Kiowa literary giant N. Scott Momaday walks on
Native Americans and the literary world are mourning the passing of celebrated Kiowa author and academician N. Scott Momaday. He was 89.
Born in 1934 in Lawton, Oklahoma, he was given the Kiowa name Tsoai-talee, or “rock-tree-boy,” a reference to Devil’s Tower, the tall rock formation in Wyoming that features in Kiowa cosmology. Hear him explain the name in the video below:
During his childhood, his family moved between various locations on the Navajo reservation and the Pueblo of Jemez in New Mexico.
Momaday graduated from the University of New Mexico in 1958 and briefly attended Virginia Law School. He taught for a year on the Jicarilla Apache reservation before being awarded a creative writing fellowship at Stanford University. He taught at the University of California-Santa Barbara and the University of California-Berkeley before becoming a professor of English and literature at the University of Arizona in 1982.
He authored many collections of fiction, poetry, and essays. His first novel, "House Made of Dawn," won the 1969 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
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Young voters and Native American voters are 2 groups that showed up for Biden 4 years ago. But now, it%27s unclear if he%27ll keep their support.@Ximena_Bustillo and I got a group of Gen Z & millennial native voters together in Phoenix. Take a listenhttps://t.co/to6On0WeGd
— Elena Moore (@ElenaMMoore) February 1, 2024
Native youth vote could be critical in the battleground state of Arizona
U.S. National Public Radio took a look this week at the voting power of young Native Americans in the state of Arizona.
In the 2020 election, they helped President Joe Biden win by more than 11,400 votes. In 2024, they could make a difference not just in the presidential election but in determining which party controls Congress.
"Native voters are powerful, and we can't be ignored anymore," said Jaynie Parris, a citizen of the Navajo Nation and executive director of Arizona Native Vote. “And we just need other people to meet us where we are and get on board."
NPR interviewed six Arizona voters who identify as Native American. They said neither political party has taken the time to get to know tribes and the problems that tribal communities must contend with, including water and environmental issues, the fentanyl crisis, and the lack of economic opportunities.
The report gave 25-year-old Alec Ferreira, a youth program coordinator for the San Carlos Apache Tribe, the final word: “Remember who is running the table right now. It's our time. Native people, we decided the last election. We can very well decide the next one.”
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Privileged to join @AsmJamesRamos at a press conference discussing the impactful "Feather Alert" bill he authored and successfully passed last year. It’s a crucial step forward in addressing the crisis of missing and murdered #indigenous people in #California. pic.twitter.com/BMsmw0Ncdb
— Senator Marie Alvarado-Gil (@AlvaradoGilSD4) January 26, 2024
California tribes call for changes to missing person alert system
California lawmakers last week held a hearing with California tribal leaders to discuss the successes and failures of the so-called “Feather Alert” system instituted in 2023.
Here’s how it works: when an Indigenous person goes missing, tribal law enforcement notifies local law enforcement, which in turn notifies California Highway Patrol (CHP), requesting that an alert go out on highway signs, cable networks and social media.
It is up to CHP, however, to decide whether an alert is warranted: local law enforcement must believe that the person is in danger and has gone missing under unexplainable or suspicious circumstances.
Native leaders complained that CHP turned down requests for Feather Alerts in at least three cases. They also called on lawmakers to amend the law to allow tribes to submit requests directly to CHP to speed up the process.
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Bark from the birch tree, which the Anishinaabe call wiigwaasabak.
Michigan Ojibwe galvanize to purchase sacred scrolls at auction
Members of the Keweenaw Bay Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe (KBIC) will shortly travel from Michigan to New York to retrieve a set of AnisshinaabeAnishinaabe (Ojibwe) birch bark scrolls known as wiigwaasabakoon that they purchased at an online auction.
Historically, Anishinaabe healers and spiritual leaders developed a form of pictographic writing that they inscribed onto birch bark to record histories, sacred teachings, songs and even medicinal formulas.
Because these scrolls came from a private collection, they were not subject to the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, which requires federally funded organizations to repatriate human remains and items of cultural or ceremonial importance.
With only days to go before the auction, KBIC tribe member Jerry Jondreau organized a fundraiser that enabled the tribe to purchase the scrolls.
“It was five days of anxiety and stress and lack of sleep and phone calls and emails and Zoom meetings and messages and trying to understand the whole process,” he told VOA. “There were more than 150 listings before the scrolls, so we had to stay glued to the auction site.”
The Anishinaabe are a group of culturally related Indigenous peoples in the Great Lakes region of the U.S. and Canada.
Once the KBIC has authenticated the scrolls, they hope to loan them out to other Anishinaabe communities so those stories can be shared.