Charlotte Black Elk cringes when she thinks of how her father was beaten as a child for speaking his native Lakota language in the “white” schools. As a girl, she was ridiculed for using her people’s original tongue.
But now, Black Elk speaks Lakota freely. To abstain would be to deny her history, she says.
“I can’t not speak it,” said Black Elk, 45. “Lakota is who I am.”
Joanne Shenandoah, a critically acclaimed Native American singer and composer, feels the same way about her Oneida and Onandaga roots.
“My family always taught me that it was a great honor to be Indian,” said Shenandoah of upstate New York. “All I sing and write about is native.”
It’s strong ties like these that landed Black Elk and Shenandoah — along with 11 other Native American and Hawaiian women — in a slick new poster campaign called “Women of Hope.”
The posters are being distributed to reservations, schools, colleges and libraries across the country as a way of spotlighting contributions native women have made to their people and society.
“We don’t hear much about these women, and there are many more like them,” said Moe Foner, a New York City union activist who developed the campaign. “Yet, they’ve given us so much.”
These posters are part of a series honoring minority women, produced by Bread and Roses, the cultural arm of the National Health and Human Services Employees Union, which represents mostly minority women who work in New York’s health-care industry.
Foner, executive director of Bread and Roses, started the project several years ago following visits he made to some U.S. schools. While many school lessons focused on African-American men, he discovered, few noted the achievements of black women.
“I was appalled,” said Foner. “There just wasn’t a lot of information out there.”
So Foner pondered for a while and came up with an idea. He would hire someone to photograph 12 strong black women and turn their pictures into eye-catching posters, similar to the way photographer Brian Lanker turned his shots of African-American women into the popular coffee table book “I Dream a World.”
The idea caught on.
Soon, Foner was fielding requests for the poster sets from the New York City subway system, which plastered them inside the train cars, and from teachers, parents, museums and libraries around the country. So far, hundreds of the sets have been distributed, and a teachers’ guide was developed.
The campaign was so popular Foner did another one featuring inspirational Latina women. Now, comes the native campaign, which is also getting rave reviews. Another campaign will feature Asian women.
Maggie Bertin, deputy director of the group raising money for the planned National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, said these posters will be useful in helping people to understand the tenacity of native and Hawaiian women.
“It’s a wonderful way to educate people about the contributions of native women,” said Bertin. “For so long, there stories have gone untold.”
Stories like that of Lori Arviso Alvord, a Navajo from New Mexico and the first woman in her tribe to become a surgeon. Alvord, a graduate of Stanford University Medical School, advocates the use of medicine men and traditional Navajo songs to treat the ill in her work at the Gallup Indian Medical Center in New Mexico.
And there’s Wilma Mankiller, former principal chief of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma and the first woman to lead her tribe. Now an author and lecturer, Mankiller is credited with tripling her tribe’s membership, doubling its annual budget to $90 million and raising the overall visibility of her people.
Black Elk, a native of Pine Ridge in South Dakota, she said she was surprised to be chosen a part of the “Women of Hope” campaign.
“I felt honored,” said Black Elk. “I didn’t think I had done anything remarkable.
That’s not what the selection committee at Bread and Roses thought.
Black Elk has long fought to improve the quality of life on her reservation, where unemployment hovers around 85 percent and families still live without running water and electricity. She has also led the fight among Indians to have the historic Black Hills in South Dakota returned to her people.
But mostly, Black Elk was picked because of her devotion to her culture. Where many Indians have stopped speaking or never learned their native languages, Black Elk uses hers as a way to hold on to the Lakota tradition.
“Our history is who we are,” said Black Elk. “To forget, is not to belong.”
PORTRAITS OF `HOPE’
The Native American “Women of Hope” campaign features:
– Charlotte Black Elk, an Oglala Lakota Indian from South Dakota. A spiritual leader, she is known for her creative storytelling and commitment to traditional ceremonies and cultural practices.
– Wilma Mankiller, a Cherokee from Oklahoma. In 1987 she made history by being elected the first female principal chief of her tribe. Now retired from that post, she spends her time writing and lecturing.
– Joanne Shenandoah, an Oneida from New York, is a singer and songwriter. She uses native chants in her music and has won numerous awards.
– Juane Quick-to-See Smith, a Flathead Salish Indian from Montana, whose traditional and contemporary paintings are a part of numerous collections in the United States and Europe.
– Rosita Worl, a Tlingit Indian from Alaska. She is a research anthropologist for her tribe and a professor of anthropology at the University of Alaska. Worl also founded an Alaskan native newspaper.
– Lori Arviso Alvord, a Navajo, and the first woman from her tribe to become a surgeon, operates the Gallup Indian Medical Center in New Mexico. She incorporates medicine men and traditional Navajo songs in her hospital environment.
– Muriel Miguel, a Kuna/Rappahannock Indian, who grew up in New York City. An actress and director, she runs the Spiderwoman Theater, a feminist group she helped start 20 years ago.
– Carrie and Mary Dann, sisters from the Shoshone tribe in Nevada, who have spent years battling the federal government to preserve their 24 million-acre homeland with its miles of mountains, streams and wide open spaces.
– Joy Harjo, a poet and musician from the Muskogee Nation in Oklahoma. She was selected for writing about tribal losses and survival.
– Pualani Kanahele, a Hawaiian teacher, historian and mother who works to keep her heritage alive through her school lessons and animated storytelling.
– Winona LaDuke, an Anishinaabe Indian from the White Earth reservation in Minnesota. She graduated from Harvard and went on to become a political and environmental activist working to recover reservation lands for her tribe and others.
– Janine Pease-Pretty on Top, a Crow Indian from Montana. She is president of Little Big Horn College, a tribal school she created in 1982.
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To order the Native American and Hawaiian, African-American and Latina Women of Hope poster sets, write to the Bread and Roses Cultural Project Inc. 330 West 42nd St., New York, N.Y. 10036. Or call 212-631-4565.
