Native American

WITH THE TITLE "The Rock-Knockin' Native Americans," it's no surprise that pupils at Charles Carroll Elementary School were completely mesmerized by a recent school program featuring "Billy B."The "B" stands for Brennan, and Billy B. is a professional performer who demonstrates how Native Americans used natural resources and their ingenuity to survive.Pupils learned how Native Americans used cattails, saplings and bark to build wigwams, flint to make tools, and bent saplings to trap turkeys.

The sounds of a flute playing Native American songs filled Kathy Plitt's classroom at Park Elementary School on Friday as her third-graders celebrated the cultures of the Pueblos, Cherokee, Chickasaw and Sioux they have been studying for the last six weeks."

Feathers waving and ankle-bells jingling, dancers whirled colorfully to the steady beat of a dozen drummers yesterday -- encircled by hundreds of people, vendors selling dreamcatchers and a 1,056-pound bison. When the Howard County Pow-Wow and Show makes its annual appearance, it transforms a grassy section of the West Friendship fairgrounds into a temporary cultural exchange. For visitors without a tribe to call their own, the event is a glimpse into Native American heritage. For Native Americans, the gathering is a golden opportunity -- sometimes the only one -- to see far-flung friends and relatives.

Janesville, Wis -- Some were drawn here by a compelling legend handed down through the ages in the Native American oral tradition. Others were called by messengers of the more electronic variety: CNN, National Public Radio, Paul Harvey.Whatever the source of the beckoning, thousands of modern-day pilgrims have found their way to this small southern Wisconsin town to see an animal so rare and myth-bound that she merits the name her owner has given her: Miracle.Born four weeks ago to parents that are densely and bushily brown, the ghostly white baby is a sight to see, especially for Native Americans who believe they are witnessing part of their lore come to life.

The sounds of a flute playing Native American songs filled Kathy Plitt's classroom at Park Elementary School on Friday as her third-graders celebrated the cultures of the Pueblos, Cherokee, Chickasaw and Sioux they have been studying for the last six weeks."

When thousands of Maryland residents come to Baltimore this weekend in search of authentic Native-American fry bread, tribal drumming and spiritual Indian dances, they'll get that and more. But chances are what they see will only scratch the surface of Indian culture. They'll get Native-American culture, the Cliff's Notes version. As powwows -- such as the three-day one at the Baltimore Convention Center -- mushroom from small tribal affairs into sophisticated events, they encompass dozens of tribal traditions and customs aimed at attracting ticket buyers, up to 90 percent of whom are not Indian.

Sixteen-year-old Kevin Broderick is a history buff. On a family vacation to Montana last summer, he attended a lecture at Glacier National Park. The speaker, Blackfoot Indian Curly Bear Wagner, told Native American legends. Wagner also mentioned that he was developing a CD-ROM that explores the Lewis and Clark expedition from an Indian point of view. "I found that to be really interesting, since I knew that this year ... we would be studying the Lewis and Clark expedition," said Kevin, a junior at Glenelg Country School.

THIS THURSDAY on some long and tight fairways at the No. 2 Course at the Pinehurst, N.C., golf resort, the inbred and mostly white world of professional golf will see another door being opened.Notah Begay III, 26, a member of the Navajo tribe and the first full-blooded Native American to play on the PGA Tour, is scheduled to tee off in the U.S. Open.Begay's route to the highest ranks of golf was not the usual one taken by such privileged country-club children as Jack Nicklaus and Tom Watson.

Native American celebrationNative Americans will share their cultural heritage during the seventh annual National Native American Cultural Arts Festival and Pow Wow tomorrow through Sunday. Sponsored by the Baltimore American Indian Center in conjunction with Catonsville Community College Native American Student Association, the festival will be held in the CCC gymnasium.Representatives of tribes from all over the country will join the festivities and participate in traditional Native American dancing, singing and drumming wearing ceremonial dress.

CHICAGO -- Hundreds, possibly thousands, of letters from museums across the United States will descend on the Northern Cheyenne tribe this week. William Tallbull expects this unusual paper snowfall to bring information about missing pieces of his people's past and culture.The scene at the Northern Cheyenne tribal council in Lame Deer, Mont. -- population 1,918 -- will be duplicated, in varying degrees, at more than 750 councils and other bodies representing Native Americans, a broad designation often used by anthropologists to include American Indians and natives of Alaska and Hawaii.