Kennett Consolidated School District Superintendent Barry Tomasetti meeting with young students in teacher Jane Cornell’s summer school class at Mary D. Lang Kindergarten Center in Kennett Square, Pa. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
By KIMBERLY HEFLING Associated Press
KENNETT SQUARE, Pa. (AP) – The cheerful sign outside Jane Cornell’s summer school classroom in Pennsylvania’s wealthiest county says “Welcome” and “Bienvenidos” in polished handwriting.
Inside, giggling grade-schoolers who mostly come from homes where Spanish is the primary language worked on storytelling with a tale about a crocodile going to the dentist. The children and their classroom at the Mary D. Lang Kindergarten Center, near both mushroom farms and the borough’s bucolic red-brick downtown, are a subtle reminder of America’s changing school demographics.
For the first time ever, U.S. public schools are projected this fall to have more minority students than non-Hispanic whites enrolled, a shift largely fueled by growth in the number of Hispanic children.
Non-Hispanic white students are still expected to be the largest racial group in the public schools this year at 49.8 percent. But the National Center for Education Statistics says minority students, when added together, will now make up the majority.
About one-quarter of the minority students are Hispanic, 15 percent are black and 5 percent are Asian and Pacific Islanders. Biracial students and Native Americans make up a smaller share of the minority student population.
Education Secretary Arne Duncan called the changing population a seminal moment in education. “We can’t talk about other people’s children. These are our children,” he said.
The shift creates new academic realities, such as the need for more English language instruction, and cultural ones, meaning changes in school lunch menus to reflect students’ tastes.
But it also brings some complex societal questions that often fall to school systems to address, including issues of immigration, poverty, diversity and inequity.
The result, at times, is racial and ethnic tension.
In Louisiana in July, Jefferson Parish public school administrators reached an agreement with the federal government to end an investigation into discrimination against English language learners.
In May, police had to be called to a school in the Streamwood, Illinois, a Chicago suburb, to help break up a fight between Hispanic and black students after a racially based lunchroom brawl got out of control.
Issues of race and ethnicity in school can also be more subtle.
In the Kennett Consolidated School District, Superintendent Barry Tomasetti described parents who opt to send their kids to private schools across the border in Delaware after touring diverse classrooms. Other families, he said, seek out the district’s diverse schools “because they realize it’s not a homogenous world out there.”
The changes in the district, about an hour southwest outside of Philadelphia, from mostly middle-to-upper class white to about 40 percent Hispanic was driven partly by workers migrating from Mexico and elsewhere to work the mushroom farms.
“We like our diversity,” Tomasetti said, even as he acknowledged the cost. He has had to hire English language instructors and translators for parent-teacher conferences. He has cobbled together money to provide summer school for many young English language learners who need extra reading and math support.
“Our expectation is all of our kids succeed,” he said.
Private schools nationally are changing as well, seeing a smaller number of white students and a greater number of Hispanic students in their decreasing pool of children.
The new majority-minority status of America’s schools mirrors a change that is coming for the nation as a whole. The Census Bureau estimates that the country’s population will have more minorities than whites for the first time in 2043, a change due in part to higher birth rates among Hispanics and a stagnating or declining birth rate among blacks, whites and Asians.
Today, slightly more than 1 in 5 kids speaks a language other than English at home.
But even as the population becomes more diverse, schools are becoming more racially segregated, reflecting U.S. housing patterns.
The disparities are evident even in the youngest of black, Hispanic and Native American children, who on average enter kindergarten academically behind their white and Asian peers. They are more likely to attend failing schools and face harsher school discipline.
Later, they have lower standardized test scores, on average, fewer opportunities to take advanced classes and are less likely to graduate.
Duncan said the disparities are unacceptable, and the country needs to make sure all students “have an opportunity to have a world class education, to do extraordinarily well.”
As the school-age population has become more nonwhite, it’s also become poorer, said Patricia Gandara, co-director of the Civil Rights Project at UCLA who serves on President Barack Obama’s advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanics.
Roughly one-quarter of Hispanics and African-Americans live below the poverty line – meaning a family of four has nearly $24,000 in annual income – and some of the poorest of Hispanic children are dealing with the instability of being in the country illegally or with a parent who is, Gandara said.
Focusing on teacher preparation and stronger curriculum is “not going to get us anywhere unless we pay attention to the really basic needs of these children, things like nutrition and health and safety, and the instability of the homes,” she said.
This transformation in school goes beyond just educating the children. Educators said parents must feel comfortable and accepted in schools, too.
Lisa Mack, president of the Ohio PTA, encourages local leaders to include grandparents and replace events such as a sock hop with one with a Motown theme that might be more inclusive or to provide opportunities for people of different ethnic groups to bring food to share at monthly meetings.
“I think one thing that’s critical is that schools and PTAs and everyone just need to understand that with changing demographics, you can’t do things the way you’ve done them before,” she said. “That you have to be creative in reaching out and making them feel welcomed and valued and supported in the school system.”
Some schools are seeking teachers to help reflect the demographics of their student population.
Today, fewer than 1 in 5 of the public schools teachers is a minority. “It is an ongoing challenge to try and make our teacher population reflect our student population,” said Steve Saunders, spokesman for the Adams County, Colorado, school district outside Denver that has seen a large shift toward having Hispanic students.
The New America Foundation, in a recent report, suggested teacher prep programs have at least one class for teachers on working with non-native English speakers and that education programs embrace bilingualism.
Andrea Giunta, a senior policy analyst at the National Education Association who focuses on teacher recruiting, retention and diversity, said you can’t assume that teachers are a good match just because of their background.
“Just because you speak Spanish doesn’t mean you speak the same Spanish your students are speaking and communicating with,” she said.
This comes as the NEA, the nation’s largest union, just elected an all-minority leadership team in July. The new president, Lily Eskelsen Garcia, is Latina, and the vice president and secretary-treasurer, Rebecca S. Pringle and Princess Moss, are black.
In Kennett Square, superintendent Tomasetti said Hispanic students in his district are performing at levels, on average, higher than their peers statewide. One recent graduate, Christian Cordova-Pedroza, is attending Harvard University this fall. Cordova-Pedroza is one of five children of a mushroom farmer from Mexico.
Cordova-Pedroza credited the motivation instilled by his parents combined with access to a variety of educational opportunities for his success, including an after-school program that included tutoring and help with college applications. He also was active in a Latino leadership club that helps provides translation services in the community and participated in summer programs at Penn State and Princeton.
“Certainly, I had to work hard to get there, but I feel like at every opportunity that I had a chance of participating in or doing that, I was always like, ‘Yes, I want to do that,'” he said.
Nearby, at El Nayarit Mexico Grocery Store, owner Jaime Sandoval, a native of Mexico with six kids, said he’s been pleased with the education his children have received. His 9-year-old daughter, he said, wants to be a teacher.
“She loves to read and all that stuff,” Sandoval said. “She always has good grades on English and she loves it much.”
Candidate Joe Pakootas, center, walks with his family in the Perry Street Parade in Spokane, Washington July 26, 2014. Ian C. Bates for Al Jazeera America
Editor’s note: This is the second in a series of profiles of people running for office in America who are unlikely to win, but who believe so strongly in their cause that they still try. The first profile, on Bruce Skarin’s efforts in Massachusetts, can be read here.
SPOKANE, Wash. — Ever since Lewis and Clark rolled down the mighty Columbia with a presidential writ, politicians and the judges they appoint have controlled the fortunes of Joe Pakootas’ people. Executive orders confined his ancestors to the Colville Reservation, acts of Congress deprived them of gold-rich foothills, and federal judges ruled from afar about their basic rights as Americans. Now, for the first time ever, a registered tribal member is making a serious bid to represent the people of Washington state’s 5th District in Congress. Running against incumbent Cathy McMorris Rodgers is none other than Joe Pakootas.
It is a tough challenge. Not only is Pakootas (pronounced pah-KOH-tas) running as a Democrat in a deeply conservative district, but his main opponent is also the kind of blandly affirmative incumbent who is particularly hard to unseat. McMorris Rodgers is running for her sixth term and is the fourth-ranking House Republican. She’s a hard worker with unexceptional views and an up-by-her-bootstraps biography (first in her family to earn a college degree, worked at McDonald’s to pay her way through school) that she can wield smoothly, as she did when she gave the GOP’s response to the State of the Union address in January. She has raised a tremendous amount of money without much visible effort and won’t really begin campaigning in the district until after the Aug. 5 multiparty primary, in which the top two candidates (regardless of party) advance to the November ballot.
Pakootas speaks at the Stevens County 7th District Picnic in Chewelah, Washington, July 26, 2014. Ian C. Bates for Al Jazeera America
The only Democrat running (the other two candidates are a Tea Party Republican and an independent), Pakootas has still had to work very hard just to have a chance in the primary. Running as a Democrat in the 5th District is, as one organizer put it, “taking one for the party,” and the Democrats in Spokane had to convince Pakootas, the chief operating officer (CEO) of the Colville Tribal Federal Corp., which manages tribal business and brought in $86 million in gross revenue last year, that he should accept the challenge. The Native population can’t deliver many votes (there are just over 9,000 registered Colville members, the largest Native group in the district), but Democratic Party officials saw Pakootas’ potential to be a rare crossover figure.
Pakootas, 57, has an undeniably compelling story. Like his opponent, he comes from humble roots. McMorris Rodgers’ father owned an orchard in small-town Kettle Falls and had political aspirations of his own. Pakootas had a somewhat rougher road: he was born on the reservation and was a ward of the state by the time he was in the second grade. He and six of his seven siblings were sent to live with a foster family on a dairy farm off the reservation; it was three years before they were reunited with their parents. The only one of his siblings who didn’t grow up to be an alcoholic or drug addict was an older brother who died in a motorcycle accident as a teenager. Pakootas himself was a star athlete in high school, but he “went the path of drinking,” as he puts it, for a couple years. By the time he straightened out, his athletic career was derailed, and he was married, with a child on the way.
The candidate surveys damage at the Rainbow Beach Resort, one of the businesses he supervises as the CEO of the Colville Tribal Federal Corporation. Cabins at the resort, located on the Colville Indian Reservation, were destroyed by a storm with heavy winds.Ian C. Bates for Al Jazeera America
That he managed to become the man he is today — the Colville CEO who helped turn around tribal finances and helped lead a successful lawsuit against a Canadian mining firm that was polluting the Columbia River — is a testament to his character. For the first time in its history, the Colville Corp. is managed entirely by Native Americans, from Washington state and beyond. Pakootas has instituted a more Native-friendly culture for the employees, including things like extended leave for root-gathering season in the spring. He has also cut waste by shuttering unprofitable mills and houseboat concessions owned by the tribe, while focusing on profitable casinos and the next great hope for the tribe’s future growth: luring corporations by offering offshore-style tax concessions on the reservation. He credits his time in foster care with helping him be at ease with non-Native culture, and he worked his way up in industries — construction and later drilling and blasting — that were at times downright hostile to Native Americans. And he’s done all this while running a successful convenience store in his hometown of Inchelium. He’s been married for 38 years to his high school sweetheart; they have four children and six beautiful grandkids.
But having a great story isn’t the same as being able to tell it glibly on command. Over lunch at the gilded Davenport Hotel, in downtown Spokane, Pakootas is disarmingly thoughtful and honest. He’ll tell you about why he wears a Livestrong bracelet (for the friends and family he lost to cancer). He’ll explain that the End of the Trail pendant, based on the iconic James Earle Fraser sculpture of the plains Native American slumped in the saddle, is around his neck because it was his deceased brother’s favorite artwork: “[his death] is constantly with me,” he says. And if you ask about the aplastic anemia bracelet on his other arm, he’ll start to cry: he lost a 6-year-old niece to the disease.
That emotional honesty is not just his own personality, he says later; it is also Native culture. One of the human-resources reforms he instituted as CEO was to allow a more flexible bereavement schedule for employees. “Non-Indians can take an afternoon off for a funeral,” Pakootas says. “But we need a week, maybe two. We need time.”
Pakootas and his family prepare to walk in the Perry Street Parade. Ian C. Bates for Al Jazeera America
Native culture is, in some ways, at odds with the two main chores of electioneering: self-promotion and fundraising. “That’s the worst part for me,” he says. “I never could talk about myself. I never could grovel for money, and I guess that’s kind of what we’re doing,” he says, laughing. When he ran for the tribal council, he did a lot of door-to-door politicking, which was fine, but “out here it’s all about money. And I’m not very good at it.”
Susan Brudnicki, an energetic former federal employee who is managing Pakootas’ campaign, has done everything short of locking him in a room with a phone and a call list for fundraising. Like his opponent, he has gone far outside the district for money. But he hasn’t had her success. “There are 566 tribes in the United States,” he says. “And I’ve called 80 percent of them.” He knows many of their leaders from as far back as the days when he played in rez-ball high-school-basketball tournaments all over the country. The Colville and Spokane tribes have given the maximum amount, but turning that farther-flung network into money has proved difficult. “They say the same thing you hear from non-Indians,” he says. “They say it’s not a winnable race.”
Taking a phone call after the Parade in Spokane. Ian C. Bates for Al Jazeera America
Native groups are active in politics in the gaming era, but more as tactical donors, not as boosters for Native candidates. That could explain, in part, why there are so few Native Americans running for federal office. Pakootas says he talked briefly with a Native congressional candidate in Minnesota who later dropped out of the race. There are two Republican legislators from Oklahoma with Native roots, but through the ages, the list of Native American politicians is woefully thin.
The end result is this: even with the money raised from Native American groups and tribes, Pakootas has raised less than $100,000. McMorris Rodgers has raised more than $2 million. That leaves retail politics. Brudnicki got Pakootas to start seeing a speech coach, to help him take the “ain’ts” and “innits” out of his sentences. But the nerves are harder to conquer; he carries around a moisturizing mouth spray — “my go-get-’em juice,” he jokes — for dry mouth, which plagues him when he speaks in public.
Outside of Pakootas’ office in Spokane. Ian C. Bates for Al Jazeera America
At a candidate forum hosted by the advocacy group in the Business and Professional Women’s Foundation in a school cafeteria in Republic, Washington, more than two hours northwest of Spokane, Pakootas is impeccably turned out in a blue suit with blue tie. Most of the other candidates and the hundred or so attendees are dressed in jeans and T-shirts and the like. Everyone in the room except Pakootas is Caucasian, from the two policemen wearing military-grade body armor to the nervous guy who asks the candidates who’s going to put a check on the environmentalists.
Pakootas certainly looks like a politician: smooth skin, strong jaw, and good hair. (One political consultant who normally advises against using candidate pictures on billboards had a change of heart upon meeting Pakootas face to face.) But his delivery still needs work. He starts answers strong enough, citing statistics about rising poverty in the district and defending the role of government in creating jobs. But he tends to flee at the end of his answers, to talk quickly and then sit quickly.
Pakootas jokes with his son-in-law, left and daughter. Ian C. Bates for Al Jazeera America
McMorris Rodgers isn’t there, but the other two opponents are, and they fare no better. Dave Wilson, a successful Spokane businessman running as an independent, promises to “end the gridlock” without coming close to articulating how. Tom Horne, a conservative Republican, follows that by huffing that gridlock in Washington is the whole point: “It keeps things from getting worse faster.” When the break comes, Pakootas retreats to the back of the room, near the table where the lemonade and brownies are being served, and makes small talk with Brudnicki and a few of his volunteers until it’s time to go.
The crowd is much smaller the next evening in Colville, the seat of Stevens County, an area that one resident calls a “biker-gang retirement community.” Colville is also ranching and logging country, and there’s a deeply Western conservatism here. Fewer than two dozen people have shown up for the Pakootas “town hall” at the pavilion in Yep Kanum Park, and the crowd looks somehow even smaller under the tall trees. But the Democrats who are here are true believers, both in progressivism and in this candidate. The owner of the local window shop thanks Pakootas for running. Walt Kloefkorn, the Washington state coordinator for Progressive Democrats of America, rattles off a list of Democratic candidates from prior elections, all unserious or underqualified in some way. “I think Joe’s one of the best Democratic candidates in years,” he says.
And it’s true: in the smaller crowd, much more receptive to his set menu of pro-choice, pro-environment policies, Pakootas is at ease. Speaking into a small mic attached to a portable amp Brudnicki brought, he tells jokes and gets laughs. He tells his own story with a bit more polish than the night before.
After the speech, the Rev. Jim CastroLang of the local United Church of Christ comes over and shakes Pakootas’ hand. He congratulates the candidate on staying upbeat, despite the odds. “You know how it goes,” he says. “You can’t win — until you do.”
A Pakootas supporter wears the candidate’s buttons. Ian C. Bates for Al Jazeera America
Alan Berner / The Seattle Times Matika Wilbur took this portrait of her niece, Anna Cook, for Project 562, a three-year, cross-country road trip aimed at documenting all of the nation’s 562-plus Indian tribes. Cook is Swinomish and Hualapai. The portrait is part of an exhibit at Tacoma Art Museum.
THE PHOTOGRAPHER Matika Wilbur has a little exercise she encourages new acquaintances to perform.
Do a Google image search for the term “Native American” and see what comes up.
The first result on a recent attempt is a grainy, sepia-toned picture of an unidentified Indian chief staring into the distance like a lost soul and decked out exactly (and unfortunately) as one might expect — in a headdress of tall fathers and a vest made of carved horn. It looks to be from early in the previous century. The next six pictures, variations on this theme. It’s as if the society depicted in these images ceased to exist decades ago.
Wilbur, a 30-year-old from Seattle who’s a member of the Tulalip and Swinomish tribes of Puget Sound, knows perhaps as much as anyone in America how laughably out-of-whack that Google-search result really is. She is halfway through an epic journey funded by everyday people via Kickstarter to visit and document every single federally recognized tribe in the United States — more than 500 in all.
For the past year and a half, she’s been taking new images to replace the tired ones that pop up in Internet searches, in the mainstream media — and in our minds.
She calls her three-year campaign Project 562, the “562” representing the number of recognized tribes when she started out; there were 566 as of this spring. The first 50 or so gallery-ready images from the project are on exhibit at the Tacoma Art Museum until Oct. 5.
It is the most ambitious effort to visually document Native Americans since Edward Curtis undertook a similar challenge at the beginning of the last century. Back then, it was widely believed that Indians on this continent were going extinct and needed to be photographed for posterity.
Wilbur is also concerned about photographing Native Americans for posterity, but her project is more a story of survival and advancement than extinction.
Matika wilbur Some of Wilbur’s Project 562 portrait subjects live closer to home, such as sisters Darkfeather, left, Eckos, center, and Bibiana Ancheta, from the Tulalip Tribes north of Seattle. Wilbur is also a Tulalip member.
Wilbur’s first name means “messenger” in her tribal language, and she more than lives up to that title. She pursues the issue of Native American identity with the zeal of an evangelist. And she doesn’t mince words.
“How can we be seen as modern, successful people if we are continually represented as the leathered and feathered vanishing race?” Wilbur says in a clip on Kickstarter.
In person, she makes an equally powerful impression, telling stories, laughing out loud and giving hugs, but also speaking earnestly about her work.
Taking a break from the field to attend the opening of the Tacoma exhibit this spring, she pointed out that images such as hers have an impact well beyond museums and classrooms.
“We have to take back our narratives,” she says. “It’s time we stop assuming an identity that was never really ours.”
Native Americans make up only 1.7 percent of the U.S. population, or about 5.2 million people, according to the 2010 Census.
As Native American tribes negotiate for things like federal recognition and access to natural resources, Wilbur says it helps to show that Indian society remains intact and functional, albeit diminished.
“Imagery matters,” she says. “Representation matters.”
PROJECT 562 officially launched in the fall of 2012, when Wilbur, a schoolteacher, decided to give up her apartment in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood along with “a salary, a really cozy bed and a juicer!” and hit the road.
Matika Wilbur Wilbur captured twin brothers Jared (left) and Caleb Dunlap, both of Seattle, in a lighthearted moment during a cultural gathering in Quinault, on Washington’s Pacific Coast. The brothers, from the Fond du Lac band of Lake Superior Chippewa in Minnesota, jokingly refer to themselves as the “nerdy natives.”
She laid the groundwork by networking through Facebook, tribal newspapers, cultural leaders, professors and even distant relatives to get out the word and drum up contacts. She launched the first round of her Kickstarter campaign to fund her travels, raising $35,000.
Then Wilbur packed up her Honda with her belongings, as well as personally canned fish and berries from the Northwest to present as gifts to her hosts around the country, and headed out.
To date, she has visited more than 220 tribal lands from Long Island to Louisiana, Hawaii to Alaska, armed with little more than a camera and audio equipment, and a willingness to live out of her car and sleep in the homes of strangers.
Wilbur jokes that there are only two degrees of separation between people even in the most far-flung sections of Indian country. Still, it can take time to follow the necessary protocols with tribal leaders and identify portrait subjects, and days more to build rapport before the camera comes out.
In the field, Wilbur, a people person if ever there was one, sings and dances and cooks and feasts, gaining access to tribal events and behind-the-scenes moments that are off-limits to most outsiders.
“I can hang — I’ll do your dishes!” Wilbur says in typically animated fashion one day while “hanging” in her old stomping grounds on Capitol Hill.
Wherever she visits, locals make a way for her. “It’s like they take pity on me,” she jokes.
Wilbur, who maintains a small staff of volunteers based in different cities, seems to have struck a chord. A second Kickstarter campaign to raise $54,000 more to continue the project netted pledges totaling nearly four times that — $213,461.
The Tacoma Art Museum helped raise $20,000 to print silver gelatin images on display there.
Project 562 is only partly a photographic journey. It is also a social documentary, a contemporary oral account by people young and old, rancher, blue-collar and professional, of what it’s like to be an Indian in the United States.
At the Tacoma exhibit, recorded audio and video interviews accompany the portraits, adding nuance and resonance to the framed and in some cases hand-painted pictures. Subjects speak frankly about experiencing racism, their connection to the land, spirituality and personal identity. It is not always easy listening.
Wilbur’s teenage niece, Anna Cook, is the subject of one portrait. She talks about going to a Catholic school and struggling to find a place in the overwhelmingly non-Native student body. On the recording that accompanies her portrait, she sobs while talking about how the white, Hispanic and the few Native students self-segregate in her school’s lunch room — “but nobody really says anything about it. I just have one really solid friend that I sit with by myself, so we kinda like separate ourselves.”
That interview saddens Wilbur even now. But she believes that by having Cook expose her deepest anxieties about being Native American, she will inspire other young Native Americans to do likewise — and open a window for the rest of us.
“It’s scary to be honest,” Wilbur says. “But if we don’t do it, then we won’t change the experience for the next generation.”
Subjects in the exhibit express differing views about what it means to be an Indian. Star Flower Montoya, Barona and Taos Pueblo, shares advice from her grandmother: “You learn to wear your moccasin on one foot and your tennis shoe on the other.”
But Turtle Mountain Chippewa Jessica Metcalf, a Ph.D in Native American studies, expresses an alternate take in the clip that accompanies her portrait:
“We are not split in half. We do not have to choose . . . We do not leave our Indianness at the door when we walk into a grocery store or into an academic situation. We are who we are wherever we walk.”
WILBUR HAS tackled the issue of Indianness before.
In her earlier exhibit, “Save the Indian, Kill the Man,” Wilbur plays off the 19th-century U.S. government practice of sending Native American kids to boarding schools to assimilate them. The pictures explore how genocide and the loss of language and traditions contribute to problems such as substance abuse among Indians, which she believes is caused, in part, by a desire to numb the pain of historical and present-day ills.
Native Americans and Alaska Natives have among the highest rates of alcohol-related deaths and suicides of all ethnic groups in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Wilbur says it’s crucial to deal openly with the “sickness and toxicity” that plague Native American communities.
At the same time, it’s important to combat stereotypes perpetuated in, say, old “cowboy and Indian” movies, as well as depictions of drunken, downtrodden urban Indians, she says.
What’s striking about Wilbur’s pictures is the flattering way Wilbur has chosen to portray her subjects. The exoticism of the “noble savage” is replaced by an everyman sort of dignity. Majestic, natural backgrounds suggest a deep pride of place. The viewer can sense Wilbur’s determination to reset our attitudes about Native people.
“Unfortunately, a lot of times when young people discuss ‘What’s Indianness,’ it’s associated with poverty and struggle,” Wilbur says. “That struggle somehow defines who we are, and I think I made the same mistake as a young person. I associated it with alcoholism and drug addiction, and the negative things in our communities that we’re still trying to recover from.”
First, Wilbur had to wrestle her own ideas about what it means to be an Indian.
Wilbur’s mother, Nancy Wilbur, whom she describes admiringly as “an old-school hustler, a total entrepreneur,” was an Indian activist who ran a Native American art gallery, called Legends, in La Conner when she was a kid. There, across the Swinomish Channel from the reservation where she grew up, the young Wilbur had privileged encounters with influential artists such as Marvin Oliver and Douglas David, who’d stop in to show off their latest work.
Wilbur’s Swinomish family has a deep connection to the land around La Conner; a road near town even bears the Wilbur family name.
There was much that Wilbur could’ve been proud of in those years — but she was angry.
At college in Montana and then Southern California, where she earned a bachelor’s degree from the Brooks Institute of Photography, she became tired of fielding ill-considered questions about her identity. Explaining to people unfamiliar with Northwest Coastal culture that “No, I didn’t grow up in a teepee” can wear you down.
Even though she knew the stereotypes about contemporary Indian life were wrong, Wilbur was “too young and naive” to figure out what actually did represent her culture, or why certain ills within her community persisted.
“I didn’t understand why my people were sick; I didn’t understand why I had been to 70 funerals,” she says.
It took some time to connect the dots.
After college, Wilbur traveled abroad in search of herself, spending time in Europe, Africa and South America, where she photographed indigenous communities in Peru.
Wilbur came home inspired. Instead of thinking of her heritage as a burden, she’d work to showcase it. She would be “my grandmother’s granddaughter,” passing on the positive traditions and beliefs handed down to her while documenting efforts to improve life for present-day Native Americans, from programs to revive fading tribal languages to ones aimed at improving health-care outcomes on reservations.
Her portraits don’t avoid colorful Indian attire and ceremonies — far from it. From White Mountain Apache crown dancers in full body paint and headdresses to traditional hoop dancers, the collection celebrates custom and ritual. But presented among pictures of academics, activists, students, family men, career women and cowboys who are Indians, these images have a more appropriate context.
When the exhibit opened in Tacoma this spring, Wilbur invited local relatives, project volunteers and subjects from around the country to the opening party to present blessings of song, dance and storytelling. What could’ve been a stodgy reception turned into a moving and at times rousing affair, with a stunning cross-section of Native American society on hand — Puyallup, Tulalip, Swinomish, Paiute, Pima, Crow, Yuma, Apache and beyond.
Thosh Collins, a portrait subject from the Pima of Arizona, remarked on the uplifting spiritual energy in the room.
“What she’s doing is healing work, wellness work,” he said of Wilbur’s pictures.
At times like this, it’s hard to ignore the sad fact that this country’s Native people have few opportunities to celebrate across tribal affiliation in a mainstream space like an urban art museum. And it is even rarer for non-Natives to bear witness to such a gathering.
Rock Huska, the museum’s curator for Northwest Contemporary Art, admits that TAM has limited experience with Native American art from the present day. And it is taking a huge gamble in helping an artist in the field to bring her project to fruition. The exhibit on display now is, in a sense, a test case for this type of collaboration. The museum will use feedback from paying visitors to make needed refinements and decide later how to work with Wilbur as she gathers additional material.
Wilbur is engaged in two kinds of image-making — and only one involves a camera.
She talks a lot about making Native Americans “attractive.”
But when Wilbur uses that term, she isn’t just talking about physical beauty. She’s also talking about doing things that inspire others to make positive change in their own way — leading by example.
As Collins sang a song with his dad and brother at the opening reception, Wilbur, wearing a traditional woven hat, led a large, smiling group of women and men locked arm-in-arm in a joyful circle dance around the museum’s atrium.
Wilbur says her goal is to build a traveling longhouse that represents her Northwest Coastal Indian roots and can be set up in cities all over the world to showcase her portrait collection, reminding visitors that the communities represented in her images aren’t just a part of history — they’re still making it.
Tyrone Beason is a Pacific NW magazine writer. Reach him at tbeason@seattletimes. Alan Berner is a Seattle Times staff photographer.
At a time when social media users, , are trading in fully formed words for abbreviations (“defs” instead of “definitely”), it may seem that some languages are under threat of deterioration — literally.
But social media may actually be beneficial for languages.
Of the estimated that are spoken around the world, UNESCO projects half will disappear by the end of the century. But social networking websites such as Facebook and Twitter are in a position to revitalize and preserve indigenous, minority and endangered languages, linguists and language-preservation activists say.
Facebook is available in over 70 languages, ranging from Ancient Greek to French. Facebook
One of the reasons some indigenous languages are endangered is that increased connectivity through the Internet and social media have strengthened dominant languages such as English, Russian and Chinese, says Anna Luisa Daigneault of the .
Endangered languages stand a greater chance of survival when they are used online.
“Having a Web presence for those languages is super important for their survival. Social media are just another connection point for people who want to stay connected to their language,” says Daigneault, Latin America projects coordinator and development officer at the institute.
Today, Facebook — the world’s most popular social networking site — is available in . The list includes indigenous languages like Cherokee and Quechua. This year, Facebook says it launched 13 news languages, including Azerbaijani, Javanese, Macedonian, Galician and Sinhala.
Facebook through the website; if there is enough demand, the language will then appear in the and the Facebook community can begin translating the interface.
, a community of 16 volunteers in Bolivia, is working on translating the Facebook interface in Aymara, one of the three official languages in Bolivia.
An Aymara woman prepares to take part in a pageant in La Paz, Bolivia, in 2013. Jaqi-Aru, a community of volunteers is working on translating the Facebook interface in the indigenous language of Aymara. Juan Karita/AP
Elias Quispe Chura, the group’s Facebook translation manager, says the effort involves young Aymara people from different Bolivian provinces. “We promote use of our mother tongue on the Internet through translation projects and content creation,” he says. “With that, we want to contribute and enrich the content of our language in cyberspace.”
He says Aymara native speakers in Peru, Chile, and Argentina are waiting anxiously to see their language as an option on Facebook. The group started the project in 2012 and is more than halfway done translating 24,000 words, phrases and sentences.
But the task hasn’t been free of challenges.
“There are many words that there aren’t in Aymara, for example: mobile phone — ‘jawsaña,’ password — ‘chimpu,’ message — ‘apaya,’ event — ‘wakichäwi,’ journalist — ‘yatiyiri,’ user — ‘apnaqiri’ and so on,” Chura says. “In some cases, we had to create new words taking into account the context, the situation, function and their meanings. And in others, we had to go to the .”
Facebook provides some support to the volunteer translators, offering stylistic guidelines on its page.
The website can be used to revitalize and preserve indigenous, minority and endangered languages in more ways than one.
Pamela Munro, a professor of linguistics at the University of California, Los Angeles, has created a to post words, phrases and songs in Tongva, a language formerly spoken in the Los Angeles area.
Munro, a consultant to the Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival, says the language hasn’t been spoken by a native speaker in about 50 years. She hopes to reach people who are interested in learning about the language through the Facebook page.
“We have readers all over the world … people post on the page from all over and ask questions like, ‘I found this word in a book. Can you tell me about it?’ A lot of the people that interact with the page are ethnically Tongva but a lot of the people are not,” she says.
The creators and contributors of — a website that seeks to preserve Anishinaabemowin, an endangered Native American language from Michigan — use Facebook in a similar manner.
Ojibwe.net contributor Margaret Noodin is an assistant professor of English and American Indian Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. The language has 8,000-10,000 speakers, she says. But most of the native speakers are over 70 years old, placing the language under threat.
“That’s the most dangerous thing. There are very few young kids that are growing up in a fluent environment,” Noodin says.
Although the group doesn’t rely solely on social media to disseminate content, Noodin says that gives the group a chance to reach younger generations.
“It’s how kids communicate now. It’s little moments here and there. And that adds up … . If we don’t use the language creatively into the future then what we’re doing is documenting a language that’s dying … . Our language is alive and it’s staying alive,” she says.
Other social networking websites such as Twitter can also be used in similar ways. The website is currently available in just under 40 languages
Kevin Scannell, a professor at Saint Louis University, has consulted for Twitter on how to make the website friendlier to speakers of minority languages.
Scannell is also the creator of , a site that tracks tweets in indigenous languages. It can help people who want to find others who are using their language online.
“Having endangered languages on the Internet has a really strong impact on the youth because it shows that their language is still relevant today,” says Daigneault of the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages. “When people use their language it shows that they’re proud of speaking … it.”
At a time when companies like Facebook are trying to grow in the developing world, having the interface available in other languages can be a great benefit.
“Just even making the website itself available in other languages in a huge part of reaching the ,” Scannell says.
John Hobson, the director of Graduate Indigenous Education Programs at the University of Sydney, agrees.
“It is … essential that as new technologies are integrated into majority societies and communication, they should be equally integrated into minority ones,” he says.
But Hobson says the best results will come when the conversation continues outside of social media.
“They are not magical devices that will do the learning or communicating for folk,” he says. “Living languages are those used for meaningful communication between real people … . So, tweet and Facebook in your language … . But make sure you keep speaking the language when you put the device down.”
WORLEY, Idaho (AP) — A Native American tribe has canceled an Aug. 4 concert by Ted Nugent at its casino.
The Coeur d’Alene Tribe on Monday said that the cancellation of the concert at the casino in the northwest Idaho city of Worley was because of the rocker’s “racist and hate-filled remarks.”
The tribe says it booked Nugent without realizing he espoused “racist attitudes and views.” The tribe did not detail which of Nugent’s specific views it opposes.
Officials for Nugent’s music management company were out of the office on Monday and not available for comment.
Nugent in the past has referred to President Barack Obama as a “subhuman mongrel.” Nugent later apologized “for using the street fight terminology of subhuman mongrel.” But he maintained that Obama was a “liar” violating the Constitution.
A young orca captured in Penn Cove in 1970, which is believed to be Lolita, an orca that whale activists have been fighting to have set free in Puget Sound after 44 years in captivity at the Seaquarium in Miami. | credit: Dr. Terrell Newby
The resident killer whales of Puget Sound are an endangered species. There are about 80 of them left.
But there was a time, not too long ago, when people were catching these whales and selling them into captivity.
In the 1960s and ‘70s an estimated 35 orcas were taken from Puget Sound. 13 were killed in the process.
Sandra Pollard has documented the history of orca capture in Puget Sound in a new book: Puget Sound Whales For Sale: The Fight To End Orca Hunting.
She spoke with EarthFix’s Ashley Ahearn about this dark period in orca history.
Ashley Ahearn: Let’s go back in time here a little bit, why did people start catching orcas?
Sandra Pollard: I think there was probably an element of the trophy hunter there but also they didn’t like whales very much in those days, particularly the orcas, because they thought they were taking the salmon. And in the ‘60s the Navy used them as target practice for strafing runs and many of the whales that eventually turned up in marine parks had bullet holes in them.
So they were not respected. They were disliked. The people who did revere and respect them were the Native American people and they’re on their tribal crests and they looked up to them and they still do.
Ahearn: So it’s been almost 50 years since the first captive orca arrived in Seattle. Can you tell me about that whale and what happened, what was his story?
Pollard: That’s correct. The first whale was called Namu and a man called Ted Griffin had an aquarium down in Seattle, the Seattle Marine Aquarium, and he’d always wanted to have a killer whale and two whales actually washed up in British Columbia at Warrior Cove. They got caught in nets when a couple of fishermen abandoned their nets to get away from a storm. So they had two whales up there. One a bull and one a calf. The calf escaped but unfortunately the bull did not.
So Ted Griffin flew up to Warrior Cove and secured the whale, but then of course, he had to get it back to Seattle. So, with the help of fishermen, he built a three-sided pen with a net on one side and steel bars on the other and they brought Namu, as he was then called, down to Seattle in that three-sided pen. That was a 400-mile journey which took 18 days, and made a glorious entrance into Seattle to go-go dancers and great jubilation. But at the same time there were people there who didn’t like what they were seeing and there were protesters waiting with “Save The Whales” signs even back then. But that was how it all started.
Ahearn: And there was a Canadian biologist who went along for the trip and he describes the separation of Namu from his family. Can you read that section?
Pollard: Yes. The biologist was called Gil Hewlett and this is what he had to say.
“When they are within 300 yards of the pen, Namu lets out a terrifying squeal, almost like a throttled cat. He leaps out of the water and crashes against the left corner of the pen. There is terrific thrashing and he is making all kinds of sounds. Then they are there again, the same family of the cow and two calves. They came straight up behind the pen to about 10 feet away, tremendous squealing going on. Namu seemed to lose all coordination in the pen. He kept getting swept against the cargo net and swimming vigorously forward. The family unit circles around towards the end of the pen.”
Ahearn: Now the family unit follows him a certain distance but then they stop. What happens?
Pollard: Yes the female and the two calves follow him to an area called Seymour Narrows up in British Columbia near Campbell River and then they gradually fell back. And it has been found that the Seymour Narrows area is really the dividing line between the northern residents and the southern residents.
Ahearn: What was the public sentiment around orcas that were being captured and taken into captivity for entertainment? How were people responding at the time?
Pollard: For the most part I think they were thrilled to see this exotic creature up close and personal and impressed by the abilities it had because they are such intelligent creatures that they learn tricks for food. But I think the general consensus was more one of wonder. But there were still those creeping suspicions that this wasn’t right.
Ahearn: It seems that in terms of public sentiment changing about orca capture the most notorious, the most well known capture, occurred in Penn Cove on Whidbey Island in 1970. Can you tell me what happened on that day?
Pollard: That was on either August the 7th or 8th, 1970 and the three pods of Southern Resident orcas known as J,K and L were going north, probably back to the San Juan Islands, and Ted Griffen and Don Goldsbury and the capture team they went out in boats and started to turn them back towards Whidbey Island and the idea was to drive them into Holmes Harbor, which is a sheltered place on Whidbey Island. And they used seal bombs, which are loud explosive devices. And they also used buzzing aircraft.
But they didn’t get them into Holmes Harbor. The whales are very clever and they brought in their diversionary tactics. The mothers and the calves headed up for Deception Pass and the males did a decoy action by going in the opposite direction. But it was too late. The boats outstripped them and they turned the mothers and the calves back and drove about 100 whales into Penn Cove on Whidbey Island. And they were held there in nets until they went through the selection process, which would be to corral the mothers away from the calves and split them up, because it was the calves that they wanted. They were smaller. They easier to transport. And they were easier to train.
The capture net pens in Penn Cove on Whidbey Island 1970.
And the rest of the whales that were turned away that they didn’t want, they stayed around. They’re a family unit. They’re highly social and they stay together for life. There is no dispersal, other than by death or human interference. So those whales stayed with the whales in the capture pens and eventually seven whales were selected for marine parks, which were already waiting around the world. Four calves were drowned and there also had been a female who had died. She had charged the net to try to get to her calf, so she also died during the process, as well. And this caused an uproar and a lot of feeling against the captures. And that started to be the turning point.
And the last whale to be taken from Penn Cove was Lolita and she remains at the Miami Seaquarium where she has been for 44 years.
Ahearn: Sandra, when did we stop taking orcas out of Puget Sound to sell to marine parks around the world?
Pollard: We stopped doing that in March, 1976 when six orca were driven into Olympia and the seal bombs were used and it caused a great hue and cry. There were protesters on the water. There were protesters on land. And there was a lawsuit, as well. So after a couple of weeks there were only two whales left because three had escaped. One had been turned away because it was too big and the two whales were turned over to the University of Washington to be radio tagged and tracked for as long as possible. I don’t think they were tracked for very long, but there was a lawsuit which stopped the captures in Washington state and Seaworld were not able to come back into Washington state and capture orca again and that was the last capture in Washington state.
Ahearn: So really the end of a very dark era for the orca in Puget Sound.
Pollard: It certainly was. And one wonders if that hadn’t happened how much longer the captures would have continued and how many more whales we would have lost.
Sandra Pollard is the author of Puget Sound Whales for Sale: The Fight To End Orca Hunting. You can find out about upcoming stops on her Northwest book tour here.
The East’s Shoni Schimmel celebrates with her MVP following their 125-124 win over the West in the WNBA All-Star Game Saturday, July 19, 2014 in Phoenix, Ariz. (Photo: David KadlubowskI/azcentral sports)
Reservation-style basketball, as demonstrated by rookie Shoni Schimmel, sure ruled the WNBA All-Star Game on Saturday at US Airways Center.
And if you want an explanation of Rez Ball, well, WNBA President Laurel Richie provided a pretty good one when she told Schimmel’s dad, “She plays with such joy, freedom and liberation!”
Schimmel, who probably wouldn’t have been in the game at all without the support of Native American basketball fans, added a whole lot more faces to her following with dazzling ballhandling, long-range shooting and an All-Star-record 29 points that led the East to a 125-124 overtime victory.
Schimmel is the first rookie named MVP in the All-Star Game, but she’s been a most valuable person for Native Americans for quite a while.
Raised in eastern Oregon on the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, Schimmel’s quest to be the first athlete from her reservation to earn a NCAA Division I scholarship was the subject of a 2011 documentary “Off the Rez.”
Her following grew when she and her younger sister Jude led Louisville to the 2013 NCAA championship game before the surprising Cardinals finally fell to Connecticut.
Atlanta picked Schimmel eighth overall in the WNBA draft and she has started only two games for the Dream, averaging 7.2 points. Yet she was voted into the East starting lineup with the third-highest number of ballots in All-Star voting.
Her jersey is the biggest seller in the league.
And only the Mercury’s three players in the game, Diana Taurasi, Brittney Griner and Candice Dupree, got bigger reactions from the crowd than Schimmel.
“I don’t know if it was meant to be, but it happened,” Rick Schimmel said. “It was exciting that it was in front of so many Native Americans here. It meant a lot.”
Rick said Shoni has taken her role as an example to Native American followers seriously since she began learning those dazzling moves as a kid during her years in high school when she was coached by her mom Ceci and on to Louisville and the WNBA.
“To have the fans look up to me and be a role model not only for my siblings but the Native American fans and Native American people, it’s something that I take on my shoulders because I enjoy it,” she said. “I love being Native American, and for all these fans to come out and be here, and to vote me into this game, means a lot.
“I’m thankful they got to be here or to watch it on TV. It was awesome just to be able to go out there and play my game and have fun, and to feel free to go out there and play Rez Ball. It was a lot of fun.”
Schimmel was relatively quiet in the first half, scoring five points and handing out four assists.
But not long into the third quarter, she cut loose, hitting three shots from beyond the 3-point line in short order.
“I’m not going to lie, I saw it coming in the third quarter,” said Jude, one of 17 family members who made the trip to Phoenix. “She just kept asking for the ball and got more and more comfortable as the game went on. Playing with her for so long, and being her sister, I knew what was coming.
“I was just happy to see her so comfortable on such a big stage, playing so well.”
Rick said Shoni feels a responsibility to set an example, just as former Window Rock and Arizona State star Ryneldi Becenti did as the first Native American to play in the WNBA.
“It offers hope to the younger generation of Native Americans,” he said. “It has been such a struggle, but it gives them hope and the idea that they can go out and do anything they set their mind to.
“Shoni is living her own dream, but at the same time, she represents a lot more to a lot of people, and that’s just the blessing of it all. It’s enhancing other people’s lives and opportunities along the way.
“It’s in her core, really. It’s something she has always represented. It’s not like she comes out and thinks about it that much, but you walk out and see a lot of Native faces, I think in anybody’s mind they’re thinking, ‘Wow, they’re here to see me.’
“I would freeze up, and it’s easy to do that. But she doesn’t. She embraces it. It’s in her heart and something she was born with.”
She was born with it on a reservation, where basketball is a horizontal game more than a vertical one. Where creativity is king and playing with fear will only get you beat.
“Rez Ball is kind of an open-court game, where you feed off of each other,” Jude explained. “It’s free-flowing and fun. It’s more about a feel for the game than thinking about it. It’s not very structured, but it’s a thriller!
“It fits perfectly for an All-Star Game. Ever since we were younger, I’ve seen those kinds of moves, probably a lot more of them, too. But to see her do it on the big stage, I had goosebumps. I normally don’t cheer, but I was cheering.”
Why not? On the WNBA’s biggest stage, Rez Ball ruled.
FARMINGTON — TBA, a Los Angeles-based network, is hosting a casting call today and Saturday for a reality TV “docuseries” about a subculture of Native American youth.
The studio is looking for people between 18 and 28 years old who are interested in a medical career, environmentalism, leadership or similar programs. The people must be outgoing and not camera shy.
Auditions are from 4 to 8 p.m. today and 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday at Comfort Inn Suites, 1951 Cortland Drive in Farmington.
The show will focus on young Native Americans who leave the reservations, tribes, cultures and ways of life to pursue life in a city.
The studio is looking for a few people who are willing to leave everything behind to pursue their “big dream.”
According to a press release, the show will look at how their leaving might cause disruption to their communities and what they are willing to endure to achieve a dream bigger than themselves. If they succeed, their work will help many others including their tribe.
TBA is comparing the new series to Breaking Amish.
