This Week in Native American News (9/29/17): What will you be celebrating on Monday? (plus desalination buses and big telescopes)
September 29, 2017: What will you be celebrating on Monday?
Great People Doing Great Things: Engineers Design Desalination Bus to Help the Navajo Nation
The Navajo Nation resides within a very dry region. It gets less than 12 inches of rain a year and the groundwater is too deep and salty to drink, in addition to containing harmful chemicals like uranium.
That's where University of Arizona engineers, along with other organizations, have applied its expertise in order to find efficient solutions to dealing with drought and purifying the Navajo Nation's water.
Thus far, UA engineers, Apex Applied Technologies and the Service To All Relations (or STAR) School have implemented an innovative way to deal with the problem in a less expensive way. The solution comes in the form of a solar-powered school bus equipped with a nano-filtration system.
Read the Full Story Here
Also happening on Navajo...
Navajo Man spreads jazz across the nation. The band has played clubs, state fairs, Native art festivals, anywhere the call goes out: If there’s an audience, the Delbert Anderson Trio will preach about jazz.
Read the full story here
Indigenous Teacher Leads Reconciliation
This Parry Sound group of elementary and high-school students and teachers worked on a 22-page, illustrated children’s book about Indigenous culture. “It’s a piece to further the understanding for future generations,” says Grade 12 student Mackenzie Elwes.
When Johna Hupfield first returned to the Ontario high school from which she graduated in 1984, she was flooded with painful memories.
Back in those days, she recalls being called derogatory names in Parry Sound, a town of about 6,400, which sits on what was once Ojibwa land.
"Some people of Anishinaabe background stuck together. I had to choose who I would be with," the Trent University education faculty graduate says of her school years, in which she spent trying to fit in two worlds.
But entering Parry Sound High School (PSHS) once again in 2008 to be the Indigenous program teacher, Ms. Hupfield was overwhelmed with emotion. "I wanted to do and say the right things. I wanted to be a bridge to walk in both worlds," the mother of five children says.
Before her high-school job, Ms. Hupfield taught in the same elementary school she had attended as a child. On her first day at the school, a young girl, with big brown eyes and long dark hair, looked up at her and said, "Are you an Indian? And you're a teacher. Wow!"
And thus began Ms. Hupfield's journey to personally make a difference for Indigenous students and non-Indigenous learners, a desire eased by the We Schools and Me to We programs.
Read the Full Story Here
Artists Create Communal Creative Space in Alaska
More than 20 artists gathered at the JACC for Artists of All Nations, a monthly creative space open to all artists and mediums. Juneau artists Crystal Cudworth and Pua Maunu of the Plein Rain Painters works on projects Sep. 24, 2017. (Photo by Annie Bartholomew/KTOO)
More than 30 artists, children and crafters got together recently for an open studio gathering at the Juneau Arts and Culture Center. It was the second monthly Artists of All Nations event put together by the Juneau Arts and Humanities Council.
The Artists of All Nations events are a result of the JAHC’s Diversity and Inclusion Task Force, which responded to Alaska Native artists’ desire to create art as a collective experience.
“Most of the Native artists that I know, including myself, work in community,” says program facilitator and JAHC and KTOO board member Debra O’Gara. “We’re trying to set up just a community space where people can come in, work on their projects, but also view what other people are doing and get ideas and inspiration for not just for your project, that you’re working on, but also give inspiration and ideas to somebody else.”
Read the Full Story Here
And just a couple more headlines:
The Thirty Meter Telescope is set to move forward. (If you haven't heard about this, it's a big deal to many Native Hawaiians.)
A new documentary tells the story of suicide’s impact on Alaska Native communities. (Watch it here)
And an independent film, "Neither Wolf Nor dog" is gaining huge acclaim. (One actor called it the only film he had been in about his people that told the truth.)
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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