Indian event expected to attract scholars, elders
Article published Apr 17, 2005
By ERIC NEWH0USE
Tribune Projects Editor
A wealth of Native American wisdom will close out the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial here in July.
Known as the "Convocation of Indian Nations: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow," the event could be the largest such gathering of scholars and elders in decades.
The experts will examine the fate of Indians since the Lewis and Clark Expediton, with lectures, panel discussions and keynote speeches, from July 1-3 at the University of Great Falls.
"Forty years ago, there was a 'State of the Nations' convocation held in Chicago, but there's never been another since — until now, at the University of Great Falls," said Jane Weber, executive director of the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center.
"This is shaping into a major national symposium for Native Americans," she said.
About 50 speakers have been invited, and more than 30 already have accepted, organizers said.
Spearheading the event is George Horse Capture, who recently moved to Great Falls after retiring as senior curator for the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.
"Working at a national museum gave me an advantage," he said last week. "Many of these people walked through our doors, and I was able to meet them."
Among the speakers is former U.S. Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell of Colorado, of the Northern Cheyenne tribe.
Another is Commander John Herrington, an astronaut who is Chickasaw.
"I got to meet him," said Horse Capture. "He presented us with an eagle feather and flute that he took into space."
Other invited speakers include:
Tex Hall, chairman of the National Congress of American Indians;
Billy Mills, an Oglala Sioux who won an Olympic gold medal;
and Mark Trahant, a Shoshone-Bannock who edits the editorial page for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
"This is not a regional conference," said Dwayne Champagne, a member of the Native Nations Law and Policy Center at UCLA who is working to organize the event with Horse Capture.
"It's an effort to speak to Native American issues across the country," he said.
It's appropriate to link such a conference to the Lewis and Clark bicentennial since Indians played such a large part in the expedition's success, he added.
"Now we're interested in seeing what the past two centuries have done in Indian country," said Champagne, former director of Native American studies at UCLA.
It's been a discouraging period in Indian history, Horse Capture noted.
"They changed the structure of our society that had been in place for thousands and thousands of years," he said. "And we never seem to come out of these things too good."
Organizers have tried to pull together a comprehensive group of speakers to discuss all aspects of Indian life today, said Champagne.
Scholars from New York to California and points between are on the list of panelists and speakers. Among the planned topics are legislation, health and medicine, environment, higher education, language, tribal membership and recognition, repatriation, the military, writing and the press.
"We want to talk among ourselves," said Champagne. "But we also want to speak to the general public about Indian country and Indians, which are less well understood."
Most people think of Indians though a stereotype of a century ago, said Horse Capture.
"We're like a Western painting where all the Indians were gone by about 1900," he added.
Scholars will be asked to submit original research papers that can form the basis of their presentations and then be published.
"We'll also look to record and publish everything so that people can know us: our economy, our laws, our demographics and our culture," Horse Capture said.
The symposium is operating on grants of $30,000 from the National Park Service and $25,000 from QWest, as well as a number of in-kind donations, said Peggy Bourne, executive director of "Explore the Big Sky," the National Signature Event commemorating the expedition's Bicentennial.
Since no other National Signature Event has focused on the status of Indians today, Great Falls will be in the vanguard, Horse Capture said.
It's an enormously ambitious project for any city, much less Great Falls, said Weber, of the Interpretive Center.
Chandler Jackson, director of the Reed Library at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colo., agreed.
"I can't believe the people that George and Dwayne Champagne have recruited," said Jackson, who also is a former library director for UGF.
"This is really George's brainstorm," he added. "The rest of us are just trying to keep up with him."
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Last updated on April 23, 2005