Native Speakers' Forum Friday:
Talk, Music and Building Your Own Canoe
HOUGHTON--Learn about building a birch-log canoe, hear from an exceptional
Native undergraduate, and experience a special brand of American music
at the Speakers' Forum, set for Friday, Nov. 1, in the Memorial Union
Ballroom at Michigan Technological University.
Steve Baranyaii [Ber-AHN-yay],
an Ojibwe and member of the Serpent River First Nations in Ontario, will
speak from 9:30 to 10 a.m. He is enrolled in the Business Administration
honors degree program at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ont. Baranyaii
is the junior national student representative to the American Indian Science
and Engineering Society.
From 11:15 a.m. to 12:15 p.m.,
Earl Otchingwanigan [OH-ching-ah-WAHN-i-gahn] will talk about building
a birch canoe. Otchingwanigan is a professor at Bemidji State University
in Minnesota and is a member of the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community, but
spent much of his youth on the Bad River Reservation in Wisconsin, where
many of his relatives still live, including two that assisted in the construction
of a canoe for his film, "Earl's Canoe." He is a well-recognized
linguist and recently co-authored a major dictionary on the Ojibwe language.
"Earl's Canoe" was recognized with a CINE Golden Eagle Award
in 1999 and was a finalist in the 2001 Athens International Film Festival.
Singer-songwriter Bill Miller,
one of the all-time great Native rock recording artists, will perform
from 1:15 to 2:30 p.m. He has appeared several times on Austin City Limits.
His Warner release, "The Red Road," is a mixture of traditional
and contemporary sounds, while his recent CD, "Raven in the Snow,"
"rocks while delivering a powerful message of identity and strength
against adversity," says Arlie Neskahi, of rainbowalker.net, a Web
page devoted to Native music.
The Speakers' Forum is held
in connection with the Spirit of the Harvest Powwow, which is set for
Saturday, Nov. 2, from 1 to 8:30 p.m. in Michigan Tech's Gates Tennis
Center.
The forum and the powwow are
sponsored by the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community and the following Michigan
Tech offices and organizations: the Presidential Commission on Diversity,
Educational Opportunity, the Native American Association and the local
chapter of the American Indian Science and Engineering Society.
For more information, contact
Lori Sherman at 487-2920, lasherma@mtu.edu.
10/25/02--MTN119
