Native American

When Did Indians Become Straight?: Kinship, the History of Sexuality, and Native Sovereignty

mandy — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 08:00:00 +0000

In When Did Indians Become Straight?, Mark Rifkin takes on a monumental task, exploring the intersections between sexuality, race, colonization/imperialism, sovereignty and nationhood as they apply to Native American tribes and their struggles over the centuries. As someone who is both of Native descent and gay, I was intrigued.

Queer theory and Native American studies have frequently intersected as examinations of the complex and varied Native American understandings of gender and sexuality have frequently informed both Native and non-Native explorations of what it means and has meant to be queer and what the ideal future situation for queer people would look like. Having read a great deal of these examinations, I expected, perhaps, too much.

Rifkin has some good points to make about how discourses on sexuality and appropriate family structure have affected the construction of race and the recognition of peoples of color as legitimate in the eyes of the nation-state, how “tradition” has frequently been reconstructed to erase those parts of actual tribal tradition and culture that are offensive to outsiders, how the imposition of the nuclear family structure was used in the United States government’s attempts to eradicate Native American tribes as distinct peoples, etc. Unfortunately, he doesn’t make these points very well.

Rifkin’s use of language can only be described as abusive and exploitative. As a writer, I frequently wished to liberate them from his grasp and set them free to follow their natural habits in their natural habitats. Rifkin commits so many of the crimes against the English language common amongst academics that it would be tedious to list them all, but the highest of his crimes is perhaps the misuse of terms, such as heteronormativity, to mean what he needs them to mean rather than what they actually do.

The language alone would be bad enough, but Rifkin also seems to argue points that are valid in a manner that makes them seem invalid or at least suspect. For instance, in exploring the role of the nuclear family ideal in the racialization of Native Americans, Rifkin chooses to explore Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison, the biography of a White woman become Seneca clan mother. Unfortunately, his focus on the circumstances surrounding the sale of Mrs. Jemison’s lands in Seneca territory as evidence for the primacy of her Whiteness glosses over the fact that much of the back and forth as to her identity as White or Seneca had little to do with racial ideology and much to do with pragmatism, land speculators using whatever twist of law and fact would most quickly grant them access to a prime investment opportunity. The evidence is not sufficient to the argument. Ultimately, it seems that in trying to bring so many ideas and theories together into a cohesive whole and to do so by relying heavily on a very limited literary canon, Rifkin’s arguments frequently become muddled and disjointed or simply fall apart at the seams.

As much as I wish that more people would explore these areas of both Native American studies and queer theory, I can’t in good conscience recommend this book.

Written by: Melinda Barton, April 7th 2011

Red Willow People

mandy — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 08:00:00 +0000

By Devreaux Baker

Wild Ocean Press

Imagine evening as a woman, wind as a friend, and every part of nature as an organ in the human body. You have now entered the landscape of Devreaux Baker’s newest collection of poetry, Red Willow People. The colors are red, white, yellow and the green shade of clay. The light is supplied by lines from poetry by Federico Garcia Lorca. The smell is sage, cedar, and pinyon pine. These poems are the story of a region, specifically Taos and the Southwestern area of the United States. They are also the story of a people, all the different clans of the Navajo (Dine’). The collection captures the essence of both the region and the people while exploring the universal themes of transformation and rebirth.

“Change wants to work her mantra into each being’s heart,” Baker notes in the poem “The Nest,” one of my favorite poems in the book. Baker describes trees as lungs, rocks as bones, and rivers as veins in the beginning of the poem. As the poem continues we see life examined through the lens of middle age, the change an individual body goes through, and at the same time the change nature goes through as Baker’s neighbor cuts down 100-year-old trees so the leaves won’t fall on his house.

These kinds of observations can be seen throughout many of the poems, full of the small and big mishandling that humans do to nature. Observations of birth and rebirth are also throughout many of the poems. At the end of “The Nest,” Baker’s calves and thighs become a nest for a little baby bird that the mother bird drops into her lap. It reminded me that even as we age and even through all the changes of this earth, there is constantly new life beginning again. And we can protect that life.

The books starts with the series of poems about the Spider Woman, a part of the Dine’ creation story who also teaches the people about weaving. It ends with a poem about coming home, a journey that took many lifetimes... “about burning all the way back to ash and then it was about becoming water, that simple.” That encapsulates this collection. Beautiful images of nature and the Southwestern landscape fuel the simple story of birth and rebirth. I always want to know what the relationship of the writer is with indigenous nations they are writing about, so I was curious about how Baker created her work which relied heavily on Dine’ myth and culture. I believe it’s literary territory that needs to be respected in a serious way, especially if you aren’t from that group of people. I think she told her story honestly in Red Willow People and showed respect for a culture that clearly inspired her greatly.

Written by: Maleka Fruean, January 25th 2011

Guardian Spirit

alicia — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 08:00:00 +0000

By Sarah Martin Byrd

Lucky Press

Every good young adult book needs a strong adolescent female heroine, and Guardian Spirit has one in Sadie Madison. Despite the challenges she has faced in her twelve short years, or perhaps because of them, Sadie maintains a resilient, practical core that propels her through her mother’s decision to run away from an abusive husband with Sadie and her younger brother.

The setting of Guardian Spirit is as much a part of the story as the drama that unfolds, offering the reader a vivid look at the mountains of North Carolina and giving the physical surroundings a role in sheltering this family both physically and spiritually. The depiction of the Cherokee people in the more mystical elements of the narrative does seem like a rehash of stereotypes, but nonetheless adds richness and depth as seen through the eyes of a twelve-year-old girl who is eager to learn and experience the natural world around her. Sadie discovers that each of her family members has a guardian spirit that watches over them and can help unlock their own special gifts.

Many women who choose to flee their abusers find themselves isolated and frightened, and this is certainly true for the Madisons, but a community of sorts begins to create itself around them as they venture out to meet their practical needs. It is ultimately their willingness to accept help and honor the mysterious signs that continue to present themselves that keeps this family safe.

While there are some difficult themes of abuse and suicide in the book, they are handled with honesty and delicacy and do not detract from the underlying story of this family who is learning to trust that creating a new life for themselves is possible. Guardian Spirit will entertain young adult and adult readers alike with its interesting twist on the issue of domestic violence.

Written by: Kari O'Driscoll, November 5th 2010

Queen of the Night

andrea — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 00:00:00 +0000

By J.A. Jance

William Morrow Printing

There is only one word to describe J.A. Jance’s Queen of the Night: lazy. Reading it makes you feel like you’ve turned on a bad soap opera. Plot lines pick up in the middle, then disappear. Certain twists appear out of nowhere, and connect to nothing else. Some characters come in with no introduction, relationships are assumed between others.

The book is apparently a sequel to Day of Dead, though this is not mentioned anywhere. It opens with a murder on a beach in San Diego in 1959. This murder is not the mystery to be solved; it’s solved three quarters of the way in, and is not connected to anything else. The focus then shifts to Tucson, Arizona, where a cast of dozens is introduced and haphazardly connected to each other. The story is focused around an annual party for the opening of the Queen of the Night flowers.

The mystery lacks edge, making it feel like color-by-numbers plotting. We know who the murderer is before the murder is committed, and this person is barely connected to the rest of the characters. The murderer is not sympathetic enough to draw the reader in, and not depraved enough to be interesting. If you’ve watched a procedural TV show in the last five years, you easily can follow all of the threads to their inevitable end.

I wanted to get angry about the Native American stereotypes, but the fact is all of the characters are badly drawn. That said, some of the Native Americans are stoic older types with names like Looks at Nothing, who use traditions to decide everything, including whether to go to parties. Others are more westernized and feel bad about it. Or they are portrayed as greedy, superstitious drunks who live in fear and rob at will. The Anglo characters are wealthy, kindhearted, and well-educated.

The laziness even negates some of the potentially interesting ideas, like the fact that one of the older women is haunted by her abusive first husband, and believes she has early onset Alzheimer’s. How can her grandson also see him? (Answer: he’s a future medicine man, because tribes need medicine men, obviously.) But wait, no, it is just the interaction of some medication she’s taking. (But her grandson? Medicine man!)

The characters of Queen of the Night are easily drawn and the plot is boring, although simple to follow. However, Jance is a talented author as evidenced by her previous books such as Birds of Prey and Partner in Crime. Find one of those books, if you are really interested in reading her best work.

Written by: Taylor Rhodes, November 4th 2010

Muscogee Daughter: My Sojourn to the Miss America Pageant

tina — Sat, 30 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0000

By Susan Supernaw

University of Nebraska Press

On the surface, Susan Supernaw’s memoir Muscogee Daughter: My Sojourn to the Miss America Pageant is a story about an unlikely Miss Oklahoma winner and her trip to the 1971 Miss America pageant. The true story, however, is Supernaw’s struggle to escape a childhood marred by extreme poverty and violence and earn the Native American name revealed to her during a near death experience.

While reading the memoir, it was hard to keep in mind that Muscogee Daughter wasn’t a work of fiction. Supernaw’s struggles haunted me long after I finished reading the book, especially the image of her dying grandmother sharing a bed with Supernaw as an ill and abandoned infant.

Supernaw was the fourth daughter in a poor family and her birth was a major disappointment to her father. When she was just a baby her parents left her in the care of her elderly grandparents on a farm in rural Oklahoma so that her father could go back to college. It’s never made clear why her parents took the older girls and left their newborn, but whatever the reason it was ill conceived. By the time she was six months old, Supernaw’s grandmother had died and her mother returned to collect her.

Months of being confined to her grandmother’s bed and being fed cow’s milk and coffee by her inexperienced grandfather landed her in the hospital for many weeks. That would be the first of a handful of close calls in Supernaw’s life and each time she believed she was about to die, a beautiful woman appeared to comfort her. Supernaw believed she was a manifestation of the Corn Mother.

The second time the woman appeared she brought a small dancing bear, a personification of Supernaw’s Native American name. A community elder came to Supernaw’s bed side and advised her to follow her destined path in order to earn the right to her name and earning that name became her primary goal. Paralyzed after a horse riding accident, Supernaw fought to walk again and eventually, she became an athletic high school cheerleader, a Presidential scholar, an accidental beauty queen, and a unifying figure for the eastern and western tribes of Oklahoma.

Supernaw memoir reveals many painful and personal details about her life. We learn of the abusive father who left the family bereft and who was replaced by an even more tyrannical and dangerous step-father, though initially the four girls were happy to have him provide more than the ketchup sandwiches they had been accustomed to eating for dinner.

Supernaw seems to understand that her family’s story is representative of a piece of American history—one that is too often untold; however, it feels like too much was left unsaid. Though she was an anthropology major concerned with human rights, her attitude towards the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is puzzling. Supernaw says that it gave her white boyfriend “an unfair disadvantage and made me feel like I’d been given an unfair advantage.” In later pages she reveals that she “felt a lot of confusion over minority preference,” yet she also felt the sting of racism from her boyfriend who believed her Presidential award was the result of her being a minority. There were was also the cheerleaders’ parents who did not allow her in their homes; the Miss America pageant that treated her like an oddity; and the media that used offensive stereotypes to describe her.

Muscogee Daughter was both fascinating and frustrating. As a reader I wanted to know more about her family and her experience as a woman of color living between white and Native worlds. The importance of earning her Native American name is clear, but the significance of the milestone is not. Nevertheless, Susan Supernaw’s memoir is essential in the narrative of American history.

Written by: Stephanie Sylverne, October 29th 2010

500 Years of Indigenous Resistance

admin — Fri, 21 May 2010 16:01:00 +0000

By Gord Hill

PM Press

We are all familiar with the smiling happy portrayals of pilgrims sitting down to dinner with Native Americans, or perhaps the slightly more critical viewpoint from many of our high school history books of the Indigenous people being simply helpless victims to European colonization. However, neither of these views is, in reality, very accurate.

500 Years of Indigenous Resistance was originally published in 1992 by Gord Hill, the native artist, activist, and at the time, member of the revolutionary Indigenous newspaper, OH-TOH-KIN. The book is in a pamphlet style with artwork throughout its pages. It starts with the arrival of Columbus in the Americas and goes up through history to chronicle native resistance in North and South America until after WWII, even up through the 1960s. It was originally published just before the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas, Mexico in 1994, and so was extremely relevant and insightful both then and now.

Even though I was aware that the history of the Americas many of us were taught growing up was very skewed towards celebrating white European colonialism, I hadn’t read anything, until this, that so clearly shows all the various Native American resistance movements that have existed. Lacking from most of written American history of the past 500 years is a detailed exploration of the resistance of native peoples and how they influenced and limited the colonialism to which they struggled against. 500 Years of Indigenous Resistance fills in this gap in an extensive way. It also records all the horrendous and calculating strategies of colonization employed to destroy native people, wipe out whole cultures, and steal land.

While many people, including myself, could probably not give names of more than a few tribes, this book speaks of all the millions of indigenous people there were 500 years ago, an estimated 70 to 100 million people. Even now after hundreds of years of colonization there are still an estimated forty million indigenous people. The book chronicles the various resistance strategies that native peoples utilized: demonstrations, festivals, violent uprisings, the creation of alliances with other tribes or nations, protests, occupations, road blocks, forming organizations to oppose governmental policies, and most recently, organizing around international bodies.

In a country that still has offensive caricatures of Native Americans on display for sports team mascots, it is easy to get discouraged that there will be any real recognition of the magnitude of the American Indian Holocaust, the mass genocide of Native peoples that has run rampant the past 500 years and continues on today. But books such as 500 Years of Indigenous Resistance which don't glorify, romanticize, or just plain omit all the horrors that abound throughout this history of colonization, stand to give us some hope. For they just give us the facts, but, more importantly, the ones we most likely have never heard before.

It would be an amazing thing to make copies of this work and slip into every school in America and slide it into every history book for children to read. Well, it is no less crucial and eye-opening a book for existing simply on its own. It is a rare event to read books that really have the potential to change the way that you think about things, that help you unlearn many lies and find yourself faced with honest truths. It always gives me the chills to read something from a new perspective and to know that this information is being let loose in the world, seeking to help us to open our eyes, to learn from the past, and to ultimately change for the better.

Written by: Lesley Kartali, May 21st 2010

From the Hilltop

admin — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 16:01:00 +0000

By Toni Jensen

Uniiversity of Nebraska Press

After I read this collection of a dozen stunning stories, I sadly realized that I could count on one hand the number of Native American authors with whom I am familiar. I might pride myself on my awareness that Native Americans live diverse ways of life, just as other ethnic groups, and that the indigenous peoples of the Americas are incredibly diverse in their traditions. However, I have realized a desire to deepen my familiarity with the creative output of contemporary Native Americans.

From the Hilltop is the first volume from "Métis" author Toni Jensen. This book is easily in my top five all-time for short story collections. My favorite story, “Still,” conveys the ache beyond words experienced by a woman who has had a miscarriage. She tries to speak to her family “in English and in Michif,” but neither of her tongues are useful.

Family names reoccur from one chapter to the next. An uncle who is mentioned in the first story appears as a character in the second. This trait gives an element of continuity to the collection, while the stories remain independent from one another. Aspects of American Indian tradition and history appear in these stories of ordinary struggle, misunderstandings, and family tragedy, brightened by moments of surprising beauty.

The choice of words, whether for descriptions, dialogue, or inner reflection, is impeccable. Jensen is a powerful, gifted writer who has crafted characters for whom this reader felt deeply.

As the film Smoke Signals made many aware of the brilliance of Sherman Alexie, I hope this collection will reach a wide readership and call attention as well to other deserving Native American writers. From the Hilltop is part of the Native Storiers series of the University of Nebraska Press.

Written by: Lisa Rand, March 26th 2010

Keeping the Campfires Going: Native Women’s Activities in Urban Communities

admin — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 17:05:00 +0000

Edited by Susan Applegate Krouse, Heather A. Howard

University of Nebraska Press

Keeping the Campfires Going: Native Women's Activism in Urban Communities is a collection of essays featuring the struggles and triumphs of Native women living in urban communities. Written about people living throughout North America from San Francisco to Chicago to Vancouver to Anchorage, the essays focus on the role that women have played in keeping their native people connected as a community. The range of women and communities presented gives a broad, yet still specific, view of the conflicts overcome and those still being addressed.

Traditionally (based on reading the book and not attempting to generalize) Native and Aboriginal communities were rural, at times isolated, and not urban. Increasingly the Native and Aboriginal population is growing in cities. The challenge to holding onto one’s past and identity in the face of pressure and a changing world is magnified. The struggle in finding a home, literally and metaphorically, as both a woman and a Native American or Aboriginal is illuminated and discussed. The women are negotiating finding and keeping a place within the native community as well as making a place for themselves within the larger, non-native community.

The women are standing up to be heard and to be seen, and to confront and to change the stereotypes and misconceptions about their place in the world. A quote from a flyer distributed in Vancouver sums up much of the book for me: “We are Aboriginal women, givers of life. We are mothers, sisters, daughters, aunties and grandmothers. Not just prostitutes and drug addicts. Not welfare cheats. We stand on our Mother Earth and we demand respect. We are not here to be beaten, abused, murdered, ignored.” They are embracing their past and their heritage, and they are claiming a place in today’s society.

The essays are well-researched and professional, and while there are personal stories and anecdotes given, the focus is on academia. Many of the contributors are anthropologists and professors. The challenge they face as women is made two-fold because of their Native or Aboriginal background, and I had not before been as truly aware of the depth of the challenge.

Written by: Kristin Conard, November 17th 2009

The Blue Tattoo: The Life of Olive Oatman

admin — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 16:48:00 +0000

By Margot Mifflin

University of Nebraska Press

The Blue Tattoo tells the story of Olive Oatman, a nineteenth century woman with an unusual life. In 1851, Oatman was violently abducted along with her younger sister by Yavapais after watching this group of Native Americans brutally slaughter the rest of her family. What happens after this life-altering event, Mifflin argues, sheds light on American attitudes and treatment toward Native Americans, as well as the role and expectations for women in the 1800s.

It was a blue tattoo on her chin that marked Oatman for the rest of her life and served as a testament to her experience. After her abduction, Oatman was later adopted by the Mohave and assimilated into the tribe. This was evidenced by her tattoo, which Mohave women usually had themselves. Mifflin argues, despite what Oatman and others said later, that the tattoo was one symbol, among others, that she was accepted into the tribe and wanted to be a part of the tribe as well.

Years later, Oatman was “rescued” from the Mohave and had to transition back into White society as an adult. While she was an unusual woman for her time (she was the among the first white women to be tattooed in the United States and went on tour for speaking engagements, another uncommon act for a female to participate in), Oatman allowed her experience with the Mohave to be twisted into one where she was a victim of Native American oppressors. In fact, in subsequent photographs, and at some lectures, Oatman would cover up her chin tattoo with makeup, as if erasing her friendly ties to the Mohave.

Although Oatman’s story on its own is full of intrigue, Mifflin adeptly uses her tale as a springboard for larger issues of the time. Mifflin highlights America’s history of westward expansion through either war or simply seizing new land. The slaughter of Oatman’s family took place as they were heading through what was then Native American territory in the Southwest. While an occasional action by Oatman after her release gave some indication of the affection she felt toward the Mohave, she did not use the spotlight to defend Native American rights or acknowledge the kind treatment she received from the Mohave tribe. After her release, she seemed to bury any of the fondness and goodwill toward the Mohave, and instead, perpetuated the notion that Native Americans were savages.

Mifflin adds that Oatman's tale also reflects upon the unique lifestyle she had as a woman after her release. Oatman, ultimately, had only one immediate family member who survived the massacre and, therefore, little financial support after her release. This was a time when women did not work outside of the home. When faced with being reintroduced into white society, however, Oatman was forced to try to make a living for herself through endeavors like releasing a book about her experience and by attending public speaking events.

In the end, Oatman did what was necessary for her survival in White society. She did what she could to financially support herself by telling the American public what they wanted to hear about her years in captivity. We’ll never know how Oatman really felt about her time with the Mohave, but it is certain that, at the very least, Oatman did push the boundaries of what was thought to be appropriate for women during her time, even if what she did was at the expense of Native Americans.

Written by: Beverly Jenkins-Crockett, November 7th 2009

Mohawk Girls

admin — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 19:05:00 +0000

Directed by Tracey Deer

Women Make Movies

Mohawk Girls is a beautifully written and directed documentary film by Tracey Deer. Released in 2006, Deer parallels the lives of three teenage girls living on a reservation just outside of Montreal, Canada to her own experiences while struggling to grow up in a world that fails to reach out to those not living within the main steam culture. Tracey Deer says: "I wanted to know what girls today are dealing with, and how they managed to get through it."

Each girl poignantly discusses the difficulties of living within the Kahnawake community, and overcoming obstacles set before them by a society that has preconceived ideas about women, reservation life and native people. Felicia, Lauren and Amy speak to the audience in a very direct and open manner with surprising clarity. The young women all offer stunning honesty on topics such as discrimination oftentimes coming from within their own community, drug and alcohol abuse, teen pregnancy, cultural differences and their hope for the future.

Mohawk Girls remarkably makes the point to the audience about what it means to be a young woman faced with cultural differences in an unforgiving world. I can't help but feel that each of these girls is already a young warrior in her own right. All are in possession of an inner strength that shines outwardly onto the people around her, and hold a true desire to create change in the world in which they live. It is the strong spirit and consciousness of this group of girls that will certainly help guide other young women move through a world filled with preconceived ideas about our place society as women, and how we arrive there.

This film is a must watch for women of all ages, as we face daily obstacles while we learn of ourselves, find our voices, educate other women around us and learn to shine in our own right. Tracey Deer left me with a single thought that I will always carry with me as it embodies the daily challenges that we as women face. "Being Native isn't only about how you feel, it's calculated by others."

Written by: Diana J. Fitzgerald, July 27th 2007

Dance with the Wind

admin — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 03:49:00 +0000

By Mary Youngblood

Silverwave Records

From the very first beat of Dance with the Wind, I knew that the music Mary Youngblood creates is pure magic. This was not just an auditory experience for me! I found myself listening with my heart and being moved at my very core.

Mary Youngblood, a Native American musical icon can make her wooden flutes speak to us beyond our everyday experiences by reminding us we are part of a “bigger whole.” Of Aleut and Seminole ancestry, she was named "Flautist of the Year" at the Native American Music Awards two years in row and won a Grammy for Beneath the Raven Moon (2003). Being a classically trained multi-instrumentalist and composer, Mary Youngblood was one of the first tribal women to play an instrument not only reserved for ancient religious practices, but also exclusively to male performers!

Youngblood, breaking the binds of cultural and societal fetters, is the epitome of a strong spiritual woman. Her music will touch your heart, draw you up and make you look at the big picture we are all a part of.

Written by: Gina Hobbs, March 22nd 2007

Artistic Native American Postcards

admin — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 04:01:00 +0000

By Swaneagle Harijan

Transformation and prayer highlight Swaneagle Harijan’s art. Her paintings are rich with color and focus on women in a many states of being. We have grandmothers lifting their grandchildren to the moon in “Grandmother Dineh Supporting Future Generations," a white woman with a child of darker skin and blue eyes fleeing as a fairy catches the mother’s tears in “Mother and Child Flee" and more transformational characters as a woman with wings and flowing feather-like hair lifting a leaf to a thumbnail of a moon in “Deva of Herbs.”

The common denominator of these paintings rests not only in the vibrant reds and blues that pervade the sample of work I was able to see, but also in the depiction of women as they are connected to their environments. The settings are natural, but otherworldly; I couldn’t tell you where these women are, though the rust reds and yellow and orange landscapes might suggest the American West. The figures of these pieces are shown in natural worlds, the moon or sun are present in every single postcard and, in many of them, the women are lifting their eyes to these entities, as if in prayer.

Many of the movements presented in the paintings are painted with brush strokes that are also in perpetual movement. For example, in the painting “Mountain Mother Race Mixer” the trees seem to be woven and leaves curl forward, mimicking the shape of the woman’s wings and the manner in which she’s holding the child. Swaneagle’s paintings provide spaces where women are diverse in terms of both color, age and even their bodies.

Written by: Lisa Bower, February 26th 2007

Doris #23

admin — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 00:04:00 +0000

By Cindy Crabb

Microcosm Publishing

In the latest issue of her acclaimed zine, Cindy Crabb delivers more of the insightful, self-revelatory, meandering prose her readers have come to love. The issue opens with a beautifully-written meditation on love’s many forms. Other topics recounted include her canoeing trip with Julian, but touches upon dreams about her dead mother, the white co-opting of Native American experience, a friend’s disclosure of childhood sexual abuse, and her struggles with feelings of worthlessness. Also included are reminiscence about her friend Nicky, whom she met while in jail (for what offense we are not told), and the story of her attempt to see the redwood trees in California with her friend Jono, which turned into a miserable experience of camping on an exposed beach in a chilling rainstorm and nearly getting hypothermia.

“Ladies lunches” is a lighthearted section about attending weekly luncheons with her grandmother and other elderly women in the Southwestern United States. Her sense of the women’s joie de vivre and her respect for them is relayed well: “At Ladies Lunch they talk and laugh, they have nothing left to prove. They have seen so much and are interested in everything, they have been through the subject of death together a million times.” Crabb notes that before her mother’s death she did not get along with her grandmother, but now enjoys spending time with her and helping care for her grandfather; it’s a small but cathartic confession.

The section on menstrual extraction may be too “out there” for most readers. It is a method through which one can supposedly lighten and shorten one’s period by suctioning out the contents of the uterus, including an egg fertilized in the preceding few weeks. As such, it could be considered both a method or emergency contraception and abortion. The idea of women taking control of their own bodies is appealing, but building and operating the contraption necessary for the procedure makes it seem as if a traditional clinical abortion would be much easier to endure. (If you actually knew how to do menstrual extraction it would be much less expensive, as the equipment needed includes only such every day items as a syringe, valves, plastic tubing and a mason jar, but the training sounds difficult and hard to come by.) Overall, this issue engages the reader and sparks both empathy and insight.

Written by: Karen Duda, February 15th 2007

Out of the Ashes

admin — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 02:10:00 +0000

By Shelley Morningsong

Silver Wave Records

Shelley Morningsong is a singer, songwriter, guitarist and flutist. On [Out of the Ashes](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000HT3KZG?ie=UTF8&tag=feminrevie-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B000HT3KZG) she proclaims her Northern Cheyenne heritage as a source of pride and strength. There are thirteen tracks. The first song, "Sweet Protector," is an upbeat pop/rock number. "Sing for Them" honors Morningsong's ancestors and utilizes tribal drums, as do some of the other songs. The merging of traditional styling with modern pop convention makes for a unique sound. Every song on this album deals with social issues important to Native Americans. Morningsong's own personal struggles – alluded to in the liner notes – have helped her grow as a songwriter. Morningsong's spirit shows all through the album.

"World Gone Crazy" asks the question of who will teach and lead the children of Native Americans. "Out of the Ashes" tells the Northen Cheyenne creation myth. Not being versed in Native American mythology, I was able to learn from this song. All the songs here have lessons of some kind. Morningsong sticks to her themes of pride, self-reliance, faith and love for one's family. She also has a clean, soothing voice that goes well with the instrumentation. She shows her range as a singer, going from joyful to meditative to melancholy over the course of the album. The sound and mixing are good, with electric guitar and synthesizer riffs provided by Larry Mitchell. Morningsong's husband, Fabian Fontenelle, rounds out the group with percussion and a few spoken word parts. This album is worth listening to, and the rhythms are catchy enough that you will soon be humming them in the grocery line.

Written by: Steve Watson, February 12th 2007