Native America Calling

For most states this time of year, shifting time is as easy as moving the hour hand forward an hour. But Daylight Savings Time doesn’t change the staunch allegiance to the clock required during the typical day. But it wasn’t always that way. Tribes once had built-in schedules for harvests, ceremonies, family and feasts. Some of those traditions may have adapted to eight-hour work days, and five-day work weeks, but remnants of different cultural approaches to time remain.

Native Americans are up for a historic three Academy Awards, thanks to Martin Scorsese’s groundbreaking film, Killers of the Flower Moon. The story of the Osage Reign of Terror earned nominations for Lily Gladstone for Best Actress, Scott George for Best Original Song, and the late Robbie Robertson for Best Soundtrack. We’ll hear from the nominees as we tap into the mounting excitement over the 96th Academy Awards.

Two recent events are major wins for tribes in Washington State fighting to restore natural salmon runs. A federal judge just sided with the Puyallup Tribe in their lawsuit aiming to remove a dam on the Puyallup River because it harms endangered salmon and other fish. And a coalition of a half-dozen tribes just signed a $1 billion plan with the federal government to restore salmon populations in the Columbia River Basin.

Super Tuesday is the biggest day of the primary election season, and voting in more than a dozen states increased the chances of a general election rematch between Donald Trump and Joe Biden in November. There were some other clues about what voters were thinking in several races around the country. What is on your mind as the presidential race narrows? What other candidates or issues are most important to you?

Wandering Stars, the new novel by Tommy Orange (Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma), weaves together the complex history of the Boarding School Era as witnessed by the ancestors to the characters in his best-selling debut novel, There, There. The story takes us from the devastating Sand Creek Massacre, through the founding of the Carlisle Indian School, and into urban Indian life in Oakland, Calif. The experiences make up a constellation of experiences that define the characters and inform how all of us understand modern Native existence as only Orange's prose can.

Overfishing in Japan, a thriving black market, and even the Fukushima nuclear disaster are all fanning the flames of fishing disputes involving tribes in Nova Scotia and Maine. Eels cannot reproduce in captivity. So juvenile glass eels, known as elvers, are a valuable commodity for Japanese aquaculture. They supply demand for a popular traditional dish in Japan. That demand is so high, it is threatening eel fisheries to the point that Canada is shutting down commercial seasons. Tribes maintain their treaty right to fish despite the government’s mandate. That’s causing rifts with non-Indigenous fishers and government officials.

Sasquatch, also called Bigfoot, has captured the popular collective imagination around the globe for decades. But in addition to their pop icon status, Sasquatch have a deeper meaning for many Native American cultures. The name that’s often used most likely comes from the Coast Salish word “Sasq’ets.” The Sts'ailes First Nation in Canada consider Sasquatch to be a caretaker of the land. A new exhibition at the High Desert Museum in Bend, Ore. showcases work by Native artists inspired by Sasquatch. We’ll get a peek at the exhibition along with some context of the enduring cultural connection.

Native American agriculture sales nearly doubled from 2017 to 2022. That’s one of the takeaways from the most recent Census of Agriculture. It is now a $6.4 billion industry despite a global pandemic and a slight decrease in the number of Native farmers across the board in those five years. Also on an upward trajectory is the number of Native-owned restaurants in Albuquerque. Ohkay Owingeh chef Ryan Taylor opened Yapopup in January, settling his small catering company into a brick-and-mortar location within Tiny Grocer ABQ, which is owned by Elizabeth Gaylor (Cherokee). That’s on the latest episode of The Menu on Native America Calling, our regular feature on Indigenous food news and stories.

There’s a richness when Black and Indigenous cultures meet. But there’s also some exclusion arising from outside expectations that someone needs to be one or the other. Artists who have a foot in more than one culture have a creative way of expressing that blended identity and the joys and drawbacks of a shared, but separate history. We’ll hear from artists who draw from two or more prominent cultural sources.

On a typical day, Scott George is making sure elders and others at the Citizen Potawatomi Nation have safe and secure housing. Now, he’s headed to the Academy Awards for the song, “Wahzhazhe,” he and other Osage traditional singers perform that appears on the film “Killers of the Flower Moon”. And after releasing her first solo album, Odanak First Nation musician Mali Obomsawin is back in a collaboration, Deerlady’s “Greatest Hits,” that explores “relationships under colonialism”.