FPF Launches Values Based Marketing Initiative Program

First Peoples Fund traveled to Alaska with Judilee Reed, Executive Director, LINC to participate in the Alaska Native Arts Summit and the Alaska Arts Council's statewide arts conference in Anchorage.  First Peoples shared our Artist in Business Leadership and Cultural Capital program and our strategy for partnering with tribally based, Native Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI's).

 

Since traveling to Anchorage early this year we've been invited back to conduct our Arts Marketing and Professional Development workshop at the Alaska Native Heritage Center.  As part of the LINC cohort FPF has once again joined the Montana Arts Council, Dyani Bingham and conducted a two day workshop in conjunction with the Montana Indian Business Alliance annual conference.  Nico Strange Owl (Northern Cheyenne) and Don Montileaux (Oglala) are FPF's lead trainers in Missoula on April 19 and 20th.
  
First Peoples Fund has joined Team Oweesta partnering the Rapid City based Oweesta Corporation (CDFI) providing consulting services and arts marketing training to Oweesta CDFI clients. Currently there are 48 native community development financial institutions in the U.S.  Ben Sherman (Oglala Lakota) and Lisa Little Chief Bryan (Sicangu Lakota) our FPF's national consultants.  Lisa and Ben are adapting FPF's curriculum to include a 6 week and 15 week curriculum for tribal colleges. 

Creation-Migration-Change (Shelton, WA).  FPF extends a wopila tanka to the Seventh Generation Fund, Evergreen State College's Longhouse Education and Culture Center and the Maine Indian Basketmakers Alliance for their partnership in our recent gathering at the Squaxin Island Tribe's Little Creek Resort. The convening was made possible with support from the Fund for Folk Culture and the Ford Foundation and as part of their changing demographics dialogue occurring in targeting communities through the U.S.  The native arts convening brought together native artists, scholars, administrators and activists to address the topic of "changing demographics".  Facilitated conversations focused on tribal creation stories, cosmologies, the impact of federal policies on tribal nations and its citizens, urbanization, intellectual and cultural property rights, and creative artistic expression within the context of culture and place. At the heart of the convening was the creation of three separate artworks representing each artist's, Elaine Grinnell (Jamestown S'Klalam), Edward Wemytewa (Zuni) and Jeremy Frey (Passamaquoddy) personal interpretation and story of indigenous cosmologies and creation stories value as our communities are faced with the 'changing demographics'. 

 

Twenty five year old, Jeremy Frey created a basket inspired by materials and frogs from an earlier exchange with Hawaiian weavers. Jeremy is preparing his generation of weavers for the near future when his community will no longer have access or supply to the black ash as a result of the emerald ash borer beetle's (native to Asia) expectancy to kill virtually all the ash trees in Maine. Sadly he estimates that it will take 40 years before the ash is restored in Maine. The loss of the ash tree poses a serious threat to their very culture (their Creation Story is that their People came from the Ash Tree) and was only one critical issue raised during the gathering. Seventh Generation recorded the entire conference which will be made available on MP3 for distribution on native radio, You Tube and Google Video. 

Basket by Jeremy Frey, Passamaquoddy