This Week in Native American News (5/5/17): Miss Indian World, Art Galleries, and Weekend Reads
May 5, 2017
Great People Doing Great Things: A Newly Crowned Miss Indian World
Raven Swamp, from Kahnawake, Quebec and member of the Mohawk tribe was crowned the 2017 Miss Indian World at the 34th Annual Gathering of Nations, the most prominent Native American powwow in the world. Swamp received the honor out of 23 Native American women representing their different tribes and traditions who competed in the areas of tribal knowledge, dancing ability, public speaking, and personality assessment.
Swamp, who is 23-years old, will travel to many native and indigenous communities around the world on behalf of the powwow and will represent all native and indigenous people as a cultural goodwill ambassador for one year.
Read the whole story here
Native Gallery Announced in Top 25 US Galleries
Each Spring the American Art Awards board selects the 25 Best Galleries And Museums In America. This year, Blue Rain Gallery in New Mexico was on that list.
Gallery owner, Leroy Garcia, says: “We’re exposing Native American art and craft to markets that aren’t used to seeing or dealing with Native work.”
Read more about the gallery and how to visit here.
Looking for a good weekend read, check these two books out:
(Full disclosure, we have not read either book, but we would love to hear what you think about them if you have.)
Good Friday on the Rez: A Pine Ridge Odyssey
Good Friday on the Rez follows the author on a one-day, 280-mile round-trip from his boyhood Nebraska hometown of Alliance to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, where he reconnects with his longtime friend and blood brother, Vernell White Thunder. In a compelling mix of personal memoir and recent American Indian history, David Hugh Bunnell debunks the prevalent myth that all is hopeless for these descendants of Crazy Horse, Red Cloud, and Sitting Bull and shows how the Lakota people have recovered their pride and dignity and why they will ultimately triumph.
Buy the book here
Killers of the Flower Moon
In the 1920s, the Osage found themselves in a unique position among Native Americans tribes. As other tribal lands were parceled out in an effort by the government to encourage dissolution and assimilation of both lands and culture, the Osage negotiated to maintain the mineral rights for their corner of Oklahoma, creating a kind of “underground reservation.” It proved a savvy move; soon countless oil rigs punctured the dusty landscape, making the Osage very rich. And that’s when they started dying.
You’d think the Osage Indian Reservation murders would have been a bigger story, one as familiar as the Lindbergh kidnapping or Bonnie and Clyde. It has everything, but at scale: Execution-style shootings, poisonings, and exploding houses drove the body count to over two dozen, while private eyes and undercover operatives scoured the territory for clues. Killers of the Flower Moon reads like narrative-nonfiction. Most sobering, though, is how the tale is at once unsurprising and unbelievable, full of the arrogance, audacity, and inhumanity that continues to reverberate through today’s headlines.
Buy the Book Here
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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