Patricia Locke Foundation

Indigenous traditional arts, culture, language and character education

News/Events

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We Are Pleased to Announce our Newly Appointed Co-Presidents Louise Profeit-LeBlanc and Marylou Miller

Louise
Marylou Miller

Dear Friends of the Patricia Locke Foundation,

As we entered the new Gregorian year of 2023, Patricia Locke Foundation is pleased to announce our newly appointed Co-Presidents Louise Profeit-LeBlanc and Marylou Miller, who have accepted this position of service effective immediately. We are honored and overjoyed in embracing our two sisters in promoting the mission and vision of the Patricia Locke Foundation inspired by the legacy and propelling force of the Patricia Ann Locke (Tȟawáčhiŋ Wašté Wiŋ); and established and developed by the visionary First President, Kevin Locke (Tȟokéya Inážiŋ).

Louise Profeit-LeBlanc is originally from Nacho Nyak Dän First Nation of North Eastern Yukon, Canada. She devoted her life to preserving the stories of the Tagish of Southern Yukon. She is the niece of Angela Sidney CM (1902 – 1991), a storyteller and author. Louise grew up listening to stories told in her family, and later recorded elders’ stories. She saw first hand the transformative power of stories, and kept them alive for the last 50 years. Stories allowed her to venture into acts of service including establishing the Yukon International Storytelling Festival and collaborating with the Yukon Heritage Branch to ensure that a story of the place is recorded for each toponym. She worked for the Canada Council for the Arts and co- founded the Society of Yukon Artists of Native Ancestry. As part of her responsibility on the Canada Council for the Arts, she travelled extensively including the entire north and later to Greenland, Switzerland, Germany, Norway, Australia, and New Zealand. She served in and chaired the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is of Canada. Louise was appointed as Baha’i Auxiliary Board Member serving Alaska and the Yukon regions for many years. She traveled throughout South America on the Trail of Light and served on the Local Spiritual Assemblies of Mayo in White Horse and now in Wakefield Quebec. Being personally connected to Kevin Locke and his mother Patricia Ann Locke for many years, Louise is excited about the next chapter of her work with the Patricia Locke Foundation. She expresses, “My work for over 10 years in a National Posting working with other Indigenous art administrators across all artistic genres has and continues to be flourishing in Canada. Art is an expression of the Creator which lies latent in each one of us. It has the power to lift the spirit and bring about a higher level of understanding of creativity and how that is connected to all humanity.”

Marylou Miller is of Tlingit heritage from southeastern Alaska. She has been serving on the Board of the Patricia Locke Foundation since its inception in 2018. Marylou was adopted out of her biological Indigenous family at a very young age and was raised in a large adopted family. As a child she learned subsistence life skills including gardening, fishing, cleaning and jarring salmon, sewing, picking berries and making jam. Her high school years were pivotal for Marylou when she traveled around to Indigenous villages in Alaska. These trips brought her close to her native Tlingit heritage, motivating her to learn drumming, dancing and how to speak and understand the Tlingit language. Marylou majored in music in college and continues to be a lover of music both singing and playing instruments. She is a proponent of the role of variety of Indigenous visual and vocal arts in promoting health and well-being for the individual and communities. Marylou served as a member of the Baha’i National Spiritual Assembly of Alaska, and then as an Auxiliary Board member in Alaska before moving to Ohio. She currently lives in Ohio serving as a member and Secretary of the Regional Baha’i Council for Michigan, Ohio and Indiana. Marylou’s passion lies in working with children and youth.  She stresses that the most precious treasure a community can possess are the children because of their role in paving the way for the future of that community. Marylou engages community building activities particularly targeting capacity building with the children and youth, and sees her role in the Patricia Locke Foundation as a catalyst to society building. She states, “Children and youth can use the programs that are offered through the Foundation to become empowered to experience a way to grow their material and spiritual powers to help others, and positively shape the world around them.”

Collectively our Board thanks each and every one for your continued support of our mission and current projects as we pave our path of service.
With much love and gratitude,

Board of Directors of the Patricia Locke Foundation 

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March 2022 Newsletter

Kevin Locke Indigenous flute

Dear Friends of Patricia Locke Foundation,

Just this past month the South Dakota state legislature recognized the traditional Indigenous flute as an official state instrument. It is significant that for the first time, a US State government has validated an Indigenous North American musical esthetic. South Dakota and surrounding regions have been the stronghold of this unique musical esthetic, and it is wonderful that the state legislature is encouraging a truly vital heritage.

All Indigenous North American music originates as a vocal composition. The drum merely accentuates the rhythm imbedded in the vocal composition and flute is created to instrumentalize a very unique vocal genre. There is no way of separating the flute or the drum from the vocal tradition. Many older South Dakotans recall the stalwart promulgators of this rich wind instrument tradition; Richard Fool Bull, Dave Marks, Dan Red Buffalo, Henry Crow Dog and remember that they would always reference the vocal piece from which each flute rendition is derived. The vocal compositions which the flute intones involve romantic themes and are perhaps the most lyrically dense musical genre. As such they contain idioms, vocabulary, sentence structures and grammatical constructions that offer in depth perspectives on pre-reservation life.

Most people do not possess an awareness that the “Native American” flute is different from the “Indigenous Flute”. Prior to 1980 there was no confusion because throughout the prairies and the woodlands there was one standardized tuning system that identified the Indigenous flute. Circa 1980 a Euro-American individual created a Japanese shakuhachi masquerading as something else and called it “Native American flute”. Soon after a Navajo recorded improvisational pieces on this instrument that went viral thus giving birth to a marketing and commercial phenomenon based on lack of understanding. The “Native American flute” pentatonic shakuhachi tuning system is very conducive to improvisation and this is what the non- Indian public finds so appealing. Despite the fact that the Native American flute is a recent non-Indian created instrument, it has exploded in popularity, is all over the internet and is the default music used in every conceivable media production purporting to convey Indigenous themes. Even though I don’t know how to play it myself, I like the Native American flute and enthusiastically believe that it is a beautiful instrument and has a viable role in musical expression. However, I also think that people need to be fully aware of what it is and is not. In order to create an awareness of the traditional Indigenous flute I have been conducting hundreds of flute making / playing workshops so that learners can have first hand experience with an authentic North American musical esthetic and realize that we are all legitimate heirs to a deep and rich shared heritage. The Indigenous traditional flute may be slightly more challenging to play than the Native American flute but it is much more versatile and is intrinsically adapted to intoning Indigenous North American music. If your intention is to learn or possess the original instrument of this continent when you research to purchase what is promoted as “Native American” flute on web or other outlets, you are certainly misled, and will do well to know the difference.

After so many years of attempting to set the record straight on the cultural and historic importance of Indigenous flute, it is a great victory for Indigenous people to finally have this part of our culture recognized unanimously by the US Government for the significance and importance it plays. I envision the younger generations taking up the Indigenous flute in a robust way to create their own unique expressions based on traditional compositional patterns and their own unique universal creations. This is a turning point for all who dwell on the North American continent as rightful heirs of this age-old tradition!

For a listen, please click on the audio sample below:

Indigenous-Songs-and-Their-Meanings-opt
plfcircle-opt

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KEVIN LOCKE NAMED 2020 PEACE PRIZE AWARDEE

Kevin Locke with Patricia Locke Foundation

With joyful hearts we announce that the International Academy for Human Sciences and Culture, a nonprofit based in Zurich, Switzerland named Kevin Locke their very FIRST Peace Prize Awardee.

"As the survival of the world’s indigenous peoples and the protection of their cultural and spiritual heritage is imperative as an essential part of the cultural and spiritual heritage of mankind as a whole, we would like the first peace prize 2020 to be awarded to both your late mother and you in honor of your constant and tireless endeavors for this cause. "

May we all be strengthened by the service we provide towards promoting oneness of humanity!