Page 8
Spilyqy Tymoo, Wairn Springs, Oregon
March 3, 2005
Village: may
include library
(Continued from page 1)
"The coin would be used to
raise public awareness, support
around artist's village," she said.
Santos, in her proposal, cites
a feasibility study of the
Jefferson and Wheeler county
library systems that "concluded
that relationship with the Warm
Springs Confederated Tribes
needs to be defined and is criti
cal to improve library services
on the reservation."
Santos has met with Ruth
Metz, who administered the fea
sibility study, on the possibility
of tendering a partnership be
tween the Confederated Tribes
and the Jefferson County Li
brary District within the Oregon
Collaboration Project. The Or
egon Collaboration Project came
out of a national venture called
"Preserving Our Memory, Lan
guage, and Lifeways," designed
to initiate and assist in bringing
tribal and state resources to
gether. "The development of a li
brary at the Artists' Village will
greatly enrich early childhood,
youth, young adult and adult
learning opportunities of all
those who reside within Warm
Springs," Santos said in the pro
posal. She said it "may be pos
sible" to obtain a three-year Fed
eral Development Grant if her
group can establish a working
relationship between itself and
Jefferson County and state li-,
brary officials.
"We have great potential for
a library system because you're
going to need a library system
if you're going to have a col
laboration with colleges," Santos
said.
Santos said she aspires for
the artists' village complex to be
built as ecologically sound as
possible, using natural materials
and solar and wind power.
"Most likely the artist's vil
lage, the priority would be sus
tainable buildings and green
building," she said "We want to
go the same route because the
community would want that If
they'd want that for the gorge
casino, then we'd most likely
want that for here. That's im
portant, so that way the build
ing would be toxic-free, use less
energy, utilizing the resources
that we do have."
"We feel (if) the communi
ties in the Southwest could de
sign cliff dwellings, and they're
known for their architecture.
The time is now for us to de
velop our own architecture as
well as materials."
The healing arts program
would address what Santos sees
as a place where traditional
medicine could be introduced.
"There were some ideas
within the healing arts program
that would include having a
place where people could come
for information, a health re
source library as well as having
a place where we could grow
some of our traditional medi
cine to be used as part of our
system," Santos said.
An initial part of the artist's
village concept is a Multi-Disciplinary
Artist Survey that she
plans to distribute to every resi
dence on the Warm Springs
Reservation, including both
Warm Springs tribal members
and non-members. She said she
has proposed a working draft,
and that the survey would be
used to "come to a common
sense of what an artist's village
would focus on."
The survey has been in draft
form since last October, when
Santos' written proposal was
first distributed to tribal officials
and media outlets. It includes
questions on demographics,
what features and services per
spective artists might want in an
artists' village, and, specifically,
which artistic disciplines the pro
spective artists might be in
volved, be it traditional tribal
arts, theater, visual fine arts or
healing arts.
"I hear there's a lot of talent
among tribal people, and we
need to see what we have," she
said.
The demographic informa
tion, she said, would be used in
any possible grant-writing pro
posals, and possibly to identify
non-tribal members who might
be expert at certain artistic fields
in which tribal members are not
currently involved.
"If we have 10 tribal mem
bers who are fabric artists, it
helps us identify our resources
as a tribe," she said. "If some
one from the Umatilla tribe liv
ing on the reservation has a de
gree in filmmaking, that person
would be a resource for us in
teaching, to convert knowledge
to us."
Santos said she hopes to have
the survey ready to distribute by
June.
Santos and local artist Pat
Courtney-Gold, a nationally re-
Youth
(Continued from page 3)
The groups' leaders started
the time off by leading their
group in singing the Good News
Club theme song, which ex
presses the good' news the chil
dren have come to hear.
Moore then asked them to
recite John 3:16, the verse in the
New Testament stating that
God's love for the world was
such that He offered his son
Jesus Christ and allowed man to
have fellowship and "everlast
ing life" if they believe in Christ
That verse is one of the
verses of the "Wordless Book,"
a book that helps describe the
gospel message with no words,
but a color represented on each
page.
Gold is the first color, repre
senting God's plan for mankind
as stated in John 3:16. Black is
the next color, representing
mankind's inherent sinful nature
and separation from God, in
Romans 3:23, and its conse
quences, death, in Romans 6:23.
Red is the next color, represent
ing the blood of Jesus Christ,
shed to pay for mankind's sin
and thus bridge the gap between
man and God in I Corinthians
15:3b-4. White represents man
being "clean," having been for
given of his sins through Jesus'
sacrifice, in IJohn 1:12. The last
page, green, represents growth,
the ability to learn more about
Christ and take on His charac
teristics, in 2 Peter 3:18.
Moore said those six verses
are important "life verses" that
" together explain the basics of
the Christian faith, ones the chil
dren can remember for their
own edification and when they
have occasion to communicate
the message to others.
"Most of the kids have
learned the first three verses,"
Moore said of the boys. "We try
to teach with repetition and with
games."
Another teaching tool has
been teaching the children to
learn the verses by using hand
signals, like sign language, to put
action into the words, she said,
"so we're not just teaching the
words, but the meaning."
On the other side of the
room, Grant asked the girls,
"What is faith?"
While she has been a Good
News Club teacher for 25 years,
her roots in Warm Springs and
with its people run even deeper.
; "When I was 12 years old, I
got on a bus at Sandy and got
off at Madras, and it was 20
degrees below zero, and I tried
to walk, but I ran because it was
so cold, just to see the Native
people," she said.
She said she went to See's
Store in Warm Springs and
looked around and talked to
Natives she met at the store. She
got a ride back to Madras with
a Native family from Warm
Springs, and started walking
around Madras. In 1946, she
said, Madras had no more than
500 people and had two board
sidewalks. And the Cascade
Mountains, she said, had no air
pollution.
"When I got on the bus to
go back to Sandy, I knew I
wanted to live where you see the
mountains and be close to the
Indians," he said.
Even though she said she
didn't know it at the time, it was
God who sent her east of the
Cascades that day and led her
to move to Madras.
Grant led a 4-H
outdoorsman class that taught
students things like how to build
a fire and camp in the woods
before she got involved in Good
News Club and Sunday school.
She attends church at Simnasho
Community Church.
Grant said she was challenged
to become a teacher three
months after she had decided
to receive Christ and went
through the training to become
a Good News Club teacher.
"I was trying to learn how to
be a class room teacher," she
said. "I had always been an out
doors teacher.
"They told me, "We always
need good new teachers.'"
She taught in a Good News
Club in Madras when she started
in 1974, and then began teach
ing in Warm Springs about 25
years ago, she said.
Using Elizabeth Delarosa as
a volunteer, Grant asked
Delarosa to play the part of a
young ruler in the story in Chap
ter 4 of the Book of John in
the New Testament about the
ruler's brother who fell ill.
After asking her servants, the
ruler found Jesus on the street
and asked him to heal the
brother. In the story, the brother
is healed because of the ruler's
faith in asking Jesus for help, find
ing that the brother was restored
at the very moment he asked for
Jesus' help.
The object of the story is that
"faith" is simply belief.
The passage in the Bible is
only nine verses long, which
Grant said doesn't provide as
much text to work with to cre
ate a dramatic scene as others,
but she said the point is involv
ing the children in the lesson.
"It's a known statistic among
educators that if you're taught
something only audibly, you re
tain only 10 percent of it," she
said. "If you're taught that les
son audibly and visually, your
retention is up to 50 percent,
and if you're taught the lesson
audibly, visually, and hands-on,
you retain 80 percent of it. And
if they can replay things, like
with feedback, you can get an
even higher retention rate.
"Next week, I'll question
them on what they learned and
see if they retain it."
The Biblical teaching is what's
called a growth lesson, intended
to help students who have al
ready expressed belief in Christ
to learn more about the faith.
At the end of the lesson, the
children receive a snack. When
the hour has passed, the groups
are led back to the school in
time to pick up the group of
kindergarten through second
grade children, where the teach
ers go through basically the same
program as for the older children.
Just as in any classroom,
Good News Club teachers and
leaders try to maintain a level
of quiet and discipline in the
classroom. "A lot of my back
ground (as a teacher) has been
irreplaceable as far as classroom
management," Moore said.
Currently, Moore said there
are Good News Clubs at each
elementary school in the 509-J
School District and one will be
started at Buff Elementary
School, which opens next year.
nowncd Native artist from
Warm Springs, developed a rap
port with the Oregon College of
Art and Craft in Portland that
allowed gifted art students the
opportunity to study and hone
their craft in a scholastic setting.
Last summer, she said, the
college selected young artists
from Warm Springs to spend a
week at the college and sit in on
a number of offered classes.
"We had a wonderful time
working with Apolonia and ev
eryone at Warm Springs," col
lege president Bonnie Laing
Malcomson said. "The people at
museum have been really great."
Santos graduated from the
Oregon College of Art and
Craft and has a bachelor's de
gree in fine arts. Laing
Malcomson said Santos and
Courtney-Gold paid her a visit
and the three talked about ways
to get teenagers involved in art,
to help offer them a creative
outlet and help provide art edu
cation at a time when school arts
programs are being cut and
when equipment, such as pot
tery wheels and kilns, has be
come too expensive to make
readily available to students.
The upshot was a program
that sent six Warm Springs teens
to the college for five days and
six nights.
"It worked and I think they
got a lot out of the program,"
Laing-Malcomson said.
One of the things counselors
from the college tried to impress
upon the students was the fact
there are careers in the arts if
the students avail themselves to
them.
"They can make a living by
doing something they love," she
said. "So part of the program is
to help kids from Warm
Springs see that there are a num
ber of avenues after high school,
something that they might just
love."
A program is in place this
summer for 16 Native Ameri
can students, eight from Warm
Springs and eight from the Port
land area, called Journeys in
Creativity, Explorations in Na
tive Art and Culture June 17
22. ;!
The famous Portland adver
tising firm of WiedenKennedy
funded an arts camp including
youths from the reservation at
Camp Caldera near Sisters last
summer.
"Both the college and camp
had excellent visual arts, theater,
music," Santos said. "It's the first
time youths had gone off the
reservation to receive this kind
of support."
The tribes' youth is particu
larly a focus of Santos' efforts.
"Our idea is to work towards
their future and give them early
exposure so they might aspire
to go to college," she said, "to
just let them have a good posi
tive experience.
"I feel that they just need to
be children."
Santos said she sees a com
mitment from the College of
Art and Craft, in that its presi
dent Bonnie Laing-Malcomson
bought a house near the college
to house Native American stu
dents. "It's future as well as current,"
Santos said. "The college, by
buying land and housing for our
students in Warm Springs is a
good faith plan."
"We had the opportunity to
purchase a house that abuts the
campus, so we really restored
one of them to become dorms
for students during the school
year," Laing-Malcomson said.
The house will be used for resi
dence programs in the sum
mer. Laing-Malcomson said work
ing with Native artists is appeal
ing to her because art is already
an inherent part of their cul
ture. "In Native culture, there is
already an understanding that
art is central to their culture,"
she said. "It's a way to express
who people really are, and that's
a thing that's not so with non
native culture."
The public meetings in April
will focus on how an artist's vil
lage might have an impact on
Warm Springs' youth.
"In many ways, it depends on
the youth to take the project into
the future," she said.
Santos also plans to initiate
an art marketing feasibility study
to explore both national and in
ternational markets for tribal art,
and to help tribal artists "explore
their artistic capabilities and di
versify their art portfolios to
meet market needs."
The study though has been
put on hold, she said, until re
sponse from the survey has
been tabulated and the artist vil
lage established.
"It's not really necessary right
now, but it will be once we ac
complish first and second
phases," she said. "We haven't
gotten to that point."
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