Native American Month 2012

Dance

Jingle Dress - I am a Jingle Dress Dancer.  I grew up with an older woman teaching me.  I started by Fancy Dancing/Shawl dancing.

The Gathering of Nations has some links for the "contest" style of dancing.
Indian Country Today had a video featuring Fancy Shawl and Jingle Dress.

There are a variety of links for contemporary style and old style dancing.  There are some other links for the traditional powwows.

Minnesota Historical Society - Ticanaga or cradleboard picture.  Methinks I posted a picture of one at some point in the recent past.  I linked this one to show items hanging from the headbar.

Here is a link to poet, Al Hunter's website.  He has published three books, "Beautiful Razor: Love Poems & Other Lies," released this year by Kegadonce Press. "Spirit Horses" and "The Recklessness of Love: Dreams & Regrets."  Listen to "The Diet" from his latest book.

I had hoped to post more links for this month.  Still about 10,000 words short of where I wanted to be with my NaNoWriMo novel.  Forgot how busy it gets when Halloween starts.  I have worked on the synopsis, filling in the story I wanted to write.

One thing I'd like to caution anybody who tried one of the tips I posted here and there on my wanders in, near and through various sites on the net: If you use a family tree program to track your characters, do not, I repeat, do not name the in-between generations with the same names.  My stories are widely separated in centuries.  I foolishly switched between first and middle names from one generation to the next, just so I could figure out how many generations as this was a requirement for one of my characters.

Hmmm.  Now, I spent the better part of November writing about someone who was in the wrong century for the storyline I had my heart set on.  Alas, my whole timing was made clear to me when I looked up solar and lunar eclipses.  After figuring out how to read the tables, math and making sure an eclipse would be seen or at least felt, I discovered that I had to move two different characters in my tree program.  Which, of course, threw the program out of whack.  And then I had to make sure all my notes on the characters transferred and....  I feel like I could be one of those cartoon characters that throw the whole kit and caboodle out the window and then, magically, have it brought back in good working order bopping me on the head. Well, if wishes were dollars, I'd be able to...I don't know what.  Have a lot of dollars, most likely.  Ahh well, back to the writing board.