Monday, May 12, 2008

NATIVE AMERICAN NATIONS WEBSITES

INFORMATION ON INDIVIDUAL NATIVE NATIONS
http://www.nativeculturelinks.com/nations.html
This section contains links to pages that have either been set up by the nations themselves, or are pages devoted to a particular nation, and are ALPHABETICAL BY TRIBAL NAME. Pages maintained by Indian Nations or individuals are indicated with this symbol:. Pages without this symbol are primarily ABOUT specific nations, but not by them.
Included are both recognized and unrecognized tribes.
Dick Shovel has begun compiling good general historical & cultural overviews of a couple of dozen tribes. Take a look at First Nations Histories - a good source for student papers! Dick also has a listing of tribes, both federally and state recognized, as well as those with no formal governmental recognition at all.

Monday, May 5, 2008

Native American law resource page

Native American law resource page with links to Native American legal organizations, Native American student organizations, Native American arts and culture, Native American government agencies, Native American Education, Native American Tribes, Native American national organizations and institutes, Native American news, Native American research guides, and much more.
http://www.washlaw.edu/doclaw/subject/nativ5m.html

Thursday, May 1, 2008

IN THE LAND OF THE HEAD HUNTERS-EDWARD CURTIS

In 1914, famed photographer Edward S. Curtis (1868-1952) produced a melodramatic, silent film entitled In the Land of the Head Hunters. This was the first feature-length film to exclusively star Native North Americans (eight years before Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North). An epic story of love and war set before European contact, it featured non-professional actors from Kwakwaka’wakw (Kwakiutl) communities in British Columbia—a people already famous then for their spectacular visual culture and performances. The film had gala openings in New York and Seattle in December 1914, where it was accompanied by a live orchestral score composed by John J. Braham (1848-1919), best known for his work with Gilbert and Sullivan. Curtis supplied Braham with c.1910 wax-cylinder recordings of Kwakwaka’wakw songs; despite advertising claims, however, little if any of this source material made it into the score. Critics wrote in rapturous terms about the power and beauty of the film, the Seattle Sun calling it a “great production—like a string of carved beads, too rare to be duplicated.” And yet, Head Hunters was a financial failure, quickly overlooked and barely preserved. In 1947, a single copy arrived at the Field Museum after being picked out of a Chicago dumpster; these damaged and incomplete reels were re-edited by Bill Holm and George Quimby and released in 1974 as In the Land of the War Canoes, featuring a new soundtrack recorded by Kwakwaka’wakw consultants at the time. At some point, a few deteriorating clips from another copy found their way to the UCLA Film & Television Archive, and the all-but-forgotten score was filed under another name at the Getty Research Library.
http://www.curtisfilm.rutgers.edu