SECOND ANNUAL VETERAN’S POWWOW IN CANTON The North American Indian Center of Boston (NAICOB) and the Massachusett Tribe of Ponkapoag are excited for their Second Annual Veterans Powwow on May 5 at Prowse Farm in Canton, Massachusetts. With support from the Jamaica Plain VA Medical Center, we’ll have a day long experience of culture and ceremony.
Our head dancers are Kabl Wilkerson (Citizen Potawatomi Nation) and Autaquay Peters (Mashpee Wampanoag). Our host drum is Red Hawk Singers, led by Cheenulka Peters who is the grandson of long time NAICOB member and leader, Shirley Mills. Our invited drum is the Pomham Singers. NAICOB, Massachusetts’s oldest urban Indigenous center, has been in existence since 1969, formally as the Boston Indian Council on Washington Street in Dorchester. The center has been entrusted with the privilege of supporting intergovernmental relations between the Commonwealth
DESIGNERS:
Phoebe Delmonte: p.1,4,5 Hannah Blauner: p.2,3,7 Adrian Alvarez: p.6,8
and the tribes whose historic territories are held within so-called Massachusetts. The Massachusetts Tribe at Ponkapoag is one of the tribes of first contact when the English settlers arrived in 1620. With their traditional territory stretching across much of the Greater Boston area, it is with gratitude that we are able to work in partnership with the tribe and host this powwow together. Learn more about them at http://massachusetttribe.org/. The Jamaica Plain VA Medical Center is a long time supporter of Native Veterans and was a proud partner of last year’s powwow. Their goal is to continue to support American Indian/ Alaskan Native veterans in life after service such as health care, cultural support and more.
CARTOONIST COOPERATIVE: CHANGING COMICS CULTURE Comics is a beautiful medium. Comics as a career takes a great deal of commitment. Your workflow may be welltempered and your online presence polished, but your success can still be undermined by a predatory contract or pitiful page rates that exploit the very enthusiasm that drew you to pursue comics. Comics is a medium and can be your career, but they’re also an industry. An industry that has been around for almost a century without consistent organizations looking out for the worker. The Cartoonist Cooperative wants us to change that together.
Image credit: Amanda J Ellis
To bridge that difficulty, the Cooperative invests in their online “A primary goal of the Cartoonist spaces. A highly organized Discord Cooperative has been to change server offers many opportunities the culture around comics from to teach, learn, and socialize with one of individualism to a more an international hive of creators community-focused industry,” said while participating in work for the Zach Hazard Vaupen, a member of the organization. If Discord is not for Cooperative’s Steering Committee. you, a forum page offers the same Admission for the event is $5 an adult, content at a less active pace. A “It’s hard, especially since many of us $3 for children and free for NAICOB monthly newsletter condenses the members, Ponkapoag tribal members are isolated, not necessarily by choice,” latest happenings, directing members said Nero Villagallos O’Reilly, another and Veterans with ID. to priorities. It reinforces, as third committee member. As professional Committee Member Reimena Yee said, cartoonists, the members are aware of “the idea that solidarity, organizing and —The North American Indian Center of the challenges in assembling creative resource-building are not background Boston (NAICOB) workers, often overworked to the point services that arise from the ether, but of sacrificing social lives and self care. are active mutual, conscious acts of community that require participation, no matter how small.” Article continued on page eight.