Comments The Plan to Protect Indigenous Elders Living Under the Northern LightsSkip to Comments
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The Plan to Protect Indigenous Elders Living Under the Northern Lights
March 11, 2021
A remote region with a thriving tourism economy, a strict shutdown and a surprising transformation.
By Peter Kujawinski
March 11, 2021
It takes hours of flying across Canada’s vast, trackless north to reach Yellowknife, a small city on the northern shore of Great Slave Lake one of the deepest and largest lakes in the world. The region is as remote as it is pristine. But travelers are drawn here from around the world to witness the splendor of the aurora borealis, otherwise known as the Northern Lights.
If it wasn t for Bard College at Simon s Rock, author and lawyer Justin Deabler may have never met his husband, gone on to become a civil rights lawyer, or written his first novel, Lone Stars. That place saved my life, he simply said of the private liberal arts college in Great Barrington, where then 15-year-old Deabler found himself after dropping out of his Texas high school. It was the 1990s, he said, and being a gay teenager in a large, public high school in Houston had him fearing for his physical safety and his mental health. My sophomore year, I just stopped going to school, he said in a phone interview. Deabler s mother, a professor at a junior college, let him listen in on her classes, but quickly pointed out that it wasn t going to work long term. A family friend then told him about Simon s Rock s scholarship program, and the rest, they say, is history â history that Deabler later found inspiration in to craft Lone Stars, a semi-autobiographical novel that f
Comments How Negro History Week Became Black History Month and Why It Matters NowSkip to Comments
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How Negro History Week Became Black History Month and Why It Matters Now
Feb. 24, 2021
8
Black History Month has been celebrated in the United States for close to 100 years. But what is it, exactly, and how did it begin?
In the years after Reconstruction, campaigning for the importance of Black history and doing the scholarly work of creating the canon was a cornerstone of civil rights work for leaders like Carter G. Woodson. Martha Jones, a professor of history at Johns Hopkins University and the Society of Black Alumni Presidential Professor, explained: “These are men [like Woodson] who were trained formally and credentialed in the ways that all intellectuals and thought leaders of the early 20th century were trained at Harvard and places like that. But
Comments Crowns, Gems and Costumes for the Women Who Run CarnivalSkip to Comments
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Crowns, Gems and Costumes for the Women Who Run Carnival
11 A vibrant, skimpy ensemble worn at a Caribbean Carnival is so much more than a visual delight: “It’s a celebration of women’s glory in themselves.” The blinged-out swimsuits and colorful plumage seen at Caribbean Carnivals from London to New York to Toronto take months to complete and involve an industry of designers, seamstresses, feather workers and wire benders. The women who take part in this masquerade “mas,” it’s called have transformed a tradition rooted in Roman Catholicism and Black resistance to slavery into a performance of female empowerment, resistance and self-expression.