This Week in Native American News (3/15/19): Winning Races, Supporting Teens, and Controlling Anger
March 15, 2019
Yup’ik musher wins Iditarod!
Pete Kaiser became the first Yup’ik musher March 13 to win the Iditarod, North America’s premier long-distance sled dog race. Photo: Silver Wolf Photography
Kaiser’s win is the pinnacle of a remarkable 10-year mushing career that includes six top-10 Iditarod finishes, four consecutive Kuskokwim 300 championships, two first-place finishes in the Paul Johnson Memorial Norton Sound 450, and first-place finishes in the Kobuk 400 and the 226-mile Denali Doubles.
People from Kaiser’s hometown of Bethel drummed and danced and the crowd cheered wildly as Kaiser and team arrived under police escort and crossed the finish line under the burled arch. Kaiser embraced his family—wife Bethany and children Ari and Aylee—and then went up the line congratulating his dog team as the applause and cheers continued.
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The Turtle Mountain Youth Council is Helping Chippewa Teens Find Their Voices
Courtesy of PBS NewsHour Student Reporting Labs
Drug abuse, teen pregnancy, suicide, bullying — 19-year-old Alexis Davis looked around her home on the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation in Belcourt, North Dakota, and felt her community deserved more.
Seeking sustainable change at the grassroots level, Davis stepped up as chairwoman of her tribe’s youth council, a coalition of young adults dedicated to fighting against the systemic problems Davis witnessed growing up. “The time is now,” says Davis, who believes Native country is on the brink of a new era.
The Turtle Mountain Youth Council was established 14 years ago to mobilize resources to help children and teens. Davis believes that today’s young people need the organization to stand up for them more than ever before.
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Increasing Exposure for Native Artists
“iilaalée = car (goes by itself) + ii = by means of which + dáanniili = we parade” by Wendy Red Star (2015).CreditCreditWendy Red Star/Crow's Shadow
In the foothills of the Blue Mountains in Eastern Oregon, a short drive from the rodeo town of Pendleton and about 200 miles east of Portland, is the only professional print house on an Indian reservation in the United States.
The Crow’s Shadow Institute of the Arts, known as C.S.I.A., is a nonprofit on the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation and has become a hub for contemporary Native American artists nationwide.
For more than 25 years, some of the biggest indigenous names in contemporary art — Rick Bartow, Marie Watt, Jeffrey Gibson, Kay WalkingStick, Wendy Red Star — have flocked to its printmaking residency program, housed in the ground floor of an old Catholic mission schoolhouse.
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How Inuit Parents Teach Kids To Control Their Anger
At age 34, Jean Briggs traveled above the Arctic Circle and lived out on the tundra for 17 months. There were no roads, no heating systems, no grocery stores. Winter temperatures could easily dip below minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit.
Briggs persuaded an Inuit family to "adopt" her and "try to keep her alive," as the anthropologist wrote in 1970.
Briggs quickly realized something remarkable was going on in these families: The adults had an extraordinary ability to control their anger.
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Seasonal complaint: 'Missionaries are on our reservation!'
Davidica Little Spotted Horse has handed out flyers on the Pine Ridge reservation since 2014. It's a seasonal thing. The weather is warmer and there's another influx of Christian missionaries and charity groups.
The flyer warns tribal citizens about their rights to access information about charities and missionaries’ names, their intentions as well the how to report mistreatment or problems experienced during their evangelizing.
Read the Full Story Here - THEN - Learn How Lutheran Indian Ministries Upholds culture and Our Goals in Native Ministry
Today’s History Lesson
A race against time to document Native American shelters
For years, archaeologists have been documenting hundreds of wooden shelters left by Native Americans in northern Colorado, in a time-is-of-the-essence project as the land reclaims the historic structures.
Now, archaeologists are turning their attention to the largely undocumented southwestern region of the state before it’s too late.
Technology revitalizes Native American boarding school exhibit at Heard Museum
As visitors enter the Heard Museum exhibit “Away From Home: American Indian Boarding School Stories,” they encounter an eye-level digital screen with a grid display of hundreds of school portraits of indigenous students who attended scores of such boarding schools across the United States.
Talahongva said a great deal of historical trauma from the boarding school experience remains, and many indigenous communities are still living with it. But she also said, “ The big thing to understand is that the boarding school story is so individual to each student who came to boarding school.”
It's hard to fit so much news in such a small space.
To read all of this week's news, visit the LIM Magazine.
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