For example, the police chase across the Ohio-Indiana state line resembled real police incidents in that general region.

And interestingly, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base is also located near the Ohio-Indiana border. That base is home to an Air Force foreign technology research center and closely associated with the alleged Roswell incident and subsequent research.

In “Close Encounters” a mysterious red-suited team of 12 Americans is covertly sent to Devils Tower, a U.S. National Monument. That element parallels claims about a secret mission called “Project SERPO.”

According to reports about this allegedly real operation, 12 carefully selected and trained U.S. military personnel went on an exchange program in the 1960s with an extraterrestrial race aboard their spacecraft, staying on a faraway planet for more than a decade.

In “Close Encounters” the clandestine logistics and security operation at Devils Tower was largely facilitated by U.S. Army Special Forces.

In real life, some of their specialties are covert and unconventional operations. Army Special Forces also works in roles to establish rapport with indigenous populations and provide training.

But is there more about Devils Tower that we can learn?

Image: Bear’s Lodge, also known as Devils Tower, Wyoming

BEAR’S LODGE

Native American Indians had a very different name for this unusual geological formation. To the Lakota and Cheyenne, it was “Bear Lodge,” “Grizzly Bear Lodge,” or “Bear Lodge Butte.” The Cheyenne and Crow also referred to it as “Bear’s House” or “Bear’s Lair.” It was also called “Bear’s Tipi” by the Cheyenne and Arapaho. To the Kiowa, it was “Tree Rock.”

How did an Indian identity associated with a bear lodge become “Devils Tower?” It is believed that an interpreter in an 1875 expedition in the area misunderstood the Indian words and translated them as “Bad God’s Tower” which was later changed to “Devil’s Tower,” and eventually to “Devils Tower” (no apostrophe).

President Theodore Roosevelt declared the huge rock formation a U.S. National Monument in 1906. Today, the entire monument are includes 1,347 acres.

Interesting legends and folklore about the site may also hold clues about more subtle connections at Devils Tower or Bear Lodge.

A Lakota tale reportedly describes six Lakota girls picking flowers there when they were chased by bears. The Great Spirit helped the girls by raising the ground under them. The distinctive vertical striations of the rock were made when the bears tried to climb it but slid down, leaving huge scratch marks, according to this legend.

A Kiowa story is similar. Seven girls playing were chased by large bears. To escape, the girls climbed a rock and prayed to the Great Spirit for help. Answering the girls’ prayers, the Great Spirit caused the rock to rise to the heavens, saving the girls as the bears tried to climb the rock, leaving their claw marks.

As the girls reached the uppermost realms of the sky, they became the star constellation the Pleiades. This star system is sometimes associated with extraterrestrial visitors in more modern cases.

There is another legend about several boys escaping a bear, praying to the Creator for help, being raised up on the rock and escaping back to their village with the help of an eagle.

ALIEN VISITORS

When Army Special Forces, scientists, technicians, defense and intelligence officials, and the mysterious 12-person team infiltrate the Devils Tower or Bear Lodge region in “Close Encounters,” can we make any connections to this Native American Indian lore or other possible factors?

Many Indian tribes have oral histories about unusual visitors or beings of many kinds. In some legends, the visitors come from far away in the skies. In others, certain beings are native to Earth, or live nearby, and are part of the mysteries of Nature and reality.

Even now, there are many reports of mysterious phenomena in Indian Country. And, Indian perspectives about Nature, the Great Spirit and other matters can be unique and helpful to learn about.

Another different type of link is the rich history in the U.S. Army of establishing connections to Native American tribes and traditions. Unit patches, words and concepts related to the identity and honor of a warrior can be found throughout the U.S. Army.

For example, the Army’s famed 101st Airborne Division uses the Cherokee word “currahee” as a touchstone concept. Currahee means “we stand alone together.”

The Army Special Forces motto, though not in American Indian language, is the Latin “de Oppresso Liber” meaning “Liberate the Oppressed.”

Of course, these two U.S. Army examples are paradoxical, to put it mildly, regarding the history of conflicts with Native American Indians over centuries as Europeans landed, conquered, took land, enslaved and destroyed or nearly destroyed native societies and cultures.

When some Europeans became “Americans,” regional militias and federal army troops often did the same.

In the case of the Cherokee, their ancient homeland in the Appalachian Mountain region stretched from Tennessee and North Carolina to Georgia and Alabama. Staring in the 1700s, there was a large degree of intermarriage with Scottish, Scots-Irish and English explorers and settlers, resulting in the millions of Americans today who have Cherokee DNA within them.

But this did not help them when in 1838 men, women, children and the elderly were forced at gunpoint and bayonet point from their homes and farms into prison camps, their land stolen, and marched to Oklahoma on the terrible and deadly “Trail of Tears.” Many mixed-ethnicity Cherokee were reportedly able to avoid this removal.

Their experience parallels the history of many other tribes.

Today, some researchers advise us to consider the experience of Native American Indians who faced a visitation or invasion of technologically superior “aliens” from England, France, Spain and elsewhere in Europe.

Could humans dealing with advanced beings from elsewhere experience a fate similar to that of American Indians?

Maybe we can take another look at “Close Encounters” in light of the history of Bear’s Lodge or Devils Tower. That location may serve as a way to explore the many lessons about connections between American history, humanity, nature and the mysteries of the universe.

View the original article here

The winners of the 12th Annual Native American Music Awards were announced on Friday, November 12, 2010. The event took place at the Seneca Niagara Hotel & Casino, in Niagara Falls, New York.

The Native American Music Awards, also known as Nammys, celebrate the rich cultural heritage of the American Indian nations.

Artist of the Year
Joseph FireCrow – Face The Music

Record of the Year
Breakin’ Free by Jan Michael Looking Wolf Band

Best Traditional Recording
Rebuilding The Fire by Bo Taylor

Best Pow Wow Recording
Boys Will Be Boyz by The Boyz

Best Waila Recording
Get’n Down by Native Thunder

Best World Music Recording
Remembrance by Gabriel Ayala

Debut Artist of the Year
Victoria Blackie – Wanted Man

Debut Duo or Group of the Year
Dark Water Rising – Dark Water Rising

Best Female Artist
Tinesha Begaye – Horses Are Our Journey

Best Folk Recording
Michael Bucher – Believe

Flutist of the Year
Joseph FireCrow – Face the Music

Group of the Year
Bluedog – Get Up & Get Out

Best Instrumental Recording
Hitchin’ A Ride by Nokie Edwards

Best Male Artist
Jay Begaye – Horses Are Our Journey

Best Native American Church Recording
Dakota Lakota Traditional Church Songs – Sacred Harmonies

Best New Age Recording
Sheila Applegate & Joanne Shenandoah – Enchanted Garden

Best Blues Recording
If That’s All Right With You by Twice As Good

Best Compilation Recording
Walking With the Spirits by Randy McGinnis

Best Pop Recording
We Are by Digging Roots

Best Producer
Frank Waln for Always Ready

Best Rock Recording
Segweh by Segweh

Song/Single Of The Year
“Grandfather” by Windwalker/Wind Spirit Drum

Songwriter Of The Year
Brad Clonch & Jeff Carpenter – Fight For Survival

Best Spoken Word Recording
Stories From The Social Fire by The Story Tellers

Best Music Video
Sacred Warrior by Tom Bee

Native Heart
Tribal Vision by Big City Indians

Best Country Recording
It’s About Time by Shane Yellowbird

Best Gospel/Inspirational Recording
Sacred Fire by Sayani

Best Rap / Hip Hop Recording
Tribal Tribulations by Chase Monchamp/Chase Manhattan

View the original article here

Homeland tells the engaging story of some of the Lakota Indian families from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota – a place where 30 per cent of the people are homeless, 80 per cent unemployed and 60 per cent live in substandard housing.

The film weaves a portrait of a spiritual leader, a grandmother, a community activist and an artist over the course of three years, following them as they face the harsh realities common to most American Indian reservations – alcoholism, unemployment and scarce housing. With family loyalty, spiritual devotion and a keen sense of humour, they work to build a better life for their children and future generations.

The interviews and footage reveal a palpable yearning for self-reliance and personal freedom – from tribal corruption and governmental binds. For some families this freedom is a return to family land outside of town, far from government-built housing projects. For others, freedom means looking off the reservation for educational and employment opportunities.

In the film we meet Michael Little Boy, a spiritual leader who helps lift his community with Lakota prayer. Living with his wife and seven children in a falling-apart shack, Michael – spurred on by a dream – looks to sources outside the expected. As a result, the Little Boys became the first family to receive a relocated military home.

Marian White Mouse believes that freedom is living in harmony with the earth, on land of one’s own. But archaic laws mean those on the reservation are unable to own their land outright. Yearning for her children to run free in the fields, she and her husband hope to build a house in the country.

Thurman Horse, a young artist and father of four, struggles to raise his children in ghetto-styled cluster housing. He moves off the reservation to establish himself and find a better education for his children.

Filmmakers Jilann Spitzmiller and Hank Rogerson say: “We wanted to encourage viewers to look at current realities of reservation life, which are virtually unknown and often very disturbing – severe poverty, homelessness, poor health, alcoholism. But within the harsh conditions of reservation life, you will always find an inspiring and incredible group of people striving to create a better future for their children.”

In Homeland we hear voices from the reservation – native voices, seldom heard, that speak to commonalties and differences, and bridge the gap between American Indians and the rest of the world.

Filmmakers: Jilann Spitzmiller and Hank Rogerson. Homeland aired on Al Jazeera from Sunday, November 7, 2010.

View the original article here

The site’s content is targeted to both Native and non-Native audiences, NAE Network said in a press release. Video categories include: news, government, sports, health and wellness, lifestyle, arts and entertainment, history and biography, culture and tradition.

Native American Entertainment Network is an empowering resource for all Indigenous Peoples of North America,” said Tlingit storyteller, performer and NAE Network Board Member Gene Tagaban in the release. “It provides a means for our People to tell their stories and come together through the arts — strengthening a sense of pride and honor in who we are historically and moving forward into the future.”

This post is brought to you courtesy of the author and TribalBiz.com.

For all I know, people may have known the information in Ghosts of Machu Picchu for decades. Whether the info is new or old, it does paint a coherent picture of Machu Picchu’s story.

Who and what

According to Ghosts of Machu Picchu, Pachacuti, the founder of the Inca empire and first emperor, ordered Machu Picchu built. (It took so long that it couldn’t have been anyone else.) The place served as a royal estate, a peaceful retreat for worship and rest with the royal staff.

“An actor portrays the imposing emperor-warrior Pachacuti.”

Why and where

Ghosts of Machu Picchu endorses the “sacred landscape” theory. The Inca derived power by being physically connected to mountains, which they considered deities. Machu Picchu was perfectly situated for this belief. It had “views to sacred peaks, proximity to holy water, and alignment with four powerful mountain gods.”

That made it a “formidable symbol of Inca power,” a “spectacular boast” by Pachacuti about how great and godlike he was. Every time the Inca looked up, they could see the living deity in his divine location.

How

The famous stonework isn’t necessarily a mystery. The Inca used a granite quarry on the site. They laboriously pounded the stones into shape with other stones. They rolled them into place with logs, then pounded off the rough edges until they were smooth.

What’s interesting is the complex engineering needed to make the site usable. Before anything else, the Inca built terraces to shore up the mountain and hold it in place. They put layers of gravel and rock in the terraces and under the site itself to draw off the 76 inches of rainfall per year.

Fifty to 60% of their effort went into this underground drainage system. Without it, the soil under Machu Picchu would’ve turned to mud and slid away.

“Wright’s excavation revealed a vast underground drainage system with layers of topsoil, sandy gravel, and granite waste rock.”

What happened

The short-lived Inca empire was devastated by disease and civil war. People drifted away from Machu Picchu and didn’t return because they were occupied elsewhere. All but the royal servants forgot about it. When the Spanish came, it basically had been abandoned, so they never learned about it. It remained untouched until Hiram Bingham rediscovered it in 1911.

An interesting note about Bingham: He thought he had found Vilcabamba, the undiscovered last stronghold of the Inca. Why? Because he thought 4/5 of the skeletons he found were women. Which meant they were the Virgins of the Sun who would’ve accompanied the emperor to his final redoubt.

One problem: Later researchers reexamined the skeletons and learned many of them were men. Bingham had assumed they were women because they were small. But all Peruvian Indians are small compared to Europeans. Oops.

Meanwhile, no one has ever located Vilcabamba. It remains a real Inca mystery.

Rob’s mini-review

Ghosts of Machu Picchu effectively uses recreations and computer graphics to enhance its story. It answers all the questions it sets out to answer. It’s one of the better Native-themed documentaries I’ve seen, and well worth your time.

For more on the subject, see Ben Powless at Machu Picchu, Review of 4Real Peru, and Simpsons Visit Machu Picchu.

Below:  ”While impressive today, Machu Picchu would have been an even greater site to behold in the late 1400s, with gleaming white granite walls topped by golden-colored thatched roofs.”

This post is brought to you courtesy of the author and TribalBiz.com.

The Legend of Tillamook’s Gold
By Elliot V. Kotek

Punctuated with a fine performance by a pretty youngster in Suzanne Marie Doyon (as Julie) and by veteran thesp Max Gail as Grandpa, this flick succeeds by not patronizing its audience, and by celebrating the central role that extended families play in small towns. That the film does not strive for Disney perfection is also admirable.

Set on the shoreline of the serene state of Oregon, Tillamook unravels over one summer vacation. Julie, who narrates the adventure, relocates with her financially troubled family from Los Angeles to Manzanita and into her Uncle Jimmy’s modest home. Surrounded by sparring parents, a storytelling grandfather and a college-bound sister whose life consists of a constant game of tonsil hockey with her immature boyfriend, Julie spends her summer sauntering along the oceanfront without direction until she stumbles across a Spanish gold coin. The tale of the Tillamook Treasure is local lore, the legend being that the finder of the loot is not to be a simple explorer but an individual brave enough to not be afraid of the ghost of the slave buried with the booty.

Inspired by her find, Julie is soon entranced by an imposing elk that appears intermittently, and she finds herself following bird feathers, mystical runes, fate-filled voices and her innate Native American feelings into the mountains and into a collection of real and dream-like adventures. Comment: Kind of funny how the film’s producers went from a dark poster to a light one. The new poster is so suffused with sunshine that Suzanne Marie Doyon has changed from a brunette into a blond.

I don’t think either poster is great, but at least the old one hints at something dark and interesting. The new one screams “feel-good Afterschool Special with a heartwarming message.”

Anyway, I haven’t seen this movie. Sounds like it includes heavy doses of Indian mysticism and a wise elder (Floyd Red Crow Westerman). I’ll have to see it someday.

For more on the subject, see The Best Indian Movies.

This post is brought to you courtesy of the author and TribalBiz.com.

B. W. Clough, for instance, drolly recounts “the Gazorcher’s” predicament of handing over “the goggles” to his Generation X-er daughter. Michael A. Stackpole in “Peer Review,” however, takes a turn toward serious action-adventure as he treats one crime fighter’s apparent defection into lawbreaking and his censure by fellow superheroes. In “Reflected Glory,” Paul Kupperberg soberly demonstrates how today’s world would really treat a superhero when a PR man slyly uses a superhuman vigilante to further his own career. These and the other stories well may satisfy both fans and foes of the comic-book scene. –Carl Hays

Super Reader, August 3, 2007
By Blue Tyson

Varley admits in his introduction that is is not really very familiar with this sort of thing, and it would appear to show in the result. The story average is 3.28.

So, a lot of average/ordinary, and a small number that flat out really don’t belong.

Still, it is by no means bad, and some good stories, just average taken as a whole, and without the shouldn’t have been there stuff, would have gotten a 3.5.The three Native-themed stories with each story’s preamble, my description, and Blue Tyson’s ratings (in italics):

Four Tales of Many Names

by Gerald Hausman.

The concept of the super heroic figure is neither uniquely American nor exclusive to this century. Most cultures are rife with legends of individuals who have special gifts. An indian elder tells children the legends of Hawk Storm, Fire Storm, Water Spider, and Snake’s Medicine. 3 of 5

The Long Crawl of Hugh Glass

by Roger Zelazny.

Amazing people have been accomplishing superhuman feats throughout history. It is possible, as in the factual case of Hugh Glass, that the most astounding power is the will to survive.

In 1823 an injured hunter named Hugh Glass crawled over 100 miles through the wilderness from the Grand Valley to the Missouri River.An Army scout mauled by a bear dreams of crawling through hostile territory to locate friendly indians. 3 of 5

Basic Training by Jerry Bingham.
Some people live their entire lives as though waiting for one special moment.An indian youth must climb a mesa as a rite of passage. He later uses his knowledge of heights to rescue people from a burning skyscraper. 2.5 of 5

Thoughts on indian superheroes

On the one hand, one could argue that these stories don’t belong in a volume titled Superheroes. The first protagonist is borderline super heroic; if he counts, you could say any mythological character is a superhero. The third protagonist is merely heroic, not super heroic. The second protagonist is heroic only if you call surviving an act of “heroism.”

On the other hand, it’s nice to see some recognition that indians can be heroes. That if Americans are going to mythologize Uncle Sam, John Wayne, Paul Bunyan, Daniel Boone, Johnny Appleseed, and George Washington (for telling no lies), they should mythologize indians too. Not merely as noble savages or resistance fighters–e.g., Crazy Horse or Geronimo–but as actual heroes. So it’s fitting that two of the 25 stories star indians.

Even the Hugh Glass story, a cowboy-style adventure, incorporates indians into the mythology. To survive, Glass must test himself against the harsh land and its inhabitants. As with Jackson’s Frontier Thesis, we’ve defined ourselves as a nation by our interactions with indians.

Unfortunately, Tyson’s three-star rating for the book is reasonable. I agree with him that only five or so stories deserve a 4 or 4.5 of 5. Rob’s rating on the usual 10-point scale: 7.0 of 10.

For more on the subject, see Why Write About Superheroes?

This post is brought to you courtesy of the author and TribalBiz.com.

“Seeing Red” takes us back to a different time, the 19th century, and examines how anger was communicated as a force for social change by three different American indian writers: S. Alice Callahan, E. Pauline Johnson, and Sarah Winnemucca.

Callahan, Johnson and Winnemucca used a prevailing literary genre of the time–sentimentality. Though the frank expression of emotion was what moved sentimental literature, how much room did these three writers, as Native women, have to articulate their anger about what was being threatened and destroyed, and how successful were they? Carpenter, an English and native american studies professor asks this question. She also raises some thought-provoking questions about white Americans’ appropriation of indian-ness or indian causes as a way to express their own anger.Garrigues’s conclusion:[B]y examining the early possibilities for expression of anger in Native literature, Carpenter recognizes that these expressions were the roots for Joy Harjo’s “we have just begun to touch the dazzling whirlwind of our anger” and lay the groundwork for Sherman Alexie’s mix of anger and humor.

By shining the light on the anger that was, with varying degrees of success, expressed by these early American indian writers, Carpenter helps us look at what part anger plays as an agent of change in the contemporary world, in Native discourse and resistance, and in our daily lives.Comment:  ”White Americans’ appropriation of indian-ness or indian causes as a way to express their own anger”…hey, I resemble that!

For more on the subject, see The Best Indian Books.

This post is brought to you courtesy of the author and TribalBiz.com.

When Dee Brown wrote his book “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee,” he could not have known that it would become a classic.

This year an illustrated 40th anniversary edition was published in hardback. It is a beautiful book and the photos add so much to the stories that made the book great. There are photos of a young Black Elk, Sitting Bull, Hollow Horn Bear, Short Bull and Kicking Bear.

The 543 page book is truly a collector’s treasure.Comment:  I was in a bookstore Monday and I saw this new edition of Bury My Heart. I only glanced at it, but it looks great. It would make a fine present for anyone who’s interested in history but doesn’t know much about Indians. And it goes without saying that readers of this blog should have it in their libraries.

For more on the subject, see Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee:  The Movie.

This post is brought to you courtesy of the author and TribalBiz.com.

On Wednesday [12/2/09] on the station TVO our second graphic novel (nominated as one of the BEST in graphic novels for kids in Canada) was featured on a program called Empire of the Word, Episode 2.

The program is about literacy and features the Honorable James T. Battleman, former Lieutenant Governor of Ontario, and how he learned to read from comic books that he found at the local garbage dump. At the end of the program Battleman is being read to by an First Nations youth from a northern community. The last 3 minutes of the program is where our graphic novel is featured.

Meegwetch,
Chad

Comment:  I wasn’t sure what TVO was, but according to Wikipedia:

TVOntario, often referred to only as TVO (call signs: CICA, CICE, CICO), is a publicly-funded, educational English language television station and media organization in the Canadian province of Ontario. It is a crown corporation owned by the Government of Ontario. For more on the subject, see Comic Books Featuring Indians.

This post is brought to you courtesy of the author and TribalBiz.com.