New aNm Client - CNMCC

New aNm Client - CNMCC

tribe  

As many of you know, alterNative Media is focused on providing services to enhance various Tribal communities in the Oklahoma and surrounding areas. With this in mind, aNm is proud to add the Comanche Nation Museum and Cultural Center (CNMCC), located in Lawton, OK, to our list of ever-growing client success stories. aNm will provide artistic and technical design services to CNMCC for various visual components that support the exhibits within the museum.

CNMCC is committed to "Preserving and expanding the knowledge of local communities about Indian Arts and Culture with an emphasis on Comanche History and Culture" and aNm is eager to assist the Museum in this endeavor.

You can check out the Museum's website at http://www.comanchemuseum.com/ for more info and directions to CNMCC.

What can aNm do for you and/or your Tribal community or business? We offer a vast multitude of services, ranging from traditional/digital artistic design to high-end 3D modeling and simulation work. Check out our website at http://www.alternativemedia.biz to find out more about how aNm can help you with numerous projects that can potentially strengthen and enhance your Tribal community and/or business.

Report From OEGE

Report From OEGE

video games  

The Oklahoma Electronic Game Expo was a most excellent event for aNm. It was great to see all the individuals in the local OKC metro area come out for an event focusing on video games and electronic media. The staff and crew deserve many thanks and kudos for their accommodating attitudes and due to the fact that everything ran smoothly.

There were many vendors and sponsors and all the booths were busy with people interested in one aspect of video games or another. Indeed, aNm's booth received many visitors and friendly faces wanting to know more and talk about video games and electronic media.

At alterNative Media's booth, we displayed images from the digital gallery (which can also be seen at http://www.flickr.com/photos/sheyahshe/sets/72157603892304375/show/), were able to pass out many information flyers - about my book, Native Americans in Comic Books, the studio itelf, and our outreach to other '3D people' in the local community - as well as exchange business cards and do some good-natured networking within the 3D community.

Friend, David Downs came in for the "assist" in manning the booth, distributing flyers, and fielding questions from our booth's visitors. Many thanks to him for his efforts and professionalism at the expo.

We appreciate all the good people that came out and talked with us at OEGE and look forward to hearing from all of you that have 3D skills and to those that had potential projects to collaborate with aNm. Feel free to use our contact page for any communications about potential projects or collaborations. Look for alterNative Media at next year's OEGE event.

AbTeC Interview

AbTeC Interview

video games  

Beth Aileen Lameman - an Indigenous friend and creator of The West Was Lost and Fala comics, as winner of the APTN Comic Creation Nation contest from Zeros2Heroes - recently interviewed me for the Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace ("AbTeC") blog, "The blog of the Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace research network."

Here's a little info about AbTeC, from their website:

About

Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace (AbTeC) is a series of projects investigating innovative methods for First Nations to participate in networked culture to tell our stories while populating and shaping cyberspace itself.

Main

The main objective of AbTeC is to discover, define and implement methods by which Aboriginal people can use networked communication technology to strengthen our cultures. AbTeC’s Skins project will bring Aboriginal community organizations together with academic institutions to conduct research into the means by which the power of digital and networked technology can be put to use in producing and preserving our knowledge, culture and language. We will work with elder who have stories to tell, bands who have histories to preserve, and Aboriginal language speakers who want to share their knowledge. The goal is to provide conceptual and practical tools that will allow us to create new, Aboriginally-determined territories within the collection of web-pages, online games, chat rooms, bulletin boards and virtual environments that we call cyberspace.

Beth asks questions about alterNative Media, my opinions on fine art, and the future of video games for Indigenous people. My responses also came with a small peppering of nostalgia for some video-games-of-yester-year some of you might well recall.

Check out the interview here: http://www.abtec.org/blog/?p=118.

Look for aNm's Booth at OEGE 2009

Look for aNm's Booth at OEGE 2009

video games  

alterNative Media is proud to both sponsor and participate as an exhibitor for the Oklahoma Electronic Game Expo and Multimedia Conference - April 11, 2009, at OCCC in OKC. aNm will have booth space along with many other local business and services in the metro area. Click the link below to see the list of exhibitors at OEGE:

http://oege.catblog.occc.edu/wordpress/exhibitors-info/

aNm will showcase our many services and make exciting new networking connections within the local gaming industry. One of our main goals is to cultivate, support, and collaborate with Oklahoma's video game community and to foster growth towards creating a viable 3D game studio resources and talents to which regional studios (say, in Austin, TX) can outsource.

In addition, we will also have information about my book, Native Americans in Comic Books, from McFarland, available everywhere online.

Daily Oklahoman featured an article on OEGE. The article highlights the many events that will be at the expo including speaking presentations and the game tournament. You can access the store on the web at: http://newsok.com/occc-to-host-video-game-expo/article/3357567

Come by our booth, see what we can offer your projects, and say hello.

Sheyahshe Serves as Chair on NCU Accreditation Committee

Sheyahshe Serves as Chair on NCU Accreditation Committee

NCU  

Northern California University ("NCU"), www.ncalu.us is developing an Accreditation Committee to receive accreditation through the DETC (Accrediting Commission of the Distance Education and Training Council), a national accreditation body. Michael Sheyahshe - CIO, alterNative Media - has been appointed to this committee and will serve as Chair for Divisions III, IV, and V, providing oversight in the following areas:

Standard III - The institution and program provide educational services that meet the needs of students. The institution ensures that distance educational services are designed to optimize interaction between the student and the institution in order to encourage and facilitate learning.
Standard IV - The institution provides student services that encourage and assist the student to attain institutional and program objectives, intended course learning outcomes, and his/her educational goals.
Standard V - The institution verifies/demonstrates student success and satisfaction using valid and reliable assessment techniques.

The mission of the Northern California University School of Law and Business is to bring a traditional legal education to students with an online setting. NCU offers an alternative to the classroom by allowing our students live online lectures in the comfort of their home rather than a classroom setting.
...
Our instructional mission includes undergraduate, graduate, and continuing and distance education informed by scholarship and research. Research and other creative endeavors comprise an essential component of Northern California University‘s mission. All faculty members contribute to the discovery and dissemination of new knowledge. These efforts, supported by public and private resources, are conducted in an atmosphere of open inquiry and academic freedom.

The NCU Accreditation Committee facilitates assessment and accreditation activities within Northern California University; to encourage effective and fair assessment practices throughout NCU programs; and to support the accreditation needs of NCU. The primary purpose of the Accreditation Committee is to study program accreditation; development standards for the accreditation of NCU programs; and prepare for accreditation. The NCU Accreditation Committee will steer the university in the direction for DETC accreditation.

See http://www.detc.org/index.html for more information on the DETC

Another Critique of My Book

Another Critique of My Book

native americans in comic books  

A contributor to livejournal had the following to say about my book, Native Americans in Comic Books:

"The book annoyed me a bit with its critique of Native American comic book characters whose stories are set in the past. Sheyahshe commented that these characters reinforce the notion that Native Americans disappeared in the Old West days. It's a completely legitimate complaint--so the complaint itself I have no problem with...What annoyed me was the fact Sheyahshe brought this up each time he discussed one of these characters. It was very redundant. A few paragraphs at the beginning of the book, to comment on the problem and mention its applicability to all "historical" characters, would have made for a better reading experience."
*****
"Thankfully there are plenty of modern-day Native American comic book characters, so I didn't have to suffer through his redundant complaint too much."
****
"One omission that surprised me was the lack of commentary on the names that so many Native American comic characters have. The only name Sheyahshe commented on was Tonto's (Spanish for "stupid")."
*****
"Overall, though, I did enjoy reading the book. It made for a nice, nostalgic trip, and it sparked my interest in a comic book called Tribal Force, the creative work of a Tucsonan."

I can certainly see how someone might see parts of the book as repetitive: as an examination of many stereotypes and many comic books, there's bound to be a certain recurring element. Add to this, my use of a very specific set of criteria to evaluate the level of stereotype in each study and you can well imagine how a reader might feel this way, initially.

To certain extent, I agree that a short foreword / blanket statement about the problem inherent to all historic-only characters might have sufficed in some respects; however, given the sheer amount of continual stories that appear in comics, movies, and any other stories about Indigenous people, the event of portraying characters as historical artifacts only is exponentially more repetitive than I could ever be in simply documenting its existence. Yet, I can see how a reader might tire of reading about this tragic phenomenon - just as I tire of seemingly only seeing Native people with fringe, feathers, and on horseback.

But, as mentioned above, there are some modern-day Indigenous heroes in comics and we should celebrate them when we can.

This reader is correct about naming conventions for Native comic book characters: they certainly do seem formulaic and stereotypical, by nature. While the reader mentions the fine line between homage and misrepresentation, I would lean towards the latter, as I have seen far to few character names that seem realistic for Native people. Good call.

Also, I'm happy this reader was introduced to Proudstar's Tribal Force comic. My hope is that many readers will also have similar experiences of discovery and interest. Thanks for reading and taking time to comment.

Check out the full commentary here: http://footnotefetish.livejournal.com/458721.html