£1000 Prize for best debut collection of young poet, free to enter
Eyewear Publishing announces its inaugural (2012) THE MELITA HUME PRIZE FOR POETRY. This will be an award of £1,000 and a publishing deal for the best first full collection (i.e. debut) of a young poet writing in the English language born in 1980 or later. The book will be published in a hard cover format, and launched in early 2013, or sooner, in London.
The aim of this prize is to support younger emerging writers during difficult economic times, with a quality publication in England and a helpful amount of money which can assist them in their studies, travel or accommodation.
This contest is open to any one of the requisite age, anywhere in the world. The submission must be at least 40 poems long, or 50 pages, whichever comes first. Maximum 60 poems, and 80 pages. IT IS FREE TO ENTER. Todd Swift will be the judge. THE DEADLINE HAS BEEN EXTENDED TO MAY 1ST, 2012.
Please post your submissions to the address below:
Eyewear Publishing Suite 38 19-21 Crawford Street Marylebone London W1H 1PJ United Kingdom
THE SHORTLIST WILL BE ANNOUNCED IN JUNE, THE WINNER BY SEPTEMBER 1.
Please include a biographical note of 100-250 words, a recent author’s photo, and a covering letter.
For email queries, contact TODDSWIFT AT CLARA DOT CO UK or Todd Swift at Facebook.
We open to submissions from the public ahead of the official launch of the site during the first week in April:
The Kalahari Review is an African-eccentric magazine interested in material exploring Africa and Africans in unique and avant-garde ways. We are looking for stories that have not often been told but should be – through voices that have not yet been heard - but should.
We hope to push the limits and expose the world to aspects of Africa not often shown - both the positives and the negatives. We are interested in pieces about and from Africans living abroad as well.
Please take the time to enjoy the content of the site and get a feel for it before submitting.
Because this is a web-based publication there are no word count restrictions.
Fiction, Poetry, Essays, and Humor Pieces: Should be sent as a PDF or WORD attachment and should be accompanied by a proper query letter in the body of the email. Please include your contact details including full name, postal address, e-mail and telephone number in the body of the query letter.
Photos, Art Work and Cartoon Portfolios: Should be sent as a PDF, JPG. or PNG attachments and should be accompanied by a proper query letter in the body of the email. Please include your contact details including full name, postal address, e-mail and telephone number in the body of the query letter. (Note: this area particularly the publication is interested only in avant-garde content. We are not interested in ordinary wildlife or landscapes. Portraits will be considered if they have a unique quality to them.)
Feature Articles, News Articles, Profiles, Exposés, Conversations and Interviews: Please attach your pitch letters as a PDF or WORD attachment. Please include any photos or graphic illustrations that you feel would help your pitch. Please include your contact details including full name, postal address, e-mail and telephone number in the body of the letter.
Note: Please thoroughly check your submissions for proper formatting, grammar and punctuation. Gross errors in these areas will seriously damage any works consideration for publication.
For a book-length collection of poetry written in English by a poet who has not previously published a first book of poetry.
$1000.00 plus publication and a reading in NYC.
Submit online or by mail January 1 - March 31. Include necessary entry form and submission fee of $28.00. For guidelines and entry form, please click here.
The June Reading Period
Submissions accepted June 1 - 30
Poetry and short fiction
For a book-length collection of poetry written in English, regardless of publication history. We will also read short story collections, and consider novellas of between 80 - 200 pages (or thereabouts).
Publication and a reading in NYC.
$28.00 reading fee.
Submit online or by mail between June 1 - June 30. Guidelines will be posted at the end of May.
It's No Contest
Submissions accepted November 15- December 15
No reading fee.
For a book-length collection of poetry written in English by a NYC resident (5 boroughs) for a first or second collection of poems. More information will be posted on the site by the end of October. You may also submit your work to us during our other regular periods.
Throughout the Year
Query first before sending your work.
We will, if we can, read your work at other times during the year. Please email us at editors@fourwaybooks.com to see if we can accommodate your schedule. Note: it's always best to send to us during our regular reading periods. Your work will not receive "special attention" if you submit to us outside of our normal reading periods.
Our readers rotate throughout the year so that your work can receive a fresh read in the event that you submit to us multiple times. Our readers hold an MFA, and/or work as editors. We do not employ readers who are students.
A Little Bit Colored. A Little Bit White. is a documentary about 4 suicides in 3 Black families in Denver, Colorado. (50 mins.) Directed by Shy Hamilton.
And here's the first of what'll likely be a few profiles/previews...
Ya'Ke Smith is a Director’s Guild of America Student Film Award recipient, winner of an HBO Short Film Award and a Student Academy Award Nominee.
We profiled one of his short films last year titled Katrina's Son, which MsWOO mentioned on her list of 20 Cannes Short Film Corner Shorts in 2011.
Wolf, his feature film debut and SXSW 2012 official selection, stars Irma P. Hall, Mikala Gibson, Jordan Cooper, Shelton Jolivette, and Eugene Lee in a story about a family...
... shaken to the core when they discover their son has been molested. As they struggle to deal with the betrayal, their son heads towards a total mental collapse because of his love for his abuser, while his abuser attempts to exorcise his own past demons.
Heavy.
This will be the 86-minute film's world premiere, and it's officially on my list of films to see at the festival which runs from March 9 - 17 (the film section anyway).
No trailer or much media publicly available yet, exept for the still image above.
Watch Smith pitch the project below in a fundraising video he made for the project when he was trying to raise money to get it produced:
Congrats Mr Smith; we'll be watching... something tells me that this is going to be one of those heavily debated films whenever it's released, given the subject matter and Smith's description of it below:
Check out the poster below for Ya'Ke Smith's Wolf, his feature film debut and SXSW 2012 official selection, which stars Irma P. Hall, Mikala Gibson, Jordan Cooper, Shelton Jolivette, and Eugene Lee in a story about a family...
... shaken to the core when they discover their son has been molested. As they struggle to deal with the betrayal, their son heads towards a total mental collapse because of his love for his abuser, while his abuser attempts to exorcise his own past demons.
This will be the 86-minute film's world premiere, and, as I said in my profile of the film last week, it's most certainly on my list of films to see at the festival which runs from March 9 - 17 (the film section anyway).
See the full poster below, and then watch the brooding trailer undernaeth if you haven't already seen it:
Boniface Mwangi is a Kenyan photojournalist who likes messing with politicians. He made a name for himself photographing Kenya's post-election violence in 2008, later winning the CNN Photojournalist of the Year award. He’s been arrested and had his cameras broken on several occasions, and he was even banned from Facebook, purportedly for being too politically outspoken.
Now Mwangi’s moved on to graffiti to challenge the current regime, tribal politics, and a host of other grievances including land grabbing, famine, and IDP resettlement. He’s hired a crew to paint 50 political murals across the country’s poorest areas in the run-up to this year's elections. It's illegal to do this, but Mwangi doesn't really care.
“The guys in power have been raping this country for the last 49 years. We speak from the flesh. We want to tell the story of Kenya. You can’t do 49 years with a photo, but you can with graffiti,” he said.
Mwangi was joined by a half-dozen artists on a quiet Tuesday night in downtown Nairobi as they worked on painting their inaugural mural. A piece this size would usually take days, even with a large crew. They did it in seven hours. A blank wall in a filthy, abandoned lot near the city market was illuminated by floodlights as various crew members traced a 30-meter tall mural that tells the story of corruption in Kenya.
“We’re using images of a vulture MP stomping on a face, of protests and Parliament, to tell Kenyans that when you sell your vote, you’re mortgaging our future,” he said.
Scaffolding that was delivered to the site wound up being just a giant pile of timber, and one rather expensive light got shattered in the confusion, but otherwise things went off pretty smoothly. When machine gun-toting police officers showed up to the scene, it turned out Mwangi had hired them to keep an eye on things. No idea how he pulled that one off.
“I have a lot of friends,” was his only explanation.
Participating in the effort was Markus Quinting, aka Tona, a German graffiti artist who first started painting in Kenya after witnessing the aftermath of the post-election violence, which left more than 1,000 dead and thousands more displaced. “I remember seeing just wave upon wave of people, crushed into trucks driving to the camps, with nowhere to sleep or sit,” he said. “I wound up at a hip-hop jam with some drug dealers after that, and I showed them my sketchbook, and they gave me spray cans. That’s how it started.”
Quinting’s already been arrested once after painting illegal political art in the Kibera slums. The police back in Germany know him and his crew well enough to have their phones tapped.
Kenya is hurting for professional graffiti artists, and painting illegal after-hours murals with dozens of people involved is complicated at best. But Mwangi’s confident the project will succeed anyway. “What’s the worst they can do?” he says. “Arrest us? We’re not worrying about the project. Worrying about it will stop it from happening.”
A 8th grader’s incendiary essay comparing today’s education system to slavery is causing a firestorm of controversy in her upstate New York community.
13 year-old Jada Williams,writing an essay on Frederick Douglass for a contest, made the very astute analysis that packing 30-40 students into a crowded classroom, and having mostly white teachers give them packets and pamphlets to complete that they don’t fully comprehend, impedes the learning process; and that this produces results similar to those hoped for by a slave master that forbids his slaves from learning how to read at all.
Jada’s point is that nothing has really changed since the days of Frederick Douglass; “the same old discrimination still resides in the hearts of the white man.”
Jada’s essay infuriated teachers and administrators at her school, who launched a campaign of harassment against the young lady.
“Williams called for her fellow students to ‘start making these white teachers accountable for instructing you’ and challenged teachers to do their jobs. ‘What merit is there,’ she asked, if teachers have knowledge and are ‘not willing to share because of the color of my skin?’
According to the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, Williams’ parents transferred her to another school, then withdrew her altogether. The conservative Frederick Douglass Foundation gave Williams a special award, saying that her essay ‘actually demonstrates that she understood the autobiography.’ They have also reached out to the school for an explanation of the 13-year-old’s treatment.
While the issues Williams raises are controversial, even Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has acknowledged that closing the achievement gap requires more black educators in the classroom. But because the large majority of current teachers are white, they have a responsibility to figure out how to be effective with children of color.”
Jada Reads her Essay. Find out what happened to her after writing this essay that was supposed to be entered into a contest (which never was) Find out more about what happens when you stand up to fight for your education. Let's hold the Rochester City School District accountable.
(CNN) – African American history, as it is often told, includes two monumental migration stories: the forced exodus of Africans to the Americas during the brutal Middle Passage of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, and the voluntary migration of Black residents who moved from southern farms and towns to northern cities in the early 1900s in search of “the warmth of other suns.” A third African-American migration story–just as epic, just as grave–hovers outside the familiar frame of our historical consciousness. The iconic tragedy of Indian Removal: the Cherokee Trail of Tears that relocated thousands of Cherokees to Indian Territory (now Oklahoma), was also a Black migration. Slaves of Cherokees walked this trail along with their Indian owners.
In 1838, the U.S. military and Georgia militia expelled Cherokees from their homeland with little regard for Cherokee dignity or life. Families were rousted out of their cabins and directed at gunpoint by soldiers. Forced to leave most of their possessions behind, they witnessed white Georgians taking ownership of their cabins, looting and burning once cherished objects. Cherokees were loaded into “stockades” until the appointed time of their departure, when they were divided into thirteen groups of nearly 1,000 people, each with two appointed leaders. The travelers set out on multiple routes to cross Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri and Arkansas at 10 miles a day with meager supplies.
At points along the way, the straggling bands were charged fees by white farmers to cross privately owned land. The few wagons available were used to carry the sick, infant, and elderly. Most walked through the fall and into the harsh winter months, suffering the continual deaths of loved ones to cold, disease, and accident. Among these sojourners were African Americans and Cherokees of African descent. They, like thousands of other Cherokees, arrived in Indian Country in 1839 broken, depleted, and destitute.
In addition to bearing the physical and emotional hardships of the trip, enslaved Blacks were enlisted to labor for Cherokees along the way; they hunted, chopped wood, nursed the sick, washed clothes, prepared the meals, guarded the camps at night, and hiked ahead to remove obstructions from the roads.
One Cherokee man, Nathaniel Willis, remembered in the 1930s that: “My grandparents were helped and protected by very faithful Negro slaves who . . . went ahead of the wagons and killed any wild beast who came along.” Nearly 4,000 Cherokees died during the eviction, as did an unaccounted for number of Blacks. As one former slave of Cherokees, Eliza Whitmire, said in the 1930s: “The weeks that followed General Scott’s order to remove the Cherokees were filled with horror and suffering for the unfortunate Cherokees and their slaves.”
Although Black presence on the Trail of Tears is a documented historical fact, many have willed it into forgetfulness.
Some African Americans avoid confronting the painful reality of Native American slave ownership, preferring instead to fondly imagine any Indian ancestor in the family tree and to picture all Indian communities in the South as safe havens for runaway slaves.
Some Cherokee citizens and Native people of other removed slaveholding tribes (Creeks, Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Seminoles) have also denied this history, desiring to cordon off forced removal as an atrocious wrong that affected only Native Americans. By excluding Blacks (many of whom had Native “blood”) from a claim on this history, these deniers also seek to expel the descendants of Freedmen and women from the circle of tribal belonging. For it is the memory of this collective tragedy, perhaps more than any other, that binds together Cherokees who draw strength from having survived it.
As a researcher whose work focuses on African-American and Native American histories, I have encountered this resistance. A few years ago, I spoke on the subject of Blacks in the Cherokee removal at a conference of the National Trail of Tears Association. One member of the audience, a Cherokee instructor of Cherokee history, insisted that this was an historical event only for Cherokees, a story that rightfully belonged to them alone. This is a view shared by a former principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, who reportedly implied in a published remark that descendants of Freedpeople do not deserve tribal rights because they did not suffer the collective trauma of removal. The Trail of Tears is a sacred story to the Cherokees, as in special and set apart. It carries a meaningful lesson across time and space—about greed, injustice, and the perseverance of a people staring into a bleak and unknown future. However, a potent story shared with others is not necessarily diminished by the sharing; it might instead grow stronger in its ability to enlighten.
For Black History Month, I collected the opinions of individuals rarely asked about their view of the Trail of Tears: descendants of slaves owned by Cherokees. Common themes in the responses I received were pain at having their history publicly denied and pride in their ancestors’ ability to survive multiple trials.
Kenneth Cooper, a Cherokee Freedmen descendant and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who has researched his family history through oral and documentary methods, has a great-great-great grandfather, Thomas Still, who walked the Trail of Tears. Cooper said, “At least one of my ancestors was on the Trail of Tears—by double compulsion. The U.S. troops compelled his mixed-white Cherokee owner, who compelled my ancestor to come and, presumably, provide for his needs.”
Terry Ligon, a descendant of Choctaw and Chickasaw slaves who writes a blog about the topic, was frustrated because “the typical story about the ‘Trails of Tears’ speaks to the horrors of uprooting ‘Native Americans’ from their homes...[while] the story that rarely gets told is the tears shed by people of African descent who were enslaved within these same tribes of ‘Native Americans.’”
Olon Dotson, a professor of Architecture at Ball State University, said his great-great-great- grandmother, Betty Mantooth Teichmann Childers Starks, was born to an enslaved woman en route on the Trail of Tears. When Dotson found out about this hidden chapter of his family’s history, he felt “angered and betrayed,” and his anger was not only directed at Indians. “The feeling of betrayal,” he said, “was derived from the customary portrait of American history, as taught and understood, which paints the Five Civilized Tribes merely as victims of cruel and racist policies with little or no mention of the African American experience in the context. I was prepared to pounce on any African American who felt compelled to express pride in their Native American heritage at the expense of their African blood.”
Some descendants expressed no outrage, but simply wanted the experience of their ancestors to be remembered and respected. Olive Anderson, a descendant of slaves owned by the Cherokee Vann and Bean families, feels proud of her ancestors’ bravery, both during Removal and the Civil War, when her great great grandfather, Rufus Vann, fought with the 1st Kansas Colored Volunteers. “Let it be known,” she said, “that our ancestors walked, fought, loved and died to make this country what it is today.”
The Trail of Tears is an epochal moment not only in Cherokee history, but also in Black history. Descendants of slaves owned by Native people therefore claim this story as rightful heirs. Kenneth Cooper concluded in his remarks to me: “I don’t see how Cherokees...can separate the history of the tribe from the history of the Freedmen; they are irrevocably intertwined, before, during, and after the Trail of Tears.” The intertwined histories of Freedpeople and Cherokees, of African American history and Native American history, of all groups in this great and varied nation of ours, is a historical reality that may prove to be one of our greatest strengths.
The opinions expressed are solely those of Tiya Miles.
John Running/Courtesy of the National Museum of the American Indian
Radmilla Cody and her grandmother, photographed in 2006.
Her first audience was the sheep. Her inspiration came from what she saw and heard around her.
"When you're way out in the middle of nowhere, and you're herding sheep, and you're spending time jumping over the salt bushes and sitting around listening to all the beautiful sounds of nature, something's going to make you open your mouth," Cody says.
Cody's voice is bicultural. Her mother was Navajo, her father African-American. Now, she sings folk songs in the language of her Native American ancestors — with a twist.
Two In One
Her mom was just a teenager when Radmilla was born, so she was raised by her Navajo grandmother. There was no electricity or running water, and young Radmilla Cody lived a very traditional life, learning to herd sheep, spin wool for clothing and cook meals using only what they grew or raised.
That traditional Navajo foundation was augmented by one additional cultural factor: Cody's grandmother was Christian.
"I always remember one particular time, the church had this choir from I don't recall where," Cody says. "But man, they sounded so good. And I remember thinking in my mind, 'That's what I want to do, that's what I want to sound like!' "
Cody's two cultures come together on her albums. There are traditional songs as well as songs written by her uncle, Herman Cody.
Speaking from his home near the center of the 26,000-square-mile Navajo reservation, Herman Cody says the songs he writes for his niece are secular interpretations of sacred ceremonial songs. From the beginning he had one goal.
"We're going to make these albums just as grandpa would walk behind the hogan, sit down, start making a moccasin," Herman Cody says. "And then, he just goes at it."
That singing usually comes from a man, and it's usually a monotone, with almost no flourishes. Radmilla projects more and uses techniques like bending notes: common among blues, jazz and pop singers.
Herman Cody says her voice brings together the traditional and the contemporary.
"She tends to blend both of them in there to where she can sing a traditional song and give it a soulful approach," he says. "That's what makes it sound so unique."
It adds what he calls "Navajo soul" to Navajo spirituality.
"I think the soul comes in from the black side," Radmilla says, laughing, "and with the Navajo [side], just the beauty and the language in itself."
Keeping The Spirit Alive
Radmilla Cody's connection to singing deepened during the 18 months spent in prison for not reporting a boyfriend's drug dealing.
"The music did not desert me," she says. "It remained there in my life. And I think that in a lot of ways it was because the spirit in those songs knew that I needed — I needed them."
Cody says she was afraid to report her boyfriend because he hit her. Today, she lends her voice to help other victims of domestic abuse and to help keep the Navajo language alive.
She has her grandmother to thank for that connection to the language. Dorothy Cody is 95 years old now. She still lives in the same house where she raised Radmilla.
She says she is proud her granddaughter is taking the Navajo language well beyond the reservation. Radmilla translated for her.
"She said it's good," Radmilla says. "She said it's good, you being able to sing in the Navajo language, it's a good thing. And then, of course, you being able to sing in English and speak English is good, too."
For Radmilla Cody it comes down to two languages, two cultures and one voice.
Radmilla Cody's crowning as Miss Navajo Nation in 1997 triggered an outcry and a conversation about what it means to be Native American. Now she's featured in a museum exhibit showing the rarely told history of African-Native Americans.
In a 1920 edition of the Journal of Negro History, Carter G. Woodson observed, "One of the longest unwritten chapters in the history of the United States is that treating of the relations of the Negroes and the Indians."
"Red/Black: Related Through History," a new exhibit at Indianapolis' Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art, illuminates this rarely told story. Since the first arrival of enslaved Africans in North America, the relationships between African Americans and Native Americans have encompassed alliances and adversaries, as well as the indivisible blending of customs and culture.
"It's not received a lot of attention because it's not the dominant culture's story, although it's very important to the dominant culture's bigger view of the past," says James Nottage, curator of the exhibit, which includes narratives of enslaved blacks who traveled the Trail of Tears with their Native owners; slaves who intermarried into Native tribes as an escape from bondage; and the largely African-featured members of the Shinnecock tribe of New York, as well as shared traditions in food, dress and music.
Radmilla Cody, 35, a Native American Music Award-winning singer and anti-domestic violence activist, is also featured in the exhibit. The daughter of a Navajo mother and an African-American father, Cody was raised by her grandmother in the Arizona Navajo community, initially speaking only the Navajo language. In 1997 she was crowned Miss Navajo Nation, sparking controversy from some members who refused to accept her.
As one disapproving letter to the editor of the Navajo Times put it, "Miss Cody's appearance and physical characteristics are clearly black, and thus are representative of another race of people. It appears that those judges who selected Miss Cody have problems with their own sense of identity."
Cody, also the subject of a 2010 documentary, Hearing Radmilla, talked to The Root about growing up both black and Navajo, and how she handles frequent "Wow, you don't look Indian" comments.
The Root: The experience of having your Miss Navajo Nation reign challenged calls to mind the debate over the Cherokee Freedmen. Is this a common issue across the Native community, of African-Native Americans having trouble finding acceptance?
Radmilla Cody: I grew up having to deal with racism and prejudices on both the Navajo and the black sides, and when I ran for Miss Navajo Nation, that especially brought out a lot of curiosity in people. It's something that we're still having to address as black Natives, still having to prove ourselves in some way or another, because at the end of the day, it all falls back to what people think a Native American should look like.
But there's been many times when people have said to me, "Oh, my great-great-grandmother was an Indian." I'll ask them if they know what tribe, and they don't. It's very important because in order to be acknowledged as a tribal member, you have to be enrolled. So I can see where Native people are protective about defining who's a tribal member, and are questioning of people claiming Native ancestry.
TR: What motivated you to enter the Miss Navajo Nation pageant?
RC: I've known since I was in the seventh grade that I wanted to run for Miss Navajo Nation. We had a day at school where we were all dressed up in our traditional attire, and I remember seeing the woman who was Miss Navajo at that time. I thought she was so beautiful, and thought it was so neat that she represented the whole Navajo tribe.
Our society, as most Native societies, is matrilineal. Miss Navajo exemplifies the essence of First Woman, White Shell Woman and Changing Woman, which are deities in our culture. From that point it became a goal of mine, and I talked about it all the time. When I got older, I spent the summer before the pageant preparing for it.
TR: What does that preparation entail, exactly? I understand it's not a typical pageant.
RC: Basically you're tested on your knowledge of the Navajo government, the culture, the stories, the songs and the Navajo philosophy of life. You're tested on butchering a sheep and making fry bread and other traditional foods of the Navajo people. It usually lasts about a week. What separates our pageant from the Miss USA pageant is the bikini -- we don't have a swimsuit category!
TR: What was the overall reaction in the Navajo community when you won?
RC: As soon as I was crowned, it was in the newspapers. But every negative newspaper article that came out about me holding the title of Miss Navajo was outnumbered by support letters for me. The people who disagreed with me being selected were a small group of individuals, versus the majority of the Navajo people who were in favor and looked past the color line. They decided that I was able to represent our people because of the knowledge that I had.
TR: Were you surprised by the backlash that you received?
RC: I wasn't surprised. I knew it was going to happen. Right before I left to go to compete in the pageant, my grandmother sat down with me. She said to me, "My child, I just want you to know that there are going to be some people who are not going to be accepting of this."
Growing up, I was taunted at school with racial slurs and would come home in tears. My grandmother would be there, waiting to console me. She always said, "Let 'em talk. You are a Navajo woman. This is your land. This is how I raised you. You be proud of who you are." Every time, that's what she would say.
So this day before the pageant, when she cautioned me about people who wouldn't be accepting of me participating, I turned around and told her, "Let 'em talk, Grandma. I'm a proud Navajo woman, remember?" She had a big smile on her face. I think she felt content that I was ready for what I was going to be challenged with.
TR: Do you have any connection to African-American culture and community?
RC: I spent more time in the Navajo community growing up because my grandmother raised me. When I would come into town in Flagstaff, Ariz., to see my mom, who had black friends, and my dad's relatives, I was in the black community more. I went to high school in Flagstaff, and one day a friend was wearing a T-shirt with a big "X" on it. I said, "That's cool! I should get one that says 'R' for Radmilla!" I didn't know anything about Malcolm X. He told me to join the black student organization. I had a lot to educate myself about and embrace, because I come from two beautiful cultures.
In the black community I also had my challenges. I was always told, "You think you're cute because you got that long, fine hair," and I would have to stand up for my Navajo side because of stereotypes placed upon the Navajo. When I'd go back to the Navajo community, I would have to stand up for my black side because of stereotypes.
It's a challenge sometimes, but I've gotten past the initial state of frustration and just use those opportunities to educate people and let people know about my culture as a Navajo woman. I think this exhibit at the Eiteljorg Museum is a wonderful opportunity for people to gain some understanding about black Natives. We exist, we're here, and through this exhibit we have an opportunity to be acknowledged and recognized.
With an angelic voice of bluebirds singing, Radmilla Cody, traditional Navajo recording artist, Indie Award Winner, multiple Native American Award Nominee and international performer, continues to maintain Navajo culture by recording music that children sing with pride and lyrics the Dine elders can be proud of. Radmilla is a biracial woman who continues to touch the lives and heal the hearts of her supporters.
Miss Cody is of the Tla’a’schi’i’(Red-Orche-on-Cheek) clan and is born for the African-Americans. Radmilla is the 46th Miss Navajo Nation from 1997-98. Born and raised in the beautiful and picturesque plateaus of the Navajo Nation, Radmilla Cody’s childhood consisted of herding sheep on foot and horseback, carding and spinning wool, and searching late into the night with her grandmother for lost sheep and their lambs. The highlight of her sheep herding days was standing on the sheep corral singing at the top of her lungs with the sheep and goats as her audience. “All that mattered at that time was the moment of living a dream,” says Radmilla about her early life, which today has become a reality for the young musician.
A survivor of domestic violence, Radmilla uses her personal experiences to advocate strongly against the epidemic of violence. It is an issue she has become very passionate about. As a biracial person she attempts to communicate positive messages about her dual identity as children who are biracial or multiracial still bear the brunt of prejudice. Radmilla is the subject of a documentary entitled “Hearing Radmilla”, produced and directed by Angela Webb, which further explores Radmilla’s journey as an activist and performer. The film premiered at the Pan African Film and Arts Festival in February 2010. Currently she is completing a Bachelor of Arts in Public Relations and a minor in Sociology. In 2010, Radmilla was selected for NPR’s 50 Great Voices, a year-long series featuring singers from all over the world. Radmilla is grounded on a renewed foundation.“The Creator has given me the strength to look forward in life, to embrace the beautiful and the positive.” - Radmilla Cody
Ballake ce matin-là sortait d’une nuit blanche soucieuse, et portait un sourire diaphane aux incessantes anecdotes de Vincent.
French cellist Vincent Segal and kora master Ballaké Sissoko (from Mali) recorded the 2009 ‘Chamber Music’ album in Salif Keita’s Moffou Studio. Three years later, this is their Take Away Show.
Crédits
Filmed by Jeremiah Edited by Norman Sound by Renaud Doguet & François Clos Regie by Mathieu Mastin Produced by Kidam for La Blogotheque
