J Pat Carter__Life is Beautiful
J Pat Carter
The First Americans Dia de los Muertos Imagine sessions Street sessions Oklahoma's vanishing animals - renaissance Birding - small images of beauty Animals - life in the wild
American Indian Expo - Anadarko, Oklahoma. A clash of cultures. Indigenous People Day To Native Americans, dance is a form of awe-inspiring storytelling that honors their culture, departed ancestors, and more. Most dances are regionally or tribally specific. There are hundreds of them, with variations existing from tribe to tribe. raditional dances commonly take place in an open field, around a blazing fire or central drum, or in a long structure, such as a longhouse. The steps mimic the movement of people or animals or symbolize simple gestures, whether thats expressing prayer, victory, or thanks A White Mountain, New Mexico, Apache Crown Dancer dances the scared dance tradition. Mountain Spirits taught the Apaches the dance as a means of healing. Two Fort Sill Apache youths, one blind, the other crippled, were left in a mountain cave after their tribe was attacked. After several days, fearing death, a voice told them to build a fire and then jump over it. The voice said they would be healed and saved. The Fire Dance became the dance of the mountain spirit. Stomp Dance. The songs are typically performed in call and response form. The dancers circle the fire in counterclockwise direction with slow, stomping steps set to the rhythm created by the women stomping with their shell shakers. During a battle, Kiowa warriors often set fires around their enemies. Their legs turned black as they walked through the smoke. Members of the Kiowa's tribe Black Leggings society at the annual Veterans Days ceremony. A member of the Cheyenne Arapaho tribe observes a moment of silence during the Massacre Memorial Ceremony to honor Indians killed by General Custer, as he made his way to the Little Big Horn battle. "Remember our Missing" ceremony in Oklahoma City. This is a silent genocide. Indigenous women are murdered at a rate 10 times higher than the national average. There is widespread anger and sadness in First Nations communities. Sisters, wives, mothers, and daughters are gone from their families without clear answers. There are families whose loved ones are missingbabies growing up without mothers, mothers without daughters, and grandmothers without granddaughters. When we talk about the missing Native women, we are not talking about statistics. We are talking about our aunties, our moms, our sisters. We are talking about the center of our world. Hanna Harris would have turned 30 on May 5, 2022 had she lived. Instead, thousands of Native Americans observed Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons Awareness Day. Built in1903, the Concho Indian Boarding School served the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes. Many of them never went home. Oklahoma - which had the most indigenous boarding schools - 79 schools. The spirits of generations of children, many unnamed, are buried on the grounds of boarding schools, lost and endlessly traveling the earth in search of peace. "Sometimes we hear the voices of children playing there" Nex Benedict was nonbinary. There are reports Benedict was two-spirit. 2SLGBTQ includes Two Spirit people, an umbrella term used to describe a third gender in Indigenous communities. Benedict died one day after a "physical altercation" with classmates in their high school bathroom. A medical report said that Benedict died of suicide. The death has been a painful reminder of the increased vulnerability of the LGBTRQ+ community. Since 2022, Oklahoma has been at the forefront of a wave of anti-trans legislation. Oklahoma has introduced more than 50 anti-LBGTQ+ pieces of legislation this year. Community leaders said "we need lawmakers to know we are past of Oklahoma". "Nex was part of Oklahoma too. It's time they hear us - we are not going to be silent". Stickball is considered the oldest team sport in North America. The first recorded game was not until the mid 17th century. There are teams for kids, women, men and mixed teams. Women can tackle men but men can not tackle women. Stickball is the "little brother" to war. Traditional stickball games were, sometimes, major events that could last days with up to 1000 men from opposing villages playing. The Pima Reservation, south of Phoenix, has one of the highest rates of diabetes in the world. Nearly half the adults have diabetes. The Pimas represent the extreme of an epidemic sweeping Indian communities. About 9% of American Indians have diabetes - three times higher the rate for white people. "Imagine if your mom had diabetes, your dad had diabetes, your grandparents had diabetes". It is not uncommon to find diabetes in three year old children. In the past Indians were poked and prodded in pursuit of a cause. In recent years the focus began to shift from treating the sick and burying the dead to trying to prevent diabetes. Educators are teaching the basics of healthy living - if they are healthy and eat right, they live longer. Researchers report that people became heavier. Their bodies adapted to store fat. And they became fat. Another factor is the shift in diet that occurred after World War II with the onset of government commodity programs and fast foods. Traditional foods such as home grown squash and corn were replaced with fried and processed foods high in sugar and fat. By the mid 1980s, researchers suspected diet and exercise could help to prevent diabetes. . For the first time, there was evidence that changing lifestyle is an effective means of prevention. To some diabetes is a bigger problem than cigarettes, killing more people. "My sister lived big, ate big and died big"
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