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Inspiring Youth to Reach for the Stars

ThorneLE — Fri, 04 Oct 2024 15:55:57 +0000

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Inspiring Youth to Reach for the Stars

From Issue: Fall 2024 / Vol. 25 No. 3

by Alexandra Witze

When she was growing up in northern California, Nicole Aunapu Mann was always interested in math and science. But it wasn’t until her late 20s, after learning to pilot fighter jets in the U.S. Marine Corps, that she realized she could combine her technical interests with her high-flying skills to become a NASA astronaut.

In October 2022, NASA astronaut Nicole Aunapu Mann became the first American Indian woman to travel to space.

Photo Courtesy of NASA

In November 2022, astronaut Mann floated aboard the International Space Station with Earth’s ocean and clouds visible behind her.

Photo Courtesy of NASA

Mann, who commanded a nearly six-month-long mission at the space station, also performed two hours-long spacewalks to help upgrade the orbiting outpost.

Photo Courtesy of NASA

In October 2022, Mann (a member of the Wailacki Tribe of the Confederated Tribes of Round Valley Indian Reservation) became the first American Indian woman to travel to space. For nearly six months, she served as commander of a four-person crew who lived and worked aboard the International Space Station. Looking down as she orbited the planet at 17,500 miles per hour, she watched continents race by, the sun rising and setting every 90 minutes.

One important tether to life back on Earth was a dreamcatcher, a gift from her mother that Mann carried on her space voyage. When she was a child, the dreamcatcher hung in her bedroom, as it is believed to be able to trap bad dreams and let good ones filter through. Aboard the space station, it helped her cope when she was frustrated and needed inspiration to persevere. “It’s the strength to know that I have the support of my family and community back home,” she told the Associated Press.

Mann was born in Petaluma, California, and grew up in Sonoma County, about two hours south of the Round Valley Indian Reservation. Her parents instilled a strong work ethic in her while her extended family and community provided support and advice. In high school, Mann was an athlete who devoted much of her time to soccer. “I think it was part of being on a team and being part of something bigger than just me,” she reminisced in a NASA video.

Her father served in the U.S. Army, and she also wanted to serve her country. So she combined her interests in serving in the military and sports with math and science by studying engineering at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, which was building up its soccer program. She captained her team to its first conference title. While at the academy, she also got a chance to fly in the back seat of an F/A-18 Hornet, which inspired her to join the U.S. Marine Corps. She trained as a test pilot and flew more than 2,700 hours in 25 types of aircraft—including 47 combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. She ultimately rose to the rank of colonel.

She continued her education at Stanford University in California, where she earned a master’s degree in mechanical engineering. Meanwhile, she built a family life as she met and married U.S. Navy fighter pilot Travis Mann. The couple and their son now live in Houston, Texas.

Despite all these accomplishments, Mann is open about how she has at times struggled to persevere. “To be honest, I’m not always confident,” she told CTV News, a Canadian television network. “There have definitely been moments in my career and my life where I doubted myself.”

But as she read biographies of NASA astronauts, she realized space research and exploration could be her next path. She applied to the U.S. agency and was chosen as an astronaut candidate in 2013, becoming one of only a few potential space fliers with American Indian heritage.

Mann’s leadership on the sports field and in the military made her a natural fit to command a mission to the International Space Station. Since 2000, people from many nations have lived and worked on this orbiting outpost, which strives to demonstrate how humans can prepare for future missions to the moon and Mars. During her 157-day mission in space, Mann performed two spacewalks, floating for hours at a time outside the space station while installing upgrades to the solar arrays that power the station.

Inside the station, she worked on scientific experiments, including testing ways to grow better tomatoes in space and 3D-printing human tissue as a way to explore whether organs could be grown in space for medical needs. She played with food and water, using honey to glue cold cuts onto a charcuterie board and toying with floating water droplets. Like other astronauts, she had to figure out ways to wash her hair, use the toilet and sleep in near-zero-gravity. The experience was like a dream in which you might be floating or flying, she has said.

Groups of NASA employees gathered to watch her launch to orbit and conduct her spacewalks. “For us professionals in the agency, it’s beyond exciting,” said Lauren Denson of the Chihene Nde Nation of New Mexico. She is an engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and an expert in science and engineering outreach. Of Mann she said, “She’s the elite of the elite—the first Native American woman in space, and a powerful woman, a commander. She’s a huge deal in breaking barriers in different intersectional identities.”

Outside of NASA, Mann has “a great opportunity to make a difference in the lives in a lot of Native peoples,” said Chickasaw astronaut John Herrington. On a 13-day trip on the space shuttle Endeavour in 2002, he became the first enrolled tribal member to travel into space. He said, "I believe Native kids will look up to Nicole, inspired that they can pursue their dreams as well.”

Since her flight, Mann has been speaking to groups of students and others about her experiences. In her CTV News interview, she said she felt it is important for her “to talk with the young kids so they know how many possibilities they have with their future.” One of her appearances was at California Indian Days hosted in September 2023 by the Confederated Tribes of the Round Valley Indian Reservation. There she presented the tribes with a small U.S. flag that flew to space with her, a journey of more than 66 million miles.

Mann has received several honors, including being inducted into the Academic All-American Hall of Fame and receiving the 2023 Marine Corps Military Order of the Iron Mike Award and Aerospace States Association 2023 Distinguished Aerospace Service Award. As Mann waits to see what her next adventure with NASA might be, she is working on other tasks including a Boeing spacecraft that the agency hopes will serve as a space taxi to and from the International Space Station. She is also training for future space missions as part of NASA’s Artemis program, which aims to put the first woman and the first person of color on the moon in the coming years. One of those next moon-walking astronauts could be Mann.

Mann said throughout her career she has looked to her Native heritage and community for guidance and support, even when she was miles away from her family in space. She often thinks back to those six months in orbit and how they connected her to the Earth passing beneath her window. “It makes you reflect on where we all came from and how we are all living on this planet,” she told CTV News. It made her think about preserving it for future generations. “It gives you this incredible appreciation for our planet to see it in all of her majesty, but it also gives you this huge sense of fragility,” she said. “What do we need to do to take care of this planet?”

Authors

Alexandra Witze

Alexandra Witze is a science journalist based in Boulder, Colorado.

Navajo Boxer Mariah Bahe Hits Above Her Weight

ThorneLE — Wed, 12 Jun 2024 17:10:25 +0000

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Navajo Boxer Mariah Bahe Hits Above Her Weight

From Issue: Summer 2024 / Vol. 25 No. 2

by Vincent Schilling

Mariah Bahe often watched her father train her four older brothers at their family’s Damon-Bahe Boxing Gym, the only boxing gym within the Navajo Nation. At the young age of 5, she told her dad that she wanted to be a boxer, too.

At age 8, Mariah Bahe began her boxing career, often having to compete against girls above her weight class to find an opponent.

Courtesy of the Bahe Family

Mariah Bahe, a 14-time state champion and seven-time national champion, trains with her father and coach at her family’s gym on the Navajo Nation.

Courtesy of the Bahe Family

“My dad and I would go into the gym when I was younger. It seemed like my brothers were always training," she recalled. “I would try to practice, but my dad wouldn’t let me because he didn’t want me to box.”

Mariah’s father, John Bahe Jr., admits initially he was not thrilled with the prospect of his little girl getting into the boxing ring to exchange punches with an opponent. He agreed to let her begin training but hoped she would eventually decide to get out of the sport. He remembers thinking, “One day she will run into a tough opponent, and she will not do it anymore and say, ‘I’m done.’” But that did not happen. Her persistence paid off, and Mariah started competing at the age of 8.

Starting a boxing career at such a young age may seem unusual, but Mariah Bahe is following in a long line of family footsteps. Her great-grandfather Lee Damon, who served in the U.S. Army and Marine Corps, became an All-Service Boxing Champion in the Army. When Lee Damon returned home from World War II, he started the Damon Boxing Gym.

Her Navajo grandfather and Damon’s nephew, John Cal Bahe, began boxing in 1961 at the age of 15. When he was in his 20s, he acquired the Damon Boxing Gym from his uncle and renamed it the Damon-Bahe Boxing Gym. After moving it a few times, he settled in Chinle, Arizona, at the center of the Navajo Nation. Bahe’s three sons were among his trainees, including John Bahe Jr. In 2005, Bahe Jr. took over managing the gym.

Mariah Bahe said it was tricky to have a dad who was also her coach growing up, but she appreciated it. “It was different because I’m his only daughter and a big daddy’s girl. But I’m also his most accomplished boxer in the gym. We’re dad and daughter, but he also has that trainer side. If he sees me eating something I’m not supposed to or watching too much TV, he’s going to get upset at me,” she said with a gentle laugh.

Having so many Native boxers in one family is unusual since, despite the sport's longevity, not many Indigenous boxers have entered the professional ring. The sport of boxing is thousands of years old. Carvings on a 3,500-year-old Minoan vase found in Crete show helmeted boxers wearing hand coverings resembling plates strapped to their fists. A relief sculpture from the Egyptian Thebes dating to about 3,350 years ago shows images of not only boxers but spectators as well.

During the late 1600s, the British became known for fighting bare-knuckled. During the 1700s, competitors began to be classified and paired according to their weight, ranging from the lightest “minimum weight” division at 105 pounds to a “heavyweight” at more than 200 pounds. But in the 1800s, the British lost their dominance of the sport when Irish-born boxer John Sullivan became the first American to claim the heavyweight title in 1882. As he wore gloves, he influenced boxing to become a gloved sport.

People of color were not recognized as professional fighters until the early 1900s. Jack Johnson became the first Black boxing heavyweight champion in 1908. Notable Indigenous boxers have included Billy “The Indian” Wells, a Cherokee featherweight fighter during the 1920s. Many people cheered as Marvin Camel, a Black and Native boxer from the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, defeated Mate Parlov in Yugoslavia and became the first Native American to win the title of World Champion Cruiserweight. Virgil “Quicksilver” Hill of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation was a five-time world champion boxer and silver medal winner in the 1984 Summer Olympics. Then in 2008, George “Comanche Boy” Tahdooahnippah (who is Comanche and Choctaw) defeated Johnathan Corn with a seventh-round knockout and became the Native American Boxing Council Super Middleweight Champion.

The Olympic Games first considered including boxing in 1904. However, whereas men’s boxing was accepted into the competition, women’s boxing was seen more as an "exhibition" sport and denied. Not until 2012 was women’s boxing recognized as an Olympic sport.

Both Camel and Tahdooahnippah admit being an Indigenous boxer can be a tough road, particularly for women, and offered words of encouragement to Bahe. Camel, a three-time world champion, said it’s all about frame of mind and striving to do better each day. “Hit the bag, hit the bag. If you can only go two rounds today, do more than what you did yesterday,” he said.

Tahdooahnippah said Native fighters may find competing difficult if they are in rural areas where monetary support and sponsorships to cover training and other expenses such as travel can be hard to obtain. “When you don’t have this support, the only support that you have is all within your heart. You’ve got to believe in yourself,” he said. “I’d advise her to keep riding that way and bring all the honor and all the glory for all our people because it’s a good thing. .... You can start seeing Native athletes coming [forward] now, but they can’t bring it like she brings it.”

Chinle is a small town, with a population of only about 5,000 people. So finding a girl in Mariah Bahe’s weight class to box against was challenging. She often trained by boxing with her brothers, and in competitions, she frequently had to fight older girls above her weight class.

This made her mother, Elvina Bahe, anxious. “One time, I was very nervous when she had to face an older girl. She had to go up two weight classes to box her,” she recalled. “Then, I saw her fight. Oh, man, it was one of the best times I’ve seen her fight. … She was moving—not standing, not brawling—just moving, punching and boxing. Wow. I was so impressed. After that, I was never worried about her going up against anybody.”

Since her early career, Mariah has had the support of her brothers. Joshua, who also has been training since he was 5 years old, said of his sister wanting to box, “I was all for it. We all liked it, and we were all pretty sure she would like it.”

John Bahe Jr. didn’t worry about his daughter fighting above her weight class. “For her to try to keep up with males like that, it is something else,” he said.

In 2018, while she was still in middle school, Mariah won both the Arizona State Junior Olympics title in her weight class and the 2018 Nationals bronze medal. Since then, she has won seven national championships and 14 Arizona state championships.

Though Mariah had hoped to join the trials for the 2024 Olympics, she opted to join the U.S. Marines this year and is currently training to join the Marine Corps Boxing Team. She and her father now have set their sights on the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles.

“It’s always been a dream of mine to go to the Olympics,” said Mariah. Her father is supporting her continued training through the Marines and looks forward to seeing her soar. “I want her to fulfill that dream,” he said.

Just like Camel, Mariah said she is striving to continuously improve. “I’ve been trying to step it up every day, to work harder than I did yesterday.”

Authors

Vincent Schilling

Vincent Schilling is an Akwesasne Mohawk journalist, public speaker and author.

Restoration and Honor for Osage Ballerina Sisters

ThorneLE — Wed, 13 Dec 2023 20:00:00 +0000

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Restoration and Honor for Osage Ballerina Sisters

From Issue: Winter 2023 / Vol. 24 No. 4

by David Helvarg

October 29, 2023, was a cold and rainy day outside the Tulsa Historical Society and Museum, but it was also a time of heartwarming celebration. More than 500 people gathered to honor ballerinas Maria and Marjorie Tallchief, two Osage sisters who even eight decades after first dancing on the stage are still captivating audiences.

Left to right: Moscelyne Larkin (Eastern Shawnee/Peoria), Marjorie Tallchief (Osage), Rosella Hightower (Choctaw) and Yvonne Chouteau (Shawnee/Cherokee) performed at a 1967 ballet titled “The Four Moons.” Along with Marjorie Tallchief's sister, Maria (who was not able to attend the performance), these Oklahoma ballerinas became known as the Five Moons.

Photo by Bjarne Holm, Courtesy of Tulsa Ballet Archives

Osage dancer Marjorie Tallchief was one of the leading ballerinas of the mid-20th century. Among her many awards was induction into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame in 1991.

Photo by Paul Popper, Sydney Morning Herald/Alamy

Osage prima ballerina Maria Tallchief pictured dancing in "Swan Lake."

Photo by Walter Owen

Left to right: Marjorie Tallchief’s granddaughter Nathalie Skibine, sculptor Gary Henson, Marjorie’s grandson Adrian Skibine and Tulsa Historical Society Interim Executive Director Cray Bauxmont-Flynn unveil the restored statue of Marjorie Tallchief at the historical society’s museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Photo by Owen Hutcheson for Osage News

This bronze sculpture of Maria Tallchief is one of five of exceptional Indigenous ballerinas, including her sister, Marjorie, outside the Tulsa Historical Society and Museum.

Courtesy of the Tulsa Historical Society and Museum

In 2023, the U.S. Mint released the latest in the series of Native American $1 Coins, which depicts the Five Moons, all prestigious Indigenous ballerinas from Oklahoma (left), and the latest American Women Quarter. Both coins’ faces feature Osage prima ballerina Maria Tallchief at their center.

The United States Mint had just released the 10th of its American Women Quarters series featuring the world-renowned prima ballerina Maria Tallchief leaping across the face of the coin. Her Osage name, Wa-Xthe-Thonba (Two Standards, in reference to her dancing to traditional Native songs while also as a ballerina) is etched in Osage orthography below her image.

Earlier in the year, her image, that of her sister and three other Indigenous ballerinas from Oklahoma—Yvonne Chouteau (Shawnee/Cherokee), Moscelyne Larkin (Eastern Shawnee/Peoria) and Rosella Hightower (Choctaw)—appeared on a new U.S. dollar as part of the Native American $1 Coin Program. Collectively the dancers became known as the Five Moons following a 1967 ballet titled “The Four Moons” at which four of the ballerinas performed (Maria Tallchief was unable to attend).

“These five Indigenous women led the path to show Native American youth that anything is possible,” said Cray Bauxmont-Flynn (Cherokee/Delaware), the Tulsa Historical Society and Museum’s interim executive director.

The five were also immortalized at a dedication in 2007 by sculptor Gary Henson (Cherokee/Shawnee). His fellow sculptor Monte England had passed away early in the process of creating the bronze sculptures of the women that then formed a circle outside the museum. But then in 2022, Marjorie Tallchief’s statue was sawed off its base, broken apart and sold for scrap metal. Henson vowed to recreate the sculpture. Henson, who had been sculpting in bronze since he was 16 years old, spent a year restoring Marjorie Tallchief’s statue, casting a missing arm and leg, filling holes, heating and hammering out dents from the inside, welding, grinding and sanding. “I thought it was important to restore it as a statement,” he said. “It was so extreme. Anytime anything awful happens, we should restore it.”

The broken circle of dancers was healed at the October celebration when the restored sculpture was unveiled on the grounds of the museum along with the new coin. Hosted by the Osage Nation, the United States Mint, the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum and the Tulsa Historical Society, the event brought together members of the Tallchief family, dancers and dignitaries. Nathalie Skibine (Osage), Marjorie Tallchief’s granddaughter, said “I hadn’t seen my grandmother since before COVID, and then she died in 2021. It was sad, but the silver lining was the rededication [of her sculpture] and celebration of the quarter.”

Among the speakers at the event was U.S. Treasurer and Chief of the Mohegan Tribe Marilynn Malerba, who told the crowd, “The women’s quarter program is fairly select, so the fact that Maria Tallchief is on a quarter is extremely special to every Native child, male or female. We are celebrating someone who has made a worldwide impact, but at the heart of it, she’s an Osage Nation citizen.”

Also attending was Jennifer Schneider, program manager of the American Women’s History Initiative at the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum, which consults with the Mint on selecting the women depicted on the quarters. The vetting process, she explained, included 11,000 public submissions plus consultations with others, including a curator and two historians from the National Museum of the American Indian, who recommended Maria Tallchief for the series.

“The American Women Quarters program is significant to amplify and promote a better understanding of the important contributions of Native American women in the arts, history and sciences,” said Michelle Delaney, NMAI assistant director for History and Culture. “It was an honor to help nominate Maria Tallchief and participate in the selection of the final design of her coin.”

Reflecting on the October celebration, Schneider added that, “It was clear to me how beloved she [Maria] is by the Osage Nation and by members of the general public.” At the event, Malerba, Maria’s daughter Elise Paschen, Osage artist Dana Bear, NMAI’s Head of Collections Care and Stewardship Cali Martin (Osage/Kaw) and former principal dancer for American Ballet Theatre Misty Copeland each poured a bag of Tallchief quarters into a cedar box lined with an Osage woman’s woven belt and containing a pair of ballet shoes beaded for Copeland.

G.T. Bynum, the mayor of Tulsa, a city adjacent to the Osage, Cherokee and Muscogee (Creek) Nations, also issued a proclamation declaring it “Maria and Marjorie Tallchief Day.” In 1953, the state of Oklahoma had created a Maria Tallchief Day at the same time the Osage Tribal Council had given Maria her Osage name, Two Standards, chosen by her grandmother Eliza Bigheart Tall Chief to reflect Maria’s life in two worlds.

Maria and Marjorie Tallchief were born in the Osage town of Fairfax in 1925 and 1926, respectively, at a time when dozens of Osage women and men were being murdered for their “headrights,” or the right to sell proceeds from their oil-rich land. Through their artistic skill and discipline, these Osage sisters would become famous in the 20th century not as victims of colonial violence but as leading forces in the world of ballet and global culture, amplified by the performances of their fellow dancers Chouteau, Larkin and Hightower.

Their mother moved the girls to Los Angeles in 1933 to get them the best available dance instruction. After graduating from high school, Maria moved to New York at age 17. As ballet was still dominated by Russian performers, she was encouraged to change her Osage name to the more Slavic-sounding “Tallchieva,” which she refused to do. Instead, she decided to change her last name of Tall Chief to Tallchief.

Maria Tallchief, in collaboration with famed choreographer George Balanchine (to whom she was married for six years), gained world recognition with her 1949 performance of “Firebird,” which put Balanchine’s newly formed New York City Ballet on the map. She became America’s first prima ballerina, and her other performances, including in “Swan Lake” and as the original Sugar Plum Fairy in “The Nutcracker,” secured Maria’s enduring fame. By 1960, she was invited to become the first American dancer to perform at Moscow’s Bolshoi Theatre. She also performed for U.S. President John F. Kennedy in 1962, and in 1996 was a Kennedy Center Honors recipient, just one of the many awards she would accumulate during her lifetime.

Her sister, Marjorie Tallchief, became a “danseuse étoile,” or “star dancer,” for the prestigious Paris Opera Ballet in 1957, the first American and Native American to achieve that distinction. She performed in many ballets, including “Idylle,” from which her statue’s pose (en point, opposite knee raised, arms in flight) is taken.

Marjorie also helped her sister establish the Chicago City Ballet after Maria remarried and moved to Chicago, where she had a daughter she named Elise. “I grew up a backstage baby,” recalled Elise Paschen (Osage), who is now a poet and writing professor at the Art Institute of Chicago. “I often traveled with my mother and got to see her on stage. I watched her perform in ‘Cinderella,’ and there’s a photo of mom and me when I was 2-years-old after ‘Swan Lake.’ I saw her transform into these magic creatures and the incredible work behind her artistry. … We’d also go to Oklahoma every summer to see my grandmother in Fairfax. So I had both inspirations—the artistic and the Osage cultural background—growing up.”

One of Paschen’s poems, “Wi’-gi-e,” is about the 1920s Reign of Terror directed against the Osage in Oklahoma to steal their oil wealth and includes a reference to the “Killer of the Flowers Moon.” This inspired the title of author David Grann’s best-selling investigative book “Killers of the Flower Moon” on which the Martin Scorsese movie is based. Actress Lily Gladstone (Blackfeet/Nez Perce), who stars in the film, spoke at the October celebration. She read a letter she had written when she was a 9-year-old girl on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in Montana to her idol Maria Tallchief. It reads in part, “I hope one day I will grow up to be like you because I want to be a famous ballerina, too. ... Sincerely, your biggest fan, Lily Gladstone.”

Also at the event, several youthful dancers from the Dance Maker Performing Arts Academy in Pawhuska, the capitol of the Osage Nation, performed scenes from “The Nutcracker” and “Swan Lake.” The academy is 28 miles from Fairfax, where the Tallchief girls spent their childhood. With a town population of just 3,500, the school averages 80 to 90 female and male students per year, 80 percent of whom are typically Indigenous youth and many of whom are from the Osage Nation. On the academy website is a quote from Maria Tallchief, “From your first plié you are learning to become an artist. In every sense of the word, you are poetry in motion.”

“A lot of Osage [people] who are over 60-years-old [today] all took ballet. The men, after football practice, they’d go to study ballet. I’ve never had an Osage ask me, ‘Why ballet?’ because it’s become part of our culture, thanks to Maria,” explained Randy Tinker Smith (Osage), who founded the academy along with her daughter Jenna Smith LaViolette (Osage) in 2014. She produced and her daughter choreographed the Osage ballet, “Wahzhazhe,” which was performed at the NMAI in 2013.

“I can’t tell you how it’s helped these kids,” said Tinker Smith. “The first year they didn’t know what a dress rehearsal was. Now when they go onstage and all the parents and grandparents see their kids accomplishing something, doing better than they did. There’s just a lot of pride.”

Maria died in 2013, and Marjorie followed in 2021, the last of the Five Moons to pass. Yet these star ballerinas are still making a contribution to their Osage community. Tinker Smith said, “We are their legacy.”

Authors

David Helvarg

David Helvarg is an author, journalist and frequent contributor to American Indian magazine. His latest book is “Forest of the Sea: The Remarkable Life and Imperiled Future of Kelp.”

Ship Named After First Alaska Native Navy SEAL

ThorneLE — Mon, 30 Oct 2023 16:30:00 +0000

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Ship Named After First Alaska Native Navy SEAL

From Issue: Fall 2023 / Vol. 24 No. 3

by Vincent Schilling

This past summer, Joann Atkinson received some unexpected news. The U.S. Navy called and told her that they would be naming a newly designed Navajo class ship the USNS Solomon Atkinson after her husband, who had served in the Navy for 22 years and had passed in 2019. Of his many accomplishments were being among the first Navy SEALs (Sea-Air-Land Teams) serving in both the Korea and Vietnam Wars and training astronauts to endure weightlessness in underwater simulations.

Alaska Native Solomon Atkinson served on the U.S. Navy ship UDT-12 between 1953 and 1962.

Courtesy of the Atkinson Family

U.S. servicemen practice salvage, towing and rescue operations offshore of their Navy base in Coronado, California during the 1950s.

Courtesy of the Atkinson Family

This latest recognition follows the naval tradition of naming T-ATS (tug, anchor, tow and salvage) ships after prominent Indigenous veterans or American Indian tribes. Solomon Atkinson was from the Metlakatla Indian Community on Annette Island, just west of British Columbia from where hundreds of his Ts'msyen people had relocated in 1887.

“We are just completely overwhelmed,” said Joann Atkinson. She was married to Solomon for 60 years and was chosen along with the couple's two daughters as the ship’s “sponsors,” or those who will christen the ship.

“I am honored to name the next T-ATS after Solomon Atkinson, a man who achieved many firsts, even in the face of adversity, and continued to lead,” said Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro in a Navy announcement in August. “Atkinson’s achievements as a SEAL have left behind an enduring legacy, not just in the Special Warfare community but with our nation’s astronauts as well. I am pleased to ensure that his name will extend globally to all who view this great ship.”

One of 10 children in his family, Solomon Atkinson learned to free dive in frigid Alaska waters as a youth and worked as a commercial salmon fisherman before enlisting in the U.S. Navy in 1952 at the age of 22. He joined its underwater demolition team (UDT)—the unit that recovered and dismantled underwater armament and was the precursor to the Navy’s SEALs. Atkinson was the first Alaska Native to join the UDT and a foundational member of SEAL Team 1. He also tested state-of-the-art diving equipment near the shores of La Jolla, California, for famed ocean explorer Jacques Cousteau.

Atkinson served in the Korean War aboard the USS Washburn from 1952 to 1953 and was deployed to three combat tours in Vietnam in 1963, 1964 and 1968. He also served in deployments to Japan, the Philippines and the Bikini Atoll for nuclear bomb testing during the 1960s.

In 1966, Atkinson had an underwater accident that temporarily paralyzed him. He recovered, and by April 1967 was proctoring an underwater class in weightlessness to train 48 astronauts in the Apollo and Gemini spaceflight programs. Among his students were future moon-walkers Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin.

In 1968, Atkinson was deployed to Vietnam and served as chief of a platoon that participated in maneuvers in a shipping channel where supplies were in danger of being intercepted or destroyed on their way to Saigon. His commanding officer, SEALs Captain Rick Woolard, said that casualties happened regularly. In spite of the risk, Atkinson was “always calm,” and “had a great sense of humor,” said Woolard. “He had a deep courage within him. He was a guy with great dignity.”

Atkinson retired as a Chief Warrant Officer 4 in 1973. For his distinguished military career, Atkinson received numerous medals and citations, including a Bronze Star, Combat Action Ribbon, Cross of Gallantry, Navy Commendation Medal, Presidential Unit Citation and Purple Heart.

According to his family, friends and colleagues, Atkinson put the welfare of others before himself. He continued to serve his Alaska Native community of Metlakatla as its mayor for two terms, on its school board and as a member of its council. He also founded the first organization for veterans on Annette Island to help them obtain their health care and government benefits.

Alaska Office of Veterans Affairs Director Verdie Bowen said, “The Navy couldn’t have picked a better person to honor by naming a ship after him. He was an integral part of our space program.” In spite of his many other achievements, Atkinson probably was “the most humble person I’ve ever met,” Bowen said. “He wanted to make sure everybody else had their Veterans Affairs disability squared away before he cared for himself. I don’t think there’s anybody who knew Sol who wasn’t his friend.”

Forrest Powell, the deputy director of the Alaska Office of Veterans Affairs, agreed. “He was a man with a big heart. I considered him a pathfinder because he always guided me. When he spoke, he spoke the truth.”

Upon Solomon Atkinson’s death on July 16, 2019, at the age of 89, 20 boats gathered at a dock near his home community in honor of his passing. A team of Navy SEALs carried Atkinson in a traditional bentwood box a mile from the dock to the William Duncan Memorial Church for his funeral.

Powell noted that any ship named for an individual will dedicate a small area of the vessel to that person’s history. He said, “Sol is actually going to be in their historical requirements.”

As the ship’s sponsors, Joann Atkinson and her daughters will remain in contact with the ship’s crew. “Dad went through a lot over there,” said his daughter Michele Gunyah. “Later in life, we realized it. He didn’t show us. He actually hid a lot of the pain from us.”

“I’m so proud of my dad,” said his other daughter Maria Hayward, “I can’t think of another person who deserves it more. I only wish he was here to see it.”

Authors

Vincent Schilling

Vincent Schilling is an Akwesasne Mohawk journalist, public speaker and author.

Cycling Siblings Break New Ground

ThorneLE — Wed, 16 Aug 2023 18:32:11 +0000

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Cycling Siblings Break New Ground

From Issue: Summer 2023 / Vol. 24 No. 2

by Justin Mugits

The Oneida sister and brother duo Neilson and Shayna Powless are taking the cycling world by storm. Neilson rides for the international EF Education-EasyPost Team in the Union Cycliste Internationale’s (UCI) World Tour, the highest level of professional cycling. He finished 12th in the 2022 Tour de France—the first American Indian to compete in the race—and he is is consistently ranked among the top 25 cyclists in the world. Shayna rides for DNA Pro Cycling in the UCI Continental Tour and competes for the U.S. Cycling National Team in international competitions.

In their youth Shayna (left) and Neilson Powless were coached by their father Jack Powless (middle), a member of the North American Indigenous Athletics Hall of Fame.

Courtesy of Neilson Powless

Neilson Powless finished 12th in the 2022 Tour De France, the first Native American to compete in the storied race.

Courtesy of Neilson Powless

Shayna Powless competes in a variety of cycling races, including road, mountain biking and gravel, and races for the U.S. National team in track competitions.

Above Four Photography

Bicycle racing began in the middle of the 19th century with the first organized race taking place in Paris in 1868. The sport has been included in the summer Olympic Games since the modern games began in 1896. It’s governing body, UCI, was founded in 1900 in France. The sport has grown to include many types of racing on many kinds of surfaces, from flat circular tracks to gravel and dirt roads and moutains to steeply banked tracks known as velodromes and cyclocross tracks with obstacles. Races vary in duration and length from a few-minute sprint on a 250-meter (about 820-feet) track to multiday tours such as the Tour de France, which lasts three weeks and crosses the entire country.

Yet in spite of cycling now holding competitions in almost every country, the sport has historically been dominated by and most popular in western Europe. With some exceptions—such as Black world champion Major Taylor at the turn of the 20th century and Cole House, a distant Oneida relative of the Powlesses who won the prestigious U23 Waregem in Belgium in 2009—few other cyclists of color have reached as high of a level of competition as Neilson and Shayna.

Growing up outside Sacramento, California, the young athletes came by their talent naturally. Their mother, Jen Allred, is a collegiate track and field coach. From Guam, she represented her home country in the marathon event in the 1992 Olympics and competed in seven World Athletics Championships, winning three gold medals and a silver at the South Pacific Games. Their father, Jack Powless (Oneida), was a nationally ranked triathlete and served as a high school and college coach before helping to train his son and daughter in their early career.

The siblings competed in track and field, cross-country, triathlons and mountain biking while in high school. Shayna still holds her school’s track record in the mile race, and Neilson excelled at running cross-country. “I enjoyed cross-country the most,” he said. “I just feel like the community that came along with it was so much fun.”

Neilson realized that he also excelled in cycling. “I started racing some mountain bike races that had bigger field sizes, and you know I started winning a couple local races,” he said. “But once you get the feeling of winning a bike race, it felt really cool.” He started looking for the most challenging races.

Neilson did well enough to get placed on a domestic developmental team to train young riders and eventually was picked up by a Dutch professional team. In 2018 he moved to the Netherlands, where the 22-year-old experienced culture shock and struggled to learn a new language. “You’re also moving away from home, away from your family and you have to figure out how do I get a residence? How do I get a visa? How do I make sure I am healthy between races?” In 2020, he joined the EF Education-EasyPost team and has since flourished. He won the Clásica de San Sebastián in 2021 and the Japan Cup in 2022.

Also while in high school, Shayna realized that the sport she enjoyed the most and she excelled at was cycling. In 2013, the then 19-year-old won the National Mountain Biking U23 Championship. She also enrolled at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she started competing on its road cycling team.

Since graduating in 2016, Shayna has been racing professionally in track, road, gravel and mountain bike races. In 2022, Shayna began competing as part of the U.S. national team, racing on velodrome tracks. Belonging to the U.S. team has taken her to many countries, including Indonesia and Egypt. She is now on the UCI Continental Circuit for the 2023 season, and recently won the green jersey for most points at the Tour of the Gila road race in New Mexico.

Yet Native youth trying to get into the sport face many hurdles, including prohibitive bike and gear costs, limited access to bike shops, teams and races, gatekeeping by the established cycling profession as well as a lack of a cycling culture in Indigenous communities. In 2020, with the national reckoning on racial justice following the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery, Neilson’s team EF Education-EasyPost, Cannondale and USA Cycling came together to create a grant program to promote diversity in cycling. The initiative has provided bikes, equipment and funds to start cycling teams at historically Black as well as tribal colleges and universities. This has helped the Institute of American Indian Arts and the Navajo Technical University to start collegiate cycling teams.

“One of the biggest barriers [to entering cycling] is lack of resources,” Shayna said. “I feel this drive to kind of help alleviate that barrier.” Shayna and her fiancé, NFL player Eli Ankou (Ojibwe/Dokis First Nation), started the Dream Catcher Foundation in 2018 to empower Native American children. In 2022, Shayna and the foundation conducted a cycling clinic to teach youth of the Seneca Nation in New York how to bike, including donating 100 bikes and helmets to children on the reservation. The foundation also sheds light on the epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous people. She said, “It’s something both Eli and I feel like not a lot of people know about.”

Neilson’s EF Education-EasyPost team is also trying to diversify professional cycling. According to Neilson, his team is “the most diverse team in the World Tour in terms of different nations represented.” Likewise, L39ION, the team Shayna rode for during the 2022 seasons was founded in Los Angeles by Cory and Justin Williams, Black brothers with the goal of promoting diversity in cycling. Community engagement, such as hosting community rides, is an important part of L39ION’s strategy to encourage people of color to start cycling.

Efforts to diversify cycling along with Neilson’s and Shayna’s success may open more opportunities for the next generation of Black, Indigenous and other cyclists of color. Neilson said, “I hope that if there’s any Native athletes or Native kids out there watching the Tour de France, they’ll see this as an example of a path that’s been already paved.”

Authors

Justin Mugits

Justin Mugits serves as a program specialist at the National Museum of the American Indian.

Veteran Awarded Long-Overdue Medal of Honor

EhrlichK — Fri, 23 Sep 2022 18:47:05 +0000

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Veteran Awarded Long-Overdue Medal of Honor

From Issue: Fall 2022 / Vol. 23 No. 3

by William C. Meadows

On May 31, 2022, Dwight Birdwell received a call he never imagined getting. President Joe Biden phoned him to inform him that he was going to receive the U.S. military’s highest award, the Medal of Honor, for his brave stand against enemy forces during the Vietnam War. Just a few weeks later, Biden would be placing the medal around his neck at a ceremony at the White House. Birdwell reflected, “I was standing upon that stage, and as he was putting that medal around my neck I thought, ‘Boy this is a long way from the strawberry patch where I grew up.’ It was a really overwhelming experience.”

This drawing, adapted from a photo of Dwight Birdwell in Vietnam, hangs in the Oklahoma Military Hall of Fame, to which he was inducted in 2017.

Illustration by Mac Crank for the Oklahoma Military Hall of Fame

On July 5, 2022, President Joe Biden presented Specialist Five Dwight Birdwell with the Medal of Honor, awarded more than 50 years after his heroic actions in the Vietnam War.

Photo by Sergeant Henry Villarama, Courtesy of U.S. Army

Dwight Wayne Birdwell was born January 19, 1948, in Amarillo, Texas, but spent most of his youth in the Cherokee community of Bell in Adair County, Oklahoma. Inspired by a fellow Cherokee classmate and veteran, Birdwell enlisted in the U.S. Army at age 18 and reported for basic training just a week after graduating from Stilwell High School on May 24, 1966. In Vietnam, he was an armored tank crewman assigned to Troop C, 3rd Squadron, 4th Cavalry, 25th Infantry Division.

On January 31, 1968, about 85,000 North Vietnamese fighters poured into South Vietnam. The nine-month campaign that followed—dubbed the Tet Offensive as it was launched on Tet, Vietnam’s lunar New Year holiday— was one of the deadliest of the Vietnam War, with tens of thousands of losses on both sides.

That morning, two platoons of Birdwell’s Troop C rushed to repel an attack by Viet Cong on Tan Son Nhut Air Base near the city of Saigon. This was the first American ground unit from outside the air base to respond to the attack. As their column of tanks and armored cavalry assault vehicles approached, about a hundred U.S. soldiers drove directly into and split an enemy force of nearly a thousand men. They came under intense enemy fire from both sides of the road, crippling the lead tank and other vehicles and blocking the column from advancing. Several of the troop’s leaders, including Birdwell’s tank commander Ron Breeden, were killed or wounded. Under fire, Birdwell lowered Breeden to the ground and found a safe place for his commander; Breeden survived. Then, Birdwell took command of the tank. Standing exposed in the hatch, Birdwell aimed the tank’s machine guns at oncoming forces. When the main gun was exhausted, he continued with the .50-caliber machine gun until it overheated. He then engaged the enemy with his M16 rifle, often continuing to expose himself to enemy fire.

When a helicopter crashed nearby, Birdwell dismounted and ran to retrieve two M60 machine guns and ammunition from the downed aircraft. After giving one to a fellow soldier, he climbed back into the tank and reengaged the enemy with the other M60. Birdwell continued firing until his weapon was hit by enemy fire, wounding him in the face, neck, chest and arms. He dismounted the tank but refused medical evacuation. Still under enemy fire, Birdwell rallied his fellow soldiers to the front of the armored column, where they established a defensive position near a large tree and continued engaging the enemy with M16 fire and grenades. As the enemy fire decreased, Birdwell gathered ammunition from disabled vehicles and helped move wounded soldiers to safer positions. His determined leadership under fire inspired others to continue fighting and directly contributed to the defeat of the larger enemy force. The airport suffered minor damage.

When Birdwell was finally placed in a Huey helicopter to be medevacked, he rolled out the other side to return to battle. Forced onto a Chinook aircraft by two officers, he was treated at the 12th Evacuation Hospital. While doctors discussed possible treatment, he promptly left to return to his unit. Birdwell attributed his action to a combination of training, adrenaline, an anticipated promotion and “not wanting to disappoint” Lieutenant Colonel Glenn Otis, who was flying in a heavily armed helicopter that was shot down four times during the fight. As Birdwell explained, “Nothing short of death was going to stop me.”

After the battle at Tan Son Nhut, Lieutenant Colonel Otis recommended then-Specialist Five Birdwell for the Medal of Honor, but instead he was awarded the military’s third-highest honor designated for U.S. Armed Forces personnel, a Silver Star. Taught never to seek glory for himself, Birdwell did not pursue the issue. Birdwell earned a second Silver Star on July 4, 1968, risking his life twice to rescue several troops who were wounded and stranded in a battle zone. He also received two Purple Hearts for wounds he received in combat.

Despite his many close calls, Birdwell survived the war and returned to Oklahoma in late December 1968. He graduated with distinction from Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, in 1972 and the University of Oklahoma School of Law with honors in 1976. He has practiced law in Oklahoma City ever since. Birdwell served as a member of the Cherokee Nation’s Judicial Appeals Tribunal (now called the Supreme Court) from 1987 to 1999 and as chief justice from 1995 to 1996 and 1998 to 1999. He co-authored “One Hundred Miles of Bad Road: An Armored Cavalryman in Vietnam 1967-1968” with military historian Keith W. Nolan in 1997, and was inducted into the Oklahoma Military Hall of Fame in 2017. He and his wife Virginia have two children, Stephanie Birdwell and Edward Birdwell.

The Congressional Medal of Honor Society says the Medal of Honor is “awarded to members of the armed forces who distinguish themselves conspicuously by gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of their own lives above and beyond the call of duty,” including an engagement in an action against an enemy of the United States. First awarded in 1863, the medal is presented by the president of the United States in the name of the U.S. Congress. Normally petitions are required to be submitted within three years and medals awarded within five years of the action. However recent legislation extended the medal’s statute of limitations.

On July 5, 2022, more than 50 years after their honored service, Birdwell and three other Vietnam veterans were finally awarded their Medal of Honor. While reading Birdwell’s citation recognizing his valor, President Biden stated, “When he was ordered to load onto a medevac helicopter, he complied—and this I find amazing—only to crawl right back off the other side and keep on fighting. That’s what you call taking orders and then causing trouble. God love you.”

Of the more than 3,500 Medals of Honor awarded, 35 now have been bestowed upon Native Americans and Native Hawaiians. In the Cherokee Phoenix newspaper this past July, Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. stated, “We are tremendously proud of Dwight Birdwell, as a fellow Cherokee. He represents thousands of Cherokees over the generations who have proudly served our country to protect our freedoms.”

Acknowledging that the award brought ”lots of smiles and joy through our hearts” for him and his family, Birdwell gives the credit to his unit. “This Medal of Honor is really for the unit that I served with at Tan Son Nhut, for the guys who were there. It’s an affirmation of what they did, what we did. We saved Tan Son Nhut Air Base from the North Vietnamese,” he said. “It’s not about me. It’s about the unit, the 3-4 Cav.”

Authors

William C. Meadows

William C. Meadows is an author of several books about Native veterans and a professor of Anthropology and Native American Studies at Missouri State University.

The Dreamscapes of Emily Johnson

KlingbielEL — Wed, 15 Dec 2021 15:18:09 +0000

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The Dreamscapes of Emily Johnson

From Issue: Winter 2021 / Vol. 22 No. 4

by James Ring Adams

The “quilt being,” a tall cylindrical figure who appears to be composed of tucked-in hand-made quilts, stands nearly motionless on a rock by a narrow road. Several dancers twist and stomp by an audience seated on more quilts across the way. This outdoor performance entitled “Being Future Being” that was held at the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in Becket, Massachusetts, this past summer is the latest projection of the surreal, inspired and increasingly honored mind of Emily Johnson and her Catalyst dance company.

Emily Johnson performs at her Catalyst dance company’s presentation of “Being Future Being” at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in 2021.

Photo by Cherlynn Taushima, Courtesy of Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival

Stacy Lynn Smith with a “quilt being” designed by Korina Emmerich and embodied by Jasmin Shorty during an outdoor portion of the work “Being Future Being” on the Jacob’s Pillow grounds in 2021.

Photo by Cherlynn Taushima, Courtesy of Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival

Emily Johnson and Aretha Aoki perform a monologue in unison in “Niicugni,” the second work in a trilogy exploring Johnson’s Yup’ik roots, at the Baryshnikov Arts Center in New York City in 2012.

Photo by Chris Cameron

One of the fish-skin lanterns that were part of the “Niicugni” performance. It is now part of the “Thinking Making Living” installation at the Nash Gallery on Hilton Head Island in South Carolina.

Photo by Erin Westover

An Alaska Native belonging to the Yup’ik Nation, Johnson blends family stories, modern dance, electronic music and community participation into her own distinct vision. During the past two decades, her works have not simply broken the boundaries of the dance form; they have ignored them. In what could be called “metachoreography,” some of her earlier pieces combine videos with monologues. Some have also invited preselected members of the audience to flood the dance floor. The result, says the distinguished dance critic Deborah Jowitt, is “a domain in which dream and history and memory meet.”

Leaving Alaska

This spell-weaving comes from down-to-earth roots. Growing up on Alaska’s rural Kenai Peninsula, Johnson did not have access to early training in ballet or dance as high art. Her great outlet was athletics, including a passion for basketball. When she received an academic scholarship for the University of Minnesota, she was delighted at the chance to leave her home community of about 3,800 people. “I just wanted to go far away,” she says.

At the university, she was awed by the big city of Minneapolis and explored it eagerly with her assigned roommate. They soon became close friends. She also made an accidental discovery that began her shift from her original career choice of physical therapy. One of her selected courses had no openings, and the substitute class that best fit into her schedule was in modern dance. She immediately took to its flexible, expressive vocabulary of movement. “One of the positions was like the defensive stance in basketball,” she says. “I could relate to that.”

Then her roommate suddenly died. Deeply shocked, Johnson shut down and thought about leaving school. After several weeks, however, she started going to her dance class again and found that its movements helped her cope with the loss. “I could watch the grief tendrils moving away from my body,” she says. She decided that dance would become her life’s work. “I had no other choice,” she says.

A Catalytic Community

After graduating in 1998 with a degree in dance, Johnson stayed on in Minneapolis and founded her own dance company—now named Emily Johnson/Catalyst. The tightly knit group quickly made an impression with Johnson’s choreographed abstract, hard-bodied pieces that physically moved her audiences through unlikely settings, such as an abandoned soap factory.

“For the first decade or so, I was fortunate to be able to work with the same dancers—developing a process and way of conveying my movement and intention through these relationships,” Johnson says. “The consistency helped me to hone what and how I wanted to make, what and how I wanted to share.”

When Johnson relocated to New York City seven years ago, she left her original group behind and now assembles her casts project by project. As Johnson expanded her works and toured them widely, her multilayered reworkings of reality made an impression on the dance world. She received New York City’s prestigious “Bessie,” the New York Dance and Performance Award for Outstanding Production, in 2012, and the Doris Duke Artist Award in 2014. This past winter, she was an artist in residence at the Jacob‘s Pillow Dance Festival, where she developed the work “Being Future Being” that she presented there this past summer.

The Bessie honored her piece “The Thank-you Bar,” named for a saloon in Alaska owned by her grandmother and grandfather. It was the first of a projected trilogy drawing on her Alaskan and Yup’ik roots, and the beginning of an ambitious effort at community involvement. She prepared for the second work in the series, “Niicugni,” with wholesale devotion to a traditional Native Alaskan craft, the sewing of containers from dried fish skins. After studying the craft with the Athabaskan artist Audrey Armstrong, Johnson organized workshops in the cities of the “Niicugni” tour to sew the dozens of fish-skin lanterns to be used for lighting and sound. The activity, she says, was “as important as the performance.”

The emphasis on community carried into the performance, when Johnson interrupted the dreamy ambiance created by the lamps to invite preselected members of the audience onto the dance floor. It recreated the spirit of a down-home dance, although one thoughtful critic remarked on the risk it posed of losing control of the presentation. (This risk was evident in the performance seen by this writer, when an enthusiastic four-year-old nearly stole the show.) But from the beginning of her career, Johnson has been praised, in the words of her Bessie citation, for “gently and deftly coaxing an audience into a community, holding them spellbound with stories spoken and unspoken.”

Quilting Bee to Quilt Being

A similar communal activity helped prepare for her next series of works, but this time the craft was quilting. Community volunteers sewed together blankets through a series of old-fashioned quilting bees, following designs by the textile artist Maggie Thompson (Fond du Lac Ojibwe). Each square included a hand-sewn message expressing the volunteer’s vision for the future. The quilts were meant for ground cover on which an outdoor audience could sit and enjoy storytelling and a bonfire during Johnson’s 16-hour, all-night-plus production entitled “Then a Cunning Voice and a Night We Spend Gazing at Stars.” (One of the qualities Johnson says she learned from her early athletic training was endurance.) The work premiered at Randall’s Island Park in New York City in 2017.

After two years and performances in Chicago and Wesleyan, Connecticut, Johnson was left with 84 community-made quilts. The textiles, already imbued with messages, morphed into the vision that became “Being Future Being,” Johnson’s presentation last summer at Jacob’s Pillow. “Our dances grow out of the preceding ones,” she notes. With the help of an elaborate framework and a very strong dancer, Jasmin Shorty (Diné), four of the quilts became a 7-foot-tall quilt being designed by Korinna Emmerich (Puyallup from Coast Salish territory). Accompanied by several smaller, more mobile quiltlings and the electronic score of Raven Chacon (Diné), the ensemble became an other-worldly presence, like visiting deities.

The vision reached back to Johnson’s first modern dance classes, when she says she could feel the relationships not only in the human world but of a multilayered reality. “It makes me think of the multiverse,” she says. “Many layers of many worlds are linked all the time. I try to tune in these many layers”

New Vistas

Johnson’s vision now has a new outlet. She and her rescue dog Spicer relocated from Minneapolis to New York City seven years ago. She is becoming a major presence in the landscape and Indigenous world of the Lower East Side. Along with Karyn Recollet (Cree), she has been cohosting a monthly ceremonial fire in association with the city’s Abrons Arts Center. She is devoting her energy as a land and water protector to trying to save the East River Park and its 1,000 trees from a controversial city plan to replace it with a flood berm. She is also helping to develop First Nations Performing Arts, a network focused on commissioning, touring and presenting Indigenous performance.

At the same time, she is looking back to the traditional Alaska crafts she featured in “Niicugni.” With the help of Audrey Armstrong and other culture keepers, she and Recollet are planning to learn how to tan and dye fish skins to make them more flexible. “We want to make a fish-skin quilt,” she says. How these creations will work into a new production remains to be seen, but there is little doubt that they will mark the portal to a richly layered expression of multiple realities.

Authors

James Ring Adams

James Ring Adams is a senior historian at the National Museum of the American Indian and managing editor of American Indian magazine.

Remembering NMAI Founding Supporter James Block

KlingbielEL — Thu, 15 Apr 2021 20:08:59 +0000

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Remembering NMAI Founding Supporter James Block

From Issue: Spring 2021 / Vol. 22 No. 1

by W. Richard West Jr.

My remembrances of Jim Block are both personal and institutional: they are important to me and to the National Museum of the American Indian. In reflecting on my time as the founding director of that Native place on the National Mall in Washington, D.C, I tend to focus on “those who were there first,” and Jim, as he was known to his colleagues and friends, and his wife, Barbara, were at the head of the line.

James and Barbara Block in 1991. NMAI Archives

It was not necessarily an easy place to stand. The NMAI was a start-up in 1990—and a very unusual one at that. From the beginning, it has been a “museum different.” Yet aboard Jim and Barbara came in 1990, enthusiastic and knowledgeable. As proud citizens of New York, both were deeply informed about arts and culture institutions.

The Blocks were the first major donors in support of this nascent enterprise called the National Museum of the American Indian. I remember as though it were yesterday my first meeting with them as well as other NMAI and Smithsonian colleagues in New York. It was an evening full of their grace and graciousness at their Manhattan home as we first toured their significant collections of Native art and cultural materials. The conversation then centered primarily on the daunting ambitions of the museum. I always believed that their astute questions were probably much better than my answers as a novice director of the institution. But they were clearly “in” and ready for the journey, however arduous and complicated. The rest is history.

From these beginnings, I want to turn specifically to Jim, who within the past year has left us. His passing in May 2020 was an event of great sadness to all of us who knew him up close. As he was a dear friend and colleague, I am honored to memorialize him here.

His contributions of time and support to numerous arts and culture institutions were legion, including to the Smithsonian and the NMAI. He was a charter member of the museum’s first board of trustees and served along with Barbara on the board of directors of NMAI’s New York City location, the George Gustav Heye Center.

They contributed the first major individual gift to the construction fund for the museum on the National Mall. Jim was the initiator and charter donor of the W. Richard West Endowment Fund at the NMAI. In recognition of his contributions not only to the NMAI but to the Smithsonian Institution as a whole, he received the James Smithson Society’s Founders Medal.

But Jim, as a member of the charter board of trustees, also was present at the beginnings of the NMAI’s challenging and sometimes tortuous efforts to build an institution with the capacity to be significant, substantial and able to endure for the long haul. That playing field was complicated to say the least. It began with capital projects in three different locations—New York City, then Washington, D.C., followed by the Cultural Resources Center in Suitland, Maryland. Together, they had an expense tab of hundreds of millions of dollars and a fundraising goal of tens of millions. Fundamental policies relating to finances, collections, exhibitions, publications and research to establish the framework for designing and implementing programs had to be discussed and made final. Some of this work required new thinking—the federal repatriation legislation had been enacted by the U.S. Congress, for example, at the same time the NMAI itself was authorized.

These circumstances are precisely why I remember Jim Block with such fondness and respect: he had all the skills to make a new director far less fearful and anxious about surviving to the next day of his tenure. For starters, his career as a longtime corporate board member and executive provided a grounding that had everything to do with building an institution. But he was also thoroughly familiar with these tasks in nonprofit arts and culture institutions. He could recognize with sophistication the similarities and the distinctions between the cultural and the business sector and was able to communicate clearly about this subject. He had much more experience than I had then or now in raising private donations before he became centrally involved in the NMAI’s considerable campaign to raise private money for its museum on the National Mall.

I have seen that truly great leaders live every bit as much or more so by the intangibles they have in their skill set. The attributes that Jim brought to bear on the exciting but often challenging times in the NMAI’s early history, are what make him most memorable to me.

He came to the NMAI board table with a 24-karat mind, which was evident early in his life as a student at Dartmouth College. He had an intellectual acumen, power to understand and perceive, and a strategic sensibility that were enriched by qualities so valuable to young and developing institutions. He was often not the first to speak, but when he chose to do so, often after listening to others, everybody listened. He had capacity for human empathy that engendered trust, hopefulness and optimism that tallied up to a presence that was commanding.

My journey as the director of the National Museum of the American Indian was blessed by the support and wisdom of many, and I am grateful for all of them. But in that personal pantheon of mine, none will ever stand taller than my friend, trustee and mentor Jim Block.

Authors

W. Richard West Jr.

W. Richard West Jr. (Southern Cheyenne) is president and chief executive officer of the Autry Museum of the American West. He was founding director of the National Museum of the American Indian.

A Promise Kept

sysadmin — Mon, 12 Aug 2019 15:17:22 +0000

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A Promise Kept

From Issue: Fall 2019 / Vol. 20 No. 3

by Patsy Phillips

Suzan Shown Harjo was born June 2, 1945, in El Reno, Oklahoma, within the exterior boundaries of Cheyenne and Arapaho Nations’ reserved lands. Her mother’s great-grandfather was Chief Bull Bear, a ceremonial leader who “healed with colors” and a leader of the Dog Men Society, whose families comprised half of the Cheyenne Nation. He was the first to sign the 1867 Medicine Lodge Creek Treaty with the United States that established these tribal lands.

Secretary Robert McCormick Adams signs Memorandum of Understanding with the Museum of American Indian (MAI) on May 8, 1989. Left to right: Suzan Shown Harjo, MAI Trustee; Roland Force, MAI Director; Senator Daniel K. Inouye (D-Hawaii); Dick Baker, Lakota Sioux Red Feather Society member; and Congressman Ben Nighthorse Campbell (D-Colo.). Photo Courtesy of Smithsonian Institution Archives (89-8343-11)

Harjo’s Muscogee ancestors were ceremonial people who “sang and danced to be well” and cultivated traditional foods and medicines. She says, “They were wrenched from their original homelands,” in what is now Alabama and forcibly moved to Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma.

Harjo and her mother, Susie Eades Douglas, both Cheyenne, lived in her grandparents’ home while her father, Freeland Douglas—a Muscogee (Creek) Nation citizen and World War II combat veteran—traveled to his postwar Army base. Harjo and her younger twin brothers also lived with their parents in their “garden-spot assignments” on Oahu, Hawaii, and in Naples, Italy, where her father was stationed with NATO’s Allied Forces Southern Europe.

Harjo calls her upbringing “the best of so many worlds, filled with myriad and stunningly wise, dignified, talented, hilarious, powerful, humble and kind people to love and admire.” She also says, “My early life had just the right number of bad teachers and rotten apples in the family tree to prepare me for the worst of what life might bring.” She says her “childhood experiences with anti-Indian racism, sexism, violence, abuse and dysfunction” connect in a “direct line” to laws she has championed as well as “unjust laws we have tried to end or change.”

Harjo says that the “best of my relatives, spiritual leaders and teachers” taught this: “Always be prepared to speak, to lead, to follow, to find something that needs to be done and to do it. And always, always to be optimistic about achieving what others call the impossible.” She traces the origin of those teachings to an instruction given to the Tsistsistas [Cheyenne]: “The Nation shall be strong so long as the hearts of the women are not on the ground.” Harjo says it “provides direction for a profound way to be in the world” and she hopes “all who need it may be heartened and strengthened by it.”

Because she was instructed that the world’s balance depends on confident, strong, goal-oriented women, she says, “It’s my job to be optimistic that collective wisdom and work will result in good for the people. Cross-generational thinking makes it possible and necessary to keep moving in a positive direction even if the goal you envisioned isn’t realized in your lifetime.”

However, Harjo says, “It is most sweet, when you get to be a part of a mighty movement and see it to a clear demarcation point.” In particular, she refers to helping achieve the passage of the federal acts that affirmed American Indians’ religious freedom, established the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C., and required federally funded institutions and agencies to return cultural items and human remains to descendants or appropriate tribal representatives. These laws passed in 1978, 1989 and 1990, respectively.

“That’s several lifetimes from when my mother and I first visited the [Museum of the American Indian] in New York,” says Harjo. Her journey of many years of “labors and magic” to achieve these goals began on her mother’s birthday in 1965, a month after Harjo turned 20 and four days after her first child was born. They were horrified to see that the museum was “a place of profanity and sacrilege.” On view were human remains and sacred objects, such as a mummy, shrunken heads, beaded baby cord pouches, Haudenosaunee False Face masks and medicine bags. They saw a Cheyenne girl’s buckskin dress, with “dead rust patterns surrounding a bullet hole where her belly had been,” as Harjo wrote over the next few days in her poem, “child of time.”

Upon leaving the museum, her mother said, “Those things do not belong there! You have to do something.” Harjo admitted that she “had no idea where to start.” She dreamt about a young, healthy Cheyenne girl wearing a new buckskin dress. She and her parents talked to Cheyenne ceremonial men about her dream, and her promise to return the girl’s spirit and claim her name. The spiritual leaders said that many people had been having “dreams and visions and unexplained occurrences” that might be related. “Everyone prayed about it and, after ceremonies in 1966, they decided to have four days of talks after ceremonies at Bear Butte [South Dakota] in June 1967.”

Harjo was inspired to lead campaigns that helped achieve the passage and implementation of the American Indian Religious Freedom Act and the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. She was also part of the group that first envisioned the National Museum of the American Indian in 1967, and one of the young people sent out to build a coalition to see that it came to fruition.

In 1984, in her capacity as executive director of the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) and as president of The Morning Star Institute, she initiated talks with the Smithsonian Institution’s new secretary, Robert McCormick Adams. As a Trustee of the Museum of the American Indian (MAI), NMAI’s predecessor museum collection, she was authorized to conduct certain negotiations for MAI, as well as for NCAI and Morning Star. She says Adams was the “first Smithsonian secretary to meet with our people since the initial one, Joseph Henry.”

Adams, Harjo and others examined ways to improve the Smithsonian’s care, treatment and display of Native objects, to respect and return Native human remains and sensitive materials and to develop relationships with Native peoples and cultural institutions. Their agreements formed the basis of the 1989 law that established the NMAI and contained the historic repatriation provision covering all Smithsonian collections.

“Some in the Institution did not like that Adams was meeting, negotiating and reaching agreement with us,” says Harjo. “What we did—thousands of us collectively, in Indian Country, in the media, in museum world and academe, on the Hill, and in the courts and agencies—was to revolutionize museology, gain space on the National Mall, and do something people said cannot be done: legislate respect by changing the lexicon of disrespect and by removing impediments to Native peoples being in the room.”

Even after implementation of the acts she worked so hard to see pass, “the work began for everyone else, and started anew for some of us,” says Harjo. “We set in motion the amazing possibilities in [these] dynamic laws. The ceremonial, artistic, everyday impact of the return of our relatives, living beings and cultural objects from holding repositories is magnified exponentially throughout most Native Nations.” Harjo says these “legal blueprints” mandated “consultation with elders on everything” and “three NMAI facilities in three cities to build, open and fill with life, in order to honor our ancestors and the present generations, and to provide for our grandchildren’s children and beyond.”

The Cheyenne girl appeared in Harjo’s dreams for nearly a quarter century. “She would show up every so often, an uplifting, friendly presence,” says Harjo, “never saying anything else, and just doing ordinary things, like standing in the tall buffalo grass or sitting on a tree limb.” The girl’s appearances became a gentle motivating force while Harjo worked to reform museum policies. “I guess she stopped dropping in on my dreams because she was satisfied that I hadn’t forgotten her,” says Harjo. “I miss her and cherish her memory.”

The title of the symposium to be held September 20 at NMAI in Washington, D.C., and the volume to follow, “A Promise Kept: The Inspiring Life and Works of Suzan Shown Harjo,” is inspired by Harjo’s dream and poem.

Mateo Romero (Cochiti), “child of time,” 2011 (responding to the 1965 poem by Suzan Shown Harjo). Acrylic on canvas, 30" x 24." The Harjo Family Collection, Courtesy of Mateo Romero and the MoCNA Collection. Photo by Eric Wimmer

Child of Time

a child of time, naked and weeping
walked one night in my dreamless sleep
she came to claim my word of honor
the promise she heard me make to keep
her voice when she spoke
was the sound of the wind
first howling, then moaning and sighing
the sound of a storm without end

she knew of my early mourning visit
to the museum of indian dead
where i had stared at her small torn gown
of leather and beads, all stained with red
blood should mean something more than this
blood flows and lives and gives again
but here, only dead rust patterns surrounding
a bullet hole where her belly had been

to most it was merely a dress on display
placed next to the ancient Navajo loom
lighted and indexed for all the curious
patrons of this bone-chilling public tomb
this dress of dried blood does not belong here
it should be saged and secretly burned
and now, with the dawn, her voice on the wind
“I’ll walk this way ‘til my spirit’s returned.”

hush, now, my pretty, there’s work to be done
sleep on the earth, i’ll give your heart ease
your name will be claimed, now quiet the storm
and come to me next as a soft, gentle breeze

— Suzan Shown Harjo, 1965

Authors

Patsy Phillips

Patsy Phillips (Cherokee Nation) is director of the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. To learn more about the symposium, visit AmericanIndian.si.edu.