In The Mix

Photo courtesy of Oregon Shakespeare Festival

Mixed Race is the fastest growing minority in America. The arts have opened up new ideas through colorblind casting, fusion in music, visual art, and literature. Just as each racial/ethnic group influences and changes artistic styles and movements, Mixed Race artists help to create fusion and bridges cultural and traditional differences.

In The Mix is a one-hour radio documentary featuring artists of all different disciplines and races. The documentary features Lou Diamond Phillips, Writer Lisa See, Playwright Heather Raffo, Conceptual Artist/Writer damali ayo, Poet Robert Karimi, Musican Phillip Blanchett, Visual Artist Phyllis Fast, Oregon Shakespeare Actor Demetra Pittman and more…visit our website at MixedRaceWorld.org.

Produced by Dmae Roberts
and MediaRites Productions
with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts
the Regional Arts and Culture Council
and listeners like you

 

Listen to an excerpt featuring Phillip Blanchett, Robert Karimi and Phyllis Fast

Coming Home:
The Return of the Alutiiq Masks

Coming Home is a one-hour NPR-news-friendly radio documentary that interweaves oral history interviews, Alutiiq music and soundscapes.

The documentary takes us to Kodiak, Alaska where Alutiiq peoples work to save their language, cultural traditions and heritage by unlocking the secrets of the masks collected by French explorer Alphonse Pinnart in 1872. When he died in 1911, he bequeathed the masks to the Chateau Musee, a small museum off the coast of Northern France. There the collection survived two World Wars and were “rediscovered” by Alutiiq artists who began making pilgrimages to France in 2000 to see the artifacts of their culture. This led to an unprecedented sharing of history between two cultures, two different countries a world apart.

Learn more at DmaeRoberts.comt/cominghome

What to call yourself when you don’t have a name? That’s what Dmae Roberts grappled with most of her adult life. In a country that likes to think it celebrates cultural diversity, race and identity continue to be a complex topic. As Dmae charts four decades of history, we hear from her perspective what it’s like to be a “Secret Asian Woman.”

Secret Asian Woman is a personal exploration of identity and Mixed Race by Independent Producer Dmae Roberts, who has to make a daily decision to reveal her ethnicity. Through her personal story, Dmae charts four decades of a search by multiracial peoples for a name. The politics of calling out racism has changed through the years as has identification. In this half-hour radio documentary, Dmae talks with other Mixed Race Asian women with identities not easily recognized and addresses with humor the complexities involved in even discussing race.

Read what John Blewen (Center for Documentary Studies) had to say about Secret Asian Woman on PRX.

Download Secret Asian Woman for broadcast from PRX.

Produced by Dmae Roberts.
Editorial consultations from Catherine Stifter and damali ayo.

Original music by Clark Salisbury. Additional music by Teresa Enrico and Portland Taiko. Interviews with Velina Hasu Houston, Rainjita Yang Geesler, Julie Thi Underhill and Patti Duncan.

    Funded by the Regional Arts and Culture Council Individual Artist program.

Crossing East
2005-2006

The Story of Ing ‘Doc’ Hay

2005

“The Story of Ing “Doc” Hay” documentary tells the unusual and significant story of Doc Hay and his business partner and friend Lung On who ran the Kam Wah Chung store and medical practice in a small Eastern Oregon town shortly after the Gold Rush and into the 1950’s. Unlike other parts of the country where lynchings and massacres of Chinese immigrants were the norm, these two men were respected members of the community and are still remembered by John Day residents. [ more]

Visit MediaRites online store

The Breast Cancer Monologues

2004

A one-hour radio documentary produced by Dmae Roberts and the Breast Cancer Radio Arts Project distributed nationally for Women’s History month 2004.
The Breast Cancer Monologues is a one-hour collage of women’s stories intricately woven from interviews, readings and dramatizations about how breast cancer has affected the lives of women in America.

The Breast Cancer Monologues was produced by Dmae Roberts and the Breast Cancer Radio Arts Project and is dedicated to the memory of Chu-Yin Roberts. [more]

Visit MediaRites online store

Growing Up, Growing Strong
2003

Heart of Nature
2003

1st Person: Stories of Loss, Hope & Peace
2001

Legacies: Hope, Faith & Peace
1998

Legacies: Tales from America
1994

Stage and Studio – 1996 to present

Portlands live half-hour performing arts and media program

— Visit CrossingEast.org — Visit MediaRites.org — © 2016 Dmae Roberts

Dmae Roberts: Consult

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Coming soon…

— Visit CrossingEast.org — Visit MediaRites.org — © 2007 Dmae Roberts

Read Dmae’s “My Turn” columns in the “Asian Reporter”  

Every two weeks, Dmae writes a commmentary for Portland’s Asian Reporter newspaper. She draws from her personal experiencse and often excerts from her memoir-in-progress.

READ ARTICLE – Cooking Up A Storm

READ ARTCLE – Everywhere There’s Art

READ ARTICLE -“Other Asian”

My Brother, the Keeper
A woman tries to understand her brother’s need to hoard.  

Dmae Roberts latest essay was published in the Oregon Humanities Journal. “I just saw my little brother, Jack, digging through a Dumpster at our neighborhood grocery store, and I pretended I didn’t know him. He was in the dirty, torn clothes he likes to wear for what he calls “collecting….”

READ ARTICLE

From The Sun Magazine Readers Write section

“At the age of ten I became my mom’s sous-chef. She would tell me what vegetables to cut up and always criticize me for doing it wrong. Then, after she heated her wok till the oil was smoking and flames shot up toward the ceiling, she would start to shout: “Garlic! . . . Now the onions! . . . Bring me the carrots and bamboo! . . . Where’s the cabbage? . . . Hurry with the broccoli! Now!”…”

READ ARTICLE (third article on the page)

Telling Stories: Dmae Roberts’ Insightful Works on Multicultural America Posted by Colors of Influence July 2008  

Dmae Roberts is a two-time Peabody award-winning independent radio artist and writer who has written and produced more than 400 audio art pieces and documentaries for NPR and PRI programs. Her work – often autobiographical or focuses on cross-cultural peoples – is informed by her biracial identity.

READ ARTICLE

    Dmae Roberts and actor
George Takei

Posted by The Oregonian April 05, 2007  

Portland-based MediaRites, a nonprofit dedicated to telling the stories of diverse cultures, is the recipient of a 2006 Peabody Award for its radio documentary “Crossing East,” the first radio series to examine in detail the history of Asian Americans.

READ ARTICLE

    Dmae Roberts and actor
George Takei

OREGON COUNCIL FOR THE HUMANITIES Posts: Readers Write about Secrets  

When my mother died, I wondered if I’d still be Asian.
“I’m part Asian,” I’ve said most of my life.
“Oh, which part is that?”
I point to my prominent cheekbones, my best facial feature.
“This part.”
“I see.”

No one really sees. Sometimes I can’t see. I look in the mirror and turn my face to and fro and see Meryl Streep with a flat nose, freckles, and dark, thick hair. Often I look at my beautiful Asian women friends, and while I feel at home, I wonder if they look at me in that sideways manner as well.

READ ARTICLE

Posts: Readers Write about Class  

The American Dream has haunted me since high school. Growing up in the ’70s, I felt a strong urge to reject all the material possessions of the middle class–a car, a house, 2.5 kids, and a nest egg for retirement. Throughout my adult years, I was a member of what is now called the “creative class”–artists and writers who would rather save pennies for happy hour than plan ahead for the future.

READ ARTICLE

USA Fellows Win 2006 Peabody Awards  

Dave Isay and Dmae Roberts, both 2006 USA Rockefeller Fellows, won George Foster Peabody Awards. The 66th annual awards, which were announced on April 4, were given to 35 recipients from a pool of 1,000 candidates for excellence in broadcast and cable media.

READ ARTICLE

Coming Home: The Return of the Alutiiq Masks  

Home | About | History | Stations

Stations

Available November 2008 for Native American Heritage Month at
NV1.org  |  Prx.org  |  Content Depot  |  Earthsongs.net

Audition CDs available upon request at CreativePR.org

For Distribution info contact
Creative PR 888-235-5650 or info@creativepr.org

Like A Face exhibit opening ceremony
Photo by Sven Haakanson, The Alutiiq Museum

Hear a demo:

Hear an excerpt on PRI���s The World:

Listen to Segment B of Coming Home:

Download promos:
(Mac users, control-click and select "Download Linked File As…" Windows users, right-click and select "Save Link As…")

coming_home_promo_01.mp3
coming_home_promo_02.mp3
coming_home_promo_01.wav
coming_home_promo_02.wav

Download press releases (pdf format):

Coming Home PR 10-16-08
Creative PR press release

Download graphics (pdf format):

5×5 CD Sleeve
8.5×5.5 Postcard
CD Artwork

Download photos (Photos © The Alutiiq Museum – click for larger image):

For more information:

Burt Poley
Native Voice One
bpoley@nv1.org
NV1 Network Manager
Office: 505.277.5354

Rachael Tuia
Koahnic Broadcast Corporation
rtuia@knba.org
Resource Development Coordinator
Office: 907.793.3531

  earthsongs.net • kohanic broadcast corporation • dmaeroberts.com
©2008 Koahnic Broadcast Corporation • web design by Clark Salisbury

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136 years ago…
Alutiiq masks were taken
From Kodiak, Alaska
And given to France
And for a short time they are…

Coming Home:
The Return of the Alutiiq Masks

A one-hour radio documentary
by Dmae Roberts, two-time Peabody-winning producer

An Earthsongs Special documentary
with Host Shyanne Beatty and
Associate Producer Clark Salisbury

"Where I go, you go, helper spirit.
You don’t know where I will come from,
The land or sea.
As I travel the universe, helper spirit,
Protect me…"
-From a song collected by Alphonse Pinart
in Eagle Harbor, March 1872

  Coming Home is a one-hour NPR-news-friendly radio documentary that interweaves oral history interviews, Alutiiq music and soundscapes. 

The documentary takes us to Kodiak, Alaska where Alutiiq peoples work to save their language, cultural traditions and heritage by unlocking the secrets of the masks collected by French explorer Alphonse Pinnart in 1872.  When he died in 1911, he bequeathed the masks to the Chateau Musee, a small museum off the coast of Northern France. There the collection survived two World Wars and were "rediscovered" by Alutiiq artists who began making pilgrimages to France in 2000 to see the artifacts of their culture. This led to an unprecedented sharing of history between two cultures, two different countries a world apart. FUNDERS
Rasmuson Foundation
United States Artistss
United States Artists – Alaska AIR
Alaska Humanities Forum
Cook Inlet Tribal Council, Inc.
National Endowment for the Arts

RESOURCES
Alutiiq Museum
KMXT 100.1 FM
Koahnic Broadcast Corporation
Anchorage Museum at Rasmuson Center
Koniag Corporation
Dig Afognak
Alaska Kodiak Watercolor

  "It’s like having the key to the hieroglyphics, the Rosetta stone, all of the things that have been so defining in culture…"
                                                                       … Alutiiq Artist Perry Eaton   earthsongs.net �Ģ kohanic broadcast corporation �Ģ dmaeroberts.com
©2008 Koahnic Broadcast Corporation �Ģ web design by Clark Salisbury

Coming Home: The Return of the Alutiiq Masks  

Home | About | History | Stations

  History  

In the winter of 1872 a young French anthropologist, Alphonse Pinart, traveled the Kodiak archipelago by skin boat, assembling one of the most extensive collections of Alutiiq ceremonial masks in the world. Owned by the Château Musée Boulogne-sur-Mer, a municipal museum in northern France, the collection has not been extensively exhibited. In May 2008, 34 of these Alutiiq ceremonial masks traveled to be exhibited at The Alutiiq Museum in Kodiak, Alaska. Koahnic Broadcast Corporation and Dmae Roberts have created “Coming Home: The Return of the Alutiiq Masks” to document this important moment and the variety of personal and cultural stories it weaves together.

Only a decade ago, Alutiiq children knew little of their ancestor’s world. Today, the Alutiiq people are in the midst of a cultural resurgence, developing traditional language programs, re-creating stories, dances and songs, and creating new artworks from rediscovered traditions including masking, which holds a central position in traditional Alutiiq culture.

"When the Russians came, they called everybody in Alaska ‘Aleuts,’ and that’s a name for indigenous people in Siberia. And so, since we looked like the people in Siberia, dark skin, dark hair, most everybody here in Alaska ended up with the name Aleut. And from that word came the word Alutiiq, and the elders decided we were going to stay with the name Aleut, and so there was a division of what we should call ourselves, so they settled on Alutiiq. But our real name is Sugpiaq, and it means the real people."
            – Sugpiaq Artist Helen Simeonoff

Sugpiaq Artist Helen Simeonoff
Photo by Sven Haakanson, The Alutiiq Museum

More about the Journey of Alaska’s Alutiiq people:

The term "Alutiiq" is used to refer to both the language and culture of the group of Alaska Native people indigenous to the Kodiak Island Archipelago, the southern coast of the Alaska Peninsula, Prince William Sound, and the lower tip of the Kenai Peninsula. Ancestors of the present-day Native Alaskan residents of the Alutiiq culture area have continuously inhabited the area for at least 7,000 years.

For almost 250 years, the Alutiiq people have endured powerful forces of change. In the late 1700’s a Russian outpost was established on Kodiak and Alutiiq people were forced to work as virtual slaves for the Russian fur companies. Over time, with the arrival of Russian Orthodox missionaries, life in the Russian colony became less harsh. Russian customs, language, and Orthodox religion were gradually accepted and Russian and Alutiiq traditions endured alongside each other.

The United States took control of Alaska in 1867 and The U.S. government established public schools where the Alutiiq language and the adopted Russian Orthodox traditions were forbidden. Children were to be American – not Alutiiq or Russian. The impact of forced acculturation upon the Alutiiq people was compounded by several Twentieth century disasters. In 1912 a huge volcanic eruption forced residents to flee villages on the Alaska Peninsula and resettle elsewhere. In 1964, a large earthquake rocked the Gulf of Alaska region, and the villages of Afognak, Kaguyak, Old Harbor, and Chenega were destroyed by tidal waves. Another disaster struck in 1989, when oil from the Exxon Valdez oil spill reached almost every Alutiiq community.

In 1871, Alphonse Pinart, a young French linguist, traveled to Alaska to study Native cultures. Pinart collected scores of Alutiiq objects, including ceremonial masks. His collection has miraculously survived for more than a century and through two world wars at The Chateau Musee at Boulogne-sur-Mer in France. When Alutiiq masks were created, a song would be created for the mask. Pinart recorded portions of these songs in his journals. These masks, removed from Alaska just at the point in history that the United States was beginning its policies of forced acculturation, represent an unmatched store of Alutiiq ancestral information and inspiration.

For more info about Alutiiq peoples and the Masks exhibit
visit the Alutiiq Museum in Kodiak, Alaska.
http://alutiiqmuseum.org/

  earthsongs.net • kohanic broadcast corporation • dmaeroberts.com
©2008 Koahnic Broadcast Corporation • web design by Clark Salisbury

Coming Home: The Return of the Alutiiq Masks  

Home | About | History | Stations

About

Producers

Dmae Roberts is a two-time Peabody award-winning writer and public radio producer living in Portland, OR. She won the USA fellowship and the Asian American Journalists Association’s award for civil rights and social justice. She has produced more than 400 documentaries and features for NPR and PRI, including her eight-hour Asian American history series, Crossing East, winner of the Peabody in 2007. She runs MediaRites, a non-profit dedicated to multicultural arts productions. For more info visit dmaeroberts.com, mediarites.org or crossingeast.org.

ABOUT KOAHNIC BROADCAST CORPORATION

Koahnic Broadcast Corporation, the country’s leading national Native media enterprises, operates four divisions: KNBA 90.3 FM, the country’s only urban, Native public radio station; national radio programming including National Native News, Earthsongs and Native America Calling; and Native Voice One (NV1), the nation’s national Native American radio service.

For further information on Koahnic Broadcast Corporation, please visit www.knba.org.

Jaclyn Sallee, President and CEO
aclyn Sallee (Inupiat) has been with Koahnic Broadcast Corporation since its inception in July 1995 and has served as its President and CEO since December 1997. Nearly a decade ago, Ms. Sallee helped found the Indigenous Broadcast Center — now the KBC Training Center — to provide educational opportunities for Native people seeking or pursuing media careers. Ms. Sallee’s experience includes service on several community and industry boards and committees including, the Center for Native Public Radio, The CIRI Foundation Board of Directors, Alaska Broadcasters Association Equal Opportunity Committee, University of Alaska-Fairbanks Department of Journalism/
Broadcasting Advisory Board, Native Communications Group and the Steering Committee for the Alaska Native Communications Society.

Shyanne Beatty is Hangwichin Athabascan and grew up in a subsistence lifestyle in Eagle, Alaska where the Yukon River meets the Alaska/Canadian border.  Growing up in a remote community radio provided her a connection to the rest of the state. That influence as well as being a singer was a natural match for a career in radio.

Shyanne began that career in 1999 as a Production Assistant fellow for Koahnic Broadcast Corporation.  As a fellow she worked as production assistant for the call-in program Friday Wellness Edition.   She also worked on Native Word of the Day, Stories of Our People and produced various feature stories.  After leaving Koahnic she headed to Seattle, Washington to pursue an education in audio production and graduated from the Art Institute of Seattle with an Associate of Arts Degree. 

She rejoined the Koahnic family as a media instructor and traveled to rural areas of Alaska with the goal to introduce possible careers in radio broadcasting to Alaskan Natives and American Indians.  Shyanne also blended a daily four hour music show on 90.3 KNBA when she wasn’t traveling.  She now focuses her time on the daily music show as well as hosting and producing Earthsongs.

  Producer/engineer Clark Salisbury‘s work over the past 20-plus years has included public radio programs, music libraries, musical artist recording and production and web design. Highlights include the award-winning PBS documentary Kids In Crisis – Robert’s Story, Wisdom of the Elders radio, the Flash-based Refugee Dreams Revisited and the Peabody-award winning series Crossing East. He is owner/operator of BobbleheadMusic. His technical articles have appeared in Electronic Musician and Keyboard magazine, among others. Salisbury is an accomplished guitarist and electronic musician and has performed with a varitey of ensembles in his hometown of Portland, Oregon, and throughout the US.        

About Earthsongs  

Phyllis Peterson of Kodiak
Photo by Richard Jensen

Earthsongs is an eclectic mix of Indigenous music produced weekly in the Koahnic studios in Anchorage, Alaska.  It is distributed nationally via Native Voice One satellite distribution service and has become the primary showcase for contemporary Native American and Indigenous music.  The program, which is broadcast weekly by public radio stations across 19 states and streamed online, is designed to demonstrate the incredible musical talent flourishing in today’s Native communities, and to increase the "Native voice" through the arts.  Each hour-long Earthsongs program includes a live interview of a featured artist with Host Shyanne Beatty.  Artists featured on Earthsongs include many contemporary Indigenous artists, such as Robert Mirabal, Joanne Shenandoah, Pamyua and Arigon Starr.  Beatty also emphasizes the importance of showcasing newer, emergent music selections and Native artists, such as the Canadian First Nations group M’Girl, Grammy-nominated Lumbee artist Jana, and the young Navajo punk rock group Blackfire.  Having been raised in the traditional subsistence lifestyle of her Hangwichin Athabascan tribe in Eagle, AK, Beatty has developed relationships with many "grass roots," or underground Native artists who represent the future of Native music and its impact on contemporary sound.

For further information on Earthsongs, please visit www.earthsongs.net.   earthsongs.net • kohanic broadcast corporation • dmaeroberts.com
©2008 Koahnic Broadcast Corporation • web design by Clark Salisbury