Steve and Megan Dragswolf - Our life

More bad news on the frybread front.  This one...

More bad news on the frybread front.  This one coming from South Dakota, a state which named frybread its official bread.  It seems there are several good reasons to forgo that next piece of frybread; two of the biggest reasons?  It’s full of fat (the health reason) and it’s a product of survival after colonization (the militant, man gets me down, reason).   On the other hand, despite whatever good reasons there may be to continue eating frybread tradition doesn’t seem to be one of them. From the article, “Fry bread furor: Standing by a food tradition in a negative light”: While fry bread sometimes is considered a traditional Native American food, its makeup - mainly white flour, sugar, salt and cooked in anything from lard to canola oil - is far from foods that Native Americans ate as part of their hunter-and-gatherer lifestyle. “It’s become such a part of our diet that we think it is traditional. But traditionally, it was not. Traditionally, obviously we didn’t have flour, we didn’t have lard,” says Jace DeCory, an instructor with the American Indian Studies Program at Black Hills State University in Spearfish and a member of the Lakota Cheyenne River Sioux tribe.

More bad news on the frybread front.  This one coming from South Dakota, a state which named frybread its official bread. 

It seems there are several good reasons to forgo that next piece of frybread; two of the biggest reasons?  It’s full of fat (the health reason) and it’s a product of survival after colonization (the militant, man gets me down, reason).  

On the other hand, despite whatever good reasons there may be to continue eating frybread tradition doesn’t seem to be one of them.

From the article, “Fry bread furor: Standing by a food tradition in a negative light”:

While fry bread sometimes is considered a traditional Native American food, its makeup - mainly white flour, sugar, salt and cooked in anything from lard to canola oil - is far from foods that Native Americans ate as part of their hunter-and-gatherer lifestyle.

“It’s become such a part of our diet that we think it is traditional. But traditionally, it was not. Traditionally, obviously we didn’t have flour, we didn’t have lard,” says Jace DeCory, an instructor with the American Indian Studies Program at Black Hills State University in Spearfish and a member of the Lakota Cheyenne River Sioux tribe.

via indigen.tumblr.com

 

findout:

Guatemala indians

Highland Maya of Guatemala have one of the most colorfully dresses in the Americas. While traditional native dress has disappeared in many parts of the world, Guatemala remains a place where a high percentage of the indigenous people still proudly wear their traditional dress.

Moreover, in Guatemala, Maya dresses is village-specific or language-group related. Thus, with dozens of Indian towns and villages, and 21 different Mayan ethnolinguistic groups represented, the variety of indigenous costume is truly dazzling.

People ask us ‘When did the Indians all die?’ They don’t realize they’re still around. The importance of Keeping the Tradition is that it lets people know Native Americans are still here, that they have a lively culture and that they have many traditions still going strong.

Andy Sawyer, site manager of the Sun Watch Indian Village in Dayton Ohio, explaining why they have a yearly powwow at the archeological park.

Annie Pootoogook’s Drawings of contemporary Inuit life - Boing Boing

Boing Boing:

The Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian is exhibiting 39 drawings “that chronicle the realities of contemporary Inuit life by renowned artist Annie Pootoogook.” It open on June 13.

Pootoogook’s detailed work describes everyday life in her home community of Cape Dorset, Nunavut. Her scenes of Inuit traditions include the less romantic but real integration of modern technologies such as video games and televisions as well as domestic abuse and tragedy. Her method, carefully outlined shapes in black filled with blocks of solid color, recalls traditional Inuit drawing while the subject matter reflects the unvarnished viewpoint of her generation. Other drawings are more personal and abstract, illustrating an emotional landscape of mental anguish, such as “Sadness and Relief for My Brother,” and the austere but compelling, still life of the artist’s prescription- medicine bottle, cup and a single dangling key in “Composition (Annie’s Tylenol).” Cheerful domestic scenes such as a family opening Christmas presents (“Christmas”) are depicted with the same precision and calm attention to detail as the emotion-laden composition “Memory of My Life: Breaking Bottles.”

Annie Pootoogook’s Drawings of contemporary Inuit life

Indigenous leaders issue “ultimatum” to FARC | Intercontinental Cry

http://intercontinentalcry.org/indigenous-leaders-issue-ultimatum-to-farc/

Indigenous authorities in Colombia and Ecuador have issued an “ultimatum” to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), demanding they return the bodies of the indigenous Awa who were brutally massacred this month, so they can be buried according to Awa tradition.