Discussion by Elders who express regrets at loss of traditional customs and values and desire a return of schools on reserves ; a need to preserve Indian ceremonies and Indian medicines ; concerns about problems with alcohol recur throughout.
Elders discuss contemporary problems. Recurring themes are: problems with alcohol; education by whites from an early age; need to return to traditional teaching by elders in combination with white education.
Elders discuss concerns regarding: loss of Indian culture and traditions; failure to educate young Indians in traditionalways; young well-educated chiefs who will not take advice from elders.
Elders speak of their concerns regarding leadership on the reserves; new young leaders with education but no experience who ignore the elders and their advice; the failure to educate the young in traditional Indian ways.
Discussion of the educational system: relative merits of day schools, residential schools, integrated schools, etc.; need for inclusion of Indian culture into the curriculum at all levels ; the role of the elder as teacher.
Discussion of: Role of elders in setting young people on the right road ; Importance of breast-feeding and giving up alcohol ; Need for a tipi on each reserve, to be kept for prayer, pipe ceremonies and the counselling of the young.
Transmotion, vol. 5, no. 1, Native American Narratives in a Global Context, July 11, 2019, pp. 33-55
Description
Literary criticism article in which the author explores Vizenor’s use of trickster tropes and transnational narrative to explore different expressions of Indigenous identity and how it adapts to and is affected by sites solidarity and sovereignty.
Studies in American Indian Literatures, vol. 31, no. 1-2, Spring-Summer, 2019, pp. 54-82
Description
Discusses the Two-Row poetry of Peter Blue cloud by comparing it to the Haudenosaunee Two-Row Wampum, and then uses “trans-systemic” analysis to map out the importance of two-row thinking for changing the relationship between Indigenous and settler-colonial legal regimes.
Studies in American Indian Literatures, vol. 31, no. 3-4, Fall-Winter, 2019, pp. 1-35
Description
Author defines and then discusses Indigenous Futurisms as a decolonial aesthetic practice rather than a defined literary genre and explores its power as a reorienting and revisional device.
Interview includes a description of traditional life style and the life of settlers on the prairies. It also includes stories of theft and murder by Indians.
Interview includes a description of life on the reserve that describes milking, sheep-shearing and fishing weirs. It also consists of stories about a woman whose husband turned into a lizard; a story of Wisakedjak; and how Thunder Blanket killed his wife and then himself.
Mrs. Carter tells a story of her life. She talks of the traditional way of living; residential schools and tells how she was given her name. During the interview she also relates a tale from her grandfather about the Cree raiding Blackfoot camps.
Discussion on problems of the younger generation, including alcoholism. Also discussed ways in which parents and elders can help by instructing children and young people and by maintaining the Indian religion.
Panelists discuss theatre as an expression of identity and cultural practice, how personal experience is interwoven in their projects, and how their work manifests their connections to their homelands and ancestral knowledges.