Native american storytelling9/16/2023 New Field Museum exhibition will highlight Native American women and warriorsĪpsáalooke Women and Warriors at the Field Museum (Episode published October 1, 2020) Related:Įxhibition upends traditional representations of Native American cultures Subscribe to Big Brains on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher and Spotify. We talk with the people involved in these projects, and how museums need to change for the future. Along with an overhaul of its Native North American Hall, the Field Museum is trying to address the racially insensitive past of many natural history museums by including Native Americans in the process. But the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, in partnership with the Neubauer Collegium at the University of Chicago, is trying to change that.Ī historic exhibition, Apsáalooke Women and Warriors, is the first large-scale show to be curated by an Indigenous person. People from these communities are often not included in the conversation, and their artifacts can be mishandled. Or my grandfather also called them Chinook dances.Since their inception, natural history museums have struggled with how to represent Native Americans and their culture. This is held during the evening and can go all night, depending on the number of sacred singers who come to share. There are songs, dancing, feasting, and a give-away. We have winter dance ceremonies prayers for the new year to come, for the berries, roots, four-leggeds, and fish-the four Food Chiefs prayers for our families and ourselves. My grandmother sometimes held her first ceremony of the winter at this powerful time. Syilx (Washington State & British Columbia): What I know is that it marks the point in time when our Winter Ceremonies can be held. For my folks it’s a sign that the frost giants will be returning to the North.Īssiniboine/Sioux (South Dakota): Waniyetu -time for gathering can'sa'sa while the Thunder is gone. Passamaquoddy (New England): In traditional calendars in the Northeast, the solstice is always marked. My parents said that when you call haamaaha, people will arrive with piñon nuts gathered in the fall that are roasted and shared. It’s also the time of haamaaha, storytelling of the coyote, stories of heroes, stories of the animals, sharing of knowledge. We mark the time with ceremonies not privy to the public. Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin: We have to wait for the Winter Moon, and there has to be snow on Mother Earth for those stories.īlackfoot (Calgary, Alberta): Blackfoots are the same with the snow and stories.Īcoma Pueblo (New Mexico): The winter solstice marks our New Year in Acoma. Soon he would start telling stories most of the night. Then my grandpa would put a bundle at his feet. We would eat dinner they would visit, smoke. My grandfather would ask a really older man to come visit. San Carlos Apache (Arizona): This reminds me when I was young. The storyteller will often take the tobacco outside and place it on the earth as an offering to the spirits of the story. To be respectful, a gift of tobacco is offered to the storyteller before the story begins. To have a storyteller tell you a story is like receiving a gift. To be respectful, people waited until the winter when animals hibernate or become less active so they cannot hear themselves being talked about. Another reason is that many traditional stories contain animal characters. It was in the winter, with the long dark evenings, the snow and wind blowing outside, that telling stories was a way to entertain and teach the children. This was a practical choice given the fact that during the other season's, people were busy growing, gathering, and hunting food. Traditional storytelling is reserved for the winter months for many tribes. Like many events in American Indian culture there is a proper time and place for all activities. Ojibwe (Minnesota Chippewa Tribe): This description of winter in many Native communities was prepared by the Indian Land Tenure Foundation/ Lessons of Our Land as background for teachers: Their answers highlight winter as a time for storytelling. As we did before the solar eclipse in August, this December we asked our Native friends to share traditions they’ve heard about the winter solstice. North of the Arctic Circle, it will be the midpoint of the period of darkness, when even twilight doesn’t reach the horizon. In the Northern Hemisphere, December 21 will be the year’s day of least sunlight, when the sun takes its lowest, shortest path across the sky. Indian Arts and Crafts Board Headquarters Collection, Department of the Interior, at the National Museum of the American Indian.
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