Southwest Archaeology Today for August 29, 2005

Archaeology Making the News – A Service of the Center for Desert Archaeology

– Native American Surgeon Honored at Fund-Raiser: A Navajo woman honored in Buckingham Saturday said colleges using Native American names and images for their athletic teams should support those groups. Dr. Lori Alvord, the first Navajo woman surgeon in the United States, suggested the schools offer scholarships and give accurate representation of the culture rather than make a mockery of it.
http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/news/113-08212005-530492.htm

– New Mexican Author Profiles Native America (Albuquerque): Veronica Tiller was frustrated by the lack of published information about modern-day American Indians. So she did something about it. She profiled each of the 562 federally recognized Indian tribes and visited the headquarters of 240 of them.
http://www.kvia.com/Global/story.asp?S=3774884

– Exploration of the Powwow (Pueblo, Co): More than entertainment, a contest powwow is an educational event for participants and spectators alike. “The people on the reservations, they have had the opportunity since birth to be exposed to it (native culture), but the urban Indians haven’t,” says Shelley Gauna, secretary and events coordinator for Pueblo Friendship Powwow Association. “We have people who come up and say, ‘We have Native American blood but we don’t know anything about our culture,’ and we say, ‘We didn’t either.’
http://www.chieftain.com/life/1125237606/1

Local Residents Fight Development near Historic Fort Stanton (Rudioso, NM):Local residents handed the Fort Stanton Development Commission a 950-signature petition Saturday morning in opposition to a proposal to build up to 600 residential units near the historic outpost. The commission meeting, held in an office at the fort jammed with nearly 40 local residents, stretched on for hours as audience members took turns attacking the proposal by Collaborative Inc., a consulting firm hired by the commission to find ways to generate revenue needed to restore the fort.
http://www.roswell-record.com/archives/082805/news08.html

– Research on Pre and Post Contact American Population Dynamics: A new book, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus” erases our myth of a wilderness Eden. It replaces that fallacy with evidence of a different genesis, exciting and closer to truth.
http://tinyurl.com/bzlua – The Cleveland Plains Dealer.

– Zuni Potter Honored at the 84th Annual Indian Market (Santa Fe): Indian pottery is a physically demanding art form and Zuni potter Josephine Nahohai, a frail nonagenarian of 93, proves that spirit is more important than muscle when it comes to creating beautiful objects.
http://www.gallupindependent.com/2005/august/082605potter.html

– Public Lecture on Possible Ancient Polynesian Contact (Irvine, CA) Pacific Coast Archaeological Society’s September 8, 2005 meeting will feature Dr. Terry L. Jones and Dr. Kathryn Klar speaking on “The Polynesian Connection: Linguistic and Archaeological Evidence for Prehistoric Polynesian Contact in Southern California.” Meeting information: Thursday, September 8, 2005, 7:30 PM at the Irvine Ranch Water District, 15600 Sand Canyon Ave., Irvine, CA. Meeting is free and open to the public. For information:
http://www.pcas.org

– Paul S. Martin’s Views on Restoring the Fauna of North America: For retired UA professor Paul S. Martin, his first glimpse of prehistoric dung from a ground sloth nearly a half-century ago was a life-changing experience. Now Martin, 77, who works sporadic hours at the University of Arizona Desert Laboratory, is seeing ideas he’s promoted since shortly after his arrival to Tucson in 1957 getting national attention. Martin is one of a dozen co-authors on a paper published in the Aug. 18 issue of the journal Nature called “Re-wilding North America.” It’s a two-page proposal to reintroduce modern cousins of prehistoric large animals – including 22-pound tortoises, Asian asses and African cheetahs, elephants and lions – into North America as a way to replace extinct large animals and prevent the extinction of the still-living animals worldwide.
http://www.dailystar.com/dailystar/allheadlines/90725.php

– Park Service Retirees Suspect National Park Service Planning Dramatic Changes in Rules Governing the Use of 388 Parks: An ongoing and secret Interior Department attempt to rewrite and override 90 years of laws, rules and court rulings governing the 388 sites in the U.S. National Park System would “hijack” the American’s national parks, leaving them wide open for what are now barred uses and making it extremely unlikely that the sites would survive as unspoiled treasures for future generations of Americans, according to the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees (CNPSR), which is a watchdog group of 410 NPS veterans accounting for 12,000 years of collective park management experience.
http://tinyurl.com/dd2cz – Yahoo News. Also, see:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9087265/ and
http://www.wilderness.org/NewsRoom/Statement/20050826.cfm and
http://tinyurl.com/dqey4 – Billings Gazette