From Big House To Longhouse: Continuity And Change Of The Delaware Skin Dance

This dissertation addresses continuity and change of the Delaware Skin Dance, a dance accompanied by a number of short songs that the Haudenosaunee adopted from the Delaware. Once used ceremonially, today the dance is integrated into Haudenosaunee social dance practice; although the songs comprise a large percentage of living Delaware music, they are no longer known to Delaware people, making them of interest to those wishing to revitalize them in their respective communities. Through analysis of recordings, participant observation, and interviews with Haudenosaunee singers, dancers, and elders, the author explores the oral history, perpetuation, and significance of the Delaware Skin Dance and highlights the complex relationship between the Haudenosaunee, the Delaware, and their music. The author identifies the most significant change in the dance as its shift in function. Based on Iroquois oral history gathered through interviews, she argues that the Delaware Skin Dance was once used for ceremonial purposes. Through comparison with Delaware Big House songs, she suggests the dance likely possesses connections to the Delaware Big House ceremony. She finds that Iroquois satellite communities where Delaware people found refuge allowed a degree of freedom favorable to continued practice of their musical traditions that eventually allowed them to pass the songs to the Haudenosaunee. The author explains that the soundscape in contemporary Longhouses has much in common with the ancient sonic environment of the Delaware Big House, although performance spaces outside the Longhouse have changed drastically. Through analysis of Delaware Skin Dance recordings, the author demonstrates diversity in song lyrics, melodic embellishments, and repertoire held by Iroquois singers. She discusses Delaware people's interest in the Delaware Skin Dance and the commencement of efforts to relearn the songs. The author outlines a project of revivalistic musical revitalization that could lead toward renewal of Delaware music and identity, strengthening of intercommunity relations, and advancement of ethnogenesis and decolonization

Portrait of Angela Sdrinis for the Forgotten Australians and Former Child Migrants oral history project [picture].

Acquired in digital format; access copy available online.; Part of the collection: Portraits taken during interviews for the Forgotten Australians and Former Child Migrants oral history project.; Title devised by cataloguer.; Mode of access: online.; Angela Sdrinis interviewed by Sue Taffe for the Forgotten Australians and Former Child Migrants oral history project; Located at; National Library of Australia Oral History collection ORAL TRC 6200/120

Cosmopolitan Voices: Women’s Native American Powwow Drum Groups in Northern Appalachia

This paper addresses the significance of women’s Native American powwow drum groups in Northern Appalachia, specifically their positive influence on Native women’s identity. The majority of Native American powwow drum groups are comprised of male singers. Sometimes these groups have women “backup singers” who stand behind the men but who do not play the drum. While women’s drum groups are rare in Indian country, a surprisingly large number of such groups are found in Northern Appalachia. In fact, at some powwows in this region, the number of women’s groups matches or even exceeds the number of men’s groups. What’s more, although powwows were not held regularly in Northern Appalachia until the late 1980s, which was later than many areas in the United States, women’s drum groups in this area started forming in the early 1990s, making them some of the earliest women’s groups on the East Coast. Through ethnographic interviews and my auto-ethnographic experiences as a powwow dancer since childhood, I build on work by ethnomusicologists such as Hoefnagels and Diamond that addresses Native American women’s musical performance. In this paper, I discuss the obstacles that women singers overcame in order to perform at powwows, the shift in opinion regarding women singers over time, and the current perception of women’s drums from data collected through interviews with powwow singers and dancers. I argue that women’s drum groups have played a significant role in energizing Native women’s identity in Northern Appalachia. Understanding this aspect of powwows is an important part of our understanding Native American modernity more broadly; likewise, it is significant in our comprehension of Appalachia as a place of dynamic, diverse traditions

Light from the East: travel to China and Australian activism in the long Sixties

Throughout the "long Sixties" a diverse array of Australian activists traveled beyond what was popularly known as the "bamboo curtain" into the People's Republic of China (PRC). This paper will argue that they found not the monolithic "red menace" presented by media and government, but an often contradictory set of images mediated by their own political agendas and the changing nature of Chinese politics. More than useful idiots, these radicals took important political lessons from their Chinese counterparts, engaging in a largely unacknowledged process of transnational exchange. Through investigating three key groups of antipodean travelers - Communist Party members in the 1950s, student and worker revolutionaries in the late 1960s, and Indigenous activists in the early 1970s - it is possible to understand how not only their diverse political agendas, but also the changing realities of Chinese domestic and foreign politics, impacted on the lessons they took home. Drawing on memoirs, newspaper and magazine articles as well as archival sources, a light will be shone on this period of political and cultural exchange across seemingly impassable Cold War boundaries, illuminating Australia's often forgotten involvement in the Sixties experience