Skip to main content

Posts

Featured Post

#NoDAPL Stop the Dakota Access Pipeline

#NoDAPL  #NoDakotaAccess #Stand4StandingRock Stand for Standing Rock By Lynne Colombe Mitakuyapi, le miye ZiZiWin.  Hello my relatives, I am Yellow Woman.  I have never used that name, "Yellow Woman," in writing.  It was a name that my great-grandmother, Carrie Roubideaux-Bordeaux, gave to me because I did not have "an Indian name."  She gave me her name because I am an identical twin; and I was born jaundiced.  And, because that was her name, so she gave it to me. There was no ceremony, no feather placed in my hair, no kiss upon my forehead.  My great-grandmother and great-grandfather on my mother's side were the only grandparents on that side I would ever really know.  My maternal grandmother passed away when my mother was only 15 years old; and my material grandfather lived out of state and had a different family. I think of my childhood as "peculiar" in many ways.  First, because I am 1/2 White and live on an Indian Reserva...
Recent posts

Feedback on Native Filmmaking

Native Film Making - Documentarian Thoughts and Declaration of Descendants of the Star People: Lakota Voices, Values and Virtues INTRODUCTION Jack London went into the wild; Mowat hunted like the People of the Deer; Leslie Marmon Silko went to the edge of the world; Hemingway went out to sea; Achebe journeyed into the past of his ancestors; and I have ventured into the belly of... "the Rez." Every artist that I admire has gone through mighty transformations. Each writer whose work that I value most communicated their views of their fellow man, the degradation or advancement of society around them, the translation of their cultural values and the survival of the human spirit. While watching commercials that promote Latin American Culture and "National Hispanic Heritage Month," I enviously embrace the film projects and products that have amplified the voices of many persons of Latin Heritage. As a Lakota Sioux, or Sicangu, I often work in solitary form - much like San...

Lessons of a Reservation-Schooled Kid

Much of What I Needed To Know, I Learned by 6th Grade by Lynne M. Colombe November 30, 2021     My favorite picture of myself is of me wearing my older brother's hand-me-down shirt with Big Bird kicking a football on the front of it. That day, I had been to the grocery store and saw a traveling photographer with his pop-up stand. I ran home, and then pleaded to go back and take my photo. Sprinting to my room, I found the Big Bird shirt, threw it on, and told my mom that I was ready. She took one look at me and asked me to change my shirt. I declined. She told me I must at least comb my hair. I obliged.      An anecdote to this story is that I have an identical twin sister, who also adored that Big Bird shirt, and we squabbled for years over who was actually in the photo wearing the Big Bird shirt. It is me.      From the missing teeth, I date this photo to the summer of 1981, before the start of the third grade. There is an innocence and a happine...

WORKING DRAFT: "A Room Without a View: Challenges to Democracy and Native Nation Building, A View by a Sicangu Lakota Woman During the COVID-19 Pandemic

A Room Without a View: Challenges to Democracy and Native Nation Building, a View by a Sicangu Lakota Woman During the COVID-19 Pandemic By Lynne M. Colombe WORKING DRAFT OF ARTICLE (Sections: Background of Author and Introduction) Date: 2/17/2021 BACKGROUND OF AUTHOR The year 2016 would begin a change in my life; one initiated via the exit from a comfortable career with the Tribal school that I had enjoyed program direction for three years. I had been seeking a way to free myself from the oppression and social constraints that I felt were diminishing my ability to work in Native American Education on my home reservation, the Rosebud Sioux Reservation. It was May 2016, and I didn’t know what I would do next, but I took a leap of faith and non-continued my contract with the school for the fourth year. I had made a decision based largely on my own reflection of the meaning of Eleanor Roosevelt’s quote, “Noone can make you feel inferior without your consent.” From this starting point,...