Annie Pootoogook 

Fishing, n.d.

Heather Igloliorte on Inuit Artistic Expression as Cultural Resilience 

Question: What is that he is beating on?

It’s a gourd drum. The drum represents the heartbeat of the deer.
Listen.
When the drum beats, it brings the deer to life.
We believe the water the drum sits in is holy. It is life.
Go ahead, touch it.
Bless yourself with it.
It is holy. You are safe now.

― Ofelia Zepeda, Deer Dance Exhibition 

Photo by Larry Pannell 'Half Dome Buck' 

“Poetry = Anger x Imagination”

― Sherman Alexie, One Stick Song

“Artists jam like musicians, but we jam quietly. We look at each other other's art. We have a relationship with a lot of other artists and we think, 'should I go in that direction? Is this good for me? Or bad for me?' Artist’s jam sessions take place over a long time and with many different artists and sometimes we even jam with the dead. We have a good relationship with them, but we tend to have it in private." 
—Jockum Nordström

via kyo maclear

The Spirit of the Beehive (1973 Victor Erice)

Carving, flying bird. Koryak, Siberia, North Kamchatka (1901, Jesup expedition). Ivory, sinew © American Museum of Natural History.

via 

Weaving on a Cardboard Loom

Miwok string figures 
images from calisphere

> Here is David "Kitaq" Nicolai sharing traditional Alaskan Indigenous string stories 

"String figures, or string stories, have been found in every indigenous culture on the six populated continents. String figures from arctic and sub-arctic cultures have been considered by the International String Figure Association the most difficult string figures to construct in the entire world. As recently as five years ago, there were only four people in the state of Alaska (all Alaska Natives) who knew a large number of string figures. Recently, those four have worked hard to re-IGNITE this type of traditional storytelling."

The ISFA was founded in 1978 by Hiroshi Noguchi, a Japanese mathematician, and Philip Noble, an Anglican missionary stationed in Papua New Guinea. ISFA is a small, not-for-profit organization funded solely by membership dues and private donations. The primary goal of ISFA is to gather, preserve, and distribute string figure knowledge so that future generations will continue to enjoy this ancient pastime. We also encourage the invention of new string figures, and enjoy sharing them with one another.

books on string figures: stringfigurerstore 

Ruth Cuthand: Back Talk : Works 1983 - 2009 / Kihkahtowi-Naskwewasimowin: Atoskewina 1983 - 2009

"This catalogue for a recent retrospective exhibition by Ruth Cuthand was shortlisted for the 2013 Saskatchewan Book Awards. With good reason – it takes an intelligent and thought-provoking look at the work of an artist influential in indigenous circles but often overlooked by mainstream institutions. Bilingual – in Cree and English – it considers Cuthand’s take on the harsh realities facing aboriginal women. Cuthand often uses dark humour and typically adopts an anti-aesthetic stance in her art. But she’s also known for Trading, a series of visually compelling beaded works that portray deadly microbes like small pox and cholera, which decimated indigenous people during colonization of the Americas. “It’s beautiful and it’s abhorrent, so it puts you off guard,” Cuthand says in an interview with Jen Budney, associate curator of the Mendel. “I like using opposites to get people to think.”

via: gallerieswest.ca

Kwe

Standing With Our Sisters
Edited by Joseph Boyden

• Driven by deep frustration, anger, and sorrow in the wake of yet another violent assault upon a First Nations woman in November 2014, dozens of acclaimed writers and artists have come together to add their voices to a call for action addressing the deep-rooted and horrific crimes that continue to fester in our country.

Kwe means woman in Ojibwe. More specifically, kwe means life-giver or life-carrier in Anishinaabemowin, the Ojibwe language. It is a pure word, one that speaks powerfully of women’s place at the heart of all our First Nations.

These women who bring light and life to our world are in peril. Aboriginal women in our country are three times more likely to face violent attack and murder than any other of their gender. We must take concrete steps to stop this and we must do it now. 

A nation is only as good, is only as strong, as how it treats its most vulnerable and those of us in danger. This book is a call to action. It’s sometimes a whisper, sometimes a scream, but we speak our words as one when we demand justice for our more than 1200 murdered and missing Indigenous women. After all, they are our mothers, our daughters, our nieces, our aunties, our sisters, our friends.

penguinrandomhouse.ca

braids <3
via: waanaki.com

I just discovered a beautiful new book called A Children’s Guide to Arctic Birds, written by Mia Pelletier, illustrated by Danny Christopher, on the American Indians in Children's Literature blog. The guide is published by Inhabit Media, an Inuit-owned publishing company, located in Iqaluit, Nunavut. Two versions have been published, one is bilingual and one is in Inuktitut. Here are three pages from the Inuktitut version:

From: The Nunavut Bilingual Education Society (NBES)  

Зеркало, tr. Zerkalo; The Mirror, 1975 
Andrei Tarkovsky

Illustrations: Miroslaw Tokarczyk 
Author: Tadeusz Kubiak 
Title: What kind of wonders
Issued: 'Office Publishing >> << Movement', Warsaw, Poland, 1971. 
Edition II.

via: pstrobazar.blogspot.ca

leanne simpson – broken berries

via: http://asusjournal.org/

photo by Amiel Flett-Brown

I recently overheard a little boy at Jericho park ask his caregiver: "..what do rabbits do for fun?"

Run, Run

Zitkala-Ša 

"Not only, then, was Zitkala-Sa the first American Indian woman to write her story without aid of an editor, interpreter, or ethnographer, but she was a devoted social reformer unafraid of assuming unpopular positions. Her writing and activism were informed by social criticism and rebellion, conflicts between tradition and acculturation, between literature and politics, between American Indian spirituality and Christian religion, and other dilemmas, such as mother-daughter conflict and gendered family role expectations. With these themes and others, she tapped the potential of merging literary art and protest and thereby paved the way for contemporary activist and experimental writers to do the same."

- Roseanne Hoefel

Maria Tallchief in George Balanchine's Firebird

Maria Tallchief

(1925 - 2013)

Elise Paschen wrote of her mother: "My mother was a ballet legend who was proud of her Osage heritage. Her dynamic presence lit up the room. I will miss her passion, commitment to her art and devotion to her family. She raised the bar high and strove for excellence in everything she did."

‘Music For Children’ Carl Orff

    

Performed by the Children’s Percussion Ensemble, the Children of the Italia Conte School

via: a sound awareness

Mark Emerak

The Great Whirlpool (Kalaniyaaktok), 1987

stonecut on paper

Mark Emerak was an Inuit elder when he began drawing in 1966. His imagery and tightly organized compositions have created a rich record of the artist’s life on the land. This unusual work is based on a story recorded by the artist. One man told another that if he took his boat out to a certain place, the water would suck him down. Skeptical, the second man paddled out to the place described and he was never seen again.

via: http://wag.ca/art/collections/inuit-art/

Pawnee Nation star map

18th century 

Tanned elk skin

15 x 22 inches

via: http://huldrapress.tumblr.com/