Dragonfly Lecture on February 22nd

Concert: Traditional and New Music from Southern California Indian Nations

Georgiana Sanchez has a gift for you. She drove a very long way to share her beautiful stories and poems at the January 23 Native Voices Poetry Festival. Today, Sunday, January 24, she is turning around and commuting many miles again. She and her family will sing and tell traditional and new Chumash songs and stories at a benefit concert. Dorothy Ramon Learning Center is so grateful that this Elder is honoring our nonprofit this way. Please come and support, 3 p.m. at 127 N. San Gorgonio Avenue, Banning, and accept her gift of beautiful songs and stories from the Chumash culture. Sean Milanovich will share beautiful songs he wrote in Cahuilla. Ernest Siva, Bill Bell & Don Strandberg also will share traditional songs. Your $10 will help Dorothy Ramon Learning Center save and share Southern California's cultures, languages, history, and arts. 

Photo by Carlos Puma for Dorothy Ramon Learning Center

Come to Native Voices Poetry Festival!

Poetry Festival: Native Voices 2016

Inspire. Discover. Explore. Create. The second annual Native Voices Poetry Festival at Dorothy Ramon Learning Center in downtown Banning on Saturday, January 23, will celebrate the human voice in all the arts. 

Explore the richness of Southern California’s Native cultures, languages, history, and traditional arts. Discover and be inspired by our region’s beauty, vitality, and uniqueness. Enjoy Native American songs, storytelling, poetry, and more in family-friendly, free performances. 

Create poetry, stories, and art in free workshops for all ages.

 

DETAILS:

When:  9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, January 23.

Where: Dorothy Ramon Learning Center’s San Manuel Band of Mission Indians Gathering Hall at 127 N. San Gorgonio Avenue, Banning.

What: Free, family-friendly performances and workshops.

Who: Native American storytellers, singers, and poets from the region and from throughout Southern California, including Georgiana Sanchez, Ted and Dennis Garcia, Ernest Siva and family members, Kim and Mallory Marcus, Raymond Huaute, the Morongo Bird Singers and Dancers, Madrigal Family Bird Singers and Dancers, and other bird singers. 

Dragonfly Wind Flute Ensemble returns for the 2016 Festival, along with musicians Bill Bell and Don Strandberg, who again will perform local historian Bell’s “Ballad of Willie Boy.”

Food: Festival participants can enjoy lunch from Ramona’s food truck and Super Subs restaurant nearby.

Other Poetry Festival highlights are:

• Free workshops throughout the day, many for children, teens, and their families, offering ways to explore their own creativity through writing and art. First-come, first-serve signups will be available at the event.

• A Native Garden area with demos and displays of how native plants provide foods, medicines, tools, and have served Native cultures through time. 

• Shopping, browsing, and enjoying poetry in the Literary Café sponsored by the nonprofit Inlandia Institute, with poetry readings throughout the day.

Browse among books offered by vendors Malki Museum/Ballena Press; Heyday Books and News From Native California magazine; Scarlet Tanager Books; Dorothy Ramon Learning Center’s publishing arm, Ushkana Press; UC Riverside Costo Chair; and Inlandia Institute.

• Tours of Dorothy Ramon Learning Center’s new library, along with information on local history resources in Banning Library. The nonprofit Dorothy Ramon Learning Center since 2003 has saved and shared Southern California’s Native American cultures, languages, history, and traditional arts.

Festival sponsors Include California State University, San Bernardino, and CSUSB Palm Desert;

Banning Community Fund; Mt. San Jacinto Community College; College of the Desert;

Inlandia Institute; Banning Schools Indian Education Program; UC Riverside Costo Chair; Poets and Writers; PoetrIE; Morongo Cultural Resources; Morongo School, and Banning Library District, which is kicking off its 100th birthday celebration at the Poetry Festival.

For more information: Call 951.849.7736; email info@dorothyramon.org, or come back here.

A Chemehuevi Song: Dragonfly Lecture November 16

The Oasis of Mara

The new book, A Chemehuevi Song: The Resilience of a Southern Paiute Tribe, brings together a chorus of Native American voices, both past and present, to narrate the story of tireless efforts to gain tribal recognition and autonomy. 

Please join Clifford E. Trafzer, distinguished professor of history at UC Riverside, also the Rupert Costo Chair in American History, as he shares the story of the power of perseverance in a Dragonfly Lecture at 6 p.m. November 16, 2015, at 127 N. San Gorgonio Ave., Banning. 

Your $5 will help the nonprofit Dorothy Ramon Learning Center save and share Southern California's Native American cultures, history, languages, and traditional arts. Information: 951.849.7736.

November 2015 Benefit

5 Reasons to Love Our Dragonfly Gala

Dorothy Ramon Learning Center's 12th Dragonfly Gala is Saturday, August 8, starting at 4 p.m. at Morongo Community Center.
Here's 5 reasons why we see so many of the same faces among more than 300 people, year after year ...

1. We're Intertribal.  People of all ages, from cultures both Native and non-Native, from all walks of life, gather to celebrate and support the work to save and share Southern California's own Native American cultures, languages, history, and traditional arts. The Gala includes exhibits by tribes and Culture Bearers, traditional music, and traditional foods.

2014 Morongo Cultural Resources Exhibit (Carlos Puma Photo)

2014 San Manuel Serrano game (Carlos Puma Photo)

2. The Food is Amazing.

Carlos Puma Photo of the Chia Café chefs 

You can have your typical banquet food. The Dragonfly Gala is catered by Chia Café, which is devoted to restoring and sharing the arts of indigenous traditional foods. Along with turkey and beef barbecued underground, homemade tortillas and beans, and other mouth-watering foods, past galas have featured rabbit stew, unusual and delicious salads made with wild greens, side-dish staples such as cactus pads and yucca, and other delicious and nutritious Native foods. Oh, and the desserts are to die for.


3. Our Silent Auction is Epic.

Silent Auction Photo by Carlos Puma

One-of-a-kind. Beautiful. Eclectic. Native handcrafted arts. Dragonfly items. Pottery. Jewelry. Shop, shop, shop. Don't miss it.





4.  We Sing. We Dance.
Just as Southern California people have done for centuries.

Bird dancers of all ages (Carlos Puma Photo)

James Ramos (left), 2014 honoree, with Ernest Siva

5. We honor someone each year for soaring cultural achievements

Carlos Puma Photo

The 2015  Dragonfly Award goes to Walter Holmes, Jr., leader of the Morongo Bird Singers and Dancers. (center, wearing hat).