NU museum to return two Native skeletons

Lincoln Journal Star: Kevin Abourezk

(NCIA Director Judi gaiashkibos delivered sage collected by Roger Welsch on the Pawnee homelands that was used in the smudging ceremony)

Charmaine Shawana plans to get up early Wednesday and drive nearly 12 hours west to bring her ancestors home.

It’s been more than a century since two of her tribe’s ancestors were taken from their graves in Michigan, and it’s time to bring them home, said the Saginaw Chippewa tribal council member.

“Our ancestors were disrupted in their sleep,” she said. “We need to put them back, and that’s what we’re going to do.”

A small delegation will visit Lincoln Wednesday and Thursday to retrieve the remains of the ancestors that have been housed for decades in the University of Nebraska State Museum.

A 1990 law requires all federal agencies and federally funded institutions to return human remains and funerary objects to tribes through a process known as repatriation, and while most federal agencies and federally funded universities today are willing to participate, it hasn’t always been that way.

A memorial stone on the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s East Campus stands as testimony to a nearly three-year effort by tribal leaders to get the university to return remains to them. Many of the remains had been incinerated and spread on East Campus, and UNL leaders decided to erect a monument nearby.

Priscilla Grew, director of the NU State Museum, said she began working with a coalition of seven Michigan tribes in 2008 to return human remains and 27 funerary objects housed in the museum.

The tribes designated representatives of the Saginaw Chippewa to receive the remains and objects on their behalf.

“I’ve enjoyed working with the coalition up there,” Grew said. “Now they’ve been able to bring this to a conclusion.”

UNL has returned the remains of 1,849 individuals to tribes since 1998, she said.

The latest repatriation effort has roots in 1883, when a man named M.L. Eaton removed the remains of two Native people from graves near Midland, Mich. That same year, he took 27 funerary objects from different Native graves. The State Museum took possession of the remains and funerary objects in 1894.

According to a Feb. 17, 1894, obituary in the Fairbury Gazette, Martin L. Eaton was a Fairbury doctor and former mayor who had served as the Jefferson County coroner and an adjutant for the second regiment of the Nebraska National Guard. He died Feb. 12, 1894, of pneumonia at the age of 36.

Shawana said it was common practice for non-Native researchers to exhume the bodies and funerary objects at the time, often to study physical attributes including cranial capacity and femur length.

The late 19th century was an especially difficult time for the Saginaw Chippewa people as they struggled to adapt to the loss of hunting land and the decimation of their culture and language due to forced assimilation by the federal government, she said.

“We survived that,” she said. “Where we are today is really quite remarkable.”

The tribe has prospered partly due to a successful gaming enterprise and largely due to the determined efforts of tribal members to preserve their language and culture, Shawana said.

Saginaw Chippewa tribal members plan to host a brief ceremony at the State Museum Thursday morning, she said.

Once home, they plan to host a feast for their ancestors and then bury their remains in a cemetery the tribe has designated specifically for repatriated ancestors, she said.

“It’s an honor to work with our relatives, bring them home, feast them, put them back in the ground where they belong,” Shawana said. “Hopefully, they’ll never be disturbed again.”

Grace: Lakota woman celebrates a century of laughter, love, tears

By the Omaha World Herald.  Click here for original story.

The lines in Laura Galligo Brewer's face run deep, reflecting a century of living — much of it hard.

All the loss, starting with her mother, who died when Laura was just a child. Then, when Laura was a young mother, her husband and one of their children perished. She was barely 30, with five other mouths to feed.

And all the separation. She went to a boarding school when she was 8. Years later, she sent her own children there after she was widowed, so she could work.

There was the crushing poverty. And of course the second-class treatment: the hiding of her native Lakota language at school, the lowering of herself to prospective landlords in Omaha as she asked, “Do you rent to Indians?”

Yet look more closely at Laura Galligo Brewer's face. These deep outlines around her mouth, in her cheeks, above her eyes, are the imprints of laughter. Of near-constant smiling.

Hers isn't the face of suffering. For all the hardship she has endured, time and experience have carved joy.

“One time a woman told me, 'Don't think about the bad things that happened to you,' ” Laura says. “'Remember the good things.'”

And she has. Of her entry into this world on the banks of the White River in South Dakota, where her parents had gone fishing. Of learning the Lakota language. Her parents spoke Lakota when they wanted to have a private conservation in front of their children, who were raised speaking English in the 1920s.

Of riding around Pine Ridge on horseback; there were no cars on the reservation in those days. Of traveling with her grandparents by horse and wagon to Chadron, Neb., where they sold crafts and camped.

Of how the matron at the Oglala Community School at Pine Ridge praised her for her bed-making skills. Of how hard work, pluck and her father's buy-in to the controversial boarding school eased the pain of separation from her family.

Other kids cried. But not Laura. She was eager to learn.

And she did learn, at Indian schools in Pine Ridge, Oklahoma and Kansas, where she bounced, staying with relatives, getting jobs as a domestic in people's homes in Kansas City.

“I never did run away like some of the girls used to,” she said. “I wasn't afraid.”

She peeled potatoes, she cooked, she helped. And then as an older teenager, she returned to Pine Ridge, where such jobs were nonexistent. Who could afford paying a girl to help?

Laura Galligo still managed to find jobs here and there, finally landing at the reservation hospital, where she was a “Blue Girl,” which gave her invaluable nurse's aide training. She went to college for a while at Chadron State and then met Freddy Brewer, who had grown up on a farm on the outskirts of Pine Ridge.

They had met at a dance. Freddy served in the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Depression-era work-relief program, and became part-owner of a gas station.

They had a Catholic wedding. And then the babies came. Five sons: Tommy, Richard, Everett, Willard and Fred, whom everyone called “Budger.” The youngest was a daughter, Elena. They lived in Pine Ridge.

Then in 1943, her husband and son Richard, who was maybe 7, went fishing. And a hat fell into the spillway. And Richard went after it. And Fred went after Richard. They both drowned.

Everything changed.

Laura needed work. There was none at Pine Ridge.

With her older children at Indian boarding school, she took her two youngest kids wherever she could find jobs. This meant ranches in Montana and Wyoming. Then to a job caring for a priest's sister in Chicago.

They returned to Pine Ridge, but in the summer of 1954, Laura would leave that reservation forever.

She and Elena, who was by then 11, landed in Omaha, broke. The Salvation Army housed them until they could find their own apartment. Budger later joined them and graduated from the old Tech High. Elena graduated from the old Notre Dame Academy.

Laura got work as a nurse's aide at the old St. Joseph Hospital. A friend there got her a job at a hospital on the Winnebago Reservation north of Omaha. She worked as a licensed practical nurse for 13 years before retiring in 1976.

Then she cared for ailing relatives in Idaho and New Mexico.

Laura saw her older children on sporadic visits home to Pine Ridge whenever she could get there. Her children understood why she had left, and the family remained close despite the separation, granddaughter Teri Dameron said.

Later, Laura would see her grandchildren during extensive travels that took her throughout the United States and to Europe. A highlight was Italy. She often traveled with Elena, who lives in Omaha.

Elena's daughter, Teri Dameron, is devoted to her grandmother, visiting her daily at the Douglas County Health Center, where Laura has lived for four years.

Teri grew up in Omaha and runs a business here called Traditional Eagle Solutions, writing grants and serving as a consultant to Indian tribes.

Over the weekend, Teri organized a 100th birthday party for her grandmother that drew so many relatives from so many states that she needed to rent the firefighters union hall to fit everyone.

Teri knows her grandmother's stories and wants to keep them alive for generations like Taliyah's. Taliyah is Teri's 3-year-old granddaughter, a bouncy, long-haired girl who runs around the hospital delighting residents, especially her Unci.

“Unci” — pronounced OON-chee — is Lakota for grandmother. It's what Laura's family calls her. They had to as the brood grew from five children to 25 grandchildren to 75 great-grandchildren to 30 great-greats like Taliyah.

With so many grandmas, the clan needed a term for matriarch Laura. Unci it is.

Unci taught her granddaughters how to braid hair. She made their Indian dresses. She emphasized generosity, respect, the importance of family.

And now, in her twilight years, she is teaching something else.

Unci, Teri asks her, what are some of your lessons for us?

Laura thought about it.

“Help each other,” she said. “Remember the good.”

Great Plains Art Museum to host 2 youth art exhibitions

Released on 04/01/2013, at 2:00 AM

Office of University Communications
University of Nebraska–Lincoln

WHEN: Friday, Apr. 5, 2013, through Apr. 21, 2013

WHERE: Great Plains Art Museum, 1155 Q St., Hewit Place

Lincoln, Neb., April 1st, 2013 —

            The Great Plains Art Museum at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln will offer two exhibitions of artworks created by students in the Lincoln Public Schools Visual Arts Mentoring Program and Omaha Public Schools. The exhibitions run April 5-21 with a public reception from 5 to 7 p.m. April 5.

            "This is the Visual Arts Mentoring Program's 15th year, and our 10th year partnering with the Great Plains Art Museum for an exhibition venue," program facilitator Tina Spomer said. "It is very powerful for the young artists to create and direct their own work knowing it will hang in the professional atmosphere of the Great Plains Art Museum."

            The program invites applications from elementary school children gifted in the visual arts. Selected students are partnered with an artist mentor who works with the student two hours per week.

            This popular returning exhibition will be paired with artwork from Omaha Public School students, ages 8 to 18, who learned traditional teepee painting in the styles of the Omaha, Lakota and Ponca tribes. Artist Steven A. Tamayo led the workshop at the Therman Statum Studios in partnership with Tami Maldonado of the Omaha Public Schools Native American Indian Education Program, and sponsored by The Kaneko Foundation. Three full-sized painted canvas lodges will be on display with related artworks displayed within.

            "We're very excited about the opportunity to have our student's work on display at the museum," Tami Maldonado said. "This is a great time for them to be able to share their talents with the community. The purpose of our collaboration is to help our Native American youth expand their leadership and academic skills through developing a deeper understanding of their rich culture through the arts."

            "This is always a favorite exhibition," said Amber Mohr, curator of the museum. "Many of these students have participated in the program and been exhibited in earlier years, so I always enjoy the opportunity to see how each artist has developed.

            "The Great Plains Art Museum is extremely happy to be a small part of encouraging these talented young people. Not many artists already have a group exhibition on their resumes before graduating from elementary school."

            Collaborators would like to thank the following for their support and assistance: Jordan Menard, Josh Frazier Sr., Josh Frazier Jr., Nikki Maldonado, Diego Gil, Jaylen Grant, Katie Menard, Steven Menard, Thomas Menard, Wendy Menard, Andrea Montana, Timothy Robeck and Izzy Tamayo.

            The Great Plains Art Museum, 1155 Q St., Hewit Place, is open to the public 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and 1:30-5 p.m. Sundays (closed Mondays, holiday weekends and between exhibitions). There is no admission charge. For more information, telephone (402) 472-6220, e-mail gpac2@unl.edu or visithttp://www.unl.edu/plains/gallery/gallery.shtml

Two Doane Students Named 2013 Legislative Pages

BY 

MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS

January 28, 2013

Congratulations to School of Graduate and Professional Studies students Tobias Grant and Sean Miller. They have both been named 2013 Legislative Pages in Nebraska. Tobias Grant is an Omaha tribal member and past Nebraska Commission on Indian Affairs Chief Standing Bear Scholarship recipient. Sean Miller started his own non-profit organization, has a feature advocacy radio show, and was a youth mentor at the Malone Center.  Nebraska Legislative Pages are local college students employed by the legislature to respond to senators' requests for assistance on the legislative floor, answer incoming calls to the chamber and prepare for and assist with committee hearings.

Click here for original source.

Beat the stereotypes!

Graduate intern Khloe Keeler battles stereotypes.  How do you fight stereotypes?: