How National Geographic Used Cowbird Storytelling Tool to Tell a Reservation’s Whole Story: ”To make a really great narrative [in print] often means only telling the story of a couple of people, and trying to use those stories to tell the larger story of the community and where it’s going,” Huey said. “That’s often confusing for the community itself. People always asked me why I couldn’t fit in something about the all-star basketball team, or the scholars going on to college. Everyone wanted something specific and claimed that I was missing the entire story because I didn’t have those things. They felt like they were misrepresented. They felt like for decades in the media, they’d been misrepresented.”

See it in action, here: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/

Writing has become so dominated by a small number of global cultures that those 6,000-7,000 languages are written in fewer than 100 alphabets. Moreover, at least a third of the world’s remaining alphabets are endangered–-no longer taught in schools, no longer used for commerce or government, understood only by a few elders, restricted to a few monasteries or used only in ceremonial documents, magic spells, or secret love letters.

The Endangered Alphabets Project, which consists of an exhibition of fourteen carvings and a book, is the first-ever attempt to bring attention to this issue.

Every one of the Endangered Alphabets (Inuktitut, Baybayin, Manchu, Bugis, Bassa Vah, Cherokee, Samaritan, Mandaic, Syriac, Khmer, Pahauh Hmong, Balinese, Tifinagh and Nom), carved and painted into a slab of Vermont curly maple, challenges our assumptions about language, about beauty, about the fascinating interplay between function and grace that takes place when we invent symbols for the sounds we speak, and when we put a word on a page—or a piece of bamboo, or a palm leaf.

http://www.endangeredalphabets.com/

http://kck.st/rcGkGW

This video was created by Sterlin Harjo of This Land Press. You can find more of his videos at http://thislandpress.com/look/

In this documentary, filmmakers Matt Leach and Sterlin Harjo explore the rare language of the Yuchi and the attempts being made to revive the ancient tongue. The film recently screened at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. as part of the program “Celebrating Native American Language Revitalization in Film” which was a pre-summit event for the 2011 National Native Language Revitalization Summit.

View the Video here.

“You have a community that perhaps treasures media and cultural production more than almost any other constituency in the country, and you have an entire dearth of access to new media production and dissemination technology,” Meinrath said.

Since 2009, New America Foundation has worked with Native Public Media, which supports and advocates for Native American media outlets, to help tribal communities take advantage of new media platforms. In January, the organizations formalized their partnership, and this fall, they plan to launch a media literacy pilot project that will train Native radio broadcasters in at least four communities to tell stories using digital tools.

“It’s a very proactive way to address the digital divide, apart from the hardware,” said Loris Ann Taylor, president of Native Public Media. (read the full article here » )

The addition, announced today, means Cherokee speakers can now make it their default language for searches, and help keep the language alive. Google also introduced an on-screen keyboard option. In practice, this means anyone who can read and write Cherokee can look up anything on Google. Users can change their language setting to Cherokee here.

Cherokee, an Iroquoian language, did not have a written form until the early 19th century, when it got a syllabary (a set of written symbols to represent syllables) writing system. The Cherokee Nation has about 300,000 members, though only about 20,000 people speak the Cherokee language.

“I believe that efforts like those of Google are essential to keeping our language alive,” Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chad Smith said in a statement. “We have been working hard to get our young people interested in learning our Native tongue, but we cannot be successful unless they can read and write in the medium of their era -– all the digital devices that are currently so popular.”

With this latest addition, Google now supports 146 interface languages and encourages users to sign up for Google in Your Language to make a case for interfaces in other endangered languages.

Google made similar additions of other North American native languages Maya and Nahuatl last year.

The resulting film, “Smiling Indians,” was posted on YouTube in February. Although it hasn’t drawn the same number of viewers that videos by pop artists or antic cats might, the film did catch the attention of National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered,” which ran a short feature on “Smiling Indians” recently.

What prompted NPR’s interest was the opening image – white letters on a black background stating “This film is dedicated to Edward S. Curtis.”

Curtis was a photographer who in 1906 began work on “The American Indian” – a series of some 1,500 images that have become iconic. In Curtis’ images, no one is smiling.

Read more from this Tulsa World article at http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?subjectid=11&articleid=20110323_11_A2_ULNSor155761

Preliminary symposium activities begin April 11, with the full schedule running April 13-16. This year’s theme is “Hands Across Nations: Smart Legacies – Strong Spirits.”

Confirmed speakers for the symposium include Dr. Theda Perdue and Dr. Craig Womack.

Perdue is Atlanta Distinguished Professor of Southern Culture at the University of North Carolina. She is an author of books on Cherokee and women’s history and was lead developer of the “Study Abroad in the Cherokee Nation” summer seminar at NSU in 2009 in collaboration with the CTS and the Cherokee Nation.

Womack is an associate professor of English at Emory University. He is an author and leading figure in Native American literary studies and argues that mainstream contemporary approaches to such studies need change.

Dr. Marcellino Berardo of the University of Kansas and Dr. Brad Montgomery-Anderson of NSU will lead the Indigenous Language Documentation and Revitalization Seminar co-sponsored by the Oklahoma Native Language Association.

Berardo and Montgomery-Anderson are linguists who studied under linguistics scholar Dr. Akira Yamamoto at the University of Kansas. They are highly skilled linguists who worked among Native language groups under Akira’s leadership. The entire group has experience conducting portions of the Oklahoma Native Languages Conference and the Annual Symposium on the American Indian seminar.

April 15-16 is the always popular NSU Powwow which will include the Gourd Dance, Grand Entry, contests and vendors. Hours are 7-10 p.m. Friday and 3-11 p.m. Saturday.

For more information about the 39th Annual Symposium of the American Indian and NSU Powwow contact the Center for Tribal Studies at (918) 444-4350 or visit the Symposium page.

When asked by an Arizona Republic reporter in 2001 about his legacy, Oliver was hesitant. “Am I a hero? I don’t know,” Oliver said after some thought. “Yeah. I’ll be a hero,” he finally said. “I’ll go for that. Yeah.”

Read more: http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2011/03/18/20110318code-talker-lloyd-oliver-dies.html#ixzz1HRnxulBp

Sterlin Harjo’s new film Barking Water
Before Oklahoma was a red state, it was known as the Land of the Red People, described by the Choctaw phrase Okla Humma. In his sophomore film, Sterlin Harjo takes viewers on a road trip through his own personal Oklahoma, which includes an eclectic mix of humanity. Irene and Frankie have a difficult past, but Frankie needs Irene to help him with one task. He needs to get out of the hospital and go home to his daughter and new grandbaby to make amends. Irene had been his one, true, on-again, off-again love until they parted ways for good. But to make up for the past, Irene agrees to help him in this trying time.