Come and Play

The new kids' books are ready to be checked out. Thanks to all the community members who contributed to the matching funds for this grant.

The New Kids' Books Are Here

The books from the Libri Foundation grant, supported in part by your matching donations, have arrived. What could be better than 87 new children's books??

Jim is working on processing them. We'll let you know when they're ready to be handled, admired, and checked out. Maybe we should have an ice-cream social for them.

We also have some new (used) shelving on its way. And four of the six new computers are already installed. The keyboards work and everything. :-)

Peninsula Daily News

WooHoo!! We have subscribed to the Peninsula Daily News. It will be available on our newspaper shelves.

Salmon Links

• Billy Frank's new editoral, Northwest salmon, tribal cultures and treaty rights at risk from disappearing habitat
• Opinion piece in Crosscut by Will Atlas et al., about hatchery fish in the Elwha
• Story from the Seattle PI about Judge James Redden's rejection of the government's salmon recovery plan for the Columbia River. "Redden added that he doesn't think the government can meet the standards of the Endangered Species Act by habitat improvements alone, and it is time to consider new options, including removing some of the dams." Wow. (Another story about the decision.
• Editorial from Tom Bancroft of People for Puget Sound about the Redden decision.
• New York Times story about restoration on the Nisqually River.

• John Gussman's Farewell Lake Mills photographs.
  

Sherman Alexie News

The Richland (WA) School Board has un-banned Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. This is really pretty funny: at the time they had voted to ban the book, no one on the School Board had read it, and only one person on the advisory committee who recommended against the book had read it.

This bit of news came to us via Alexie's twitter account, which in turn points to his blog. The blog is very lively, including information about his schedule, discussion of developments in publishing and the media market (ebooks; the demise of Borders; the changes in Netflix; etc.).

New Books on Native Topics

In an article in Indian Country Today, Native author and legal scholar Marc Trahant recommended three books for "summer reading":

• In the Courts of the Conqueror: The 10 Worst Indian Law Cases Ever Decided by Walter Echo-Hawk;
• Roberta Ulrich’s American Indian Nations from Termination to Restoration, 1953-2006;
• and Alison Owings’ Indian Voices: Listening to Native Americans.

The Echo-Hawk title was already on our shopping list. We've added the other two.

Canoe Journey Articles and Photos

It's awfully quiet around here. It's not true that 'everybody' on their way to Swinomish, but it sure feels like it...

• NWIFC's photos of the canoe journey landing at Port Gamble
• Article from Indian Country Today on the Paddle to Swinomish
• Article from the Kitsap Sun.
• Undated photo taken at La Conner, we think it's 2010, fascinating close-up viewing technology.
• A blog posting about the landing at Port Townsend
• There's a lot of really cool photographs on Facebook, but we can't get to them from here...

Tlingit Canoe Landing at Hollywood Beach, Port Angeles, July 17, 2011 (click for larger image>

Alaska Language Map

There is an updated map of Alaska Native Languages. News story and link to the website with map, information about each culture, illustrations, etc. It's cool.

Native Daughters

Interesting website, a student project from the University of North Dakota: Past Present Future: Native Daughters, "stories, profiles and multimedia projects about a diverse group of Native American women."

Thank you to the mailinglist of the American Indian Library Association, and to the Santa Ysabel Virtual Tribal Library for pointing out this beautifully-made website.

A Canoe Story

A 500-year old canoe has been found on Prince of Wales Island in Southeast Alaska. Think about that while we wait for the 2011 Canoe Journey to arrive. Landing will be around 1 PM on Sunday, down at Hollywood Beach.

The Missing Shortcut

Every weekday the summer food program serves lunches in the Education Building at 11AM, and at the Upper at 12 noon. It really seems that there should be a tram, or a little bridge, or something, to get straight from A to B, and then back again. Or maybe we should be birds, carrying those lunch bags in our talons, straight across the river valley...

Driving Route from the Tribal Center to the Gathering Place (click for larger image)

Lists, We Love Lists

There's a really interesting post on the PaperTigers blog about children's books written by or about contemporary Native Americans. The author, Nancy Bo Flood, teaches at Diné Navajo College in Tuba City, Arizona, and she has wonderful lists of titles she recommends.

We already have a lot of these books, and will put the rest on our ever-growing, never-executed shopping list.

Summer Food Program

Lunches for kids available in the Education Department from 11AM to 11:30 AM, and at the Gathering Place at the Upper Housing Area from 12noon to 12:30.

Parking Lot for Today's Lunch

Absolutely True Diary...

The Literacy Council has given us a whole bunch of copies of Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, and we are giving them away to middle-school, high-school and adult students. Come by the library and ask for one if you don't already have it.

... :-)

Canoe Route Map and Landing Schedule

The landing schedule map for the Paddle to Swinomish has been posted. It's really complicated this year.

(Click for larger image...)

Doing Research : Databases and Information Sources : Free ;-)

Doing research at home or in the computer lab is easy as 1-2-3:

1. The Washington State Library has paid for access to magazine and newspaper databases, which you can use either in the computer lab or on your home computer, logging in with Elwha's own login.

• ProQuest includes full text of national and northwest newpaper articles; general magazines; business news, Ethnic NewsWatch, and many other resources. To access Proquest go to http://proquest.umi.com/login Call the library for the login and password 452-8471x122, or stop by and pick up a handout. (We aren't supposed to just publish it on the web, so can't show it here.)
• Culturegrams gives information about 200 countries, the 50 states, and Canada’s provinces. To access Culturegrams go to http://online.culturegrams.com/ Call the library for the login and password, or stop by to pick up a handout.

2.The public library in town has an amazing array of databases: magazines and newspapers, auto and small engine repair, genealogy, business info, homework help, and more. Their Articles and Databases page gets you started. You will need a library card to access them at home (but it's easy to get one), or can get them at the library in town.

3. Peninsula College gives you access to an even vaster array of resources, including programs for learning languages, historical documents, electronic books, academic periodicals, etc etc. You can see the full list, but will then need a student ID to log in from home. They are available for free use to all community members from computers inside the Peninsula College Library; so if you find a resource on the list that you need, you can use it without being a student; just head for the college library.

If You Have a VCR...

We have mounds of recently donated VHS tapes. Not necessarily very good ones, you know, but they are available for checkout. Here are a few of the covers:

Come by and take a look at the DVD and VHS shelves...

News Notes from the Web

The Elwha fish hatchery in the news.

New Squamish dictionary in the news.

Senate committee hearing about repatriation of remains.

Indian Country Today has an enticing story about the Quileute Tribe's Perfect Pacific Coastline, and a story about a Native American Youth Language Fair.

The National Museum of the American Indian has a blog.

The Yakama Indian Nation has asked that non-treaty fishing on the Columbia River be limited to downstream of I-205 due to low salmon numbers in the river.

Indian Country in the News

...by which we don't mean the re-formatted news source Indian Country Today (now much less useful both in print and online), but just, what's going on out there.

• The latest step in the run-up to dam removal: Peninsula Daily News reports Lake Aldwell behind Elwha Dam begins its descent
• The Southern Ute Tribe (CO) has opened a new Museum and Cultural Center. Story on NPR.
• Nice story at rural newsmagazine, The Daily Yonder, about a growing trend for non-Indians choosing tribal colleges. The story doesn't cite any actual data.
• A program in Oklahoma designed to give participants the tools they need to help revitalize American Indian languages that are endangered has received a major grant. This is particularly interesting in that the program is based at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History and the funding came from the National Science Foundation. Huh?
• Nice picture story in the Vancouver Observer of a memorial powwow at the Vancouver Aboriginal Friendship Center.
• American Indian Report has a story about repatriation of Native American remains. The story is based on a report from the Government Accountability Office entitled Smithsonian Institution: Much Work Still Needed to Identify and Repatriate Indian Human Remains and Objects. (Don't use the link in the story to get to the report, it's broken. Use link in previous sentence.)

The network is running so slow I'm going to stop here. Maybe more later. :-{

Dams and Maps

Everything is on track for a September 17th start for the actual removal of the Elwha dams. It's in the news almost daily. May 19th's story in the Peninsula Daily News was about the possibility that President Obama will come for the event. The rest of this post is about maps (except to mention that we have copies of the Smithsonian volume available in the library...)

This is a map from Handbook of North American Indians: Volume 7—Northwest Coast, published by Smithsonian Institution Press, reproduced here with permission.

"Fig. 1. Territories and principal villages of the Central Coast Salish in the early 19th century" from page 454 (Click for larger image.)

Closeup View of Klallam Territory from map above (Click for larger image.)

This map comes from the United States Geological Survey's Elwha River Sediment Monitoring page, showing the Elwha River watershed and the Elwha coastal drift cell.

NorthWest S'Klallam Villages. Map prepared by Randall E. McCoy, Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe

This is a map of the Elwha River Watershed, showing the location of the dams and of the present day Lower Elwha Klallam Reservation (the small gray patch at the top of the map). It comes from ElwhaBiodiversity.org at the University of Washington.

Have a Movie Night

There are a bunch of new-to-us DVDs. Maybe you've been waiting to see one of these:

News Notes from the Web

Here are some stories at interest:

• The Yurok Tribe doubles its land base with purchase of a community forest reserve
• King5-V has a story about Nisqually's river delta restoration project
• There's a lot of interesting material on Matthew Sakiestewa Gilbert's blog, Beyond the Mesas, including a 1982 video about Tewa-Hopi artist Dan Namingha, Seeking Center in Two Worlds
• Peninsula Daily News had a updated story about the Quileute's land trade to move tribal buildings out of the tsunami zone
• Indian Country Today has a story about new legislation worked on by the state and the Makah Tribe requiring oil spill contingency planning from tanker companies entering the Strait of Juan de Fuca

Thanks, Kids

During the 2011 School District Potlatch, the kids attending the event gave the library around a hundred books. We have finished processing them, and here is a list of all the titles. Below is an image of about half the covers (click to see them a little larger). Good looking bunch of books, no? Thank you very much, kids.

Beautiful Photos

The View from Indian Country project has added some new material. The photos from Quinault are especially wonderful, especially the canoe heading out... The ones from Confederated Salish & Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Reservation are also terrific. In fact, nearly all of them are.

News Off the Web

Here are some interesting links:

• Indian Country Today has an article about a project to combine scientific knowledge and Inuit cultural knowledge in mapping the sea ice off Baffin Island. The project, Inuit siku (sea ice) Atlas, is complicated and beautiful.
• A bill has been introduced in the House by Representative Norm Dicks and in the Senate by Senator Maria Cantell, regarding land transfers from Olympic National Park to enable the Quileute to move the school and senior center and certain other buidings up out of the tsunami zone. This is a process which began long before the recent tsunami, and events have made its importance clear. There are news stories (1) (2)(3) (4) (map), and the text of the bill is online. (Go to http://thomas.loc.gov/ and search for bill# HR 1162.) The tribe has posted a video Quileute Tribe Tsunami Informational Video 2011 about their location and the dangers of a substantial tsunami.
• The new Education Director of the Crow Tribe is making language revitalization her priority, beginning with their day care and Headstart classes.
• TheNative Appropriations blog has an interesting entry about Edward Curtis's photographs.
• The Swinomish tribe has posted a video about their Nearshore Beach Survey work.
• The New York Times has published a prominent review of Richard Kluger's book about Chief Leschi and the Nisqually, The Bitter Waters of Medicine Creek: A Tragic Clash Between White and Native America. It's already on our shopping list.

Making a Wish List

We hope to be able to order some materials for the library soon. There will be new DVDs, some cookbooks, some general good reading (Brad Melzer's new title, the "Girl Who" books, Jean Auel's new title:

    

some new Native related titles (and some others we missed long the way)

books for little kids and for high school age

AND whatever you might suggest.

Ple-e-e-ase let us know what else should go on the wish list.

Plateau Peoples' Web Portal

Five of Washington's tribes are working together with Washington State University to make digitized cultural materials available in the Plateau People's Web Portal. The Coeur d'Alene, Colville, Spokane, Umatilla, and Yakama are each in charge of what materials are available to public access, and what materials remain private to the tribe. As the website says, "The materials in the portal have been chosen and curated by the tribes. Tribal administrators, working with their tribal governments, have provided information and their own additional materials to the portal as a means of expanding and extending the archival record."

There's a detailed conference presentation, Digital Repatriation, Reciprocal Curation and the Ethics of Circulating Native Knowledge in the Plateau Region, about how this project deals with issues of access to and control of Cultural Knowledge.

House of Seven Generations

Our cousins down the shore, the Jamestown S'Klallam Tribe, have unveiled the digitization project they have been working on. Their House of Seven Generations online museum, built with the help an Institute of Museum and Library Services Native American Enhancement Grant, has documents, photographs, and pictures of artifacts.The display of peoples' family photographs is particularly wonderful.

Wave

Lower Elwha is right down here by the Strait. The tsunami warning siren is on poles behind the shop, right in the central area, and is tested at noon on the first Monday of every month.

According to the Peninsula Daily News, the tsunami triggered by the 03/11 earthquake in Japan brought a 1.6 foot surge to La Push, and half a foot to Port Angeles harbor. The tribe has received an all-clear, and the Emergency Operations Center has shut down. Coast-wide we are still under a National Weather Service tsunami advisory, and according to the advisory the surge in the Port Angeles harbor was 1.3 feet. In this case I'd tend to believe the local paper.

Remarkable visualization of wave height, from NOAA.

Working on a Grant Request

We are applying to the Libri Foundation, a nationwide non-profit organization which donates new, quality, hardcover children's books to small, rural public libraries in the United States through its BOOKS FOR CHILDREN program.

The Foundation wants us to work with our own community because they believe in community involvement and want to encourage and reward local support of libraries. The community can contribute from $50 to $350 which the Foundation matches on a 2-to-1 ratio. Thus, a library can receive up to $1,050 worth of new, quality, hardcover children's books through the Foundation's BOOKS FOR CHILDREN program for a match of only $350.

Three years ago we received this grant with a match from the Paul J. Allen Foundation. This year we are asking that Staff and Community members consider donating as little as $1 towards our goal of $350. It will truly be a project with Community Involvement! We sent out an all-staff email this morning and have already received $150.00!! Wow. Only $200 to go.

Here are some of the books we received from Libri three years ago. It's sure worth doing again: