MetaFilter posts tagged with FirstNation

(Still) Dancing on John Wayne's Head: two albums of "raging blakkindian dub"

filthy light thief — Sat, 29 Dec 2012 16:10:21 -0800

This is probably one of the most unusual and creative dub records you're ever likely to hear. Imagine typical bottom-heavy, bass-filled Jamaican dub reggae -- complete with horns, percussion, the whole nine yards -- mixed with traditional Native American vocal music (don't ask how it works, just believe that somehow it does). Now add spoken word samples from Native American, black, Russian, women's lib, and other sociopolitical leaders discussing the effects of colonial imperialism and totalitarian governments on the common man (and, of course, woman), and what you get is this radically inventive album. Dancing on John Wayne's Head was followed up by Still Dancing on John Wayne's Head, both exploring the connections between Blacks and Indigenous Peoples in the Americas, put together under the banner of The Fire This Time, who aim "to provide a greater understanding of the struggles and triumphs of the various indigenous peoples and other freedom fighters." Pat Andrade, on how the original album was made:

"We went down to Jamaica with chants and asked the musicians in Jamaica to improvise around traditional drumming and chants and then we did the reverse of that and asked the traditional singers to sing along with completed reggae tracks."

The follow-up album saw some tracks re-worked by various dance music producers.

Spotted Lake

filthy light thief — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 12:31:29 -0800

About 13 km (8 miles) north of the US/Canada border is Spotted Lake (Google Maps/streetview), a endorheic basin, or terminal lake. In wetter times, the lake is full, but spots are visible. During the summer months, the water level drops, leaving spots of mineral-rich water. The waters have long been considered therapeutic, and one story cites a truce in a battle to allow both warring tribes to tend to their wounded in the lake. Though a sacred medicine lake of the Okanagan People, the lake and the land around it were privately owned for 40 years. Mineral-rich salts were harvested during World War I for munitions, and decades later, the land owners were looking to mine the mud to sell for use in therapeutic spas. In 2001, the land was finally purchased by the The Indian Affairs Department and the Okanagan Nation Alliance. kłlil'x^w is property of the Okanagan Nation once more. Without context, the spots of 15.2 hectare (38 acre) lake may not seem that big, but people give the spots some scale. Though officially private property, plenty of folks trespass. If you can't make it out to see the lake in person, Flickr has plenty of pictures, and deviantart has a few more. And here are more on Panoramio. Spotted Lake is set in a larger public park system, the South Okanagan Grasslands Protected Area, which includes trails and fishing areas.

The short animations of Frédéric Back

filthy light thief — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 16:45:33 -0800

Frédéric Back was born in 1924 in France, where he studied drawing and lithography. He was lured to Canada by Jack London's stories and Clarence Gagnon's paintings, as well as correspondence with a Canadian pen-pal. Back moved to Canada in 1948, married his pen-pal Ghylaine Paquin, and was hired by Radio Canada at the birth of their television network to create still images for display on and to promote moving pictures. The drawings lead to experiments with animations, which lead to a series of animated shorts, starting with the wordless short Abracadabra (9:23, YT) in 1970. You can read and see more about Frédéric Back on his extensive website, and see more animations inside. The follow-up to Back's first short came in 1972, with the Inon ou la conquête du feu (Inon or the Conquest of Fire), which is based on the Algonquin legend about Inon, the God of Thunder, who kept fire from humans. A series of adventures follows with a happy ending. [No video found online beyond the three clips on Back's website] That same year, Back created a second short based on Native American legends, La création des oiseaux (The Creation of Birds) (10:07, YT). The short won best animation at the 1973 Yorkton Film Festival, the longest running film festival in North America. It would be 3 years until Back's next short, ¿Illusion? (11:31, Tudou), which is a largely wordless short about the miracles of nature versus "magicians of advertising, the promoters of progress and over-consumption." In 1977, Frédéric Back made a short, Taratata (8:33, YT), in celebration of the parades that used to be held on Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day. Tout Rien (All Nothing) (11:00, YT) is a short from 1978 about the greed of humankind. The short was nomination for an Oscar, Back's first nomination. His next short, Crac! (15:20, YT), was a tribute to Quebec, his adoptive home. For the short, Back won an Oscar, allowing him to undertake more ambitious projects. Unfortunately, while working applying a coat of fixative to a Crac! drawing, the fumes got into his right eye. His eye did not recover, but Back continued to produce art. There is a story-book version of this short, illustrated by Back and written by his wife. The next, more ambitious project was the 1987 animation, L'homme qui plantait des arbres (The man who planted trees) (30:03, YT, with English and Spanish captions; previously, twice). The film would be Back's first that relied on spoken roles to convey the story. The story resonated with Back as he had planted over 30,000 trees, as a member of the Society to Overcome Pollution, which formed in 1970. Back's final film, Le fleuve aux grandes eaux (part 2, in French on Daily Motion) (The Mighty River, 24:02, on Google Video in English, with narration by Donald Sutherland) was about the St. Lawrence River. The film was won four awards for animation, and was nominated for an Oscar, but lost to Wallace & Gromit in The Wrong Trousers. Frédéric Back is now 87, and is continuing to be recognized for his lifetime of artwork, from his environmental message to a celebration of his work in Japan (10:00, Japanese news clip, with interviews of Back who speaks in French), including a display at the Ghibli Museum (I think -- this part of the Ghibli Museum site is only in Japanese, and the Google auto-translation may not be terribly accurate or clear). Bonus links: * Lengthy interview with Back, year unknown. * Aother lengthy interview, in 1996.

Sequoyah says, "ᎣᏏᏲ!"

overeducated_alligator — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 07:05:21 -0800

The Indomitable Language: How the Cherokee Syllabary Went from Parchment to iPad