Arizona State University

Box 871006

Tempe, Arizona 85287-1006

Patricia.Etter@asu.edu

Patricia A. Etter, Curator            

New Faces in the Labriola Center           

   The Labriola Center welcomes Library Specialist, Joyce Martin to its permanent staff.  She has a Bachelor of Arts, Sociology from Drake University and a Master of Arts, Anthropology, with a certificate in Museum Studies from ASU.  Ms. Martin comes to us from ASU East, where she was Document Delivery Supervisor.   During her course of study at ASU, Ms. Martin served as a Research Assistant to Dr. Ann Hedlund and helped coordinate activities for “Contemporary Navajo Weaving” exhibit at the National Museum of the American Indian in New York.  In addition, she coordinated the Indian Heritage Project for the newly-begun Deer Valley Rock Art Center in 1993.  Also, during that year, she interned at the Museum of Northern Arizona, for the Annual Summer Native American Art Show.

Nonabah Atcitty will spend the summer as an Archival Project Assistant in the Labriola Center.  She earned her Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology with a minor in Southwest Studies from Fort Lewis College, Durango.  While there, she edited the school paper, Intertribal News.  During a NAGPRA Internship at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, Laboratory of Anthropology, Santa Fe, she aided in planning the Southwestern Tribal Peoples NAGPRA Conference.

Labriola Media Center Becomes Classroom...

Professor Bo Colbert and his fifteen students settled in twice a week for the class, “American Indian World Views/Philosophies.”  We offered space in the Labriola Center since the small class felt lost in the huge lecture hall assigned to them.  It was a win-win situation for all.  According to reports, both the students and professor enjoyed the ambience of the Center and the cozy space for the class.  And, since they were already in the library could easily obtain material needed for class projects and papers. 

The course surveyed systems of understanding and explaining the relationships between human beings and the natural world in American Indian cultures. It also included discussion of concepts of power, spirituality, ceremonialism, ethical systems, and how these concepts are manifest in social relationships.

This is one of the classes offered in the American Indian Studies Program at ASU.

ASU & Navajo Nation Address Student Retention

(From Arizona Commission of Indian Affairs Newsletter Quarterly, Oct/Nov/Dec 1998):

At Arizona State University, the Navajo student retention success is attributed to the collaboration between ASU and the Navajo Nation in the creation of a program to help Indian students succeed.

This effort was created to address the high drop out rates among Indian students.  In 1995, 94 students enrolled and one year later only 54 percent remained.,

Former Navajo Nation president and now advisor to ASU President Lattie Coor on American Indian Affairs, Peterson Zah began the pilot program with the Navajo Nation in 1996, named the Native American Achievement Program (NAAP).

Other tribes have become aware of the program’s success (93 percent retention rate) and are considering similar programs to support their student members.

Program participants are freshman and sophomore Navajo Nation Scholarship recipients. 

As a condition of maintaining their scholarship award, students are required to participate in program components that foster the academic and personal success of the students.

For program information call the NAAP coordinator at 480 965-6060.

Note from the Curator: During 1998, there were over 900 Native students registered at ASU, which included some 160 graduate students.

ASU Professor Awarded Grant to Write Navajo History

Peter Iverson is only the sixth ASU faculty member to win a prestigious Guggenheim fellowship.  The generous grant will allow the history professor  to leave his teaching duties in August to begin his research prior to writing a comprehensive history of the Navajo people.

Iverson has long been interested in Navajo culture and history.  His maternal grandfather served as principal in Navajo schools in both Fort Wingate and Toadlena.  And back in 1969, Iverson accepted a three-year teaching assignment at the Navajo Community College in Many Farms.

The professor has written and/or edited numerous books and textbooks dealing with Native American history.  Some are: We’re Still Here: Native Americans in the Twentieth Century; When Indians Became Cowboys; and Indians in American History: An Introduction.  Another recent publication is Barry Goldwater: Native Arizonan.

Professor Iverson will return to his teaching duties in May 2000.

Exhibits in the Labriola Center

On permanent exhibit are four spectacular Kachina Dolls by Hopi artist and carver, Tony Dukapoo: Navan Kachina; Talavi Kachina; Flute Kachina; and Ahöla Kachina.

Born in Walpi on First Mesa, he left to attend Phoenix Indian School when he was 13 years old.  There he learned the trades that supported him, paining and carpentry.  He also participated in the band and performed for President Kennedy’s inauguration.

He joined the staff at ASU in 1962 as a painter and was a mason of the 32nd Degree.  In keeping with Hopi tradition he was a member of the Flute Clan and participated in Hopi ceremonies and dances. 

Over the years he donated time and knowledge in an effort to preserve Hopi heritage.  In 1978, he was consultant on an exhibit of Hopi musician instruments at the Smithsonian Institution.  He retired in 1979 and passed away in 1988.

He was particularly proud of a son, geneticist Frank C. Dukepoo, who was the first of two Hopi to receive a Ph.D in biology, which was awarded by ASU.  The junior Dukepoo also founded the National Native American Honor Society.

Currently on temporary exhibit in the Center is “Contemporary Native American Literature.” Coming in June will be an exhibit featuring books dealing with North American Indian potters and their pottery.

Labriola Web Page News   

http://www.asu.edu/lib/archives/labriola.htm

We are pleased to announce that close to 1000 people visited our web site in both April and May.  In addition, we are planning links from the site directly to ASU databases that the Labriola Center recommends to its students in the various disciplines. See URL above.

Labriola’s Language Collection Grows and Grows

In an effort to preserve native languages, the Center collects both current and historic materials both in book form and on tape.  Following is a sampling of  recent additions to the collection. These can be used in the Center Monday-Friday from 1 to 5 pm.

BIBLES, HYMNALS

The Books of Joshua, Judges, and Ruth, translated into the Choctaw Language ( New York: American Bible Society), 1871.

Cherokee New Testament (Tulsa, OK: Cherokee Language & Culture), 1995.

The First Book of Moses, Commonly Called Genesis, translated from The Original Hebrew into the Muskokee Language (New York: American Bible Society), 1908.

Hymnal in the Seneca Language also Ten Psalms of David (John Wentworth Sanborn), 1892.

Creek (Muscogee) New Testament Concordance (Muskogee, OK: Indian University Press), 1982.

DICTIONARIES

Dictionaire: Français-Montagnais avec un vocabulaire Montagnais-Angles, use Courts lists de Noms Géographiques et use Grammair Montagnaise (Boston: W. B. Cabot and P. Cabot, ), 1901.

Dictionary of Mesa Grande Diegueño (Banning, CA: Malki Museum Press), 1973.

Dictionary of the Sioux Language (Yale University Press), 1968.  Copy of a book which may have been printed on a field press at Fort Laramie in the late 1800s.

An Introduction to the Luiseño Language (Banning, CA: Malki Museum Press),

1971.

Nanticoke (Southampton, PA: Evolution Publishing), 1996.  Reprinted from an 1893 edition.

Now You’re Speaking Tolowa (Arcata, CA: Humboldt State University), 1995.

Potawatomi Language Manual: Resource Materials and Training Exercises (Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction), 1981.

Susquehannock (Bucks County, PA: Evolution Publishing), 1996.  Taken from earlier 1696 and 1834 editions.

Tuscarora-English /English-Tuscarora Dictionary (University of Toronto Press), 1999.

Western Apache-English Dictionary (Tempe, AZ: Bilingual Press), 1998.

Native North American Firsts

The book by Karen Gayton Swisher, EdD and ASU graduate student, AnCita Benally is now available at the campus bookstore. 

The book, which many readers have asked for, recognizes the contributions American Indians and Alaska natives have given to this country and the world.  It was published by Gale Research in 1998.

Peterson Zah Donates Papers

Peterson Zah, Special Assistant to President Lattie Coor on American Indian Affairs and former Chairman of the Navajo Nation, has generously agreed to deposit his personal papers with the Labriola Center.

These will be inventoried and processed as quickly as we can so they can be made available to our students, faculty, and researchers.

We are always grateful for individual gifts of personal papers, photographs, books, and other materials that help document  the culture history, language, and education North American tribal groups and support the educational mission of the University.

This Year in History

(Taken from Chronology of Native North American History, Duane Champagne, ed.  Detroit: Gale Research, Inc., 1994)

1729     The Natchez Nation, a Muskogean-speaking society, remnant of the Mississippian culture, rebels against French attempts to impose taxes and confiscate land in its central village.  The French and Choctaw allies retaliate and destroy the village and sell many inhabitants into slavery in the Caribbean Islands.

1739     The Arikara Indians, relatives of the Pawnee, begin their migration north from Nebraska to South Dakota.

1749     The British establish the town of Halifax, Nova Scotia, on lands occupied by Micmac tribes.

1759     The Mohawk, Molly Brant is born.  She becomes the mistress of William Johnson an important Indian diplomat. Throughout the American Revolution, Brant provides information to the British regarding the movement of troops. 

1769     The San Diego mission is established in California, the first of some 21 religious settlements built a day’s journey apart along El Camino Real.

1779     George Washington, commander in chief of the colonial army, orders an attack on the Iroquois Confederacy during the American Revolution.  In July, the army and militiamen destroy the Shawnee capital, Chilicothe and mortally wound Chief Black Fish.

1789            Secretary of War, Henry Knox, urged Congress to purchase Indian lands before U.S. settlers seize them.  Subsequently the U.S. negotiates and ratifies 245 treaties with the Indians in which the government secures over 450 million acres of land.

1819     A measles epidemic depopulates the Indians of the Mackenzie River Valley.

1829     The first edition of the Cherokee Hymn Book is printed at New Echoa, Georgia.

1839     Upper Canadian Judge James Buchanan Macaulay recommends that Upper Canada’s Indians be assimilated rather than sent to isolated reserves.

1849     Hudson’s Bay Company establishes Fort Rupert on Kwakiutl lands on Vancouver Island and the mainland, to exploit local coal resources and employ Indians as miners.

1859     The Salt River Reserve is established and 448 square miles of land was set aside for the Pima and Maricopa Indians in Arizona.

1869     Metís forces led by Louis Riel take possession of Upper Fort Garry, the control center of the Red River Colony  at the forks of the Red and Assiniboine rivers in Manitoba.

1879     Capt. Richard H. Pratt opens the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania.

1889     Ella Cara Deloria, Yankton Sioux, is born.  She attended Columbia Univesity, where she studied linguistic anthropology under Dr. Franz Boas.  She translated and edited Sioux texts.  Her description of Indian and Sioux culture was published in Speaking of Indians.

1899     By 1899, $2.5 million is being expended annually for the education of 20,000 Indian students at 148 boarding schools and 225 day schools nationwide.

1909     Indian tribes of British Columbia, an alliance of 20 Indian groups, appeal to the British throne for help in settling their land claims.

1919     Congress passes the U.S. Citizenship for Indian Veterans of World War I Act, granting citizenship to every American Indian wo served in the armed forces.