Messages From The Drum Episode 1

September 2018 – What is the role of storytelling in Indian Country? As Messages from the Drum builds a platform for claiming the narrative this inaugural episode highlights four leaders and their compelling stories. Matika Lorraine Wilburis a member of the Swinomish and Tulalip tribes of the State of Washington where she was raised in a family of commercial fishermen. As an educator she experienced firsthand the lack of educational resources to teach indigenous intelligence and was dismayed the curriculum being taught did not provide Native youths with positive imagery and understanding. That was the catalyst behind her launching Project 562. Project 562 is Wilbur's fourth major project to document contemporary Indigenous peoples. She began traveling throughout the US with the goal of photographing members all US tribes on their tribal lands. She has traveled 250,000 miles documenting indigenous people. Elyssa Sierra Concha is from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota she is an educator and Lakota language speaker. Elyssa walks us through the most commonly discussed statistics that often are used to define Native American communities, and describes her personal experiences that bring the statistics to life. Nancy Marie Mithlo is a Chiricahua Apache woman who is an Assistant Professor of art history and American Indian studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she teaches courses on Native American film, fine arts, visual representations and museum theory. She talks in this selection about the role of media and public perception of American Indians.  Finally, Dr Cornel Pewewardy, Professor of Indigenous Nations Studies at Portland State University on the topic of Walk A Mile in My Redface.