Tales from a Hollywood Indian

2011-10-31T00:14:00.000-07:00

It's been quite a while since the last post--- will try and keep up the blog. Here's a list of current projects:

Echolocation: Poems and Stories from Indian Country: L.A. : we are in the final copy editing stage. The layout has been beautifully designed by Gail Cross at Desert Isle Designs in Tucson and the amazing Stu Jenks, Renaissance Man, is publishing through his Fezziweg Press. We should see the light of day by January 2012 (fingers crossed!)

Bloodline (novel) is finished. It has been sent to Aunt Lute. We will see if they take a chance on it! Indians and vampires inherit Los Angeles in the near future.

The Bone Picker (play) is nearing the end of the first draft. Will send it to Native Voices when it's finished. Jeanie and Randy are patient. They have lots of new works in the works as well...

The third poetry book, The Stains of Burden and Dumb Luck, is in progress. Still editing. We may see some progress by the end of 2012. That is if we're not all at the bottom of the ocean by then.

My evil twin is hard at work at the next novel in her fantasy series, The Two Kingdoms.

I totally blame my students for this, but they have me totally addicted to the Josei/Shojo genre of manga. Oh, those girls have ruined my life!! It reminds me of my mom reading her Harlequin novels on Sunday afternoons while listening to Neil Diamond's Hot August Night. It's a wonder I survived Dora's choice in music and reading, but she lives on and I believe would have joined me in the manga obsession while listening to Crowded House. I am her daughter after all. So I am looking for a student to be a translator and another to scan. (Can I give independent studies credit for something like that???) That said, I am starting my own scanlation group (in my infinite spare time). Tyrrywoodscans.blogspot.com will be up and running sometime in 2012.

Adjusting to life in the Bay Area has been fun. I'm such an Angeleno that I bristle at all the Giants paraphernalia I am accosted with on a daily basis. Thank goodness for L.A. transplants at UCSC and the occasional Dodger cap. Ahhh... I can relax and breathe. I did spend seven years at USC so I guess I can survive enemy territory. After all, isn't this all enemy territory for a Hollywood Indian?

Carolyn on Feminist Magazine, Pacifica Radio's national feminist news program

2011-03-23T18:07:00.001-07:00

Carolyn Dunn will be interviewed tonight on KPFK 90.7 FM on Pacifica Radio's (national) "Feminist Magazine" show from 7:45 to 8 pm. The interview will conclude with a ticket giveaway for the March 26th "Frybread Queen" show.

http://www.feministmagazine.org/

Arts Alive - March 12, 2011

2011-03-15T19:04:00.000-07:00

Arts Alive - March 12, 2011

Wonderful story on the Frybread Queen about eight minutes in!

Lovely review of The Frybread Queen in Culture Spot L.A.

2011-03-15T12:50:00.001-07:00

http://culturespotla.com/2011/03/theater-review-%E2%80%98the-frybread-queen%E2%80%99-at-the-autry/

Lovely article from Steve Julian at LA Stage Times

2011-03-12T13:47:00.001-08:00

http://www.lastagetimes.com/2011/03/native-voices-opens-carolyn-dunn%E2%80%99s-the-frybread-queen/

Recipe: Native American Frybread from Playwright Carolyn Dunn

2011-03-10T11:41:00.000-08:00

Recipe: Native American Frybread from Playwright Carolyn Dunn

Visionaries Jean Bruce Scott and Randy Reinholz created successful Native Voices - Los Angeles Theater | Examiner.com

2011-03-10T11:40:00.000-08:00

Visionaries Jean Bruce Scott and Randy Reinholz created successful Native Voices - Los Angeles Theater | Examiner.com

from the new poetry manuscript...

2011-02-07T09:07:00.001-08:00

winter count

Deepened octaves of winter,
three different words for
snow
and we can't seem
to fathom even one.
Bringing us to our
knees, the road ends
here, in a mist of sky,
water, and air
greeting earth in
a kiss of white and
the end of time.
Drifts rise
smoke of prayers
ascending upon a
breath of a distant
light, long ago laden
with the end of beauty.
How can we move
'if we are frozen
in a fear of change, of death,
of endings and beginnings
that are one in the same?
Can this frozen starlight,
glittering starry-eyed
in the darkness and silence
of night,
remain just what
breathing was meant to be---
beginning, ending, ending,
beginning---
and the mercy of an eternal
night
brings the breathing
to prayers looking
skyward
to heaven as we wish
the road would lead
us home.

Hollywood Indians living in the woods...

2010-12-27T15:23:00.000-08:00

My friend Terri Windling has been doing a series on her blog about writers and artists and their work spaces. I can finally say that I now have a studio to work in, instead of a cramped den shared with kids and coffee cups, old candy wrappers and strawberry tops that the kids never seem to throw away. My studio, as we call it, ia a small attic room at the top floor of our house in the redwood forest that is filled with my stuff...knitting supplies, guitars, posters, music, boxes from the move (yes, we are barely unpacking) books, hand drums, and a really cool retro chair bought from our friend Dawni's yard sale in September, which I am sitting in right now. I love this little attic studio. The kids do too... and do the dogs! I have to fight just for the space. Can't tell if it's because they all want to hang out with Mama or they love the magic of the space. Even Piper is happy amongst the books and dolls...and yes, that really is Piper, looking like a stuffed doll that she is!!

This year has brought many changes for all of us, and we are managing to roll with them. Most exciting, of course, is the world premiere of my play The Frybread Queen at the Wells Fargo Theatre and the Autry National Center. The Frybread Queen has been in development for the last three years with Native Voices at the Autry; Robert Caisley has been the dramaturg throughout the process and I am excited to announce will direct the premiere. Producers Jean Bruce Scott and Randy Reinholz locked themselves in a hotel with Rob and me to get the production draft ready to go last November and I am happy to say the script looks pretty solid. It has been a great three years working on the project, and I'm glad to see it finally coming to fruition.

In terms of producing, we will be working on two projects this winter at UCSC with the American Indian Resource Center. On February 17th we'll be hosting Arigon Starr, Robert J. Conley, and Gayle Ross for an evening with Oklahoma Indian Storytellers at the Fireside Lounge at Stevenson College. We're also working on a film symposium with Peter Bratt late in the quarter and are looking forward to that as well.

More sooner than later ;P

The Turquoise Ledge in Santa Cruz

2010-10-22T12:38:00.000-07:00

Last nightg Book Shop Santa Cruz hosted the legend that is Leslie Marmon Silko, who read from her new book The Turquoise Ledge. The Turquoise Ledge is part memoir, part family history, and all wonderful. We had a great turn out and I was honored to introduce Leslie, whom I had never met, but I felt like I knew. Her father, the photographer, Lee Marmon, took James and I and the kids out to coffee at the market in Laguna when we were last in New Mexico two years ago. The Marmons are cousin through Laguna to the Francis family, including Paula Gunn Allen, Carol Lee Sanchez, and Lee Francis III and IV.

Also in attendance last night were several UCSC faculty and staff, including Karen Tei Yamashita, who has been honored with a National Book Award nomination:
http://news.ucsc.edu/2010/10/yamashita-national-book-award.html

Karen was an early inspiration to me when we worked at KCET in Los Angeles in the 1980's where she wrote Tropic of Orange, while working full-time.

All around a good evening!

Haunting drama tells the story of native families - Montana Kaimin - Arts+Culture

2010-09-21T20:22:00.000-07:00

Haunting drama tells the story of native families - Montana Kaimin - Arts+Culture

Nice review of The Frybread Queen, which premiered last weekend at Montana Rep and the University of Montana School of Theater and Dance...

‘Frybread Queen’ explores individuals, roles, tribes

2010-09-18T11:26:00.000-07:00

‘Frybread Queen’ explores individuals, roles, tribes

The Frybread Queen makes her appearance in Montana

2010-08-24T19:21:00.000-07:00

Rehearsals began this week for my play The Frybread Queen which will be presented by Montana Repetory Theater, in production with the University of Montana and Native Voices at the Autry in Missoula, Montana, running two weekends, September 16th-19 and the 23rd-26th at the Masquer Theater at UM. I am thrilled to be part of the first weeks of rehearsal and it has been an amazing journey. Directed by UM's Jere Hodgin and dramaturged by Robert Caisley, the play tells the story of three generations of Indian women who come to terms with the death of a family member. Over the course of two days, secrets are revealed and tragic consequences occur. Starring Jane Lind as Jessie, Arigon Starr as Annalee, Lillie Gladstone as Carlisle and Tiffany Wild as Lily, this play will also be part of Native Voices at the Autry's season in Los Angeles as a staged reading in November and a full production in March. More later!

Lovely review of Stu Jenks' Hoop Dancing

2010-07-11T14:57:00.000-07:00

I just found this very nice review of my friend Stu Jenks' memoir Hoop Dancing. I wrote the introduction to Stu's book and this review is from Zocalo Magazine in Tucson, Arizona, where Stu lives. Stu is a true renaissance man: photographer, musician, mythmaker, caregiver. He creates these gorgeous images using light and movement I am a huge fan of his work. Stu's website is stujenks.com. Click here to visit him on the web.

Review of Hoop Dancing from Zocalo Magazine:

HOOP DANCING:Picture 21_1.png
More Journeys Through Nocturnal Photography, Book Two
by Stu Jenks
Fezziwig Press (2009) Photography/Memoir

Stu Jenks makes magic in the dark. While his breadth of subjects is deep and wide, he is well known for his ethereal nighttime photos. In Hoop Dancing, Jenks takes the reader on his artistic journeys deep into deserts and forests where he spends hours creating gorgeous, otherworldly images.

Along the way, Jenks lays his soul bare while he vividly reflects on life, love, loss and rebirth. His poignant explorations into the natural world include ruminations on humanity’s ancient issues – especially reconciling the physical with the spiritual. An important observation Jenks makes is remembering “that my body is just the vessel that moves my soul through this world…not to be hated or judged, but loved for doing the good job of moving me around.”

With breathtaking photography, Hoop Dancing is an inspired art book that delves into Jenks’ creative process and reminds us of the importance of connecting with nature. In doing so, we connect to a greater power. — Jamie Manser

Zocalo Magazine can be found here.

Half price Terri Windling Paintings...for a good cause

2010-07-11T14:00:00.000-07:00

My friend Terri Windling asked me to pass the word along about a benefit for a family member whose medical bills have gotten quite high due to unexpected illness. Reminds me of all the discussion with health care in the US, especially after I waited in line for six hours to get MediCal, since my insurance ended when I graduated from USC in May.

See the link here:
http://windling.typepad.com/blog/2010/07/big-painting-sale.html

Frybread in Montana, Hollywood Indians

2010-07-01T14:31:00.000-07:00

Had a great script meeting this morning for the Montana Rep workshop production of The Frybread Queen. Director Jere Hodgin is busy with casting and that looks like it is moving along with some wonderful Montana- based actresses cast as Jessie, Carlisle, and Lily. Returning as Annalee for the Montana production is the Kickapoo Creek Diva herself, and one of my muses, Miss Arigon Starr. So thrilled to work with the Diva any chance I get, since she was one of the folks I had in mind while writing the character of Annalee. Native Voices Executive Director Jean Bruce Scott informed me that in addition to the Montana Rep production this fall The Frybread Queen will be part of the First Look Series Nov. 4-6th at the Autry in preparation for the world premier at the Autry's main stage March 2011. In the meantime, I am working on revisions for Frybread and completing the first draft of my new play, The Bone Picker. More details soon...

This past Sunday I had the opportunity to watch a great panel discussion on native peoples and media representations co-sponsored by the Screen Actors Guild Diversity Committee and the American Indian Writers committee of Writers Guild of America. Panelists included TV and film writers, playwrights, director, and actors who have been working here for a long time and dealing with a lot of the misconceptions and stereotypes. It was interesting to note that the screenwriters, Micah Wright and Jason Gavin, note that native artists need to come up through outside channels that seem inside, specifically noting that most of the actors of color who are now appearing on network television came up through out of mainstream shows such as Oz and The Wire. Developing a pool of recognizable Indian actors would help. Of course, to the Indian community, the list of recognizable Indian actors is long; seems like to the majority of Americans that list is virtually non-existent, as much of Native America is to the rest of the world. With Eclipse, will that change? We'll see...

In terms of theater for native peoples, there seems to be more opportunity. Playwrights Larissa Fast Horse and Dawn Jamieson are encouraged by opportunities for native playwrights and expansion of older theater groups such as Native Voices at the Autry and the Public Theater in New York. The encouraging news to me was that my friend Fast Horse makes her living as a playwright, and she is encouraged by collaborations between theaters that are not traditionally "Indian" venues, such as the Autry's co-production of the Frybread Queen with Montana rep. Thanks for the shout-out, Fast Horse!

Director Chris Eyre also talked about multiple opportunities for native folks in film and tv, and actors Kalani Queypo and Delanna Studi talked about Delanna's most recent role in the national touring production of August: Osage County and Kalani's new role in the sci-fi web series 10,000 Days. Delanna talked about being the only Indian in the cast and how she worked with cast mates on recognizing stereotypes. Kalani's observation that his character in 10,000 Days happens to be native but is part of a group that includes many different ethnicities but the character is not "stereotypically native" is really exciting.

So there it is. We'll see what direction we go in from here!

a little behind in the news... but good anyway!

2010-06-28T15:40:00.000-07:00

For Immediate Release

Contact:
Kenneth Shoji
Office of Public Affairs
San Manuel Band of Mission Indians
Ph: 909-864-8933
Kshoji@sanmanuel-nsn.gov

KVCR-TV AND SAN MANUEL TO DEBUT DOCUMENTARY ON CALIFORNIA NATIVE AMERICAN HISTORY OF RESISTANCE AND SURVIVAL

Four Part Television Series to Take Viewers through Stories of Struggle and Perseverance as Told by California Indians and Noted Historians

San Bernardino Calif. and San Manuel Reservation (Highland, Calif.) March 24, 2010 – KVCR-TV in partnership with the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians has produced a new four-part documentary series on the history of near extinction that was faced by California Tribal communities following contact with European and American powers. The series will air on KVCR over four consecutive Mondays starting April 5th at 8:00 p.m. Entitled “The People of the Pines, The California Native” the programs are a third installment of documentaries that have expanded from profiling the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians into a broader account of the history shared by the state’s indigenous peoples and communities.
KVCR-TV’s broadcast range extends thought the eastern portion of Los Angeles to Riverside and San Bernardino Counties. Viewers are invited to watch previews for the series and individual episodes by visiting www.peopleofthepines.org
This series which began nearly two years ago is the product of in-depth research, interviews and reenactments providing California Native Americans an opportunity to bring to light those actions and policies that resulted in the decimation of a Native world that has existed since time immemorial.
“It is my wish that viewers will come to understand the factual accounts of what our ancestors went through in history, so that we can be here today to call ourselves the California Indian People and start to move forward in the broader community with mutual understanding and respect for one another, ”said San Manuel Chairman James Ramos.
The series covers a period of time spanning the internment of natives into the Spanish Mission System to the mid 20th Century when native veterans of World War II returned home to find their tribes terminated through a single action of congress.
In order to get these accounts KVCR crew traveled the state of California and beyond to speak to Native Americans who recount the shared history of their communities. This including the Modoc Tribe which was split between Oregon and Oklahoma following a protracted war that resulted in the death of a United States general and a forced removal of half the tribe to what was then Indian Territory (Oklahoma).
Historians and Native Americans cover the chronology of this history as painted upon the backdrop of American and world history. Discussions focus on various manners in which California Indians fought to maintain and remain within their ancestral lands and preserve their ways of life. Broken treaties, major military campaigns, and the heroic actions of native leaders such as Santos Manuel, leader of the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians, are recounted by their descendents who candidly share the tragedies and triumphs that are part of the shared identity of over 100 tribal communities located in all corners of California.

About the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians
The San Manuel Band of Serrano Mission Indians is a federally recognized American Indian tribe located near the city of Highland, Calif. The Serrano Indians are the indigenous people of the San Bernardino highlands, passes, valleys and mountains who share a common language and culture. The San Manuel reservation was established in 1891 and recognized as a sovereign nation with the right of self-government. Since time immemorial, the San Manuel tribal community has endured change and hardship. Amidst these challenges the tribe continued to maintain its unique form of governance. Like other governments it seeks to provide a better quality of life for its citizens by building infrastructure, maintaining civil services and promoting social, economic and cultural development. Today San Manuel tribal government oversees many governmental units including the departments of fire, public safety, education and environment.

from Victor Rocha- victor-rocha.com

Yiikes and yikes again!

2010-06-08T18:38:00.001-07:00

Just realized this blog hasn't been updated since January 2010! I think I'm back. Either way, I am here...still.

Fun announcements: My play The Frybread Queen will see two productions this year- woo hoo!! Both are Native Voices at the Autry co-productions. The first will be at Montana Repertory Theatre September 17-26, directed by Jere Hodgin, and produced by Jean Bruce Scott and Randy Reinholz, with dramaturgy by Robert Caisley. This is indeed exciting news and I am thrilled with the prospects of it all.

The Frybread Queen is the story of four women who come together to bury a beloved family member: father, husband, son, and lover. Each woman has a secret to guard and in their grief secrets are exposed that threatens to rip apart the fabric of the family. The play was first workshopped in 2007 with Native Voices at the Autry and then enjoyed two staged readings, both at the Autry's First Look series (2008), directed by the awesome Jennifer Bobiwash (Ojibwe) and the Festival of New Plays (2009), directed by the New Theater's Scott Horstein, at the La Jolla Playhouse and at the Autry's Wells Fargo Theater. Both readings featured the wonderfully talented actresses and Native voices vets Arigon Starr (Kickapoo/Creek) as Annalee, LaVonne Rae Andrews (Tlingit) as Jessie, Kateri Walker (Saginaw Chippewa) as Carlisle, and Rayanna Zaragoza (Pima) as Lily.

Jere is working on casting for the Montana Rep production, and hopefully there will more more Frybread news shortly.

I had the honor of appearing in a staged reading Jack Dalton (Yupik) and Allison Warden's (Inupiat) Time Immemorial at the La Jolla Playhouse on June 6th. Time Immemorial is a gorgeous piece that explores the Inupiat creation myths involving Eagle and Raven. Jack is a world reknowned artist, dancer and storyteller and Allison is an incredible performance artist who is currently developing a one-woman show called Ode to a Polar Bear. Jack and Allison play all the characters in Time Immemorial and Native Voices at the Autry worked with them last winter with the Alaska Native Playwrights Project. I got to read with my good friend Kalani Queypo (Native Hawaiian, Blackfeet), with whom I've worked on many different projects in the past, but this is the first time we acted together, and we had a blast. Kalani is a stage and screen vet who last year wowed the festival circuit with his short film Ancestor Eyes, which he wrote, directed and produced. We will be reading Time Immemorial at the Wells Fargo Theater in Los Angeles on Sunday, June 27th, and I encourage as many people as possible to come out and see it, as well as readings of Marie Clements' (Metis) Tombs of the Vanishing Indian on Saturday, June 26th, and Dawn Jamieson's (Cayuga) On The Mangled Beam, following Time Immemorial at 4:00 pm.

So, I will be spending the summer finishing my manuscript on Native women in performance, two novels, Bloodletter, the second of my genre-bending sci-fi/spec-fic set in Los Angeles in 2083; and Deer Woman, the first of my new young adult series also taking place in Los Angeles, but during contemporary times. Oh, and finishing the poetry manuscript tentatively titled The Stains of Burden and Dumb Luck. I also have a couple new plays percolating in the back of my brain and am looking forward to working on those as well.

Ok, I think I'm caught up now, and will try and blog more often.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/arts/la-et-pasadena-playhouse30-2010jan30,0,1723543.story

2010-01-29T15:42:00.000-08:00

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/arts/la-et-pasadena-playhouse30-2010jan30,0,1723543.story

This is very sad news to hear. The Pasadema Playhouse is closing Feb. 7th...

It's Raining in L.A. part...???

2009-12-07T12:49:00.000-08:00

"The only map my father had on his journey was the story his father had told him years before..." Georgiana Valoyce-Sanchez, "When the Ancestors Whisper: Stories from Native California" (2007)

While doing research on a story for the novel I'm writing now, I came across Georgiana Sanchez's powerful description of her father's map home. Her father was a wonderful storyteller, and she often shares his stories in performance with her family.

Why am I writing a dissertation about storytellers and cultural literacy? because that's what I do. In my creative stuff, in my scholarly stuff, it's all the same. How we use stories as a map to get us from one space to the next. How we use the stories of our ancestors to lead us one place to the next- it connects us to where we have been, where we are, and where we need to be.

from my novel in progress:

The patterns weave the sky in the tear of a glittering body, a curved leg of the grandmother. In the sky, she rises over misted reflections of rain, of clouds called by jimsonweed, wild alata, and sage. We will remember to look west, and the land where the sun makes her return, we follow out of desire, out of necessity, out of fear. For warmth and blessing and the calling home of our spirits to the place we shall all be reunited with once again. Crawling out of the earth, reborn into the balance of love and death by the ladder of mud, stone and clouds, our gazes hold with the great mother in the sky, her love mending the torn centered edge, bearing the stars home on the back of her shell, given freely when the time comes for us to be reborn.

College and Graduate Horizons Program ACCEPTING APPLICATIONS!

2009-12-04T08:29:00.000-08:00

*******************************************************************************************

COLLEGE & GRADUATE HORIZONS PROGRAMS

*******************************************************************************************

College Horizons Program

Title: College Horizons: A Pre-College Workshop For Native American High School Students

Deadline: February 1, 2010 (priority); February 26, 2010 (2nd round)

Website: www.collegehorizons.org

Email: info@collegehorizons.org

Program Dates:

June 12-16, 2010 - University of Hawai'i Hilo (Hilo, HI)

June 26-30, 2010 - Lawrence University (Appleton, WI)

June 26-30, 2010 - University of Puget Sound (Tacoma, WA)

College Horizons is a five-day “crash course” in preparing for college. The individualized program helps students select colleges suitable for them to apply to, get admitted to, and receive adequate financial aid. Students research their top 10 schools; complete essays, resumes, applications, and the FAFSA; receive interviewing skills and test-taking strategies (on the ACT and SAT) and financial aid/scholarship information. Eligible participants must be American Indian (enrolled members only), Alaska Native (proof of status) or Native Hawaiian; current sophomores and juniors with a minimum GPA of 3.00 (in academic courses).

Applications will be accepted on a space-available basis to May 1 (after March 1, please contact us to see which site may still have spaces). Complete program cost is $200 (includes tuition, room, meals, all materials and transportation to campus from the designated airports). Students are responsible for their own airfare, but substantial funds are available for travel and tuition assistance (each year we award travel assistance to over 50% of our students).

***********************************************

Graduate Horizons Program

Title: Graduate Horizons: A Pre-Graduate Workshop For Native College Students & College Graduates

Deadline: February 1, 2010 (priority); February 26, 2010 (2nd round)

Website: www.collegehorizons.org

Email: info@collegehorizons.org

Program Dates:

July 17-20, 2010 - Arizona State University (Tempe, AZ)

Graduate Horizons is a four-day “crash course” for Native college students, college graduates, master’s students in preparing for graduate school (master’s, Ph.D. or professional school). Faculty, admission officers and deans from a host of graduate and professional schools and representing hundreds of graduate disciplines work with students to consider career paths and related graduate studies; complete personal statements, resumes, applications; and receive test-taking strategies (on the GRE, GMAT, LSAT, MCAT) and financial aid/scholarship information. Eligible participants must be American Indian (enrolled members only), Alaska Native (proof of status), Native Hawaiian, First Nations of Canada; a college student, master's student, or college graduate.

Applications will be accepted on a space-available basis to June 1 (after May 1, please contact us to see which site may still have spaces). Complete program cost is $200 (includes tuition, room, meals, all materials and transportation to campus from the designated airport). Students are responsible for their own airfare, but substantial funds are available for travel and tuition assistance (each year we award travel assistance to over 50% of our students).

Another new piece from Stains

2009-11-11T10:00:00.001-08:00

Kama’aina
(child of the land)

Is this world
the real one,
she asked,
or is the world
in my dreams – the
world that
keeps me clear
of the thread
connecting me
to what remains
inside.
This world is
what you wish
it, I said,
and she gazed
at black set eye
out to the stars
and moon
in motion
across and ocean
of memory.

© 2009 Carolyn Dunn

another piece from: the stains of burden and dumb luck

2009-10-02T13:09:00.000-07:00

In Some Other World

In some other world
stars shine brightly
upon the wounds of our
ancestors, stored in gates
leading from one place
to the next.
Songs that herald the
passage of time by birth
still are sung as we
enter into this world,
dreaming.
The distant reaches
Of a song of
Storied memory
Of mny mother’s birth
Is the history
of recorded time
upon shells of
red, deep sunset,
and carried at
the hip as a gesture
of remembrance.

In some other world,
I speak the words
of my grandmothers,
frozen across this life
as I gaze out from
behind her
eyes, singing her
world into existence.
Her words pass through
my lips, echoing
across the flat plains
and oceans of stars
beckoning us home.

Starlight plays
Upon the phosphorescent sea
As jewel of many colored
Like her eyes, as I gaze upon the
Dark cloud-bearing rain.
Mending the tear, I cast
out her net and call forth
the songs that bring corn.

In some other world,
The first shoot of silk
Reaches toward the space
From where we all came.
Like us, they look to the
Sky, wishing they could
Call back the ones who left.
Like them, a silk tuft of gold
Gently calls the rain cloud.

The sea is strong,
Grounding us here,
in a space
of breath, the faceted turn
of a song from the sky.
In my grandmother’s voice,
breath escapes my lips
passing in the veil
of some other world.

© Carolyn Dunn 2009

The new Interfictions is here!

2009-09-30T11:21:00.000-07:00

Check out the great work being done without borders involved:
http://iafauctions.com/interfictions-2/interfictions-music/

Elouise Cobell on the Research Channel

2009-09-30T10:34:00.001-07:00

A great link on a talk by the Blackfeet Nation's treasurer and Chair of the Blackfeet National Bank:

http://www.researchchannel.org/prog/displayevent.aspx?rID=3657

from The Stains of Burden and Dumb Luck

2009-09-21T22:31:00.000-07:00

I am working on poetry book #3, working on new poems to be collected in teh third volume. It's very different than Outfoxing Coyote and Echolocation, in that it's not really about a specific place, but about a collection of space. We'll see how it turns out...

______

Inheriting Her Brother’s Horse

Walking
Away from the
Place, stolen
Like kisses
Between classes,
The world shatters
Upon an axis
Of blood
And betrayal.
Keeping count
Of the vengeance
Painted by numbers
Upon her heart,
The order is
Precise.
Ones are red,
Twos are black,
Threes are white,
And everything else
Pales in shadow,
Fading to grey.
Who will keep time
In this ballad of ‘lost dreams
And hopes pinned
To the chest
Of the boy dying
from a hole
In his heart?

The road looms
Ahead, swimming
A mirror
Reflecting the sky.
She places her
Hands upon the
Worn white leather,
Cracks under her fingers
Lovingly filled
With layers of
Every contrivance
Known to boy-kind.
The crack of his skull
Meets the blood
Pouring from
His heart
And she is amazed
She could wipe
Away all of his blood
From the well-worn
White leather
Interior.
She fixes her stare
Upon the mirror ahead,
And not looking back, even
Once,
She pushes on,
Leaving his ghost
Walking,
His red and white leathers
A portion of himself left
Behind when
His soul moved
And released,
Entering the water
To join the songs
Sung thousands of ways
Since before
His birth.

She rides
The line of red earth
That takes her away
From the scene of
His death
He fades
In the mirror,
Her eyes
Facing
the sun.

© 2009 Carolyn Dunn

Performing Nation, Performing Identity

2009-07-07T23:17:00.000-07:00

An early version of the essay I co-wrote with Cindi Alivtre, and appears in Eating Fire, Tasting Blood, edited by MariJo Moore:

Performing Nation, Performing Identity: American Indian Storytelling, Poetry, and Song
(thoughts on cultural survival in the wake of the new Indian Wars)

by Carolyn Dunn (Cherokee/Muskogee/Seminole) and
Cindi Alvitre (Tongva/Cahuilla)

When we began writing on the topic of American Indian holocaust and survival, the first idea that came to us was the fact that in spite of overwhelming attempts to exterminate indigenous peoples religiously, culturally, politically, and economically, native peoples in the Americas have continued to flourish and survive. Our participation in this project is from purely a diasporic perspective; that is what are the ramifications of several forced migrations of a people from their ancestral homeland, a place which is so clearly culturally identified from traditional stories, songs, poems; from within the body and soul of a people that a connection to the land is what has remained in the memory and hearts of a people that weren’t supposed to survive? How can thousands of native peoples, from over 500 different tribes, nations, and communities come together in a place that itself is full of the storied conquest of native peoples in place names, in film, literature, oral history, and name? When the forced migration occurred from reservations and rural communities starting from Indian Removal and well up into the twentieth century, native people left ancestral and adopted homelands to call urban areas “home”. What was the impact of these immigrants upon the many native nations still living in the urban landscapes, facing erasure and extinction in a city that looked nothing like their ancestral villages? It is through ceremonial performativity, that is, the artistic, folkloric, mythological and political relationship native peoples share with the nations of origin that has allowed us to survive together in a place in which we have been simply erased. We cannot be simple labled “urban” Indians because we are a diasporic people, dispersed and spread out across the world, far away from home, family, and community.

First, let us identify and unpack our terms. Webster’s defintion of disapora is as follows:
“noun, Greek, meaning dispersion; from diaspeirien to scatter, from dia + speirein to sow. 2. a: the breaking up and scattering of a people; b: people settled far from their ancestral homelands (e.g the African diaspora); c: the place where these people live.”

Through the breakup of tribal lands, through separation, adoption, boarding schools, relocation and termination, native peoples in the United States have been separated from ancestral homelands, settled far from those ancestral homelands, and relocated in large populations to urban areas that are far from the nation. Los Angeles then, with the largest urban American Indian population in the nation , is a site of displacement, temporal and spatial, that is an ongoing experiment in cultural survival that continues into the 21st century.

Ceremonial performativity becomes important in this discussion of holocaust, diaspora, and survival. J.L. Austin, the linguistic philosopher, described performativity as the following: “A performative is the semiotic gesture that is being as well as doing. Or, more accurately, it is a doing that constitutes a being; an activity that describes what it creates. As native peoples, the performance of our identity is intimately connected to our stories, songs, and poems; to the landscape in which we inhabit that informs our being as well as our doing. It is through our ceremonies, our songs, our words, that our rituals are reenacted in daily life. We speak of our creation and connection to each other and to the landscape, and our actions, our dances, our artistic expressions, reify the core of who we are as native peoples.

The result of colonization and government policies of termination and relocation have resulted in a substantially large, multi-tribal population of young indigenous peoples existing as second and third generation urban American Indians, some with or without tribal relations “back home” in tact. The role of the traditional and modern storyteller is the role that forms the subject ancestrally and represents “the call” from home. The late Lee Francis III wrote about his son, Lee IV’s experience as an urban Indian in the essay “We The People: Young American Indians Reclaiming Their Identity” :

“My son was born in Fairfax, Virginia. He is an urban. Since infancy, my spouse and I told our son story. We told story about all of creation, seen and unseen. We told him about the People. We told him story about the People of Fairfax, Virginia. He learned about the civil war and the pogroms committed against the People. We told him stories that incorporated that values, attitudes and beliefs of the People. We told stories about hummingbird and coyote and the tree people and the cloud beings…

“It is a sad reality that a majority of urban Native students do not have a clue about the trials, tribulations, joys, and hopes of the People.”

For many young urban American Indians, the concept of the landscape of home is a faraway image told of only in story from those who left it behind. Home is also problematic in the sense that as a result of colonization, it is not always the “safe place” in the traditional sense of “home”. It is not “safe” due to cause and effect of colonization, externalized and internalized oppression. Eduardo Duran and Bonnie Guillory Duran’s theories of intergenerational post traumatic stress disorder that leads to domestic violence, substance abuse, and suicide, are often located in a trajectory that begins with and ends with the sense of home: home encompassing domestic space, land base, tribal center, language, literature, and economic struggles. Home also represents environmental and political struggles: the struggle for an ever decreasing land base which is still “held in trust” by the American government ; land that is used by others for toxic waste disposal on or near reservation water and agricultural systems; the desecration of sacred places such as Puvungna (the Tongva place of emergence in Southern California) and Puthidiim (Ajachumen place of emergence present day San Juan Capistrano Mission.

Many young Indians have some concept of their tribal identity, yet an outside “other” constructs an alternative “Indian” identity for them. How many of us have been told, “Funny, you don’t look Indian,” or “how come you don’t have black hair?”, or “Do you have a tipi in your backyard?” or “I knew you were an Indian; you’re so spiritual!” We are constantly barraged by images of the pretend, or the Hollywood Indian. If we don’t wear beads, feathers, or turquoise, then we’re not seen as authentically Indian by the non-Indian “other”. The return home, then becomes an important aspect to a ritual of remembrance for many young urban American Indians.
The role of story, as Lee Francis states, is the ceremonial performative of modern tribal and clan identity. This return home informs what has become the Native American or American Indian canon: the writings of many contemporary writers, from Mourning Dove on through Dawn Karima Pettigrew, reflect this sense of home: a contested space. Story for us then becomes the connection to the landscape, to the nation, to our identity as an American Indian, as a tribal person. It connects us to what Paula Gunn Allen calls “the universe of medicine” . It is through the story, through the landscape, that the performative speech of storytelling calls us into the web of creation that calls us home.

It is difficult to imagine the urbanized southern California landscape replaced with hundreds of Tongva villages and even more brown bodies weaving buff-colored juncus baskets, or shaping redwood planks for a ti’atem, lashed redwood canoes, the earliest form of transportation to and from the southern Channel Islands. But we can...and we do, at least in moments when we have to withdraw from the reality of a sprawling city like Los Angeles, inundated with silicone and spiritual orphans. We feel alienated, even as native, we have become immigrants. Even to many relocated Indians who since the 1950s make Los Angeles their home, we are not real and have no status, federally unrecognized, extinct, not here...go away imagination woman. How can we give them eyes to see our pain?

The white sands, once abundant with life of the ocean are now scattered with the disposable culture they call “civilization”. The sandy shores are inundated with newcomers in g-strings and pseudo tans, whose ignorance of the sacred ones contribute to the continued destruction of Tongva land. They look at us as if we are the strangers to this land, with our brown skin, assuming we are one of the “illegals” from the south, as if this is truly their land.

I (Cindi) walk across the massive constructed rock barriers, returning to that place where I spent countless hours as a young girl, shrouded like indigenous royalty with seaweed skirts. It was on these rocks that my relatives would speak to me and teach me as I sat watching the sacred ones. I learned of the creations and watched forever as they flew into the skies, as they crawled onto the rocks and as they freely swam in the tide pools. I learned the gentleness of life in the water as I swam beyond the crashing waves without fear.

The Torovim, the dolphin people, forever danced along the ocean horizon, protecting the Tongva. Our elders emphasized that they are the protectors are the ancient ones and forever the caretakers of the world. It was in the old days they trusted man. Today, the tourist boats chase they to catch a glimpse of their silver beauty and to seek out the grey whale during the migratory journeys to give birth to future generations. Moomat, the ocean, now purifies herself by casting remnants of oil spills onto her shores. No longer does my father dive into the ocean to gather food for his family. The shellfish are contaminated with excrement and chemical that empty into the bays. I listen and hear the ancient language of the Ocean People as they roar with foamy frustration at the destruction of their own tribes. They tell their story over and over, with the crashing of each wave onto moonlit shores.

Our people have resisted the ways of the intruder for over two hundred years, beginning with the arrival of the Catholic missionaries and Spanish soldiers in 1769. In their quest for world power and wealth a nation of people violently lost their lives. Within a fifty year period after the missionaries arrived our populations, which at one time exceeded 10,000, dwindled to a few hundred survivors. The missions bred disease of the body and of the soul. Sensing the obvious danger, many fled inland finding sanctuary of surrounding tribes. We have carried the stigma of being called “mission indians” without acknowledgement of the diversity of our people or respect for our individual names.

The destruction continued as went through oppressive rule by the Mexicans after the secularization of the missions. They say we were given choices to flee the confines of the missions and become ranchers, or to find acceptance in newly formed pueblos dominated by the invaders. The reality of the situation was that this “new freedom” was conditional. It meant a Tongva woman could be an obliging domestic or forced into sexual slavery to the oppressors. Hard labor was payed in aguardiente, numbing the loss and intoxicating the minds and the will of the people.

The women in particular lost their voices upon invasion of our homeland. They were treated like the women of the Spaniards. They were confined, separated form the men, and perceived as whores simply because they were not seen as human, but Indian. The inquisitors conquered, murdered, and grossly seduced Indigenous men into their ways. The emasculation of the men occurred by removing the ceremonies and traditions that made them warriors. Since then, they have attempted to recover their positions by fighting wars that are not ours to fight. This has led to the a distortion of masculinity-a twisted manifestation of right and wrong and constant questioning of who they are. Yet, even in their absence, in the midst of their abuses, as women, we cannot turn our backs. We have to help our sons, our brothers, our fathers, and our lovers to heal. We have now spent generations in a liminal state of decolonization. It is a constant challenge. Yet, we, as women, as life givers, once again become responsible for bringing new ways of healing to our families and community.

Healing reaches into all spaces. It takes a transformation of space where ceremonial performitivity occurs. There are few who will reach out, outside of the comfort of their Indian circles to look at themselves. In L.A. we have them all...Indian scholars, Hollywood Indians, Pow wow people, Redroad Recovery Indians, Aerospace Indians and even some churchy Indian folk, all seeking something that was lost in their journey to the western edge of the universe.

To step outside means to redeem any communal sanctity and to become voyeur of sorts. The looking glass reflects a haunting image of what we have become in their culture. We seek our reflection in pools of clear water lit by our grandmother moon, but her illuminated glow is lost somewhere under layers of asphalt and concrete. Out of desperation we look to other tribes to seek validation of our clandestine thoughts and good intentions. We must escape the constant chaos of the city that comes in wave after wave, never allowing us to stand and catch our breath. We frequently travel to gather and harvest healing food to bring home. Some of us go really far...like overseas. We did, two women, a local and a diasporic-homegirl. We dared to look beyond and take our own dreams with us and see if they fit anywhere in the indigenous universe.

The silvery jet roars across the Pacific ocean to Aotearoa, to the land where day begins. Days of packing un-colonized baggage, I anxiously await the opportunity to spill it out onto Maori earth, and see if they if their eyes see it the same way our do.

We are two women from two communities, both native, sharing our differences, embracing our similarities and airing our dirty laundry in an inter-national setting. The silenced knowings cannot no longer be contained. We unleash them, and our solutions, to the world. We talk about the space and place we have created to allow our communities, our families and others can come to access, to share, to transform and feel just fine being the trickster in a chaotic world.

The last of ceremonial houses were burned in the 1960s in native southern California. For generations the ceremonial house, the wamkish, was the center of the world. Our spiritual leaders fed the house to assure the balance and nurturance of our community. On the other side of the world, the Maori welcome us into their ceremonial house, the morae. In the midst of Maori ceremony the message is clear. We have a house, Mother Bears. It is a space of transformation and healing for the community. It there we sing and dance, we weep with joy and sadness as we feed the people....all tribes. We have come across the ocean to realize what we do have.

In Janice Norwood and Vera Monk’s collection of writings on southwestern women’s art , the landscape’s influence upon the myth and imagination of its writers and artists inform the region as well as the psyche of the individual and communal artist, specifically female artists. The landscape is a vehicle which artists draw inspiration, express social and personal aesthetic ideals, and form communal connections with society, place, community, spirituality, family, and creativity. Landscape provides necessary connections for life; it informs who we are and how we are in a way that sometimes there is no other expression for other than poetry and art. Native peoples in the southwest, because of our deep ancestral connections to landscape and the mythologies of the living landscape, express connections to the landscape in unique ways. Landscape tells the story of emergence, of history, or religion, and birth that is indigenous of our Native experience. The connections expressed through ritual and ceremony, through art and music and poetry, celebrate that ritual connection in the everyday. Tribal aesthetics are applied to the landscape, and the aesthetic cannot live without the land.

The indigenous mythology of the landscape reveals a relationship between people and earth that is revealed in very human ways. The difference between disaster fiction and Native ecological fiction is that landscape is seen in adversarial ways as opposed to simply, the landscape. Like Mary Austin’s “American Rhythm”, there is a cadence to the landscape, but there is an understanding of responsibility for the landscape that is missing in both Austin’s romantic past and the noirist disaster fiction of West and Macdonald.

Shape shifting as we move along the street darkened with porcelain bodies, leathered, grunged and inked with borrowed ancestral symbols. Swiftly, we thread our way through bodies quickly inspecting their tribal tattoos and wonder, “What tribe are you? Were you people also annihilated and dispossessed of their land?” Once again, we become the trickster, hiding our own identity, never to be found out, only if we choose to. Concrete paths lead us to the storefront of Mother Bears, our community house, our sacred space...in the midst of chaos. Taking a deep breath, secure in an energy that is familiar, assuring us that there are others as myself who also are in a constant negotiation of who they are...here in LA, whether you be native-native or diaspora, the ceremonial houses have returned.

“Every poet is aware of this primordial depth in language, whereby particular sensations are invoked by the sounds themselves, and whereby the shape, rhythm, and texture of particular phrases conjure the expressive character of particular phenomenon.” ---David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous

As a young poet growing up in Los Angeles, I (Carolyn) couldn’t feel the voice of the landscape as I could in more rural places. David Abram posits that landscape and oral culture are so closely related that the suppression of the landscape affects the ability to speak of place. “If we listen first to the sounds of an oral language,” Abram writes, “to its rhythms, tones, inflections that play through the speech of an oral culture, we will likely find these elements are attuned in multiple and subtle ways, to the contour and scale of the local landscape, to the depth of its valleys or the open stretch of its distances, to the visual rhythms of the local topography.” Rather than California as what David Fine calls “the place at the end of the west,” to its indigenous inhabitants, Los Angeles and Southern California teems with meaning related directly to the landscape, to the sense of place and meaning that place names invoke missing in the literature of Los Angeles based upon its Anglo mythologies. In his work with the Western Apache, Keith Basso talked about the concept of “stalking with stories”: how landscape and language are intertwined and language reminds the Apache of landscape and vice versa. California’s indigenous peoples have similar stories. Driving along the freeway at rush hour, with the city’s beautiful people riding along with cel phones attached to cosmetically enhanced ears, riding alongside the city’s poor, dispossessed, and colored, I wonder if they truly will ever know that we ride with them, under cover of beads, feather, buckskin, and abalone. Out of the cracks in the cement, like the forgotten ancestor they are, sprout broad leafed California alata, yellow blooms bright against the whitewashed adobe so many now call home. The green tobacco reminds me that the land’s voice is strong, even over the roar of traffic, airplanes, oil refineries, and shipping lanes. In the midst of this native diaspora, the tobacco gave me a story:

Coyote Tears
Mist of rain
and wild tobacco
dot the earth
in subtle
songs of remembrance
and
longing for
the loss of a language
of harvest
and blessing.
To rule this land
is to subjugate
the center
of the world
by blood,
by living,
by water
and power.
And she knows
the sound
of footprints
upon rain
is a breath
of dying
and decay.
So this land
breathes
barely standing in
the midst
of darkness
and peverse delight.
Oh where
is the song
of survival,
of living
on the
cusp of disaster?
I can see her:
in wild tobacco
in a mist of rain
that sails away
on a whisper
of survival.
I wander
the landscape,
her breasts empty
only for those
who do not
listen.
I picked this earth clean,
and she gave me
wild tobacco,
a mist of blessing rain,
a breath of desire
and she sings
sacred songs
only for those
who listen.
Tears glisten
upon the breath
of ancestors
who cry
what they want
to know
and what will happen
if I begin
to howl a love song
lost to the souls
of decay
and wonder
where is
my voice?
Where is
the red earth
and gifts she honored me
as my tears
land in soft
moon shaped
puffs of smoke,
turning ash
to clay
and wild tobacco,
singing.

Stalking with stories, the landscape of the Los Angeles American Indian diaspora emerges through the Anglo mythologies in the narrative of its indigenous peoples, reminding us of the role the place played and still plays in the larger city narrative. It also connects us to that universe of medicine, to the ceremonial performativity that reminds us of who we are, where we come from, and where we are going. We just need to listen to the stories, hear the songs, and use them as the roadmap that will send us home, in all parts of the world in which a diasporic people call home. The ceremonial houses, placed upon the now urban landscape, the places where story is shared and relived, is where we find our spaces of remembrance, of renewal, and of regeneration.

(c) 2006 Carolyn Dunn & Cindi Alvitre

49 songs galore!

2009-06-24T09:12:00.001-07:00

when the dance is over honey I will be your sugar, sonny, sweetest thing I’ve seen in the longest time, way ya ha, way ya ha ho…

Daughter of the Sun

2009-06-23T00:36:00.001-07:00

The Daughter of the Sun

Washing clean
the stains of burden
and dumb luck,
she falls across
a barren world
that has yet to
recall.

Stealing
aboard a flight of protruded
dreams, she
awaits, lingers,
singing a song
that calls her
to the damage of stars
and crying a deed
that’s left unfinished.

In the early morning,
light finds itself
surrounded by
in-betweens
her song varies
in length, in tone,
in vision
and breadth.

It remains a new day at dawn,
when the daylight
can turn either way
like her heart.
forgiveness,
or famine,
sometimes these things,
like her singing,
can never remain
in the same flame.

As a heart broken
by grief and constant
tongue-loosening
pride. Will she sing
as a star rises,
giving light to a world
framed in darkness?
Or, will she remain still,
looking in shadow
for the pieces
of the shattered and shaking
rain crossed and shimmering
in a blessing of dawn.

© Carolyn Dunn 2009.

Free event!!! Join us at the Autry National Center, Sat. Jun 27th!

2009-06-21T17:47:00.000-07:00

Just got back from a wonderful week of rehearsals and rewrites and the most awesome phlegm-producing brownies a person could ask for down in San Diego. Thank you to all who came out and helped workshop my play The Frybread Queen at the La Jolla Playhouse on Saturday, June 21st!

The Frybread Queen is the story of a family coming to grips with the suidice of a beloved son, husband, and father, and all of the ghosts that such a death can bring about. I had the pleasure of working with director Scott Horstein, with whom I had worked with before as an actor in Julie Pearson Little Thunder's play The Girl Who Was Captured By Ghosts, and dramaturg Robert Caisley. Rounding out the team is our Directing Intern Jennifer Bobiwash and stage manager Joan Marie Hurwit. Scott is the director of play development with Cornerstone Theatre in Los Angeles and Rob is a well-known playwright and director and they are so much fun to work with and be a drama nerd with. Jenn was my AD on Arigon Starr's staged reading of The Red Road in 2006 and directed our last staged reading of The Frybread Queen in November 2008. Joan is a recent SDSU School of Theatre grad and a wonderful dramaturg and blogger who worked on my good pal Joy Harjo's Wings of Night Sky, Wings of Morning Light.

We were so blessed to have our entire cast return from last fall's reading: my very best Creek/Kickapoo girlfriend, the multi-talented Arigon Starr reads as Annalee Hayne, the former wife of the deceased; LaVonne Rae Andrews (Tlingit) portrays matriarch Jessie Burns; stage and screen vet Kateri Walker (Saginaw Chippewa) portrays Carlisle Burns, Jessie's daughter-in-law, and the lovely and talented 16 year old going on 30 Rayanna Zaragoza (Tohono-O'odham) reads as Lily, Jessie's granddaughter who must come to terms with her father's death.

The staged reading at the La Jolla Playhouse was the first of two readings this summer of The Frybread Queen; the next one will be at the Wells Fargo Theater at the Autry National Center in Griffith Park in Los Angeles Saturday June 27th, at 1:00 pm. This staged reading is FREE and is a wonderful opportunity to see not only my work but Terry Gomez' Carbon Black and Dawn Dumont's The Fancy Dancer. Carbon Black reads on Friday evening, the 26th at 8:00, and The Fancy Dancer, which also features Kateri Walker, reads at 4:00 on Saturday.

Did I mention the readings are FREE?

Tales from a Hollywood Indian

Carolyn on Feminist Magazine, Pacifica Radio's national feminist news program

Arts Alive - March 12, 2011

Lovely review of The Frybread Queen in Culture Spot L.A.

Lovely article from Steve Julian at LA Stage Times

Recipe: Native American Frybread from Playwright Carolyn Dunn

Visionaries Jean Bruce Scott and Randy Reinholz created successful Native Voices - Los Angeles Theater | Examiner.com

from the new poetry manuscript...

Hollywood Indians living in the woods...

The Turquoise Ledge in Santa Cruz

Haunting drama tells the story of native families - Montana Kaimin - Arts+Culture

‘Frybread Queen’ explores individuals, roles, tribes

The Frybread Queen makes her appearance in Montana

Lovely review of Stu Jenks' Hoop Dancing

Half price Terri Windling Paintings...for a good cause

Frybread in Montana, Hollywood Indians

a little behind in the news... but good anyway!

Yiikes and yikes again!

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/arts/la-et-pasadena-playhouse30-2010jan30,0,1723543.story

It's Raining in L.A. part...???

College and Graduate Horizons Program ACCEPTING APPLICATIONS!

Another new piece from Stains

another piece from: the stains of burden and dumb luck

The new Interfictions is here!

Elouise Cobell on the Research Channel

from The Stains of Burden and Dumb Luck

Performing Nation, Performing Identity

49 songs galore!

Daughter of the Sun

More photos from The Frybread Queen reading...

Free event!!! Join us at the Autry National Center, Sat. Jun 27th!