In Brief

UAM Vocal Music Student Performs at Minnijean Brown Trickey Lecture

Photo by Indra D. Kriner

Grace Notes - Sophomore vocal music major and multi-instrumentalist Robert Webb entertained an ample crowd awaiting the arrival of Little Rock Nine member Minnijean Brown Trickey in the Fine Arts Center Feb. 15. Webb also performed R. Kelly's "I Believe I Can Fly" in honor of Trickey before she took the stage. "I chose the song because it speaks about believing in yourself," Webb said. "I'm sure Mrs. Trickey had to believe in herself in order for her to accomplish what she set out to do." Hailing from a musical family, Webb began his journey with music when he joined his church choir at age seven. "Music is my life and I enjoy being around it," he said.

Program at UAM on American Indian "War and Peace" Tuesday 

    Dr. Marvin Jeter of the Arkansas Archeological Survey will present a PowerPoint-illustrated program on “War and Peace among American Indians” at UAM Tuesday evening, March 1. The program will begin at 7:15 PM, in the Conference Room in the rear (north) end of the first floor of the Forestry Building on the UAM Campus. Parking is available in the adjacent lot northeast of the building. The public is welcome, and admission is free. 

   Jeter earned his Ph.D. in Archeology and Anthropology at Arizona State University, and has been the Survey’s UAM Research Station Archeologist for most of the time since 1978. He has also done research in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Illinois, and has published widely on the archeology of the U.S. Southeast, Lower Mississippi Valley, and Southwest. Tuesday evening’s program will be based upon a presentation he made at the British Museum in London in 2008, and a revised version that is being prepared for publication as a book chapter in England later this year. 

   Familiar examples of warlike historic Indian groups include the Iroquois in the Colonial Northeast, the Creeks and Seminoles of the 18th- and 19th-century Southeast, and the Comanches, who created an “empire” based in the upper Arkansas River Valley of the Great Plains that endured until the late 19th century. But in recent decades, archeology and physical anthropology have revealed the deep roots of violence and conflict among prehistoric Indian groups. 

   Evidence of prehistoric warfare in the Eastern and Southeastern U.S. includes fortified settlements with moats, stockades, and bastions; unoccupied “no-man’s land” areas between settlement concentrations; blunt-weapon trauma and scalping cut-marks on skulls; and art motifs with violent themes, including the famous “Southern Cult” figures of warriors dressed as birds of prey. Comparative examples will be shown from the Midwest, Great Plains, and the Southwest. 

   There were also peaceful interludes, sometimes quite lengthy ones. Perhaps the best examples in and near Arkansas include the Plum Bayou culture around the famous Toltec Mounds site, and the related Coles Creek culture of Louisiana and southwest Mississippi, which flourished between about 700 and 1200 A.D. Similar episodes can be drawn from the Puebloan Southwest, the Plains, and other regions. In several cases, climate shifts and resultant scarcity or abundance of resources seem to have been major factors. 

   Tuesday evening’s program is part of the regular monthly meeting of the Southeast Arkansas Tunican Chapter of the Arkansas Archeological Society, under its President, Dr. Don Bragg of Monticello. A brief business meeting of the chapter, beginning at 7:00 PM, will precede the program. Anyone with interests in the archeology, geology, “natural history,” and history of Arkansas is welcome to attend. To receive the chapter’s new electronic newsletter, contact Hope Bragg, the Editor, via her TunicanAAS@live.com e-mail address. 

   This program is part of the state-wide observation of “Arkansas Archeology Month” during March. This year’s theme is “the Archeology of Conflict” and other programs around the state will involve the archeology of the Civil War, which began 150 years ago. The program is co-sponsored by the Arkansas Archeological Survey’s UAM Research Station. For further information, contact Dr. Jeter or his Research Assistant, Jessica Howe, at 460-1290 or 460-1090.

Gay-Straight Alliance to Hold Informative Event 

   The University of Arkansas-Monticello Gay-Straight Alliance will host a Zap Panel Feb. 28 in the Memorial Classroom Building Auditorium. The event will educate and inform students and faculty about cultural views on homosexuality. 

   The panel will consist of GSA officers and guests including, Fulbright foreign language teaching assistants Elodie Macler and Gonzalo Espinoza.

   The group looks forward to the event, which will have a Mardi-Gras theme and be open to all students and faculty. Refreshments will also be provided. President Justin Brophy, a senior music major, said the event will “Hopefully educate students and get new people interested in the GSA.”

   The Zap Panel will be an open discussion event. Guests are free to ask questions and participate in the conversation. The members are very excited to see the turn out. “I think it’s a good idea. It will help people understand us better,” said Melina Long, a sophomore marketing major.

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