Film Explores WWII Internment on Colorado River Indian Reservation

Cross-posted from our sister site, Asian American Village:



Following up on the Annual Day of Remembrance -- marking FDR's signing of Executive Order 9066 -- we feature a contribution by filmmaker Joe Fox, whose new film Passing Poston: An American Story, debuts in New York City tonight.

The filmmaker and writer discusses the inspiration behind the new film about Poston concentration camp, and about the film's exploration of connections between the Japanese Americans who labored there and the Colorado River Indian tribe, whose desert reservation served as its host.

As Fox states, "A filmmaker is nothing more than a storyteller. And one really searches high and low for those amazing stories to tell."

He and partner James Nubile have found an amazing story indeed. Learn more at http://www.passingposton.com/.

Johnny Whitehorse Wins 2008 Grammy for Best Native American Music Album

A nice note sent over from Silver Wave Records about the Grammy Awards:

Silver Wave Records is pleased and excited to announce that "Totemic
Flute Chants" by Johnny Whitehorse (aka Robert Mirabal) is
the winner of the 2008 Grammy Award for Best Native American Music Album.

Mirabal and co-producer Larry Mitchell were honored with the prestigious
award on Sunday, February 10 in Los Angeles.

Thank you to all the fans, voters, retailers, distributors, radio, and
media people who have supported Johnny Whitehorse and Robert Mirabal. We
sincerely appreciate you.

For more about Robert Mirabal, see/hear the VoA report from last fall, "Musician Robert Mirabal Draws Inspiration from Land," on the Native American Village.

What Do American Indian and Alaskan Native College Students Want in a Career?

What Do American Indian and Alaskan Native College Students Want in a Career?:

2007 Diversity Employers survey finds flexibility, opportunities to serve, higher priority than just making money

By the IMDiversity Career Center Staff

A follow-up to last year's Diversity Employers survey finds flexibility, opportunities to serve, remain highest priorities for Native college students and MBAs, when compared with surveyed groups of other backgrounds. However, it also shows shifts within the Native student population from last year, and sees increasing common ground being built among Natives, African Americans, and Pacific Islanders, South Asian Indian Americans, and Latinos in particular.

Just for one thing, Healthcare has dropped fairly significantly as a top ideal industry since last year, while interestingly, Non-Profit work has risen. Also of interest is how the most common definitions of "diversity" have changed since last year's survey, among Natives and all ethnic groups.


Some survey highlights posted on the Village were extracted from a larger, illustrated report, the Top 100 IDEAL Employers - Diversity Edition 2007, presented by Universum and our sister publication from IMDiversity, THE BLACK COLLEGIAN Magazine.

We give our light take on it in the article on NAV, but are also really, really interested to hear how you might interpret the findings. We hope you'll leave us a comment letting us know your thoughts on what this comparative survey might say about our work values, commonalities and differences, not just between ethnic groups, but also possibly genders, tribes and generations.

Chippewa Designer Builds Vet Memorial in MT

We know, it's been a while since posting. We've been pretty hopping with other areas of the site, in particular reworking some parts of the IMDiversity job bank portion, which is getting some enhanced search features this season.

Meanwhile, we wanted to pass on this word sent in from a visitor, a Chippewa Indian who has designed and built "one of Montana's finest Veteran Memorials". Located at the Kiwanis Park in Dillon, Montana, the Beaverhead County Veterans Memorial allows people to purchase inexpensive bricks with three lines of text (14 spaces) or even some more complex graphics commemorating friends and loved ones who served and died in America's wars.

The Progress section of the site shows a photo essay of the memorial's construction, and a few sample bricks provide ideas for possible layouts. To apply for a brick, you have to download a form in Adobe PDF format from the site.

Designer Ron Lake writes that "What I'm trying to get is at least one brick from every state to go into the www.beaverhead.com/veterans memorial."

"Any Veterans or Guard can get a brick," Lake says, but he suggests that the memorials can also be non-specific, such as:

Thanks Vets!
The Boys at
_________

Well, we were happy to help him spread the word, and encourage visitors to view the site and the tasteful memorial design, and consider adding a brick of your own. Gift certificates are also available and can help complete the work.

For more information, contact Ron Lake (406)683-1269.