New at AISRI

Native American Health and Wellness Community Dance

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2nd Annual FNECC Powwow

On November 3-4, 2012 The First Nations Educational and Cultural Center will be holding its 2nd Annual Traditional Powwow at Union Street Center, 445 Union St. The powwow will being at 11am Saturday morning, with a community lunch being served at noon. Grand entry will be at 1:30 and 7pm. There will be one grand entry on Sundaty at 1:30. The MC is Terry Fiddler from Eagle Butte, SD. Host drums are Brave Heart, from Pine Ridge, SD and Sauk Nation, from Meskwaki, IA and Thaigi, OK. The event is free to the public and all are welcome. Contact FNECC for more information: 812-855-4814 or e-mail fnecc@indiana.edu

AISRI Group to Present at Ethnohistory

A group from AISRI, including Ray DeMallie, Dave Posthumus, Chris Eells, Indrek Park, and Nicky Belle, will be presenting their research at this year’s annual American Society for Ethnohistory meeting in Springfield, MO, November 7-10, 2012. The papers in this session are presented in memory of Melburn Thurman, a long-time participant in the ASE annual meetings, who passed away in spring 2012. His work, much of which is unpublished but shared with colleagues, has long been an inspiration for ethnohistorians He set a standard for meticulous documentary study and rigorous analysis. This panel will attempt to follow where his work has led and to carry it further to new understandings of the Plains.

AISRI Intern Attends Stanford University

Meredith Pelrine, a local high school student who has been volunteering at AISRI for the last year,recently moved to California to attend Stanford University. As a senior at Bloomington North High School, she worked at AISRI after school gathering experience in the field of Linguistics, which is her intended major at Stanford. Her work here included lexicon database maintenance and text translation in both Assiniboine and Lakota.

AISRI Students Construct Arikara Earth Lodge

In September of 2012 an Arikara earthlodge was constructed for the first time in the White Shield community, Fort Berthold, ND. The earthlodge will serve as a powerful symbol for the modern Arikara people and the community of White Shield. This effort will be remembered as a significant event in the history of the Arikara people. Without the sacrifices and commitment of the individuals involved, this historic episode of the Arikara would not have taken place. The Arikara tribal members present were: Jody Ground (Cree), Kuunux Teerit Kroupa, Neetahkas Takaa'aahu Perkins, Whirlwind Bull Perkins, Lee Voigt, and Jasper Young Bear. Also, a well-deserved expression of thanks is owed to the students of the White Shield School for their enthusiastic work in assisting with the willow weaving.

AISRI Director Parks Awarded NEH grant

Doug Parks recently received an NEH grant for his proposed project that deals with American Indian oral history and narrative. It focuses on a large body of previously unpublished works that document the cultures of four major American Indian tribes of the Great Plains: the Pawnee, Arikara, Hidatsa, and Mandan. What is unique about the documents is that they provide detailed descriptions of those tribes’ cultures and languages that were recorded in the late-19th and early-20th centuries in the words of prominent members who lived those cultures or remembered what their parents and grandparents had told them.

Laura Scheiber Adopted at Crow

This summer at Crow Fair, one of North America’s largest powwows and Native gatherings, Laura Scheiber was adopted into the Two Leggins family. Laura came to know this family from years of research and fieldwork on the Crow Indian Reservation in Montana. During the adoption ceremony, Laura was taken inside a tipi and dressed in a traditional Crow women’s elk tooth dress. She was then presented to the family and to the public and given a Crow name which means “One who knows about the past and teaches us about our heritage.” She was introduced to everyone by this name and everyone was told that from this point on, Laura is to be considered a full member of their family and will be treated as such. We want to congratulate Laura for being honored in such an important way.

Melissa Moves to Pine Ridge

Melissa Strickland, a graduate student in Folklore and Anthropology, is moving out to Pine Ridge, SD to be teaching assistant for the Lakota Language Project at Red Cloud Indian School. Melissa’s personal research looks at modern oral history and competitive story telling among the Lakota in South Dakota. Her duties at Red Cloud consist of teacher training, materials development, and working with local fluent Lakota speakers and teachers.

Tasha Attends U.C. Berkeley

Tasha Hauff, a Native American student (Oglala/ Minneconjou) who recently graduated from IU, has been accepted for her graduate work at UC Berkeley and was offered a 5-year fellowship in the Ethnic Studies department. Tasha has been working with AISRI for several years as both a student in the Lakota class and by contributing her vocal talents for multimedia activities for the Red Cloud Lakota Language Project. We will miss Tasha but wish her the best of luck!

Indrek Receives SSILA Award

Indrek Park has just submitted his dissertation titled “A Grammar of Hidatsa,” and has been awarded a PhD in Linguistics with a minor in Anthropology. In addition, his dissertation was awarded the Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas (SSILA) Mary B. Haas Book Award. This award is presented to a junior scholar for an unpublished manuscript that makes a significant substantive contribution to our knowledge of Native American languages, and his dissertation is eligible for publication under the Society’s auspices in the University of Nebraska Press series Studies in the Native Languages of the Americas.