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When Navajo Grey Hills weaver Barbara Teller Ornelas saw the original Barbie dolls — all blonde hair, blue eyes and 1950s clothes — she certainly didn’t see herself.

That version of Barbie stood alone for many years until the First Edition Native American Barbie was released in 1997 as part of the company’s “Dolls of the World” Collection.

Teller Ornelas bought one of the 1997 Navajo Barbies for herself and another for her daughter, Sierra Ornelas, but she wasn’t happy with the outfit. She told her daughter she would weave an outfit for them one day, and she did.

Now, Teller Ornelas’ efforts to authenticate the Navajo Barbie are drawing renewed attention with the opening of the “Barbie” movie, which is prompting Indigenous women to give the character a Native flair that is missing in the popular movie.

In addition to Teller Ornelas’ authentic Navajo weavings, a special Fish Camp Barbie has also been created by an Alaska woman. READ MORE — Sandra Hale Schulman, Special to ICT

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Legendary Indigenous musician and songwriter Robbie Robertson, who defined a genre of music before it even had a name, died Wednesday in Los Angeles at 80.

“Robbie was surrounded by his family at the time of his death, including his wife, Janet, his ex-wife Dominique, her partner Nicholas, and his children Alexandra, Sebastian, Delphine, and Delphine’s partner Kenny. He is also survived by his grandchildren Angelica, Donavan, Dominic, Gabriel, and Seraphina,” the Robertson family posted to social media. His publicist Ray Costa stated that Robertson died “after a long illness.”

As lead guitarist and songwriter for The Band, Robertson, who is from the Six Nations of the Grand River in Canada, reshaped American music with such classics as “The Weight,” “Up on Cripple Creek” and “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.” The Band created the blueprint for everyone from Bruce Springsteen to R.E.M to Mumford and Sons. In recent years the term Americana has encompassed every rock n roll and country music sound that blends contemporary and traditional roots music from blues to bluegrass with virtuoso playing and gorgeous harmonies.

Stevie Van Zandt, of Bruce Springsteen’s E-Street Band, posted, “RIP Robbie Robertson. A good friend and a genius. This Band’s music shocked the excess out of the Renaissance and were an essential part of the final back-to-the-roots trend of ‘60’s. He was an underrated brilliant guitar player adding greatly to Bob Dylan’s best tour and album.” READ MORE — Miles Morrisseau, ICT

The Native American Journalists Association is aiming to become more inclusive as its members vote on whether to rebrand as the Indigenous Journalists Association — a move inspired, in part, by evolving trends in cultural identity.

The group, with more than 950 members mostly in the United States, is expected to approve the change at its annual conference in Winnipeg, Manitoba, this week.

Voting on the new name, as well as branding that would replace a feather with an “ija” logo in stylized letters, runs through Thursday.

The three-day conference begins Thursday and continues until Sunday at the Winnipeg Convention Centre.

“We have reconciliation in media, we have decolonizing journalism, we have wellness for journalists in newsrooms,” NAJA associate director Francine Compton told ICT. READ MORE — The Canadian Press/APTN

In a legislative meeting on Monday the Navajo Tribal Utility Authority (NTUA) reported on an initiative that’s working to bring electricity to rural Navajo communities.

NTUA serves a territory of over 27,000 square miles across the Navajo Nation.

Within that territory, 32 percent lack electricity and 86 percent lack natural gas with many having to rely on coal and firewood to heat their homes.

The average per capita annual income is $10,700. State Rep. Rod Montoya (R-San Juan) told those listening to let that number sink in. READ MORE — Source New Mexico

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She is a writer who uses her life experiences to shape what she advocates for, like supporting and uplifting strong Native women. Here is this interview with Jessa Calderon from March.

The Ojibwe rapper Mic Jordan was named North Dakota’s Hip-hop artist of the year in 2016. ICT’s Aliyah Chavez caught up with him, just hours before he took the stage for a show at Cahokia in downtown Phoenix, Arizona this spring.

He is a comedian and writer whose work has appeared in places like Comedy Central and FOX’s the Great North. Brian Bahe who is Tohono O’odham, Hopi and Navajo.

WATCH:

BELEM, Brazil — The diminutive woman with a white feather headdress stood on the stage of the majestic colonial theater in Brazil’s Amazon on Monday and addressed the crowd.

The woman, Minister of Indigenous People Sonia Guajajara, declared the day “the milestone of Indigenous participation,” then cited the national statistics institute’s freshly released census data that revealed the full scope of the nation’s Indigenous population: 1,693,535 people.

While just 0.8 percent of Brazil’s population, the figure marks an 89 percent jump from the nation’s prior census, in 2010, due to greater willingness of people to recognize their roots and better survey methods, including access to previously unreachable villages, she said. The latter largely explains why their numbers within Indigenous territories grew 20 percent, to 622,066.

“This a historic moment with that picture that the statistics agency has made,” she said on the eve of the two-day Amazon Summit in Belem. “It’s a historic moment of the restart of social, popular participation, and of the dialogue of our civil society with government.” READ MORE — Associated Press

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