Institute of Native Knowledge

Northern California Native American Dance Folklife/Other Music Oral Traditions/Language Visual/Craft/Material Arts 2006

In 2006, the Institute of Native Knowledge received a grant from ACTA’s Living Cultures Grants Program to support the Klamath River Songs Project which will enable master traditional singers of northwest Native California to conduct a series of workshops in four local communities.  Young Native adult men and women will learn the fundamentals and intricacies of indigenous ceremonial song forms.  Instruction includes rhythms and melodic structures for story songs, social songs, and more complex ceremonial songs.

The self-directing and Native-run Institute of Native Knowledge was founded in 1989 by Julian Lang with a goal of bringing to Native People and the non-Native world the still vital Fix the Earth philosophy indigenous to northwest California.