ReadingRoom

Cherokee Arts & Humanities Council

Reading Room

Practicing connection

Peter Pennekamp (executive director, Humboldt Area Foundation) begins by speaking of the value of blurred lines and challenging us to find
artistic meaning in a context of connection.

Peter Pennekamp
What comes first, a people’s health or a people’s dance?

I am not American Indian and have no right to speak for them, but my friends on California’s north coast have often said there is no
such dichotomy. Ceremonial dances, health, environmental justice, community action are all part of community life constructed of
relationships that blur lines and confound artificial separations.

Over thirty years ago the tribes of the region began to both reclaim and rebuild sacred ceremonies that had been largely scorched out
during the days of forced boarding schools and their aftermath of social destruction. A fully committed generation of young leaders
reconnected with elders who remembered the original practices, and a movement to regain health of the spirit, body, and community
grew. Over the years it became strong, vigorous, and vibrant. Now thousands participate in the sacred ceremonial dances, strong
health institutions have been built, many youth go to college. The people are regaining their power and center in a contemporary world.

What came first? The spirit needs sacred ceremony and practice, art, and health of body and community to prosper. The body needs a
well spirit and practices of wellness and healing, traditional and western, to heal. The community is only as healthy, as nurturing, as
the people are well in body and spirit.

There is no “silo” of activity, no arena of life that if given attention in isolation will result in the wellness of the whole. The hope for
wellness in isolation is purely a western fiction, one that continues despite the fact that most of us know intuitively that it is wrong.

So why do we in arts philanthropy who deeply value the arts usually believe that artistic meaning comes in the context of connection
yet only minimally practice the connection in our work? We often travail about the “lack of support” for the arts, yet few funders put
into practice what the American Indians and others have known for millennia, that art as community practice is art valued beyond
product. It is not amateur, or secondary, but is the very reason a culture’s art will be valued and supported highly and widely, not just
narrowly by an elite.

When art strengthens a community, it is at its best – energizing the spirit in the face of adversity, strengthening the soul before those
who would smash it down, feeding muscles that have to keep the resolve of the march.

Ken Wilson (executive director, the Christensen Fund) offers a funder’s point of view. The Fund, which is mainly focused on indigenous and
tribal peoples internationally, supports people “dreaming, carving, struggling, and adapting to their cultural, livelihood, and environmental
futures.”

Ken Wilson
Why should we do it?

Cultural organizing is about a kind of participation/engagement that comes from an affirmation of community and culture.
Thus it enables people to speak and live from their own power (from what gives them strength: their identity, values, and
networks), rather than from their marginality, which is what they have to draw on if we ask them to speak and live on the
terms of the powerful. This kind of participation is important both because it can enable people to win against the odds,
but, even more importantly, because the very processes that enable the victories also affirm their cultural ways and
community processes going forward.

Dudley Cocke
Communities becoming aware of themselves

Artists have always helped us understand ourselves and our changing world by helping us tell both our old and our new
stories. After all, it is our stories, those that we collectively and individually tell ourselves and others, those we can
understand and imagine, that define what is possible for us as human beings.

The general purpose of our cultural organizing is to help communities become more aware of themselves, of their local
life, and of their democratic aspirations. We have evolved a community residency methodology that rests on four broad
principles we call our pillars:

partnerships and collaborations with an inclusive range of community organizations, local leadership, engagement over
the course of at least several years, and our flexibility to alternate between the role of teacher and student.
Our method encourages a willingness among all partners to reexamine basic assumptions and test hypotheses through
repeating cycles of posing questions and trying to answer them. Together, we ask ourselves: What are we trying to
change, and why is changing it important? How are we trying to make the change, and why is this the best strategy?
How will we know we are making the change; what data will provide us evidence so we can improve the work and
demonstrate its accomplishment to others? A humble curiosity, an openness to simple questions and unexpected
answers, a willingness not to know the answers – these are the qualities of a learner that our cultural organizing model
cultivates.

Ken Wilson

The digital revolution has made possible strategies around production and networking that were almost unimaginable
until recently. The cost of producing content – people’s own stories – has declined massively; likewise, the Internet and
file sharing have helped the cost of distribution to collapse. With these changes has come the capacity to move the
content around the world in milliseconds. The digital revolution is also allowing the integration of sound, image, and word
in ways that speak much more to the nature of the content of community life. (Frankly, the academic notion that all could
be conveyed with the linear written word was a pretty extraordinary one). And as we’ve seen, not only does multi-media
content convey ideas more directly and richly it also enables the ideas to be conveyed in non-linear fashion that can be
far more driven by the demand of receivers.

Dudley Cocke

Organizing, using culture or not, is about the process of learning, individually and collectively. The majority of
foundations strike me as management organizations rather than “learning organizations.” Management organizations
are more fixed in their culture, almost as if the solutions to increasingly complex, global problems are known and the
instruments for their implementation are the objects of support. Learning organizations are more flexible, assuming that
solutions are not necessarily known and the process of discovery should be supported. The former asks what strategies
can deliver the solutions; the latter asks what strategies will support the active search for solutions.

Postings will change on a regular basis. Check back often.........

Leeds, Friend of CAHC Awarded Fletcher Fellowship

The annual fellowship program established by financial executive Alphonse Fletcher, Jr. to commemorate the 50th
anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision, Brown v. Board of Education, has named four scholars as
2008 Alphonse Fletcher, Sr. Fellows, Fletcher announced Tuesday. Among those awards is Stacy L. Leeds, professor
of law at the University of Kansas School of Law, Cherokee citizen, and resident of Cherokee County, Oklahoma.

Leed's was chosen from a pool of more than 80 applicants. Fletcher added that one of the top considerations within the
selection process is an applicant’s ability to bring a proposed project to finish within one year.

“Considering the past accomplishments of this class of fellows, we greatly look forward to seeing these important
projects brought to life in the year ahead,” he said.

Leeds will produce a comprehensive history of the Cherokee Freedmen, the African-American slaves held by the
Cherokee Nation until the 1860s, and their descendants entitled, “Ties That Bind: Freedmen Citizenship and the
Cherokee Nation.”

Dr. Henry Louis Gates, the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor at Harvard University who chaired the selection
committee for the 2008 fellows, said the program is the “only one of its kind” with scholars and other thinkers engaged in
helping Americans “see how far we have come and how far we still have to go in our efforts to meet the challenge of
Brown v. Board.”

The fellows program is administered by the Fletcher Foundation, a private charitable organization established in 1993.
Two years prior to launching the foundation, Fletcher founded the New York-based Fletcher Asset Management, Inc. at
which he serves as chairman and CEO. See www.fletcherphilanthropy.org for more information on the fellows program
and the Fletcher Foundation.

Leeds has been active in her Cherokee community and supportive of the arts and humanities. She lives near
Tahlequah, with her husband Michael Stewart and son, Hunter Andrew.

Send submissions to: info@cherokeehumanities.com

Cherokee Arts & Humanities Council Offers Green Building Training to Public

Living Green is a national concern today. As part of a continued cultural tradition of honoring the earth and the gifts of
the earth the Cherokee Arts & humanities Council (CAHC) has launched a community project and partnered with others
to offer ecologically sound and environmentally friendly building techniques rooted in Indigenous values to the public
during the month of August.
The building training project launched by the CAHC has found support from the Red Earth Action Project, the Cherokee
Nation Elder Services department, and Sustainable Nations Development Project, with additional support provided by
Seventh Generation Fund, Honor the Earth, Cherokee Nation Community Services and the National Society for
American Indian Elderly.
"We have never partnered with so many others on a project before," said Roy Hamilton, CAHC president, "But, every
partner brings unique skills, ideas and values to this project. We are happy to be part of this impressive grouping of
partners, all with Indigenous concepts of what living Green is all about."
This project will be a two-part training held August 4-15, 2008, in the Cherokee community of Kenwood, OK. The
Ceremonial Ground at Squirrel Ridge will host the project.

Part 1. August 4-10th Join us to learn about straw bale building, rainwater catchment systems, composting toilets and
natural earthen plaster all in a hands-on setting.

Part 2. August 11-15th Ever wondered how Tribes can best utilize solar energy as a resource for self-reliance? Join us
to find out what uses are possible with solar energy in Indian Country and gain a new skill by helping to install a small
solar panel system. Or sign up for both trainings!

Free camping and solar showers will be available. Food will be provided, however donations of $3-5 will be requested
for each meal. The project will also be hosting cultural sharing nights, playing stickball, and having a Stomp Dance
August 9th. Everyone is invited.

To apply, go to http://www.redearthactionproject.org/trainings.html

Space is limited for the training opportunities so register soon!

Cost: The training is free of charge to Native people, however, donations of money, food or supplies would be greatly
appreciated from anyone.

For more information visit the "projects" page of the CAHC website at www.cherokeehumanities.com or email:
info@cherokeehumanities.com or attend the next monthly meeting on Aug. 3, at 3:00 p.m. in the Community Room of
the C.N. behind the Restaurant of the Cherokee at the Cherokee Nation Complex in Tahlequah, OK.