Join us today in a joyful salute to new generations of Native American cultural leadership and achievements at state and federal levels.
Artists
California Gov. Gavin Newsom has named Gerald Clarke of Cahuilla Reservation to the California Arts Council.
The Cahuilla Bird Singer, Culture Bearer, and cattle rancher has served as a professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Riverside, since 2016. Revisit his art perspectives in this News from Dorothy Ramon Learning Center 2021 favorite, Creativity and Culture.
Gerald Clarke’s art is an important part of Dorothy Ramon Learning Center. Here, his “Rattle Painting: Blanket” looks over a pre-pandemic crowd as Ernest Siva (Cahuilla-Serrano), Learning Center president, shares a story in Serrano from his aunt Dorothy Ramon. The painting celebrates the renaissance of traditional cultural bird-singing in the Native American community. (Carlos Puma Photo)
“I’ve always felt my work is most successful when I work right out of my everyday personal experience of working the cattle there on the ranch, or what have you,” the artist said as he, along with Carlos Ramirez and Kim Stringfellow, discussed “Art, Place, and Identity: A View from the Desert,” at a recent Palm Springs art exhibit, Zzyzx Redux.
Photo from the artist’s 2020 exhibit at Palm Springs Art Museum. (Photo courtesy of the museum)
“As you view my work …” Gerald Clarke writes in Falling Rock, “I ask that you don’t simply compare or contrast it to ‘traditional Native American art,’ but that you understand that it exists within a spectrum of Indigenous expression that is simultaneously ancient and contemporary. I am not simply a contemporary artist that happens to be Indian. I am a Native American artist.
“I am a Cahuilla artist.”
Healers
U.S. Rep. Raul Ruiz, M.D., who served as an emergency room doctor before being elected to Congress in 2012, announced on social media:
“So proud to see UC San Diego School of Public Health and UC San Diego School of Medicine student, and my former health scholar fellow, Alec Calac of the Pauma Band of Luiseño Indians, join The White House's Health Equity Leaders Roundtable Series! As president-elect of the National Association of Native American Medical Students, Alec is working hard to build a healthier future for us all.”
Alec Calac with Congressman Raul Ruiz, M.D. (Photo by the congressman’s office).
The White House Roundtable includes cross-sector leaders from across the United States who explore ways to use innovation and technology to advance health equity nationally, according to the TexasLBJ School at University of Texas, where Dr. Michael Hole leads the initiative.
Alec Calac says on Linkedin: “I am a medical student at UC San Diego, where I am also pursuing a PhD in the Joint Doctoral Program in Public Health at the UC San Diego Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science and School of Public Health at San Diego State University.
“As the national president-elect of the Association of Native American Medical Students,” he writes, “I work tirelessly at the local, state, and federal level, identifying barriers and facilitators to greater inclusion of Native Americans in medicine and the allied health professions. [Here’s a news commentary he wrote in December 2021.]
“I also work collaboratively with the Global Health Policy and Data Institute on research projects that synthesize public health, global health, social media, and health technology,” he writes.
Calac family members have been strong leaders in Southern California for centuries. Alec Calac is the son of Dr. Daniel Calac M.D., the first physician from Pauma Band and the longtime chief medical officer of the Indian Health Council, Inc., a consortium of nine tribes located in North County San Diego, serving thousands of clients each year.
Storytellers
Big news from sisters Isabella Madrigal and Sophia Madrigal (both Cahuilla-Chippewa), and their mother, Renda Madrigal (Chippewa), who share traditional storytelling as medicine for healing:
As you may recall, the play written by Isabella Madrigal that spotlighted their journey with art and healing, Menil and Her Heart, made its debut at Dorothy Ramon Learning Center in February 2019 to a standing-room only crowd. Now, Renda Madrigal says, they will perform the play in early May 2022 for a different crowd: The California State Legislature.
The story follows a young woman, Menil, as she struggles to cope with the tragic disappearance and loss, through murder, of her sister. She ultimately finds healing and resilience through traditional Native stories.
Ernest Siva welcomes the huge crowd in 2019 at the first performance of Menil and her Heart.
(Elder Ernest Siva, Cahuilla-Serrano, president of Dorothy Ramon Learning Center, played himself in the play’s debut at the Center, sharing the Dragonfly Song on the flute.)
Both sisters have earned Girl Scouting’s most prestigious award — the Gold Star — and more than $10,000 in fellowships, and each addressed the United Nations, their activism highlighted by the play’s focus on the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls.
During the pandemic, the sisters have continued their activism, offering healing workshops via the new Luke Madrigal Indigenous Storytelling Nonprofit. Sophia Madrigal’s play walking a landscape of grief and loss, Wildflower: Indigenous Spirit, was performed online, also premiering via Dorothy Ramon Learning Center.
Poster for Wildflower: Indigenous Spirit (Design by Pat Murkland)
Isabella Madrigal currently is studying at Harvard University, Sophia Madrigal has been accepted at Yale, and their mother, Renda Madrigal, has continued sharing her popular book, The Mindful Family Guidebook, based on connecting your circle to spirit, nature, and wellness.
Details of the scheduled May 4, 2022, performance before the California Legislature —and planned legislative honors — to come.
Thanks
Congratulations to all. And thank you! Thank you also to California State University, San Bernardino, Office of Community Engagement, which plans to honor Dorothy Ramon Learning Center leaders Ernest and June Siva with the “Outstanding Community Partner Award” at a Community Collaboration Celebration later this week, “for their outstanding contributions to the University and community.”
Thank you to all subscribers for your support of News from Dorothy Ramon Learning Center. We welcome your EMAIL. Thank you from Editor Pat Murkland, March 2, 2022.
Dorothy Ramon Learning Center, led by Elder Ernest Siva, is a 501(c)3 nonprofit that saves and shares Southern California Native American cultures, languages, history, and traditional arts. We welcome your donations. (MORE INFO.)