Poet and current Guggenheim Fellow, Joan Naviyuk Kane, teaches at the Minnesota North Woods Writing Conference in Bemidji…
And Treasure Island Resort & Casino Hosts Native American Heritage Night with the Saint Paul Saints at CHS Field in Saint Paul.
Transcript
Marie: This is Minnesota Native News, I’m Marie Rock.
Headlines: Coming up…:
Poet and current Guggenheim Fellow, Joan Naviyuk Kane, teaches at the Minnesota North Woods Writing Conference in Bemidji…
And Treasure Island Resort & Casino Hosts Native American Heritage Night with the Saint Paul Saints at CHS Field in Saint Paul.
Here is reporter Leah Lemm with these stories…
STORY #1 - Guggenheim Fellow, Joan Naviyuk Kane, teaches at the Minnesota North Woods Writing Conference.
REPORTER: I walked into a large, circular room with tall ceilings displaying flags of the United States and tribal communities of Minnesota.
The American Indian Resource Center at Bemidji State University is the location of the annual Minnesota North Woods Writing Conference, where people gather to share writing, listen to others work, and enjoy the north woods.
Sean Hill is the Conference Director for the Minnesota North Woods Writing Conference.
HILL: Every year, in the third week in June, we hold the conference, and the goal is to bring excellent teachers of writing, creative writing, to northern Minnesota.
REPORTER: This year, the group of excellent writers includes Joan Naviyuk Kane, whom Sean had met at a reading in Fairbanks, Alaska, and was immediately struck by her work and her presence.
Mathew Hawthorne is Conference Coordinator:
HAWTHORNE: Since we're in between three reservations here in Bemidji, we try to draw native writers and native participants.
REPORTER: Joan is Inupiaq with family from King Island and Mary’s Igloo, Alaska… and has earned several awards including the 2009 Whiting Writer’s Award… the 2013 Native Arts and Cultures Foundation National Artist Fellowship, a 2017 Lannan Foundation Residency Fellowship, and is a current Guggenheim Fellow in Poetry.
The Guggenheim is a highly selective fellowship for those who have proven themselves throughout their careers in scholarship… or the creative arts.
Joan made her way to Bemidji from Anchorage, Alaska to join the conference.
KANE: It feels really good to be in this space here, particularly in the American Indian Resource Center… and also to be in the same kind of boreal forest that I live in Anchorage. I feel this strange kind of almost lyric relationship to time and place that I'm coming.
REPORTER: Joan read on the second night of the conference, including poems from past works like “Cormorant Hunter’s Wife” and “Hyperboreal.” She recognized that the conference is an appropriate place to read new work.
KANE: I think a lot more of the new work, especially the prose type stuff is more of the projects I'm going to be working on in my Guggenheim year. Work that's a little bit more narrative than some of my earlier work. But I think that's kind of what I was reading tonight.
REPORTER:
Joan’s books include The Cormorant Hunter’s Wife, Hyperboreal, The Straits, Milk Black Carbon, and Sublingual.
STORY #2 - Treasure Island Resort & Casino Hosts Native American Heritage Night with the Saint Paul Saints at CHS Field.
REPORTER: Next, Prairie Island Indian Community, Treasure Island Resort and Casino and Saint Paul Saints Baseball team up to host Native American Heritage Night at CHS Field in Saint Paul.
According to the Saint Paul Saints press release, Native American Heritage Night was held to honor all Native Americans and to particularly remember Louis Sockalexis, a member of the Penobscot Indian tribe of Maine, who was the first Native, and first recognized minority, to play baseball in the National League.
Artist Marlena Myles sits at a table with buffalo skull cutouts as people trace the edges onto a tablecloth and decorate with colorful designs and positive words. Marlena mentions several aspects to Native American Heritage Night at CHS Field.
MYLES: Well we have our art activity, which is Buffalo Nation, which is something Keith Braveheart started at Northern Spark. And then we're having the little art market of Native art from the Center School students plus some of my art. And then we put up a bunch of Dakota signage and I know that the dancers from Prairie Island and coming down to perform as well.
REPORTER: The Dakota language signage included words for mustard, ketchup, bathroom, water, and other words normally found around the stadium.
Included in the festivities was member of the Minnesota House of Representatives and citizen of the White Earth Nation of Ojibwe, Peggy Flanagan, who sang the National Anthem.
For Minnesota Native News…. I’m Leah Lemm.