Clarence Wolf Guts, an 86-year-old World War II veteran, was laid to rest in the Black Hills National Cemetery with the Lord’s Prayer and drum beat resonating inside the rock rotunda.

A procession of 30 vehicles — including one white Chevy Impala with the sign “We love you Grandpa Clarence, forever in our heart.” — followed a white van that carried Wolf Guts from a traditional Lakota ceremony in Wanblee to Sturgis. A crowd of over 60 traveled to pay their respects to the war hero.

“I knew he was an important man to people because of his activities in the Army, but I didn’t know this many people had so much respect for him,” said Don Doyle, Wolf Guts’ only son. “I’m very proud of him, and I’m very grateful to them coming all the way here to pay respects to my father.”

read the whole article, here >

The brochure was created as an educational and informational piece to inform local citizens and visitors of Tulsa’s rich Native American history and tradition.

The three Tulsa regional tribes featured in the brochure are Cherokee, Muscogee, and Osage Nations. The brochure highlights each tribe with a brief tribal history and information on local tribal establishments and landmarks.

For more information or to obtain a copy of the brochure, contact the Tulsa Convention and Visitors Bureau at 800-558-3311 or visittulsa.com.

For more information on a specific tribe, contact their tribal tourism office at:

• Cherokee Nation Cultural Tourism – 877.779.6977 or www.cherokeetourism.com

• Muscogee Nation Tourism and Recreation – 918.732.7992 or tourism@muscogeenation-nsu.gov

• Osage Nation Tourism – 918.287.5555 or www.osagetribe.com/tourism

Tickets for the event are $8.50 and are available at the box office, by phone at 585-3504, or on the Circle Web site. www.circlecinema.com

Hope you can join us on Saturday as we honor a great actor, Oklahoman, and member of the Cherokee tribe.

Young adult author Lorie-Ann Grover sez, “In 2008 and 2009, readergirlz, GuysLitWire, and YALSA orchestrated publishers’ donations of 20,000 new young adult books to hospitalized teens across the country.

For 2010, If I Can Read I Can Do Anything has joined forces with these three organizations to drop over 10,000 new YA books, donated by publishers, into the hands of teens on Native Tribal Lands. Nationwide, librarians, over 100 YA authors, YA lit lovers, and teens will drop YA books in their own communities on April 15th, 2010, to raise awareness for Operation TBD 2010 and Support Teen Literature Day.

They will participate further by purchasing books from the TBD Powell’s Wish Lists during National Library Week. Purchases will be shipped directly to enrich one of two Native American libraries. Everyone will join an online party that evening at the readergirlz blog.”

My five minutes of fame!  Thanks to the entire team at Ignite Tulsa, as well as all the sponsors, the fellow speakers, and everyone who came out and supported us!  It was a great night.  I was QUITE nervous (and sick!), but I made it through thanks to my wife and daughter who were there to cheer me on.

Huge shout-out once again to Andrew Bryant who was also there to support us, and of course his wife who also gave a GREAT presentation, and to the Arts & Humanities Council for all of their support and help through this entire process.  We’ve come pretty close to getting our final presentation and budget done, and ready to show to a few tribes and other groups.  We’re getting closer to start working on our pilot project!  I’m excited.

Read more from this Tulsa World article.

‘got a fresh new email newsletter setup and ready to rock, thanks to mailchimp (hey, subscribe please!), and we’ve got a project set up on indegogo (i won’t mention that we haven’t been accepted yet by kickstarter, or that they’re a great service and you should check them out…maybe even nudge them to say yes to the native language project… nope, i won’t talk about that).  …and we’ve got our links section up and running (more soon!) so that’s awesome.

what are we doing in march?
well, we’re going to be taking our show on the road!  …that is, we’ve got our presentation ironed out pretty well.  and we’re planning to get on the road and talk to organizations, tribes, and hopefully other nonprofits and sponsor companies about funding to launch the pilot program.

we start this thursday (march 4th) with our 5-minutes of awesomeness at ignite Tulsa, and we’re looking to basically hit the ground running from there.  this will be the first of may talks we want to give about the importance of language preservation, what others like rosetta stone are doing, and gearing up to film our pilot.

Date: march 4th
Time: 6pm
Loaction: Blue Dome Diner, downtown Tulsa
Price: Free. $15 VIP tixx available at http://ignitetulsa.org/

Awesome!
Spread the word, and if you’re around Tulsa, I hope you come out to support us. If not, be sure to visit the website for updates and a link to the video; all presentations will be taped and put on youTube within a couple weeks or so.

And speaking of the website, I’m working on a lot of updates today / tomorrow.  I’ve got an email newsletter set up now (put your email address in the sidebar to subscribe!), i’ve got some new blog posts going up, I’ve got the links section working now, so things are coming together.  I’ve got some logo / branding / design ideas to pull together and apply to all of this as well, so it will start looking a bit more professional.

After Ignite, I’ll be working pretty heavily on taking this presentation on the road and seeking funding.  I’ll keep everyone updated of course.

obviously, you say? …well not so obvious to me i guess.  in any case, i now see a little more clearly how to approach and develop this project a little better, thanks IN GREAT PART to feed back from andrew, rebecca, ken, frank, and others.  …without their feedback i don’t think i would even be THIS far; i’m glad they’re around to cheer me on and keep pushing me forward.  i really need it.

rather than biting the whole thing off at once, we’re going to start the project in phases.  phase 1 will be the pilot program and getting that off the ground.  …so for now i really just want to focus on raising the money that will be needed to produce that one event, and basically reach that milestone.  if i can get to that and call it a success, it will be awesome and i can move on to everything else i want to do. …but i can’t wrap my arms around EVERYTHING at once; i just have to take one thing at a time.

phase 2 will be building the tools so that others can submit material and primarily our role will be one of spreading the word about the importance of language preservation and passing it on to younger generations, and then giving folks the tools to do something about it (that’s the, “greater cause” that i was talking about earlier).

there’s not enough time to write down / record all of our thoughts, not enough time to sit and listen to our elders for months or years, as much as we would want to completely just stop everything and listen to what the have to say and teach.  there’s not enough time to connect with our family and friends and communicate with / understand eachother as COMPLETELY as we want to.  so every day is a struggle to put food on the table, pay the bills, get all our chores done, work, eat, and hopefully have some time to enjoy life a little.

this month i’ve lost my mentor, one of my best friends, and have dealt with a LOT of pain and loss.
i’d be lynig if i said i didn’t think about just throwing in the towel on all my creative / entrepreneurial / community projects & ideas and just going to work at quiktrip.  but i’ve decided to move ahead.  it will take some time; i have no doubts that it will probably be months until i am back to the same level of activity that i am used to being at, but after reflecting, i realize that i’ll in fact be serving a greater cause w/ this project than i thought.

yes preserving knowledge/wisdom (in the case of this project via language) is important.  but even more important is what future generations will gain from being able to access it.

i was inspired by hugh mcleod, though. he wrote that, “life is too short not to do something that matters.” …and that’s stuck with me. in fact if anything drives this little experiment of mine, if it becomes anything significant, it will be because myself and others see that life is too short.  that (yes, amongst literally a million other things…) this matters and is an important cause to do something about.