Muscogee Creek MMA fighter

Nikki Lowe, Muscogee, enters fighting ring

By Brandon EcoffeyThe world of Mixed Martial Arts at one point in time was considered to be etched in the likeness of male barbaric hedonism.

Those times are long gone and today there are more women participating in the sport all across the country. It is not uncommon for mothers, models, and students to turn to the sport to improve their physical fitness and for some to use the sport as a way to quench a primal thirst for competition. It is however unusual when an individual is a mother, model, student and professional fighter at the same time. Meet Nikki Lowe.

“MMA is an art that is why they call it Mixed Martial Arts because it is about discipline,” said Lowe.

Originally from Ada, Ok, Lowe, an enrolled member of the Muscogee Creek Nation with Seminole and Chickasaw lineage as well. She now lives and trains in Albuquerque. The mother of two won her final amateur fight this past weekend at a King of the Cage event at the Ute Mountain Casino in Colorado.Comment:  For more on Native martial arts, see Lakota Black Belt to Teach Self-Defense and Navajo Hosts Mixed Martial Arts.

The Dawes Commission play

Creek language play premiering during tribal festival

By Leta Rector“The Dawes Commission,” the latest stage play by director and playwright Bob Hicks will have its world premiere 8 p.m., June 15 during the Muscogee Creek Nation Festival in Okmulgee.

“The Dawes Commission” is almost entirely in the Muscogee language with subtitles shown in Power Point.

“There are a lot of stories in Indian history that are harmful,” Hicks said. “This story about allotment has interested me for a long time.”

Set in 1904, the story focuses on a Muscogee family who is visited by an agent from the Dawes Commission. The agent’s orders are to persuade the Creeks to accept allotment.Comment:  For more on Native theater, see 2013 Festival of New Plays and Wood Bones Opens in New York.

Muscogee Creek codetalker medal

Muscogee Creek Tribe Code Talkers Medal Designs Reviewed

By Michael ZielinskiThe Commission of Fine Arts (CFA) and Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee (CCAC) recently reviewed design alternatives for a Congressional Gold Medal to be issued honoring the Code Talkers of the Muscogee Creek Nation.

Under the Navajo Code Talkers Congressional Gold Medal Act passed in 2000, the Congressional Gold Medal was awarded to Navajo Code Talkers for their contributions during World War II. Under the Code Talkers Recognition Act of 2008, additional tribes will be recognized for their contributions during World War I and World War II. As of late January 2013, an updated list of Native American Code Talkers who served in the armed forces during both wars has grown to include 32 different tribes. So far, the CFA and CCAC have reviewed design alternatives for medals honoring 12 of these tribes.Comment:  I gather the Treasury hasn't decided on a design yet. The article shows the alternatives for the obverse and reverse sides.

Two groups voted on these designs. The groups recommended a different design for each side. I'd go with the CCAC's choices--the ones described as getting the highest vote totals. They're shown below.

For more on the codetalkers, see Codetalker Congressional Gold Medals.

Mvskoke Media

Muscogee (Creek) Nation reinvents communications department

The department has evolved into Mvskoke Media, a multimedia arm providing information through print, radio, television and printing services to better serve the nation's citizens.

By Karen ShadeMvskoke Media makes programs like NNT [Native News Today] for Willits and others in the tribe. MM is also behind Mvskoke Radio and Muscogee Nation News, the bi-monthly tribal newspaper.

Along with a graphics and printing services division, the three programs that make up Mvskoke Media push to provide news and information to all segments of the tribe’s population.

“We encompass all forms of media for the tribe,” said Christina Good Voice, Mvskoke Media manager. Formerly the multimedia editor for the Cherokee Phoenix, she was recruited by Muscogee (Creek) Nation Principal Chief George Tiger.

For many years, the Muscogee Nation had a communications department that was a catch-all for many functions--from public relations to newspaper production to audio-visual tech services. In July, the communications department evolved into Mvskoke Media, a multimedia arm providing information through print, radio, television and printing services.Comment:  For more on Native journalism, see Top Native Stories of 2012 and Gary Farmer on Native Media.

Below:  "Host Jason Salsman interviews a subject for a story about adoption for Native News Today, a weekly TV news show produced by Mvskoke Media. The show airs Saturdays on KQCW, Tulsa’s CW Network."

Muscogee man is #1 principal

There’s joy in Toppenish as principal named #1 in nation

By Phil FerolitoSchool band members rolled out a bass beat as students chanted "We’re No. 1, we’re No. 1." A few students held a large banner naming Greene the 2013 National Principal of the Year. He knew he had been nominated for the national award, but this was the first word that he was chosen.

"I didn’t understand why all the cameras where here, but everyone was smiling so that seemed like a good thing," he said after the gathering. "Usually when there are a bunch of cameras at a school, it isn’t a good thing."

Greene, 43, is the first high school principal in the Northwest to receive the award from MetLife Resources and the National Association of Secondary School Principals. Only two awards are given each year by the organizations, one to a high school principal and the other to a middle school principal.

Greene, a Muscogee-Creek tribal member, was noted for turning this school nestled on the Yakama reservation—where poverty is high and opportunity slim—into a high-performing institution offering 27 high-profile engineering and biomedical classes. The effort saw state science scores improve by 67 percent over three years. Greene, who became principal of the high school in 2008, was selected from a large pool of principals, one from each state across the country. He was nominated for the national award by the state’s principals association. His school will receive a $5,000 school-improvement grant as part of the award.Comment:  For more on Indians and education, see First American Indian Sorority and Juneau Addresses Democratic Convention.

Creek growers cultivated Chickasaw plum

Rediscovering the fruit of the Muscogee Nation

By James TreatJust as there are many ways to track time through the calendar year, there can be various methods for charting the lands of this remarkable continent.

A notable effort to reconceive "America" on the basis of culinary geography is documented in the recent book Renewing America's Food Traditions. Edited by ethnobotanist Gary Paul Nabhan, this lavishly illustrated volume grew from the timely collaboration of seven major organizations committed to "saving and savoring the continent's most endangered foods."

Nabhan and his colleagues have mapped North America—including Northwest Mexico and most of Canada—by identifying thirteen regional "food nations" distinguished by place-based foodways. Each food nation is named for an iconic dish, and anyone familiar with Mvskoke tastes will be gratified to learn that Mvskoke country, both before and after Removal, is encompassed by "Cornbread Nation." Back east, this region borders "Chestnut Nation" and "Gumbo Nation" in the Mvskoke homeland; out west, this agricultural complex shares a boundary with "Bison Nation" running across the Muscogee (Creek) Nation.Treat focuses on one story from the book about the Chickasaw plum:Most immigrant writers have assumed this indigenous fruit to be wild. Yet Bartram saw plenty of Chickasaw plums during his travels in Mvskoke country, and he "never saw it wild in the forests, but always in old deserted Indian plantations." Hedrick also noted that "it is usually found near human habitations and on the margins of fields," and that "a careful study of recent botanical works indicates that the species is indigenous to the southeastern United States."

Finally, in 2004, botanists working at Horseshoe Bend National Military Park found six cross-compatible species of native Prunus—including P. angustifolia—near the site of Tohopeka village. It now seems clear that the original specimens taken from Hillabee, a few miles to the west, had been carefully cultivated by Mvskoke growers.

Nabhan and his RAFT colleagues extol this plum for its "primacy among the continent's great fruits," concluding that "perhaps the Creek were more accomplished horticulturalists than anyone has given them credit for."Comment:  People don't know that "American Indians of North, Meso-, and South America were the first to cultivate seventy-five percent of the many varities of food grown in the world today," according to American Indian Contributions. And they didn't just find these foods in the wild; they cultivated and bred them.

So much for the savage stereotype: the notion that Indians had no understanding of scientific concepts. Of course they did, as we can tell from their food, medicine, architecture, and astronomy.

For more on Native food, see Indians Made Turkey Dinners Possible, Preview of Growing Native, and Native Foods Changed the World.

Bret Jones featured in New Play Festival

Native American New Play Festival flush with good stories

By Brandy McDonnell BamThe staged reading of Jones’ “An Inside Strait” is set for 4 p.m. Saturday, and the reading of Minnesota writer and professor Diane Glancy’s “Salvage” will take place at 1 p.m. Sunday. As co-finalists of this year’s festival, their works were chosen from submissions from around the United States and Canada. After the event, organizers will pick which play will become a full production at next year’s festival.

“An Inside Strait” follows two Muscogee (Creek) men employed at the tribe’s Tulsa casino. One works as a security guard, the other as a dealer, and both are struggling to make ends meet. Reasoning that the house winnings are ultimately tribal funds, they plot to rob the casino.And:The Lindsay native, who is director of theater at Wichita State University in Kansas, doesn’t just pen American Indian stories. Jewel Box Theatre staged his uproarious Shakespearean farce “Thee and Thou” in 2009. But when writing American Indian plays, he prefers to explore contemporary issues.

“But I really focus on the story first,” he said. “I try to stay away from jumping on one side or the other. I just try to tell this story, with this as the backdrop. And if it stirs up in any conversation, then that’s OK.”

Last year’s inaugural Native American New Play Festival included a staged reading of his “War Paint,” a drama set in modern-day Muskogee around Bacone College. It follows a Creek girl who is determined to prove herself in college but discovers she doesn’t have the identity she thought she did and embarks on a search for her heritage.

“I’m a lot more interested in what is going on with Native Americans right now, real issues, real problems, instead of doing history pieces,” he said. “Some of those scripts to me—and I’m not trying to be uber-critical—glorify too much and don’t look at all the wrinkles.”Comment:  For more on the New Play Festival, see Cherokee Dirty Laundry Debuts. For more on Native plays, see An Italian American Indian and The Frybread Queen Reviewed.

Creek students perform Creek plays

Over in my Pictographs blog, I posted an item on Creek Indians using the theater as part of their language learning program. Check it out in Creek Students Perform Creek Plays.