Post by Okwes on Oct 2, 2006 18:17:50 GMT -5
Native-American family entertains, informs
JAMES H. SMITH jsmith@ctpost.com
Joanne Shenandoah has sung at the White House, at Carnegie Hall, in Istanbul and last weekend in Ridgefield with her daughter Leah.
It has been a good year, said the soft-spoken member of the Wolf Clan, Oneida Nation. She shared a Grammy Award with other Native-American singers for the album Sacred Ground, she's acting in a movie on global warming, Leah graduated from Syracuse University with honors, and husband Douglas George-Kanentiio just came out with his third book, "Iroquois on Fire, A Voice from the Mohawk Nation" (Praeger, $49, 153 pages).
Her music and his book are a study in contrasts, but both send an underlying message about the importance of keeping alive their Native-American values and culture. On a patch of grass before a participatory audience, she strummed her guitar: "I dream the dream/ where the people still speak their tongue." She dips into her native Oneida language then back to English: "I sing this song/I dreamed the dream/where the fighters laid down their guns."
But not in her Mohawk husband's book. "Still in possession of the AR 15 I fired a few more rounds toward the hill . . . a group of us charged the hill. The attackers abandoned their points. We received no more gunfire after that." He was describing a 1990 gun battle between pro- and anti-gambling forces on the Mohawk Reservation on the St. Lawrence River. Douglas George-Kanentiio is definitely anti-gambling. Signing CDs last weekend, Shenandoah said her husband's book is a disturbing book that will cause a stir.
His writing is a raw, bare-knuckled exposition pounded out, it seems at times, in his own blood.
New York state was born "only because it was an active participant in the theft of Iroquois land; it had been weaned on deception, graft, bribery and lies. It had never acknowledged the aboriginal land title and had defied with impunity U.S. federal laws meant to prohibit individual states from taking Indian territory. It could not have existed without the unscrupulous alienation of our lands, nor could it have prospered without denigrating our culture and history."
Former Cherokee Nation Chief Wilma Mankiller calls "Iroquois on Fire" "an extraordinary description of the struggles, conflict and determination of traditional people." In her own book, "Everyday is a Good Day," Mankiller writes that Shenandoah is a "soft-spoken warrior . . . an articulate spokesperson for peace and compassion." And of her music, fellow singer Robbie Robertson says, "She weaves you into a trance . . . and wraps her voice around you like a warm blanket on a cold winter's night."
She did that under cloudy skies last weekend with a big smile, happy eyes, and a voice that at once soothes and soars. Strolling with Leah to the microphones, she welcomed everyone to the Native-American crafts festival in a Ridgefield park and said to those gathering around that "We forget to
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sing. We forget to dance," and it is important to do both.
She had no trouble coaxing her crowd to move to her music, though she did joke that "generally when you sing you move your lips." It was an intimate gathering, so much so that she could announce between songs that a turquoise-colored earring was found in the grass. She hung it on her mike stand for the owner to come and retrieve it.
Shenandoah has 14 CDs out; one of the latest is Skywoman, "a symphonic odyssey of Iroquois legends." She and her husband co-authored a book of the same name, a lavishly illustrated work by Mohawk artists John and David Fadden beginning with the Iroquois creation story of how a woman fell from the sky world to create the earth.
If there is a disappointment in George-Kanentiio's "Iroquois on Fire" it is when he describes how the once-formidable Oneida Nation in the Iroquois Confederacy had shrunk to a mere 32 acres in central New York, with just one family living there in the 1920s. Half a century later he was the editor of the Akwesasne Notes news journal on the Mohawk reservation visiting the few families who had migrated to the small tract of land. There he met Joanne. "My personal destiny shifted. We courted long distance" and married 10 months later. "Joanne and I have lived within Oneida territory ever since." That's it? A chance to tell about falling in love in the midst of all the travail of land claims, gambling, drug and alcohol addiction, and gun battles, but he leaves the reader with a couple of terse sentences. You want to know more about this talented couple.
She's right, the book will stir some controversy, as when he debunks the Bering Strait land bridge theory of how the Indians first arrived in North America. In essence, he says they were always here and describes a forum of native peoples, from Mayas to Inuits held in Colorado in 2000. Participants held forth on the oral traditions of their people handed down from generation to generation over the centuries. Native peoples put great stock in their oral storytelling.
"There is no account in any Native creation story that tells of the crossing from Asia to America over a narrow land bridge," but there are similar stories among the various native peoples about surviving the ice age in North America.
If you are interested in contemporary issues among Native Americans, this book gives them to you, intimately and with passion. If you like good music that will lift your spirits, listen to Joanne Shenandoah.
JAMES H. SMITH jsmith@ctpost.com
Joanne Shenandoah has sung at the White House, at Carnegie Hall, in Istanbul and last weekend in Ridgefield with her daughter Leah.
It has been a good year, said the soft-spoken member of the Wolf Clan, Oneida Nation. She shared a Grammy Award with other Native-American singers for the album Sacred Ground, she's acting in a movie on global warming, Leah graduated from Syracuse University with honors, and husband Douglas George-Kanentiio just came out with his third book, "Iroquois on Fire, A Voice from the Mohawk Nation" (Praeger, $49, 153 pages).
Her music and his book are a study in contrasts, but both send an underlying message about the importance of keeping alive their Native-American values and culture. On a patch of grass before a participatory audience, she strummed her guitar: "I dream the dream/ where the people still speak their tongue." She dips into her native Oneida language then back to English: "I sing this song/I dreamed the dream/where the fighters laid down their guns."
But not in her Mohawk husband's book. "Still in possession of the AR 15 I fired a few more rounds toward the hill . . . a group of us charged the hill. The attackers abandoned their points. We received no more gunfire after that." He was describing a 1990 gun battle between pro- and anti-gambling forces on the Mohawk Reservation on the St. Lawrence River. Douglas George-Kanentiio is definitely anti-gambling. Signing CDs last weekend, Shenandoah said her husband's book is a disturbing book that will cause a stir.
His writing is a raw, bare-knuckled exposition pounded out, it seems at times, in his own blood.
New York state was born "only because it was an active participant in the theft of Iroquois land; it had been weaned on deception, graft, bribery and lies. It had never acknowledged the aboriginal land title and had defied with impunity U.S. federal laws meant to prohibit individual states from taking Indian territory. It could not have existed without the unscrupulous alienation of our lands, nor could it have prospered without denigrating our culture and history."
Former Cherokee Nation Chief Wilma Mankiller calls "Iroquois on Fire" "an extraordinary description of the struggles, conflict and determination of traditional people." In her own book, "Everyday is a Good Day," Mankiller writes that Shenandoah is a "soft-spoken warrior . . . an articulate spokesperson for peace and compassion." And of her music, fellow singer Robbie Robertson says, "She weaves you into a trance . . . and wraps her voice around you like a warm blanket on a cold winter's night."
She did that under cloudy skies last weekend with a big smile, happy eyes, and a voice that at once soothes and soars. Strolling with Leah to the microphones, she welcomed everyone to the Native-American crafts festival in a Ridgefield park and said to those gathering around that "We forget to
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Advertisement
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
sing. We forget to dance," and it is important to do both.
She had no trouble coaxing her crowd to move to her music, though she did joke that "generally when you sing you move your lips." It was an intimate gathering, so much so that she could announce between songs that a turquoise-colored earring was found in the grass. She hung it on her mike stand for the owner to come and retrieve it.
Shenandoah has 14 CDs out; one of the latest is Skywoman, "a symphonic odyssey of Iroquois legends." She and her husband co-authored a book of the same name, a lavishly illustrated work by Mohawk artists John and David Fadden beginning with the Iroquois creation story of how a woman fell from the sky world to create the earth.
If there is a disappointment in George-Kanentiio's "Iroquois on Fire" it is when he describes how the once-formidable Oneida Nation in the Iroquois Confederacy had shrunk to a mere 32 acres in central New York, with just one family living there in the 1920s. Half a century later he was the editor of the Akwesasne Notes news journal on the Mohawk reservation visiting the few families who had migrated to the small tract of land. There he met Joanne. "My personal destiny shifted. We courted long distance" and married 10 months later. "Joanne and I have lived within Oneida territory ever since." That's it? A chance to tell about falling in love in the midst of all the travail of land claims, gambling, drug and alcohol addiction, and gun battles, but he leaves the reader with a couple of terse sentences. You want to know more about this talented couple.
She's right, the book will stir some controversy, as when he debunks the Bering Strait land bridge theory of how the Indians first arrived in North America. In essence, he says they were always here and describes a forum of native peoples, from Mayas to Inuits held in Colorado in 2000. Participants held forth on the oral traditions of their people handed down from generation to generation over the centuries. Native peoples put great stock in their oral storytelling.
"There is no account in any Native creation story that tells of the crossing from Asia to America over a narrow land bridge," but there are similar stories among the various native peoples about surviving the ice age in North America.
If you are interested in contemporary issues among Native Americans, this book gives them to you, intimately and with passion. If you like good music that will lift your spirits, listen to Joanne Shenandoah.