This week begins Tuesday Night Blues Jam Session /Workshops with Blues Musician and Singer Selby Minner, of the Blues Hall of Fame in Rentiesville, OK for Creek Nation Citizens

For eight weeks September 10 through October 29, every Tuesday for two hours per session. All Creek community citizens invited, any age, any level. For students of guitar and bass and other players/ singers - drums, keyboard etc..

Glenpool Creek Indian Center, the Community Building at 13839 S. Casper, Glenpool, OK 74033.

Please note: On the second Tuesday of the month the jam session will be held in the larger Activity Building at 191 West 140th Street, Glenpool, OK 74033.

(P.S. Will not be available by phone this week until Friday night.)

The Cutthroat Online Writing Mentorship Program

Dear Readers, Here is your chance to work on your writing for a month one-on-one with one of our noted writers! We are registering for fall writing mentorships now. CONGRATULATIONS to our mentor, Joy Harjo, for winning the 2013 PEN CENTER USA CREATIVE NONFICTION AWARD for her memoir, CRAZY BRAVE.

2013-2014 FACULTY

ENVIRONMENTAL ESSAYS: LINDA HOGAN

MEMOIR: JOY HARJO and DOUG ANDERSON

MIXED GENRE: SEAN THOMAS DOUGHERTY

NOVEL EVALUATION: DONLEY WATT

POETRY: DOUG ANDERSON, JOY HARJO, T.R. HUMMER, RICHARD JACKSON, PATRICIA SPEARS JONES, WILLIAM PITT ROOT, PATRICIA SMITH and PAM USCHUK

POETRY MANUSCRIPT EVALUATION/POETRY IN TRANSLATION MANUSCRIPT EVALUATION: RICHARD JACKSON and MARILYN KALLET

SCREENPLAY: STEVE BARANCIK

SHORT STORY: BETH ALVARADO, LORIAN HEMINGWAY, WILLIAM LUVAAS, DARLIN NEAL and DONLEY WATT

Work one-on-one with master writers. $1000 for a full month online mentorship in poetry, short story, memoir, essays, novel, or poetry-in-translation. $2000 for a six week detailed full-length manuscript evaluation in poetry, short story, memoir, screen play or poetry-in-translation. Our fee costs less than writing programs and writers conferences. Students pay one fee only: no academic papers, no academic credit, no travel, meals or housing. Go to www.cutthroatmag.com or call 970-903-7914 or write us at cutthroatmag@gmail.com Register early. Space is limited.

Child Theft

Native child theft isn't just the obvious, like the Cherokee case we are following where the child was trafficked by an attorney and "given" to a South Carolina couple, it has to do with education. In my elementary school in Tulsa, which was essentially on tribal lands, we learned that we were "other" and on the outside. We need our own Mvskoke schools with Mvskoke values. This will make for healthy cultural exchange. Respect is the keyword here, and there has been no respect. The State of South Carolina has never honored the place of indigenous peoples.

CONTEST in honor of the paperback release of CRAZY BRAVE

First, thank you/mvto to all those who have supported the story, my poetry and music.
I'm having a contest.
I will send a signed, hardback copy of CRAZY BRAVE and a CD of my original music to the best crazy brave stories I receive from you, from your life--one page or less, via FB. I'll pick the top three to ten, depending on the number of stories I receive. I'll post the best here and on my blog. You have until 5PM Friday August 2nd Oklahoma time.  The winners posted next week!

Fire Study

Study in Fire, Taos, 2013 c Joy Harjo and Mekko Productions Inc.

Glenpool Creek Indian Community Demonstration and Dance Party Tonight

Tonight: 
*Indian Tacos by Autumn Star Catering, a Mvskoke/Creek business by Tricia FieldsAlex Alexander
*George Coser's Wednesday Night Stomp Dance Group
*Selby Minner and her Blues Band (I'll be sitting in)
* D.j. Sapphire Satepauhoodle spinning tunes for a community dance. I've requested funk, soul, r and b, etc.
Starts at 6PM at the Glenpool Creek Indian Community Center off of 141st and Highway 75. 
Come out!!

Green Corn

Green Corn or busk, our Mvskoke new year is inherently about the acknowledgement and honoring of the plant world. We become in harmony with it. Our human worlds and plant worlds are utterly interdependent. Or rather, we are more dependent on them, than us, but our decisions matter, not just to seven generations and more of human descendants, but to the seven or more plant descendants, animal descendants and elements descendants. We make sacrifices to take care of each other. To understand each other is profound beyond human words.

Independence Day

I celebrate independence anywhere it happens. The question here is how. When a diversity of peoples is destroyed or diminished in a holocaust of outrageous proportions for independence, does this truly result in liberty, justice and freedom for all? In a few generations indigenous peoples of America have been reduced to one-half of one percent. Imagine Africa with one-half of one percent Africans. We have been essentially disappeared in the story of America. Our massive libraries of knowledge, rich cultural and intellectual gifts have been disparaged, destroyed and broken by interloper religions and a hierarchical system of thought in which indigenous people exist only as savages. What then does this say about liberty and justice in this country? 

For healing the wound needs to be opened, purged and cleansed. Our stories need to be allowed. Our traditional ways and languages need to be honored. This country needs to apologize and reparations must be made. We all need to come together, every one of us to make a true plan for liberty and justice for all. As long as indigenous peoples are disappeared and disparaged, or surface only in Hollywood movies like The Lone Ranger, this country will remain as a child without parents, who has no sense of earth, history or spirituality.

Note to self today:

Do not feed the monsters.
Monsters are those thought threads that denigrate and disrespect self and others. 
Some are wandering thought forms, looking for a place to land and live. 
Some are sent to you deliberately or inadvertently. They can come from arrows or gossip, jealousy or envy. Or from just...thoughtlessness. 
Instead, have a party.
Invite your helpers to the table. Give them something to do. They want to be helpful. And just celebrate.
Feed the birds.

Second note: A positive mind makes a light slippery surface and anything not of it, slides off.

Outrigger Dreams

This morning I feel myself climbing into the canoe in early morning Hawaiian waters, and those beginning strokes as the canoe and I adjust to ocean weather. It's a kind of back and forth, a call and response. Soon, we are only water and sky.