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Posts Tagged ‘worldmusic’

DISCLAIMER BELOW.
Joanne Shenandoah is an Iroquois singer and acoustic guitarist. She is a member of the Wolf Clan of the Oneida Nation of the Haudenosaunee Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy. Her music is a mixture of traditional songs and melodies with a blend of traditional and contemporary instrumentation. She has recorded more than 14 albums and won a multitude of awards, including “Artist of the Year” at the Native American Music Awards. She is currently living in Oneida, new York. Ms. Shenandoah received an Honorary Doctorate of Music from Syracuse University in 2002, the first ever given to a Native performer. She has received more Native American Music Awards (11 to date) than any other artist including a “Lifetime Achievement Award” in 2008. She has 14 albums and three GRAMMY nominations. She was awarded the GRAMMY for her part in the album “Sacred Ground” with Rita Coolidge and Robert Mirabel. She is the author of the book “Skywoman”. She has also received numerous Syracuse Area Music Awards (SAMMYS) and was presented with the Grand Prize by the Native Film Festival in Montreal, Canada for her soundtrack in the documentary “Our Land Our Life” in June of 2008.

Disclaimer; I don’t own the music nor the pictures. All credits go to the authors of the song and the pictures.
You Can Hear Them Dancing-Joanne Shenandoah

Duration : 0:3:44

Technorati Tags: american, awards, Can, dancing, Grammy, hear, iroquois, Joanne, Mohawk, native, oneida, performers, SAMMYS, Shenandoah, them, worldmusic, You

Sundancer; by Leonard Peltier together with Oliver Shanti Family & Friends.
Lyrics by Leonard Peltier.

Leonard Peltier also known as Tate Wikuwa is a human rights and ecological activist, member of the American Indian Movement. In a trial, which was called a disgrace for the American legal system by the former general attorney Ramsey Clark, he was falsely accused of murdering two FBI agents and sentenced to two terms of life imprisonment in 1976. Leonard Peltier is innocent!
But the government wanted to brand him as a criminal and through him the Native American civil rights organisation AIM. Their ‘crime’; to protest against the ongoing land-robbery and constant human rights violations committed by the US-government, the FBI and the mining-companies in the reservations of South-Dakota. At that time those companies tried by all means to lay their hands on the mineral resources (mainly uranium) of the Native American Territory. As a consequence of the uranium mining activities the drinking water was poisoned and the death rate among the Native Americans rose dramatically.
Leonard Peltier, a Lakota-Ojibway native American, is a symbol for the justified struggle of his people and it’s suffering. The vision of this man, unbroken to this day, is justice, a considerate relation towards Mother Earth and a peaceful co-existence of ‘the white man and the red man’ through a revival of Native American culture and traditions. This song carries his message into the world and hopefully help Leonard Peltier to finally obtain the right to spend the remainder of his life in freedom, instead of suffering the unspeakable injustice, he has endured until now up to the year 2041!
Under US law he can be freed only by presendential pardon. Countless people have already stood up for his release, amongst them well known personalities as Mother Theresa, H.H. Dalai Lama, Bishop Desmond Tutu, Robert Redford, Harry Belafonte, Richard v. Weizsäcker, Rev. Jesse Jackson and many others.

For more information on Leonard Peltier’s case; www.freepeltier.org

Duration : 0:6:39

Technorati Tags: american, Dakota, human, indeginous, Lakota, Leonard, native, Oliver, Peltier, rights, Shanti, Sioux, worldmusic