Land of the Secwepemc

From my fourth post on the Drum, Northern Cree, it made me look back to the Tk’emlups Indian Band’s site (http://www.tkemlups.ca/) as I was looking for information on the Kamloopa Pow Wow where I had seen Northern Cree play.  Kamloops is also my home town.

Looking through the Tk’emlups site I stumbled on the Land of the Secwepemc or Land of the Shuswap site.

http://www.landoftheshuswap.com/msite/index2.php

Created by the George Manuel Institue the Land of the Secwepemc has a tremendous amount of historical and cultural information. It includes information about territory, traditional practices, landmarks and oral history in mp3 format. One that I’ll be downloading is about the balancing rock near Savona. My dad and my brothers hiked there to see it when I was about eight. It will be interesting to hear the First Nation story about it.

The site documents legends, language, songs and dances. It also has oral telling of experience at the local residential school in Kamloops. This will certainly be a site I spend several more hours in listening to!

Recording Artists: Northern Cree

I was fortunate enough a couple of summers ago to visit my home town, Kamloops, and attend that years Kamloopa Pow Wow in Tk’emlups territory (where the rivers meet). I hadn’t been since I was quite young and had forgotten the moving experience that is a pow wow. I started to look for one of the Drums (drum group) that I remembered, Northern Cree, online. Turns out they are quite famous. There are numerous recordings on youtube as well as cd’s available online.

The link I’ll include is for Honor the Eagle Feather CD by Northern Cree on the Canyon Records site which has been producing and distributing Native American music since 1951

http://store.canyonrecords.com/index.php?app=ccp0&ns=prodshow&ref=CR-6269

I’ll also include a link to Northern Cree’s own site

http://www.northerncree.com/

Their music is widely available online through many retailers.

After reading Indigenous Presence in the Sydney Games, by Lisa Meekson  (Chapter 6, Smith & Ward, 2000), I was curious about the Vancouver/Whistler 2010 games and Aboriginal Participation.

While I did not find sites in particular I found the following two pages from VANOC’s official site (http://www.vancouver2010.com/)

Aboriginal Peoples of Canada

http://www.vancouver2010.com/en/news/feature-stories/-/54362/32574/1ah140h/aboriginal-peoples-of-canada-e.html

Aboriginal Participation

http://www.vancouver2010.com/en/sustainability-and-aboriginal-parti/aboriginal-participation/-/31654/wc0yaf/index.html

The first link both invites artists and promotes the fact that there will be Aboriginal art at all venues in the 2010 Olympics.  Along with VANOC the invitation comes from a partner group, the Four Host First Nations (FHFN). VANOC states that there will be a commitment to unprecedented Aboriginal participation in the 2010 winter games.

It also speaks of commercial opportunities for Aboriginal artists,  legacy funds going to an Aboriginal youth group (Aboriginal Youth Legacy Fund, the participation of the BC Sports Hall of Fame with a Aboriginal sports gallery, and a reference to the North American Indigenous Games.

The second link speaks specifically to VANOC’s commitment to increase the level of participation of Aboriginal Peoples to beyond a ceremonial level at the Olympics. The speak of the FHFN partnerships and the desire to have Aboriginal athletes, volunteers, entrepreneurs, employees, artists, performers, spectators, and cultural ambassadors.

It would be interesting to have someone after the games analyze the level of participation prior to and after the games as did Lisa Meekison for the 2000 summer games in Sydney.

Reference

Meekison, L. (2000). Chapter 6 Indigenous Presence in the Sydney Games. In C Smith & G. Ward (Ed.), Indigenous Cultures in an Interconnected World (pp. 109-126). Vancouver, BC: UBCPress.

http://www.imaginenative.org

Sponsored by CTV Globe Media, this years ImagineNative media festival focuses on Indigenous media arts from around the world. It does not limit the entries to only film, but includes new media, radio, film and video.

Along with screenings of the compelling material the festival also offers workshops, panel discussions, cultural events to help connect the artists with the media and broader  community.

The festival hopes to portray the vitality and diversity of Indigenous artists in contemporary media.

In keeping with the theme of the last few weeks around media I thought to look up some media websites. The Winnipeg Aboriginal Film Festival (WAFF) aims to show the best in Aboriginal films from Canada and worldwide. It occurs each November and its mandates are to celebrate and cultivate indeginous story telling as well as to promote media as a career path for Aboriginal youth.

http://aboriginalfilmfest.org

The organization also provides entry level workshops for new film makers and the best film from the workshops opens the festival.

The WAFF has exposed thousands of movie goers to the art of Aboriginal storytelling since 2002.