The Boiled Down Juice

Social Justice educational publishers and organizations Rethinking Schools and Teaching for Change have published a middle and high school history curriculum based on Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States. A copy is available for free download here. To download a free copy you must agree to respond to a survey and provide feedback after completing the book. You need not be a middle or high school teacher to download a copy.
Read the rest of this entry »

This very important film was produced out of Appalshop’s hiphop radio program, Holler to the Hood.
The film synopsis reads:

Up the Ridge is a one-hour television documentary produced by Nick Szuberla and Amelia Kirby. In 1999 Szuberla and Kirby were volunteer DJ’s for the Appalachian region’s only hip-hop radio program in Whitesburg, KY when they received hundreds of letters from inmates transferred into nearby Wallens Ridge, the region’s newest prison built to prop up the shrinking coal economy. The letters described human rights violations and racial tension between staff and inmates. Filming began that year and, though the lens of Wallens Ridge State Prison, the program offers viewers an in-depth look at the United States prison industry and the social impact of moving hundreds of thousands of inner-city minority offenders to distant rural outposts. The film explores competing political agendas that align government policy with human rights violations, and political expediencies that bring communities into racial and cultural conflict with tragic consequences. Connections exist, in both practice and ideology, between human rights violations in Abu Ghraib and physical and sexual abuse recorded in American prisons.
Read the rest of this entry »

I recently saw this exhibit at the National Museum of the American Indian in D.C. The artist, Nora Naranjo-Morse, who is a Santa Clara Pueblo, is the first Native American woman to make an outdoor sculpture in D.C. What amazed me most about these beautiful sculptures is they will eventually be worn away by the wind and rain, thus purposefully eroding over time.
You can listen to the podcasts about this exhibit here.
Read the rest of this entry »

Just the other day my friend Dr. Kristin Dowell, an anthropologist who works with Native American communities, suggested I look into a project called Native Seeds, a seed bank and cultural memory bank based in the southwest. It am so excited about the information that I had to post about it.
Native Seeds

Started in 1983, this organization was one of the founders of RAFT (Renewing America’s Food Traditions ), and safegaurds seeds native to Native American communities in the southwest. What’s even more amazing is not only do they safegaurd the seeds, they also maintain what they refer to as a Cultural Memory Bank. Their website explains it this way:
“In the late 1990s, NS/S undertook to expand our seed bank efforts to include a cultural component, integrating cultural information – the agricultural practices, stories, songs, and recipes associated with specific crops in the seed bank – with our existing database of collection information. In effect, we would combine the geneticist’s concern for conserving unique traits of a crop with a folklorist’s concern for conserving oral history about the crop.”
Read the rest of this entry »

(the links for the seed shop and the foodbank’s blog can be found at the bottom of this post).

I am learning more everyday about the importance of eating locally grown food, especially food grown from heirloom seeds (a catchall term for seeds that have not been genetically modified). A few recent conversations with a close friend who is involved with Slow Foods and the Fayetteville Farmers Market reminded me about how I have been wanting to post some information about a great place to get heirloom seeds in Arkansas. Read the rest of this entry »

This month religious and human rights groups across the nation are drawing attention to the immoral nature of torture and sending a message to the president that the American people do not support torture.

While listening to a recent radio segment on Air America’s State of Belief (one of my new favorite radio shows), I heard about the National Religious Campaign to End Torture. This month churches around the nation are hanging banners that announce their belief that torture is not a political issue but a moral issue.

For more information or to order a banner for your organization, visit their site:
National Religious Campaign to End Torture.

The intersection of faith and social justice is particularly interesting on both a very personal gut level and on a folkloric one as well.
I am curious–from a folklore and belief perspective, what would Don Yoder and Primiano make of this campaign and this larger intersection between belief and action toward political change?

In conducting some preliminary research about Post Office Murals in Arkansas, I came across this helpful resource:

Arkansas Post Office Mural Project

The webpage is currently under construction, but still contains helpful information. I discovered that the Dardanelle post office mural was created by an artist who was originally from Armenia.

This mural plays important role in my life. I can remember my mother pointing out the artwork to me when I was a small child and telling me about my grandparents (her parents) who, just like the people in the mural, had picked cotton in the Cardon Bottoms.

I am currently beginning preparatory work for a radio piece about Dardanelle’s mural and what it means to those who live here. I am in search of personal stories and any deep background information that might be related. If you have any ideas, comments, suggestions, please let me know!

I will be updating this entry as the research continues.

See also:
“Off the Wall: New Deal Post Office Murals” by Patricia Raynorhttp://www.postalmuseum.si.edu/resources/6a2q_postalmurals.html

Democracy Now! aired an amazing program today with an interview with Utah Phillips from four years ago. This interview is wonderful.

He talks about being sent to Korea, the importance of feminism, becoming a pacifist, the importance of learning from elders, his inspirations and activists who inspire him, and the importance of maintaining hope. Really, you need to hear this. It’s wonderful.

Listen Here.

This radio program is an edited version of a talk by Harjap Grewal, an organizer with the Canadian-based group, “No One is Illegal.”
He discusses the ways in which NAFTA, the state sanctioned guest worker programs, and cooperations put profit before human rights and engage in a new form of Indentured labor and slavery. Likewise, he explores the legacy of colonialization and racialization of immigrants that is still very much with us today.

He describes immigration as a “political act,” and discusses not only immigration stories in the U.S. and Canada, but also the situation in Spain where over 6,000 northern African immigrants died last year trying to make the journey.

Most importantly he provides examples of ways to resist and provides examples of resistance from Vancouver.

The only problem is that there is some music playing in the background that can be very distracting. I can’t figure out why it’s there.

Listen Here.

More about the program Making Contact

Sign up for Making Contact Podcasts.

Barre Toelken always talks about the “So What? Question.” So…Some questions for folklorists and ethnographers that come to mind—
Read the rest of this entry »

A thoughtful and important essay from a 21 year old voter from Whitesburg.
Listen.