"We did not think of the great open plains, the beautiful rolling hills, and winding streams with tangled growth as "wild". To us it was tame. Earth was bountiful and we were surrounded with the blessings of the Great Mystery."

Luther Standing Bear - Rosebud Sioux

Guardian of the Water Medicine

Guardian of the Water Medicine
Dale Auger

Dale Auger

Dale Auger: On Art, Blood and Kindred Spirits
by Terri Mason

Defining Dale Auger in one sentence is akin to releasing the colours of a diamond in one cut. It can’t be done. It’s the many facets that release a diamond’s true brilliance, as it is the many facets of Auger’s life, education, ancestry, experiences and beliefs that have shaped and polished his work into the internationally acclaimed and collected artist that he is today.

Born a Sakaw Cree from the Bigstone Cree Nation in northern Alberta, Auger’s education began as a young boy when his mother would take him to be with the elders. “I used to say to myself, ‘Why is she leaving me with these old people?’ – but today I see the reason; I was being taught in the old way.”

Auger’s respect for traditional teachings led him on a journey to study art, opening the door to a doctorate in education. He is a talented playwright, speaker and visual artist whose vividly coloured acrylics have captured the attention of collectors that reads like an international ‘Who’s Who’ spanning English to Hollywood royalty. The essence of his work is communication, and now Dr. Auger has come full circle, interpreting the life of his culture – from the everyday to the sacred - through the cross-cultural medium of art.

Read the rest here:

http://www.daleauger.com/printversionbio.cfm

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Film shot around Fond du Lac Reservation to debut in Cloquet

By: Ann Klefstad

A feature film freighted with the ghostly but real stories of hundreds of people and the hopes of healing even more, “Older than America,” will debut on Thursday at the Premier Theater in Cloquet, near where it was filmed on the Fond du Lac Reservation last winter.

The film sets several subplots swirling around a dark secret. Rain, the protagonist, is unable to commit to her police officer boyfriend, Johnny (Adam Beach). Rain’s Auntie Apple (Tantoo Cardinal) raised her because her mother was committed to a mental institution. Rain fears her mother’s madness in herself when she begins to see a figure from her dreams in real life.

At the center of all the plots lies an old Catholic boarding school. Everyone wants something from it or wants to keep something about it hidden: The Catholics want a cover-up, a geologist wants to investigate, a developer wants to build — and something in the school wants to be known.

Georgina Lightning, the film’s co-writer, director and lead actress spoke Monday of the sorrow, hopelessness and suicides that she grew up with on a reservation near Edmonton, Alberta. Much of this pain she attributed to the common experience in her parents’ generation of forcible attendance at Catholic boarding schools. Such schools were part of the attempt by government and church to suppress Indian culture in the name of assimilation.

Lightning’s own father experienced a school like this, so the subject is very close to her. And when she was younger and lived on her reservation in Canada, she worked at the youth center with kids of parents scarred by the same experience. After two of those children, 13 and 14, killed themselves during her time in Los Angeles studying film, she decided that she “couldn’t be in just any movie; some fun thing, some silly thing.”

Get the whole story here: http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/articles/index.cfm?id=63492&freebie_check&CFID=21859745&CFTOKEN=50543351&jsessionid=88307cd7e5b732363c34
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