American Indians Culture

Indian drum maker Mike Kopepassah cuts a spiral rawhide thong from a wet pelt, then laces it through holes in saturated cowhides stretched over and under a gnarled, hollowed-out cottonwood stump. The hides will dry and shrink tight, turning the stump into one of about 20,000 drums produced every year by craftsmen at Taos Drums and sent out worldwide. Some of the company's drums weigh hundreds of pounds, cost thousands of dollars and double as coffee tables.

After generations of forced separation from their families, many Native Americans have forgotten--or never knew--how their ancestors nurtured, disciplined and passed on values to their children. Terry Cross wants them to remember. By interviewing 100 tribal elders across the country, Cross, a social worker and director of the National Indian Child Welfare Assn. in Portland, Ore., has blended their common principles with modern parenting techniques in a course called "Positive Indian Parenting."

For most of the 10,000 or so visitors to the first-ever Los Angeles Intertribal Pow-Wow, the three-day Hansen Dam Equestrian Center event was a chance to sample a culture most knew little of. For many of the Native Americans, from 40 different tribes across the country, it meant more. "To me it's the closest thing to being home," said Sonny Skyhawk, founder of American Indians in Film, a Pasadena group that fights for a better image in movies for Native Americans.

A celebration of Native American culture began Friday at Hansen Dam Equestrian Center in Lake View Terrace--a local showcase that organizers hope will become an annual event. Promoter Dick Wixon said that nearly 40 tribes will attend the three-day Los Angeles Intertribal Powwow, including Kiowa, Choctaw, Navajo, Pawnee and Sioux. The highlight will be a variety of dance competitions and exhibitions, he said. Events, which are open to the public, continue today and Sunday roughly from 10 a.m.

A dwindling Native American tribe clinging to its culture and two adoptive parents clinging to their children faced off Tuesday in a Monterey Park courtroom in an emotional child custody hearing that promises to become a touch point for debate over adoption, Indian sovereignty and children's rights.

Deep in the heart of Rocketdyne property in the Santa Susana Mountains, the Native American cave painting is so closely guarded that even the aerospace company's employees are not allowed to view it without special permission. Manny Tessier, a quality assurance manager for the firm, said the last time he saw the ancient, abstract drawings was in 1969, when he and a fellow worker visited the scooped-out rock formation on a whim.

"Make a recording of Native American music?" says Robbie Robertson with a laugh. "Are you kidding? "If I had called the record company five years ago and told them I was going to do what I've just done, they would've said, 'I'm sorry, we've got a bad connection here. Did you just say something really weird?' " But what Robertson has, in fact, just done--release an album of his music for TBS' upcoming six-hour series "The Native Americans" (scheduled for Monday, Oct.

There is but a hint of autumn on Dave Heider's farm in southern Wisconsin. Soon it will turn cool, then cold. The maple, oak and walnut trees will shed their leaves upon the sandy loam and hoarfrost, then become winter skeletons. It used to be quiet here. After a day spent working for the Rock County Highway Department atop roaring, heavy equipment, Heider would retreat to his 46 acres outside Janesville. And the quiet. But since Aug.

Two teen-agers banished by a tribal court for beating and robbing a pizza deliveryman left aboard a fishing boat Monday for separate, uninhabited islands where they will spend at least a year alone. As relatives watched, waved and quietly cried, Adrian Guthrie and Simon Roberts left the Klawock cannery dock aboard Wolf Chief, the boat that had served as their jail for the last week.

Two Native American teen-agers who pleaded guilty to a brutal robbery were held aboard a fishing boat Saturday pending their move to remote islands for a year or more of banishment. The two 17-year-old Tlingit boys, Adrian Guthrie and Simon Roberts, were banished by tribal elders for the beating and robbery of a pizza deliveryman. It is the first case of a state court referring a criminal case to a tribal panel for punishment. On Saturday, the teen-agers were lounging in the sun.