COVER STORY
Native Art
Kurt Andersen talks with Sherman Alexie about contemporary Native American fiction, films, and music.

The National Museum of the American Indian
The National Museum of the American Indian opens in just a few days on the National Mall in Washington, DC. The building itself is strikingly different from the marble halls that surround it, and its grounds evoke Native landscapes right in the center of Washington – with 28,000 plants trucked in from all over the continent. Studio 360’s own Ave Carrillo took a peak at the new National Museum while it was still under construction.
Go to the National Museum of the American Indian Website

Robby Romero
Romero is an Apache who spent a lot of his childhood in Hollywood. His parents were in the film industry -- his mom once danced in an Elvis movie. But as he got older and started playing music professionally, he found his calling in Native Rock, mixing contemporary folk-rock with traditional native instruments like flutes and hand drums. Yet Romero chafes when his work is categorized as "Native American” music. Minnesota Public Radio’s Annie Baxter caught up with Romero at the Mille Lacs Reservation in Minnesota.
Go to Eagle Thunder Entertainment’s site on Robby Romero
Go to Amazon’s page for Robby Romero’s album

Edward Curtis
Edward Curtis devoted his life to photographing American Indians. He took nearly 40,000 images in the early years of the 20th century. Curtis’ camera captured the Native people as he saw them: brave, stoic, beautiful -- living monuments to America’s past. But the images he created are sometimes deceptive, because Curtis often staged them, asking his subjects to wear a particular blanket he liked or pose in a certain way. To inaugurate Studio 360’s series on American Icons, Peggy Berryhill talked with Native scholars and artists about Curtis’s images and their complicated legacy.
Go to the the Library of Congress’ Edward Curtis website
Go to the American Masters website on Edward Curtis
Go to an article from Smithsonian Magazine about George Horse Capture and his work
Go to a bio and picture of George Horse Capture

Basket Bridge
Tucson, Arizona is celebrating one local tribe’s artwork with a new overpass over a 6-lane highway. The bridge is designed with traditional patterns of coyote tracks and lizards used by Tohono O’Odam basketweavers. But, the designer of Tucson’s new bridge isn’t a basket weaver, or Tohono O’Odam. Rosemary Lonewolf is a Tewa Indian potter from New Mexico and she took on the Tucson project because she was sick of seeing tacky appropriations of Indian symbols. Ann Hepperman and Kara Oehler of KNAU produced our story.
Go to Rosemary Lonewolf’s website
Go to a drawing of the Tucson bridge
Go to the Tohono O'odam Basket Weavers Association
Go to Terrol Dew Johnson’s website
Go to Tucson Pima Arts Council website

SPECIAL GUEST
Sherman Alexie
Sherman Alexie is a poet, novelist and screen writer. He’s the author of more than a dozen books, include Ten Little Indians and The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven -- which he adapted into the movie Smoke Signals, a classic of Native film. In 1999, The New Yorker named him one of “20 writers for the 21st century.” He made his debut as a director with the movie, The Business of Fancydancing.
Go to Sheman Alexie’s official website

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Commentary
Kiki & Herb
Read the full text
Go to the Kiki & Herb website

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