Tahecapṡuŋ Wi (Deer Break Off Antlers Moon) starts today for the Dakota people. It was during this moon that deer would go into rut. Bucks would fight with each other. They would sometimes hit each other so hard that their antlers would break off.
Dakota people would not hunt deer during this time. Instead, time was used for preparing their winter camps and finalizing their winter food storage systems. Today, you can still see buck scrapings and broken antlers on the ground while the bucks are in rut. The male deer do not naturally shed their antlers until January.
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A campaign focused on improving the Native American narrative in Minnesota schools. Led by @shakopeedakota.
Prolific artist and designer Steven Premo of the Mille Lacs Band of the Ojibwe people recently got his Twin Cities debut solo exhibit at the All My Relations Arts gallery in Minneapolis, running now thru April 16th.
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Even if the name sounds unfamiliar, you may already know his work. “A self-taught artist and designer, Steve’s artistic practice takes many forms, including graphic designer, illustrator, fine artist, muralist, and fabric designer, all contributing to the legacy of the Mille Lacs Band,” a press release states. Premo has provided art direction and instruction to local schools, and more than 500 of his illustrations and graphics have been published by the Minnesota Historical Society Press, Minneapolis Public Schools, Hazelden Treatment Center, and other organizations, according to the release.
The exhibit comes by way of the Native American Community Development Institute and the All My Relations Arts gallery. In the form of a retrospective showcase, Avenues of Creation will express Ojibwe pride, trace the evolution of Ojibwe art, and highlight Premo’s multi-disciplinary approach (or, his “avenues” of expression). It will run at the gallery, on East Franklin Avenue in Minneapolis, now thru April 16 th.
“Even though I work in contemporary art forms—painting, illustrations, textile design—I hope to advance the idea that Ojibwe art forms are both old and new and are not limited to birch bark and the materials our ancestors used (though I also love those mediums),” he says in the release, “but rather have evolved just as we have evolved in the modern day.”
As a child, Premo embraced art while bedridden due to a serious leg injury. Drawing and painting guided his journey toward “cultural identity, belonging, sense of self, and healing.” His mother’s teachings in beadwork, birch bark, and quilt work also sparked his interest in textile design.
“At Mille Lacs today, we are the descendants of Ojibwe leaders, men and women, who refused to leave our homelands at the turn of the century,” Premo says. “They continued to harvest rice and maple syrup, hunt and fish, as we do today. My art takes its inspiration from our lifeways and history, and from those men and women who offered decades of consistent and strong leadership. If we cease our traditions, we cease to be Native people.”
Looking for a new show? “Reservation Dogs” (@RezDogsFXonHulu) smashes stereotypes of Indigenous people. “There’s been 130-something years of cinema and we’re finally showing ourselves as human beings, which shouldn’t be radical, but it is pretty radical today.”
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About
From Co-Creators and Executive Producers Sterlin Harjo and Taika Waititi, Reservation Dogs is a half-hour comedy that follows the exploits of four Indigenous teenagers in rural Oklahoma who steal, rob and save in order to get to the exotic, mysterious and faraway land of California.
“Bear Smallhill” (D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai) is destined to be a warrior, and a leader. The only problem is he’s not a good fighter, and the gang doesn’t really consider him the leader. But with the guidance of a questionable spirit guide, he just might get there. “Elora Danan” (Devery Jacobs) may be the true leader of the group. But she’s so focused on getting to California, and so oblivious to her own power, that she often can’t see the beauty and goodness in herself and all around her. Street-smart tough girl “Willie Jack” (Paulina Alexis) is the beating heart of the group. She’s always looking out for her crew. Meanwhile, “Cheese” (Lane Factor) is the gentle, quiet ride-or-die who is so willing to go along with the group that he never stops to consider what his own dreams might be.
One year ago, Daniel, the fifth member of the Reservation Dogs, died. Struggling to make sense of the loss, the remaining four blame their boring, small town and its ability to crush the spirit. They decide to honor Daniel by adopting his dream of getting to California as their own. To succeed, they will have to save enough money, outmaneuver the methheads at the junkyard on the edge of town, constantly dodge conspiracy-obsessed Lighthorseman “Big” (Zahn McClarnon) and survive a turf war against a much tougher rival gang, led by the enigmatic “Jackie” (Elva Guerra).
Reservation Dogs has Native rappers, catfish, Indigenous superstitions and spirits both hilarious and terrifying, laughter, tears, unexpected grandmothers, decent people, terrible people and a cavalcade of supporting characters who color and shade this already vibrant world.
Filmed on location in Okmulgee, Oklahoma, Reservation Dogs is a breakthrough in Indigenous representation on television both in front of and behind the camera. Every writer, director and series regular on the show is Indigenous. This first-of-its-kind creative team tells a story that resonates with them and their lived experiences – and invites audiences into a surprisingly familiar and funny world.
Reservation Dogs is executive produced by Sterlin Harjo (11/8/16, Barking Water, Four Sheets to the Wind), Taika Waititi (What We Do in the Shadows, Jojo Rabbit, Thor: Ragnarok) and Garrett Basch (What We Do in the Shadows, The Night Of) and produced by FX Productions.
Native Mn Facts: Dr. Anton Treuer (@treuera) is a professor of Ojibwe at Bemidji State University (@BemidjiState) and the author of 19 books – including “Everything You Wanted to Know About Indians But Were Afraid to Ask” and “The Assassination of Hole in the Day.”
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In the new young readers’ edition of Everything You Wanted To Know About Indians but Were Afraid To Ask (Levine Querido), Anton Treuer tackles the questions that pop up like perennials wherever Indians are involved. Living and working in Bemidji, Minnesota, as a professor of Ojibwe at Bemidji State University, Treuer is no stranger to such queries. With subjects ranging from history and tribal sovereignty to casinos, cuisine, and everything in between, this accessible volume does a lot of work in bridging the gap between Native cultures and the rest of the world. It’s work that the author shouldered with a smile as he spoke with Kirkus over Zoom; the conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Have you seen young people—both Native and non-Native—engaging with the ideas in this book?
You know, a lot of our kids, they’re hungry. They want to know their history, they want to know their culture, and they want to marry that with their own lived experience as Indigenous people. They don’t want to be blamed or shamed for something that they didn’t get to learn through no fault of their own. I really believe that this work provides accessible information for Indigenous people who want to learn about themselves and explore their own identity and the deeper meaning of what it means to be Indigenous. I think we do a little bit of a disservice to our youth if we tell them to be proud to be Native [and] don’t also tell them what it means to be Native. I know I had a lot of misunderstandings and erroneous assumptions about what that meant, like if I didn’t struggle enough in poverty, does that mean I’m less authentic? I think having a good toolbox for them is healthy and helpful.
For the rest of the world, the first line of the book—“Indians are so often imagined, but so infrequently well understood”—you know, there is a real danger to the imaginings that people have. Like we’re all rich from casinos or we’re all living in squalor on reservations. How can both be everything you need to know? And the truth is, it’s complex. I think the rest of the world is hungry to know more, too. America is on the verge of another attempted racial reckoning, and those attempts often fall short of our loftiest expectations and goals, but things do change. Some people are paying attention, and they’re leaning in, and that gives me hope.
So much has happened since you published the first iteration of this book in 2012; it feels very timely and necessary right now.
“Indians. We are so often imagined and so infrequently well understood.” —Anton Treuer
Native Americans are thousands of years of documented human history still in the making. Even in the past 10 years, we’ve been making a lot of history—the Dakota Access pipeline protest, the confrontation at the Lincoln Memorial, so many things have been happening. I think the social activism universe has really shifted and changed. Back in the civil rights era, you had strong, highly visible individual leaders like King and Malcolm X, and their assassinations did tremendous damage to broad movements.
When you think of who led the Dakota Access pipeline protest, it’s not one person who comes to mind, although I can think of many brave leaders there, and I would say the same thing about Black Lives Matter and many other social activist movements. In addition to that, I think we’re realizing that competing victimization in the oppression olympics keeps everybody oppressed, and so there’s been a lot of bridge-building between different disenfranchised groups. Social justice movements are becoming more effective, and there are a lot more White people who are trying to figure out how to lean in.
Of course, there’s pushback and resistance. We’ve got 253 voter suppression initiatives proposed in 43 different states right now, some of those very focused on Indigenous communities—requiring a physical address, not a P.O. Box when almost all of the Natives in North Dakota have P.O. Boxes—things like that. But at the same time that there is this pushback and resistance, there is bridge-building and momentum. I believe we’re on the verge of a new progressive era in America, in part in response to the regressive stuff we’ve been seeing the past several years.
You talk about being an ambassador in the borderlands—it’s like there’s an expectation that Native people are walking Indigenous encyclopedias. Why do you think that is?
First of all, it is not fair that anybody should have to speak for everybody. Of course, within Indigenous communities, we have a diversity of opinions—and emotionally charged opinions—on a whole range of topics, and we don’t all think the same way, act the same way, vote the same way. We’re diverse, too, so nobody can really speak for everybody. But we do get put on the spot and asked to do that. Unfair though it is, it’s important that we try to find ways to provide meaningful answers and shape the narrative rather than chase everybody away from some erroneous misunderstanding, from even getting an answer to their question. As a result, we have developed a certain musculature. We’ve gone to that uncomfortable space enough [that] it’s like going to the gym, where we get stronger and we’ve got some musculature for dealing with things. That means when it’s time to be on the spot as an ambassador, we’ve got an experience that most people don’t.
It sounds like you wear many hats. Is that what it’s going to take to improve our communities, both Native and non-Native?
For me, it’s not disjointed or strange that I do wear so many hats. I speak Ojibwe, I live in my Native community, I officiate traditional funerals and life ceremonies, and I’m at the service of my people. At the same time, I’m a university professor. I’ve got one foot in a wigwam and one in the ivory tower. I’m somebody who’s working on multiple levels to revitalize our language. They all fit together and they all make perfect sense to me, how those are different dimensions of the same kind of work. So if we want to decenter oppression, you know, and begin indigenizing, learning our language, learning our culture, it’s a really powerful set of tools for recentering ourselves in a healthy code of being, in ways of belonging. As Indigenous people, we have more than vestigial remnants of some different ways of looking at the world and some different ways of solving problems. We should indeed be pollinating the garden that everyone’s trying to harvest from. I mean we have a right to this stuff on our own and for our own well-being. But we do have something to teach and show the rest of the world, too. It’s an essential piece of how we move forward.
Blue Tarpalechee is a writer and enrolled citizen of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation.