Winter 2021-22

Voices from the Prairie A publication of Humanities Iowa • Winter 2022

Voices from the Prairie Winter 2022

Voices from the Prairie Contents

Humanities Iowa Board of Directors & Staff

Humanities Iowa Mission Statement

Upcoming programs . . . 3 New Board Members . . . 5 Essay by Elizabeth Rodriguez Fielder . . . 6 Poem & Essay by Debra Marquart . . . 8 Grants Awarded in 2021 . . . 10 Statement of Activity . . . 10 2021 Donors . . . 11

Pr esident

The mission of Humanities Iowa is to explore and celebrate the diverse people, communities, cultures, and stories of Iowa.

Cover: Artwork by Gary Kelley. Created

as part of the Humanities Iowa-funded project Esteban & The Children of the Sun, a musical suite that imagines and interprets the tricontinental journey of Esteban of Azemmour, the 16th-century Moroccan explorer and first documented African to travel across the North American lands of the present-day southwestern United States.

Richard Moeller, Sioux City

V ice-Pr esident & editor Linda Shenk, Ames

Secr etary

Karen Mitchell, Cedar Falls

Tr e asur er

Steve Siegel, Ottumwa

directors

Courtney Craig, Winterset Peter Drahozal, Eldridge Trevor Harvey, Iowa City Elizabeth Hoover de Galvez, Des Moines Treyla Lee, Sioux City Rosemarie Ward, Des Moines Jack Wertzberger, Dubuque

Join other Iowans and support Humanities Iowa. Donations are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law. Humanities Iowa also accepts gifts of stock or securities. To make a donation or receive more information, please contact our office at 319-335-4149, email us at info@humanitiesiowa.org, or visit our website: www.humanitiesiowa.org.

About Voices from the Prairie Voices from the Prairie is published annually

by Humanities Iowa and distributed to its friends and interested Iowans.

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Find news and information on speakers, grants, and ways to get involved with Humanities Iowa on our website: www.humanitiesiowa.org 2 · Voices from the Prairie

Humanities Iowa Staff Acting Ex ecutive Dir ector Heather Plucar heather-plucar@uiowa.edu

Art Dir ector Sara T. Sauers

Humanities Iowa PO Box 881 Ames, IA 50010 phone: (319) 335-4149 fax: (319) 335-4154 email: humanities-iowa@uiowa.edu www.humanitiesiowa.org

Upcoming Programs

These progr ams represent a sampling of

the projects we have recently funded in communities across Iowa. Please visit our website (www.humanatiesiowa.org) for a complete and current listing. We are always forging new partnerships and writing grant proposals to be able to fund even more programming.

“Tattoo: Identity in Ink”

Museum of Danish America Elk Horn, IA May 27 – October 22, 2022

The history of tattooing stretches

back over 5,000 years—even Egyptian mummies have been found with tattoos.

Today, close to one in three Americans has at least one tattoo. Body modification is deeply entwined with both the cultural and the personal, from cultural tattoos documenting a young person reaching adulthood, to tattoos as a punishment for crimes, to tattoos paying tribute to a favorite movie or hero. For Nordic countries, the interest in tattooing is twofold: each Nordic country has its own tattooing culture that has been shaped by both historical and contemporary influences. Nordic, particularly Viking-related, imagery is very common in tattooing today for people both with and without Nordic heritage.

To explore the larger context of tattooing in Scandinavia, North America, and the world, The Museum of Danish America is borrowing a traveling exhibition called, “Tattoo: Identity Through Ink” from Vesterheim: The National Norwegian-American Museum and Folk Art School.

This exhibition will explore the history and process of tattooing and the historical meaning of tattoos, with additional focus on Nordic cultures. Artifacts from guest curator Lars Krutak will be featured, including ethnographic tattooing tools from a variety of cultures, as well as silicone arms tattooed by contemporary Scandinavian artists in traditional styles. The primary sections of the exhibition will be as follows:

image: Japanese-style back piece, in progress. Tattoo by Brock Swenson / Brock’s Valhalla Tattoo, Decorah IA, 2019.

• Global History of Tattooing How tattoos have evolved over time, particularly among indigenous groups • The Making of Identity How many groups use tattooing as a way to reinforce group identity • Tattoo Aesthetics and Styles How cultures use different motifs and styles of tattooing to represent different ideas or bring about specific outcomes • Tattooing in Europe The history of tattoos in Europe with a more in-depth exploration of the history of tattooing in Scandinavia • Tattooing in America North American tattoo traditions from indigenous tattoo culture to prison and gang tattoos Smaller areas of the exhibition will cover how tattoos work, what happens when tattoo artists make mistakes, and what a tattoo studio experience entails. In every section, visitors will explore different aspects of tattooing culture.

The Museum of Danish America will host “Tattoo: Identity Through Ink” in the Kramme Gallery of the museum from Friday, May 27, 2022, through October 22, 2022.

The museum will coordinate related public programs in the Danish Villages of Elk Horn and Kimballton and will partner with peer institutions in nearby metro areas, including Council Bluffs, Omaha, Des Moines, and Kansas City. Please visit the Museum website for details: www.danishmuseum.org

See you at these dynamic, Humanities Iowafunded events!

“Vietnam: The Real War”

Dubuque Museum of Art, Dubuque, IA Exhibit, series of programs, and a theatrical production: now through February 6, 2022

This e x hibit and series of events ask,

“How do we tell the truth in war?” The experience centers on an exhibition of Associated Press photographs that documented and changed history. Lectures, screenings, and book discussions will expand guests’ understanding of the role photojournalists play in shaping history. Plans include conversations with Tim O’Brien and historian Teri Van Dorston, M.A., and filmmaker Aaron Matthews.

The exihibit: “Vietnam: The Real War” explores the separation of powers; the war’s impact; politically charged violence; freedom of the press; tensions between advancing civil rights, public safety, and accountable governance; and the moral imperatives of leaders, soldiers, journalists, and artists in a democratic society.

Museum guests will explore artifacts inspired

by Tim O’Brien’s acclaimed book The Things They Carried. Concurrent exhibitions add perspectives including the war photography of Dubuque journalist Bob Woodward and of Ron Testa, an official Navy photographer. DuMA has also partnered with the Grout Museum of History and Science and Fall/Winter 2022 · 3

To round out the season, local theater company “Fly by Night” will produce Shirley Lauro’s A Piece of My Heart, which tells the true stories of six women Veterans.

Come join us at this Humanities Iowafunded, community-wide series of programs that are designed to engage all generations in dialogue—online and in-person—about the war and its effects.

The Midwest is an epicenter in the fight

Iowa’s Black “Micro-Histories” “There are these great moments that you can see portraits of Black life, whether they be a Black ladies’ book club in Des Moines, or the rich student life of African-American Hawkeyes at the University of Iowa. There’s some great little micro-histories that I think that we can begin to parse out, which will really shift how we think about the black experience, not only in Iowa, but also in the region and in the nation.”

This film, as part of the Digital Documentary Project, explores the history of African Americans in Iowa and across the Midwest. The project involves a PBS documentary film as well as a series of podcasts, lesson plans, and activities available to students and community members at AfricanAmericanMidwest.com.

Buxton, Iowa: A Shining Light of Progressivism “Buxton, Iowa is one of the best known stories of Black Iowa. This was a coal mining town where both black workers and white workers are living together, working together—often engaging in recreational activities, educational activities together. This is really this kind of shining light of progressivism and integration in the story of Iowa.”

“The African American Midwest: A Four-Hundred-Year Fight for Freedom” Democracy Films Event: Documentary film launch, February 2022

image: A U.S. soldier wears a hand-lettered slogan on his helmet, June 1965. The soldier was serving with the 173rd Airborne Brigade on defense duty at the Phuoc Vinh airfield.

AP Photo/Horst Faas

the University of Dubuque to train student Veterans to interview Vietnam Veterans from the Veterans Freedom Center and to interpret those oral histories for Museum guests.

Inspired by these experiences, the student Veterans curated an exhibition, and this program takes place in the University’s art galleries.

To engage high school students, DuMA is collaborating with the Dubuque Community Schools to create guided tours for social studies and photography classes.

Along with Dubuque American Legion Post 6 and Voices Productions, Inc., the Museum commissioned a mural from veteran artist and active reserve combat photographer Corban Lundborg that transforms one of the historic AP photos into a whole new scale seen by thousands every week.

The series of events: In collaboration with the Carnegie-Stout Public Library, DuMA will engage lifelong learners in a series of book groups (e.g. The Things They Carried), scholarly lectures (e.g., by art historian Teri Van Dorston), and author and filmmaker conversations (e.g., with Tim O’Brien and Aaron Matthews).

4 · Voices from the Prairie

both its own unique story and can also gesture to broader trends in our national story. [By studying the Black Midwest], we can understand a more complex way of what life looks like and how people have carved out their sense of self, their sense of worth and place within these broader narratives. Just like our regional location, the Black Midwest is central to understanding the American experience.”

for racial justice and has been for centuries.

It is one of American history’s most amazing, important, yet overlooked stories—until now.

Humanities Iowa has funded the Iowa-­ specific content for these podcast and video segments: • The Iowa Underground Railroad • The Great Migration, Waterloo, and Redlining • Iowa’s “All Nations” Multiracial Baseball Club • Edna May Griffin, the “Rosa Parks” of Iowa, who integrated Des Moines lunch counters

Please check www.wttw.com, PBS Chicago, in February for a listing.

University of Iowa Professor Ashley Howard, one of the nation’s leading historians of the African American Midwest, is serving as a consulting producer and on-camera expert for the project. In an interview about this documentary, she shares these thoughts about key moments in the film: The Black Midwest and the Story of America “For me, the Black Midwest is the story of America, the story of promise, but also our ugly history of racism and oppression….

The Black Midwest is important because it is

image: Edna May Griffin. Source: Fort Des Moines Museum and Education Center

Refugees & Immigrants in Iowa Educational Programming

New Board Members

Iowa City Foreign Relations Council Iowa City, IA Events: December 2021 – August 30, 2022 icfrc.org/events-calendar.html

Six percent of Iowa residents were born

in another country, and five percent are nativeborn Americans who have at least one immigrant parent. This group of Iowans comprises one out of ten residents working in the computer and math sciences and one of six production employees. Thus, immigrants in Iowa play an important role in our economy, just as their experiences and backgrounds add diversity and vibrancy to our state’s culture. Understanding more about their stories—who they are, why they came to Iowa, what they need, and what they add to our state—is crucial and timely.

To explore these issues and opportunities, the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council (ICFRC) is offering six public programs over the coming months—all of which are free, live streamed, and available online after airing. These six events will engage audiences and bring together scholars, artists, and representatives of ethnic-based community organizations, to discuss issues that affect refugees and immigrants across Iowa.

These programs aim to raise the voices and share the stories of refugees and immigrants who have come to Iowa. ICFRC hopes these programs will help our communities better understand and connect with each other; foster social justice and equality; and develop more informed, thoughtful, empathetic citizens.

The six programs: • Life in Iowa as a refugee and immigrant, including the challenges of job-seeking, Wednesday, January 19th noon–1:30 pm • How Covid-19 has impacted refugees and immigrants in Iowa, Wednesday, February 9 noon–1:30 pm • Area refugees and immigrants in pursuit of higher education, Wednesday, March 23 noon–1:30p • Writing and reading about the refugee and immigrant experience, Wednesday, April 13, noon–1:30 pm • How raising the voices of refugees and immigrants can lead to more effective public policy, Wednesday, May 4, time: TBA • Afghan resettlement in Iowa, [Occurred in December 2021, watch online soon.]

Ms. Treyla M. Lee is a native of Sioux

City, IA. Treyla has a Masters Degree in Education from Wayne State College in Wayne, NE, and is currently employed as a Recruiter for Wendy’s Wonderful Kids/ Dave Thomas Foundation/Four Oaks Family & Children’s Services.

Ms. Lee serves on several professional and community boards and organizations. In addition to working as Program Director for The First Tee of Siouxland, Ms. Lee is Vice President of the Omaha Graduate Chapter and the 2019 Mid-­Western Regional Conference Chairman of the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., which is the First African American Sorority. It was founded in 1908 and helps alleviate problems concerning girls and women in order to improve their social stature. Ms. Lee is also Vice Chairman of the local NAACP chapter and is a former Miss Black Iowa.

Tr evor H arvey is an associate professor of instruction at The University of Iowa with a Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology/ Musicology from Florida State University. His research centers on participatory musical cultures and community construction through collaborative, recreational musical practices. Trevor has conducted fieldwork-based research projects within multicultural and multinational Internet communities, the virtual world of Second Life, Appalachian dulcimer communities, and informal old-time jam sessions. He is an active member of the Society for Ethnomusicology (SEM) and serves as editor and producer of "Ethnomusicology Today,” the SEM podcast.

Trevor is a frequent collaborator and volunteer with a variety of local arts and community organizations. He currently serves as president of HTLIC Media, Inc., an Iowa City-based non-profit organization committed to supporting the diverse voices of local artists in the creative development and production of socially-engaged, multimedia musical projects. He is also a co-founder and coorganizer of the Iowa City Front Porch Music Festival.

Fall/Winter 2022 · 5

IOWA, DÓNDE ESTÁ ANA MENDIETA?

By Elizabeth Rodriguez Fielder One of t he most influen t i a l

American artists of the 20th century, Ana Mendieta, created her most famous pieces in Iowa during the 1970s, within a few miles of my home on the North Side of Iowa City.

From the photographs and films that have captured her performance pieces, we witness Mendieta’s body merging into nature and her sculptures, or siluetas, carved into the earth. She left a trail of blood, soil, and feathers across the campus at the University of Iowa, where she was a student of Art and Intermedia. Mendieta’s work moved between diverse public places, such as alleys and storefronts in downtown Iowa city, but she also found privacy in nature along the banks of the Iowa River and Old Man’s Creek. Mendieta placed herself everywhere and yet, apparently, nowhere. In a place that memorializes artists and writers on the names of buildings and engraved on the sidewalks downtown, Ana Mendieta’s absence glares with a sense of erasure. And yet, Mendieta calls to us in present-day Iowa to change how we relate to our environment and the systems that perpetuate violence against women. As a devotee of Mendieta’s art, I question who is made visible and invisible in public spaces and why.

Im age: “ANA MENDIETA , Silueta Works in Mexico” by QRartguide – George Fishman is licensed with CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

6 · Voices from the Prairie

Each day, I walk past the Black Angel statue in Oakland Cemetery where Mendieta performed an early prototype of what would become her Silueta series. The imposing statue of the Victorian angel of death has become an Iowa City landmark through its many urban legends, which inspired Mendieta to perform an almost-ritualistic dance on the grave, over a dark imprint of her body on stone. As a recurring theme in her work, Mendieta danced a thin line between death and life. I have no access to the film of her performance “The Black Angel” (1975), so I am left to imagine her movement through a written description by art historian Jane Blocker and two existing stills. Each time I pass the statue, I ask myself, “Dónde está Ana Mendieta?”

Where is Ana Mendieta? emerged as a rally cry after her tragic death in September 1985.

Outside of museums such as the Guggenheim and Tate Modern, people protested against domestic violence and the erasure of women artists in the art world. More recently in the twenty-first century, the world has caught up to Mendieta, solidifying her place as a significant artist and a cultural icon. Major museums around the world feature her art and have curated retrospectives. There has also been a proliferation of scholarly and public writing about her art. About 20 years ago, I first encountered Mendieta’s work at an exhibit in New York City. While I can barely remember the details of the exhibit (Was it at PS1? Or the Brooklyn Museum? Which pieces did I see? ), I remember the images of Mendieta making her forehead sweat blood, using panes of glass to distort her body, and gluing facial hair to her face. The exhibit displayed a film of one of her most famous pieces: Untitled (Body Tracks, 1974), where Mendieta holds blood-red forearms against a white wall and sinks to the floor, leaving red traces down the wall in an unclosed V. In the film, Mendieta makes herself so small, and yet somehow communicates a sense of power. As a woman, I registered the tones of violence in the red tracks left behind by blood on Mendieta’s white sweater. But also, as a young Latina in my early twenties, I had never before seen an artist from my culture so prominently featured in a major museum. To have this image of Mendieta leaving her trace

inspired a hope in me that Latinx artists, and people, have a legacy in a country in which we constantly face erasure.

I could not imagine that I would one day move to Iowa City and live where Mendieta created these and many other pieces—art that confronts the patriarchal and colonialist systems that still dominate our world. At the age of 12, Mendieta moved to Iowa as part of Operation Peter Pan, a program to relocate children from revolutionary Cuba to the United States. Mendieta and her sister ended up in a Catholic orphanage in Dubuque and then in the foster care system. Although she kept these experiences private, interviews synthesized in Julia Herzog’s dissertation on Ana Mendieta’s life and work revealed the hostile and even abusive environments the Mendieta sisters survived. Mendieta left the safety of her family in Cuba, which at the time was considered a dangerous country, to arrive in Iowa, where she experienced violence in a presumably peaceful place.

Then, while Mendieta was attending the University of Iowa, a nursing student, Sarah Ann Ottens, was brutally murdered and possibly sexually assaulted in her dorm room.

Mendieta was deeply affected by Ottens’s murder, and she created a series of artworks that were a “personal reaction” to violence

a place like Iowa City. And as I write this, a wave of sexual assaults continues to happen at the University of Iowa and other universities across the country, sparking protests.

As survivors come forward and speak out on our campus, I imagine how alone Mendieta must have felt in the 1970s, as a one-woman crusade for people to pay attention—to look more closely.

And when we look closer at the landscape, we confront an environment forever changed by colonialist values. Mendieta’s art moves between her future, which is our present moment, and pre-Columbian modes of being, a past which she researched extensively for her art. I interpret her as a “deep time” artist, meaning her work has no temporal barriers, even though she lived a short life. Mendieta time-traveled in Iowa, at places such as Old Man’s Creek, a former Indian hunting preserve south of Iowa City. There she created contact pieces in nature: Tree of Life / Árbol de La Vida (1978), a piece where her body caked in mud disappears into a tree; Creek (1974), where she submerges her body in water; and Blood Inside Outside (1975), where she stands on a riverbank smearing herself in blood. She measured time in blood, suggesting the genealogy between her sanguineous life force and the dead blood of unrecorded past violences.

And when she made contact with the earth, her still body disappeared into it, extending her presence back through Iowa’s history of colonialism and environmental degradation.

Im ages: courtesy of author.

against women, such as Untitled (Rape Scene, 1973), Untitled (Bloody Mattresses, 1974), Untitled (Suitcase Piece, 1973), and Dead on Street in Clinton, Iowa, to name a few. In many of these pieces, she disturbed onlookers with her use of blood and materials in public areas, like alleys and parks, that would suggest a scene of assault. In Moffitt Building Piece (1973), a blood-like substance seeps from an office door in downtown Iowa City. Mendieta filmed local people passing, documenting their causal response, or lack thereof, to evidence of violence. By confronting these issues in public, she made visible the daily fears that live in our heads as women, even in

In this way, Mendieta’s art differs from her contemporaries, often white male artists such as Charles Ray who “planked” their bodies into corpse-like poses in the 1970s and 80s. For these men, their rigid bodies testified to the core strength of their legacy and the power of their relevance after death. In response to her contemporaries, Mendieta’s art disintegrates into time, blending into a landscape subject to environmental destruction both natural and unnatural. Her body is not so much rigid as limp, half covered in grass, stone, or mud, in a dynamic relationship with the earth. In her pieces Creek (1974) and Ocean Bird Washup (1975), she floats in water, transforming her body into driftwood or debris. Intentionally, her art in Iowa City was ephemeral, not meant to last.

Mendieta inscribes her own brown body within a genealogy of colonized subjects, anticipating being forgotten in Iowa. And yet, as Joseph Roach says in his book Cities of the Dead, there are ways of being “forgotten but not gone.” Mendieta’s use of technology offers evidence of her power to remember and be remembered. I describe Mendieta’s recording process as what Mexican-American author Valeria Luiselli describes as an “inventory of echoes”: “sounds that were present in the time of recording and that, when we listen to them, remind us of the ones that are lost” (141). Mendieta used film to create an archive of visual echos, where her body and her siluetas remind us of all that remains unrecorded, and in this way, is not lost. Now, after years of arduous labor by her family, her films have been digitized for posterity, allowing Mendieta’s messages to live on for subsequent generations.

In twenty-first century Iowa City, scholars and artists keep her memory alive through conferences and performances, while waiting for a more material presence to take root.

The scholar in me searches for tangible evidence and desires open access to Mendieta’s oeuvre. However—as Mendieta once wrote on a barn wall in Iowa (in blood)—there is a devil inside me, which knows that I must access the intangible by touching the material. So, I return to the Black Angel in Oakland Cemetery for a ritual to understand her art through my body. I enlist the help of my neighbor, Dorian Dean, an artist, and she films me as I mix tempera with egg, and dirt with water. We record improvised motions that recall Mendieta’s performances: I lie flat on the long gravestone; I spread blood and wet dirt over my skin; and I raise my arms in a reversal of the body track. As I embody Mendieta’s Black Angel performance, I leave my own trace, channeled through Mendieta, who remembered others forgotten, but not gone. In this way, we move through time, enacting visibility through our bodies as we remember.

Eliz a beth Rodr iguez Fielder is Assistant Professor of English and Latina/o/x Studies at The University of Iowa. She lives in Iowa City.

Fall/Winter 2022 · 7

IN DEFENSE OF THE LEAST WEASEL

By Debra Marquart

world’s tiniest carnivore eight inches long, two ounces. you might think it’s cute

when authorities examined the eagle’s fresh-killed carcass to confirm the shooting of a protected

but razor teeth, scimitar claws. the least weasel steals

the burrows of rats and moles

species was accidental, they were surprised to discover the fossilized skull of a least weasel dried down

lines its nest with the skin of its prey aims for the occipital bone,

the base of the skull

to nothing, still affixed to the eagle’s fleshy neck.

a vestige of some long ago

of mice, voles, birds or dissects the cervical artery in one quick sever of blood flow.

mortal combat. unrelenting lock jaw,

sun-dried teeth still dug in,

the least weasel stockpiles food or, in times of plenty, eats only the brains of its vanquished.

even in death, even after years the least weasel still clutching the throat of its own killer.

preyed on by coyote, fox, owl, hawk, the least weasel will hiss, shriek

and wail in attack. come swift and true, if you come for the least weasel. ask the buzzard who scooped up a weasel in its claws, but failed to execute the fatal puncture. the report concludes, the least weasel twisted upwards in the vulture’s talons and eviscerated its entrails in mid-flight. ask the eagle accidentally shot by a hunter.

image: Drawing by Thomas Rice

8 · Voices from the Prairie

NOTES ON THE LEAST WEASEL

T he Iowa Depa rt ment of Natural

Resources has compiled a “Species of Greatest Conservation Need” report as part of a multi-year strategy for the conservation of wildlife in the state of Iowa. Although the least weasel is not endangered, it is considered vital to the ecosystem of Iowa because of its ability to control mice and vole populations in agricultural fields.

As the poem indicates, the least weasel is considered the world’s tiniest carnivore and is, by all accounts, a ferocious creature. A unique feature of the least weasel is its lack of a black tail tip, an attribute that typically marks stoats and other long-tailed weasels. In larger weasels, the black tail tip is thought to be used for predator deflection—the dark flash of the weasel’s tail tip draws the predator’s eye and talons away from the weasel’s more vulnerable abdomen.

But the tiny least weasel’s lack of a black tail tip hasn’t disadvantaged it in predatory situations. In a controlled study done with weasel decoys and live hawks, the least weasel decoy escaped the death blow more frequently than the larger of its co-species who possessed a black tip on their tails.

The study theorizes that the least weasel has adapted to capitalize on the unpredictability that its anomalous tail presents to predators, who might hesitate, for a micro-second, to assess what type of weasel they are attacking.

This small opening offers the least weasel the slight advantage to escape.

Many cultures have myths and lore about the least weasel. Pliny the Elder, a Roman naturalist and philosopher, wrote that the least weasel was the only creature who could kill the basilisk, a mythical serpent king creature that was reputed to kill its prey with a mere glance. Pliny the Elder reports on the role the least weasel played in containing the scourge of the basilisk.

In Natural History, Pliny wrote: The basilisk is found in Cyrenaica and is not more than a foot in length; it is adorned with a bright white spot on its head like a diadem. It puts all snakes to flight by its hissing and does not move forward with many winding coils, like other snakes, but travels along with its middle sticking up. It destroys bushes not only by its touch but also by its breath, and it burns grass and splits rocks. It is believed that once one was killed with a spear by a man on horseback and its destructive power rose through the spear and killed both the rider and his horse. Kings have often wished to see a basilisk once dead beyond a shadow of a doubt.

For such a fantastic creature the venom of weasels is fatal—thus does Nature determine that nothing is without its match. Men throw basilisks into weasel’s dens, which are easily recognized by the putrefaction of the ground. The weasels kill them by their foul smell and then die themselves. Nature’s fight is over.

Across many cultures, least weasels are associated with good omens or portents, and they are especially invoked by warriors seeking additional power in battle. In England, a witch hunter reported that least weasels acted as familiars and helpers to the witches he hunted. In Inuit mythology, a warrior undertaking a valorous task would change himself into a least weasel.

In Pyle’s retelling of the tale, we learn that the windigo’s formidable power is controlled by its heart, which is made of ice. This frozen solid iceheart is why the windigo is so unstoppable.

The rest of the story, Kai Minosh Pyle warns, is not “one easily told in polite company”: They [Nanaboozhoo and Zhingos] waited until the windigo was nearby.

Just as they expected, it came barreling into the village, looking for humans to devour. It barely noticed the tiny white weasel that scurried up behind it.

Zhingos looked at Nanaboozhoo as if to ask, Are you sure about this? Nanaboozhoo nodded and gave a thumbs-up.

And without hesitation, that Zhingos leapt up, grabbed the windigo with its little claws, and crawled his way right up that windigo’s asshole! Yes, up through its intestines he crawled, chewing his way through until finally he reached his ice heart. When he did, he chewed with all his might until the windigo faltered and then—fell.

And so the least weasel stops the unstoppable by eating incessantly. In truth, the least weasel must eat at least half of its body weight daily in order to survive. This small carnivore is renowned for its ability to escape through holes of less than one inch wide.

Several Ojibwe tales exist that suggest the least weasel is the only creature that can kill the windigo. The Anishinaabe writer, Kai Minosh Pyle, in their essay, “Autobiography of an Iceheart,” recounts one cultural tale in which the windigo is terrorizing a village. In response, the hero Nanaboozhoo calls on his friend Zhingos, the least weasel, to help.

Fall/Winter 2022 · 9

Grants Awarded 2021

Council Conducted Partnerships 2021

CEDAR FALLS

iOWA CITY

The University of Northern Iowa — $6,850 The University of Northern Iowa — $10,000

CHARLES CITY

Charles City Arts Council — $3,000

COLUMBIA, MD

Civilizations Exchange & Cooperation Foundation, Inc — $2,993

DAVENPORT

CARTHA — $3,000

OKOBOJI

Okoboji Summer Theater — $3,461

SIOUX CITY

Tolerance Week — $15,000

WATERLOO

Hawkeye Community College — $25,000

Quad Cities Chamber Foundation — $5,000

DES MOINES

Des Moines Public Library Foundation — $5,000 Iowa Environmental Council — $10,000

DUBUQUE

Statement of Activity

Elk Hor n

Revenues

Dubuque Arts Council — $7,700 Dubuque Museum of Art — $5,000 Voices Productions — $3,000

for the year ending October 31, 2020

Museum of Danish America— $10,000

FAIR FIELD

Fair Field Productions — $10,000 Pathfinders Resource, Conservation & Development Inc. — $2,030

IOWA CITY

Domestic Violence Intervention Program — $1,000 HTLIC Media, Inc — $1,200 Iowa City Foreign Relations Council — $9,530 Summer of the Arts — $5,000

MOLINE, IL

Living Proof Exhibit — $6,610

MUSCATINE

City of Muscatine — $3,000

WATERLOO

Hawkeye Community College — $3,000

BETHESDA, MD

Democracy Films — $5,000

10 · Voices from the Prairie

NEH & private grants Other grants Gifts & membership Dividends & interest Fees In-Kind Contributions Net Assets released Total Revenues

Unrestricted 689,298 34,794 9,669 34,339 3,700 8,142 1,905 781,847

Temporarily Restricted 0 0 0 0 0 (1,905) (1,905)

Total 689,298 34,794 9,669 34,339 3,700 8,142 0 779,942

Functional Expenses Program Services Management & general Fundraising, newsletter Total Expenses Increase in Net Assets for the Year Net Assets – Beginning of Year Net Assets – End of Year

597,800 101,517 10,934 710,251

0 0 0

597,800 101,517 10,934 710,251

71,596

(1,905)

69,691

1,225,378 1,296,974

251,905 250,000

1,477,283 1,546,974

Donors 2019 –2020

Michael Abrams Melanie Alexander Mrs. Donald Allgood Anonymous Violet Baker Susan Berger Neil Bernstein Ronald Blair Laura Blaker Sheila Borg Larry and Janice Bortscheller Chett and Suanna Breed Margaret Brennan Junius Brenton Robert Brost Janet Brown-Lowe Susan Bryant James Burnham Richard and Ann Burton Daniel Campion Richard Carlson Cynthia Charlton Jim and Judy Cottingham Terry Dahms Carolyn Danner-Walls Ray and Linda Davis Thomas Dean Judy Dietrich DNE Caplan Family Foundation Dover Historical Society Carol Eckey Ron and Barb Eckhoff Carrie Eilderts Ragan Ernest Timothy Fay William Feis Martin Fletcher Michael and Carolyn Forbes G. Francione Elizabeth Garst Virginia Gee Daniel Gilbert Gretchen Gonstal Graff Mary Lynn Grant Carol Gronstal Joan Haack Ted and DianneHaas Lorraine Habben David Hamilton

James P. Hayes Patrick Hazell Ken Hazen Jeff and Cindy Heland Erika Holeshoe Margery Hoppin Marsha Hucke Iowa Railroad Historical Society Doug and Sheila Johnson Doug Jones Gary Kelin Margaret Kiekhaefer Dr. James and Mary Ellen Kimball Marjorie Kline William Koch Howard Kucera Ken Kuntz Dr. and Mrs. Randall Lengeling Bruce Leu Phyllis Lewis Michael Lewis-Beck William Lieb James Liewer Sherry and Henry Lippert Marcia Lohmann Dennis Magnuson Ashley Manning Mary Markwalter Marcia McKelvey John Menninger Kurt and Paula Meyer Douglas Midgett Tom Milligan Milo Public Library Karen Mitchell Richard Moeller Mary Moniz Jane R. Morrison John and Katherine Moyers Mark Neary Margaret Nelson Teri Nelson Nancy Nickerson Mary Noble Carrie Z. Norton Sandra Norvell Russell Noyes Sally Olsen Roger Ossian

David Otten Arnold Outzen Edward Popelka Chris and Heather Plucar James Ragan Larry Render Arthur Roche RPC Inc, Charitable Foundation Gerard and Carolyn Rushton Dick and Jane Sanford Thomas Schenk Mark Schmidt Robert and Anna Mae Schnucker Linda Shenk Mary Jo Short Steve Siegel Larry Simons Cynthia Smith Eldon and Mary Snyder Bruce Sorrell Harvey Sprafka Mark Stein Michael Sternfeld Larry Stone Dawn Taylor Nancy Thayer John and Lisa Thedens Dr. Richard Thomas Mary Timp Sue Utley Rose Vasquez Rhoda Vernon Linda Wild Ann Wilson Ron and Joy Young S.A. Yunglas Gail Zlatnik

Partners Vesterheim Norweigan American Museum Eldon Uptown/Downtown Dubuque Museum of Art Voices Productions Tolerance Week Okoboji Summer Theater Fall/Winter 2022 · 11

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