Violet Hills Productions

A CALL TO ACTION

admin — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 18:50:26 +0000

It looks as though Rush Limbaugh will not lose his premiere spot on the air waves where he freely spreads his hate speech and misogyny and misinformation daily to a vast audience of over 56 million listeners. And perhaps, as Bill Maher has recently tweeted, this is as it should be.
Don’t get me wrong. I am decidedly NOT a fan.
Nor do I approve of agencies such as his and Glen Beck and especially Fox News (they being the most egregious as they actually have the audacity to bill themselves as “news” and use the slogan “fair and balanced) that spread as I stated above lies and misinformation with impunity.
But even the most heinous murderer or criminal in these United States is entitled to not only his or her day in court but to a defense, so is it granted to us under the First Amendment “free speech.”
We can argue what constitutes free speech, just as we argue what constitutes obscenity– but instead, I would like to examine what this latest brouhaha has wrought, and perhaps the good that can come from the wreckage of Rush.
We have received a good solid kick in the keister out of the complacency that the Democratic Party had fallen into as well as women in general.
Know now my fellow warriors of freedom– you may never rest.
We slayed the monster of the W regime in 2008. And just exactly how long did that triumph last?
Two short years.
And then, due to the cowardice of most of the Democrats who ran like scared rats from this President who dared have the audacity of hope and who dared push through the first health-care reform in a century, and who refused to stand up for him and instead ignored their Commander in Chief during their re-elections, we lost and lost big.
And due to the Politics of Pout, our electorate either stayed home, or God forbid, voted the other way, and in doing so eviscerated a democratic President by giving him a divided Congress.
Why? He didn’t fight hard enough for a public option? Really. And do anyone of you really think in this highly charged political atmosphere where it took an historic 18 months to even pass a reasonable facsimile of a health care bill that this Congress would have even entertained the idea of a “European-style” public option?
Of course we should have a public option.
For heaven’s sake the only thing that makes sense is to have everyone on Medicare — but you go to Congress and try to convince the Right of that.
Do not forget, they were for the individual mandate before they were against it. Just as they were for the contraception mandate before they were against it only forcibly coming out “nay” when they clearly saw a political football. None other than Mike Huckabee signed this mandate into law in Alabama as did many Republican governors. (LA Times 2/15).
Guantanomo? President Obama is not a dictator, nor does he have a magic wand. Congress blocked that one.
Republicans don’t fall in love they fall in line.
May I submit, if we want to avoid this country from falling into the hands of the oligarchy and the Koch brothers, as Democrats we take a page from our compatriots.
I am not saying you have to agree with everything, but for heaven’s sake, don’t do the Right’s work for them!
Dennis Kucinich stood up on the floor of the US Congress and asked for an impeachment vote against the president. Asked Congress to impeach a democrat!
I am glad he was voted out!
For heaven’s sake!Voice your concerns about a war. Obama did just that and that’s what got him elected, but to call for his impeachment?
To what end? Another decade of Republican plutocracy and coproatocracy?
Right now 34 states are passing or have passed voter suppression laws. This will mean up to 21 milliondisenfranchised– turned away from the polls in 2012. 21 million.
And while the Dems were out of power for 8 years due to a stolen election in 200o and 2004 ( Gore won the popular vote and he won Florida; Kerry won Ohio but those votes were never disputed — Diebold needs to be examined and put out of business — we need paper trails and votes that can be examined and counted one by one) W and his administration were stacking the federal courts. Since Obama has been elected, the Republicans have obstructed and block a vast majority of his federal court appointees. What does this mean? When Eric Holder brings lawsuits against voter suppression laws, guess whose fingers weigh heavily on the scales of justice.
Become involved.
Stop playing the politics of pout.
Support with your dollars your candiates– especially women candidates.
Sexism on my part? Okay– read up about them– inform yourself– and if it is a toss up between two candidates — support the women. Why?
Because if we had 83 women in the Senate and 17 men we would never see contraception as an issue– an issue that was settled in 1965 by Griswold v Conn.
We can no longer say one person, one vote– sad to say.
But we all still have a voice.
We have seen the outrage come with every piece of legislation produced by the Right’s war on women ; with the bombast and misogyny of Rush Limbaugh; with the support given to the Rev Al Sharpton’s march on Selma to reclaim the vote; and against each new seemingly daily assault of the Right including vaginal probes, forced medical treatments, drug testing for the poor,tax plans that give continued breaks to the wealthy while placing the burden of our recovering economy squarely on the backs of the poor and middle-class, the slashing of union rights, attempts to do away with the minimum wage, and the refusal to do away with big business and big oil subsidies.
I fought in the 60′s against the war in Viet Nam. I burned my bra for the rights of women.

I am ready and armed for battle once again.
Are you?

Native American Scholar Cahuilla Historian Katherine Siva Saubel Dies at 91

admin — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 16:14:38 +0000

Katherine Siva Saubel

Known as one of California’s foremost Native American leaders and educators, she died Tuesday peacefully at her home on the Morongo Indian Reservation, her nephew Kevin Siva said.

By
Guy
McCarthy

November 2, 2011
Katherine Siva Saubel, a Native American scholar, Cahuilla historian, co-founder of the
Malki Museum, and one California’s most respected tribal elders, died Tuesday at
her home on the Morongo Indian Reservation, her nephew and caregiver said
Wednesday.

“It is windy today, because the wind is looking for her,” Kevin Siva, a lifelong
resident of the Morongo Reservation, said in a phone interview. ”She always told
me stories about the wind when I was younger.”

Saubel died Tuesday at home in bed, “very peacefully,” said Siva, who has been his
aunt’s caregiver for the past 15 years.

Saubel was born in March 1920 in her village Pachaval in northern San DiegoCounty, Siva
said.

She came to the Morongo Reservation when she was 18 years old, and she had lived
there 73 years, Siva said.

Saubel was a widow, and her husband was Mariano Saubel, Siva
said.

She is survived by one son, Allen Saubel, of Florida, three grandsons, Aaron, Allen
and Steven, a granddaughter, Maria, and numerous nieces and nephews, Siva
said.

Saubel earned a PhD during her studies and she was a doctor of philosophy, Siva
said.

Tribal Council Chairman Robert Martin of the Morongo Band of Mission Indians expressed
his tribe’s condolences and grief.

“Dr. Saubel was truly remarkable, both as a leader and as a fierce defender of Native
American culture, from the preservation of the traditional Cahuilla language to
the protection of sacred sites,” Martin said in a statement released Wednesday
evening.

“As an author, a leader, an academic and an activist, she displayed astonishing
skill, courage and compassion as she worked tirelessly to preserve Native
American culture and reignite interest in our rich heritage among the public and
our tribal youth,” Martin said.

“We will miss her wit and her wisdom, her ability to inspire others through hard
work and laughter, and her enduring commitment to our cultural and spiritual
beliefs,” Martin said.

According to a biography on the Malki Museum web site, Saubel was born Katherine Siva to
Cahuilla-speaking parents at Pachawal Pa, the upper village of the Los Coyotes
Indian Reservation.

She spent the first years of her life in the mountains above WarnerSprings, where
only Cahuilla was spoken, according to the MalkiMuseum.

She had 11 siblings in her immediate family – six boys and five girls – and she was
the eighth.

At the time, the Los Coyotes Reservation was more isolated than it is today, and
its isolation was a factor in Saubel’s “superb command of her native tongue and
for her profound understanding of Cahuilla culture,” according to the
MalkiMuseum.

Although she lived more than 90 years in an English-dominated world, she was “a dominant
native speaker of her dialect of Cahuilla known as ‘Mountain Cahuilla,’” and the
Cahuilla culture was very much alive in her heart, according to the
MalkiMuseum.

Back in the 1920s, Saubel’s father took advice from a Cahuilla shaman and moved his
family out of Los Coyotes to a warmer part of the Cahuilla territory, settling
on the land of her mother’s uncle, Pedro Chino, at the Agua Caliente Reservation
in Palm Springs, according to the MalkiMuseum.

There she learned to speak the “Pass Cahuilla” dialect, even though it is the dialect
of Cahuilla most divergent from Mountain Cahuilla.

Around this time in the mid-1920s, she entered the segregated elementary school in Palm
Springs, where “she acquired English by the time honored sink-or-swim
pedagogical method,” according to the MalkiMuseum.

“She initially spoke not one word of English, but she learned by observing and
figuring out what was being said. No one taught her; she was just put in the
back of the classroom and ignored, but she still learned.”

She was a tomboy, often playing and rough-housing with her brothers – running,
climbing trees, and making mischief. Her grandmother once made her some dolls to
play with, and sat to play with her. But she did not like it, and upset her
grandmother by throwing the dolls up in a tree so she could climb up into the
tree, according to the MalkiMuseum.

After she finished primary school, she wanted to go to high school, but at the time
there was not one in Palm Springs.

So she had to take a bus with white students to Banning. She was athletic and
enjoyed sports like softball and archery, according to the MalkiMuseum. She was
the best archer in the otherwise all-male class.

Halfway through high school, the Palm Springs high school was finished, so she
transferred and was the first Native American woman to graduate from there,
according to the MalkiMuseum.

As a very young woman, she began to realize the imminent loss of Native American
culture and knowledge, which had been passed down through
generations.

During her high school years, she kept a notebook describing all of the familiar native
plants and their uses as foods, tools, and medicines, according to the
MalkiMuseum.

Her family was able to survive well during the Great Depression of the 1930s by
going back to their traditional ways of hunting and gathering. They never went
hungry, and she learned from her mother, who was a great cook, gatherer, and
medicine woman, according to the MalkiMuseum.

“Her mother instilled in her the idea that you must take care of the earth because it
takes care of you, and if you destroy it you are destroying yourself,” according
to the Malki Museum.

She was never afraid to stand up for her people and their rights. During high school
she had to wait at a bus stop on the reservation in front of a small restaurant
that had a sign in the window saying “Whites Only.”

When she noticed the sign, she went into the restaurant and told the owner to take it
down because his restaurant was on reservation land and he had no right to keep
Indians out of a restaurant on their own land, according to the
MalkiMuseum.

The owner didn’t say a word when she told him this – she thought he was shocked to
have an Indian teenage girl confront him – but later when she walked by the
restaurant the sign had been taken down.

When she was 18, she met Wanikik Cahuilla Mariano Saubel at a Cahuilla ceremonial
gathering, on the Palm Springs Reservation.

In 1940, at the age of 20, she married Mariano Saubel, who lived at the Morongo
Reservation near Banning, where both Mountain and Pass Cahuilla were spoken, as
well as the distantly related Serrano language, according to the
MalkiMuseum.

Mariano and Katherine Saubel were married for forty-five years, until Mariano Saubel
passed away in 1985. Allen was their only son, but they also helped raise his
four children, as well as nieces and nephews. Mariano was supportive of
Katherine’s work to preserve Cahuilla and other Native cultures, and worked with
her to found and build the MalkiMuseum.

In 1958, Saubel was introduced to Lowell Bean, who was then a student of ethnology
and anthropology at UCLA.

This began a 40-year collaboration on Cahuilla culture. Bean introduced her to Dr.
William Bright, Professor of Linguistics and Anthropology at UCLA. Her life
began to change – her formal education had begun, according to the
MalkiMuseum.

The Kennedy Scholarship for Native Americans in 1962 allowed her to travel to the
University of Chicago and the University of Colorado at Boulder, where she
studied the fundamentals of ethnology, anthropology, and
linguistics.

She then began giving seminars and study groups at UCLA, under the direction of
Bright.

Together, Bean and Saubel in 1972 authored Temalpakh, a work
detailing the ethnobotanical knowledge of the Cahuilla, with much of the
information coming from Saubel’s mother, who was a Cahuilla medicine
woman.

Katherine Siva Saubel has since become known internationally as a Native American scholar,
and appears in the biographical Reference Encyclopedia of the American Indian,
1967, and many other biographical reference works, according to the
MalkiMuseum.

She has worked with other anthropologists and linguists, including German linguist
Hansjakob Seiler, who with her assistance published two studies of the Cahuilla
language. She also worked with Japanese linguist Dr. Kojiro Hioki, from the
HachinoheUniversity. Drs. Seiler and Hioki worked together with her to publish
an updated book on the Cahuilla language in 2006.

She also worked with linguist Eric Elliott for several years, and together they
published a two-volume work with cultural memories and stories in Mountain
Cahuilla and English, I’sill He’qwas Wa’xish: A Dried Coyote’s Tail.

Saubel’s life accomplishments include co-founding the MalkiMuseum in 1964, according to
the museum. The MalkiMuseum opened in February 1965.

For more on her achievements, click here.

* * *

I had been at the California Indian Conference at Chico State screening We Are Still Here at the end of October. It had been quite awhile since I viewed the film, and when Katherine’s beautiful face filled the screen, I was filled with such over-powering emotion and nostalgia. Through the years, I had kept in touch with Katherine and with Kevin, but I had not seen her in awhile. I missed her.

Later, a woman who appears in the film — she was at the Agave Roast Festival — spoke to me. She told me that Katherine was not doing well. My heart sank.

She died only days later.

Ironically, I was in the hospital undergoing spinal fusion when Katherine passed, and so was unable to bid this great spirit a final farewell.

I first met Katherine Siva Saubel in an attempt to include a Native American voice in a play festival I was both writing and producing. She became my friend for over a decade.

The play that was developed from the oral history I took on that day in September in 1999 performed all through the Southland on college and university campuses, at cultural centers and institutes for six years. Then, with the help of f and the Soboba Indians as well as the California Council for the Humanitites, the California Stories Project we were able to adapt the play into the documentary friendsWe Are Still Here.

Now, though both Katherine and her brother Alvino Siva are gone, their voices, their songs, their cultury, and their history and the history of their people, the Cahuilla Indians of Southern California are archived in this documentary.

I remain forever in Katherine’s debt for granting me the very great privilege of telling her story.

Desert Wolf and Act of Grace Available Now

admin — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 17:12:36 +0000

Desert Wolf and Act of Grace available now on smashwords and Kindle

Desert Wolf and Act of Grace explore the intriguing paranormal universe of Luke Stone as he battles his nemesis, black magician Armand Jacobi in the heart of Death Valley, tracks lost children, and solves a 250 year old New England mystery swirling with murder, witchcraft, and retribution to save the life of his newly beloved Beth Rutledge.

In Desert Wolf, we meet Luke Stone a twenty-eight year old recluse who has been drawn by terrifying visions from the woods of northern Michigan to Death Valley. Stumbling out of the rocks and sand, Luke happens upon Eppie Falco’s Desert Inn and Café where he discovers, besides an array of motley travelers, a silver-haired voyager he had not expected: Armand Jacobi a powerful, charismatic magician and the man Luke escaped from seven years before. Drawn to this place by his visions, Luke is now confronted with the full horrors of his past. The struggle he faces will culminate in either his final destruction or ultimate redemption.

Act of Grace continues Luke’s story thirteen years later as we find him living again in seclusion now in New Camen, New Hampshire following the death of his wife, Consuelo, whom he had met at Eppie’s Cafe. Into this solitude drops Dr. Bethany Rutledge, with a mystery of her own. Accused of the murder of her daughter, stripped of her medical license, her marriage to politician Adrian Mountzaire in tatters, Beth Rutledge is haunted nightly by tortuous dreams, the recurring vision of a woman’s brutal death by hanging. Adding to the mix, a young boy has gone missing, and his disappearance is centered in the tiny hamlet of New Camen, New Hampshire. Then, Adrian Mountzaire turns up dead on the beach with his wife Beth lying beside him. Now Luke must not only find the lost boy, but save his beloved from the same fate that haunts her dreams.

Act of Grace has been adapted from the award-wining screenplay of the same title (Women in Film and Video Screenwriting Competition.)

Desert Wolf has been adapted from the play that was produced at the InterAct Theatre Interactivity Festival, North Hollywood, CA.

Watch for the release of my third novel Ouray’s Peak which has been adapted from my stage play trilogy They Dance to the Sun, also adapted for the screen.

Ouray’s Peak follows the journey of heroine Kristin Tabor’s as she leaves home at the age of fourteen in search of her mother and her Ute heritage. Her search leads her backward in time to the White River Massacre of Septemebr 1879 and the loss of her People’s beloved Shining Mountains homeland, forward into romance and love, and eventually, to reunification and hope.

Ishi’s Untold Story

admin — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 16:22:54 +0000

ishi blog

Anthropologist Richard Burrill has just released his book
ISHI’S UNTOLD STORY IN HIS FIRST WORLD:
A BIOGRAPHY OF THE LAST OF HIS BAND OF
YAHI INDIANS IN NORTH AMERICA
Customers can also go to www.ishifacts.com to download their own “hard copy.” Residents outside CA can deduct $2.02 from the $31.47 fee.
Tony Jonas, Past President of the Lassen County Historical Society, said: I consider Ishi’s Untold Story as an ideal book to assign as required reading in anthropology classes.”
The jacket describes the book: Ishi’s Untold Story is a remarkable California Indians’ story, introducing Yahi words and photographs of Ishi’s ancestral homeland, thus giving readers a broader, deeper view of what was this man’s past and why a better understanding of Ishi’s life-challenges succeeds in introducing in the 21st Century, a new recognition of him as what we moderns are.
Dan Barnett of the Enterprise Record wrote on Sunday, May 22:
“The book reconstructs ‘the secretive years’ before Ishi’s capture’ and details his cultural heritage as well as his inner strength and ability to assimilate.” Follow the link for the complete review.
ishi review
This is a handsome detailed tome, the biography of a brave forthright man, one of a kind, the last survivor, who carried within him the culture and ways of a people dating back over 15,000 years.

The Making of We Are Still Here

admin — Thu, 05 May 2011 16:04:48 +0000

In 1999 I was co-producing a festival called CelebrateWomen that brought plays by and about women to libraries, museums and cultural institutes throughout Los Angeles. We were in our second year and had produced plays that covered a wide variety of ethnicities though I found one voice was lacking, a Native American voice.

earching for that Native American voice, I went to the National Women’s Hall of Fame, where I found Katherine Siva Saubel, and I knew this was the woman whose story I wanted to tell.

Katherine Siva Saubel at home on the Morongo Reservation

She didn’t live very far from me; she was just down the road in Banning, California. I called the Malki Museum that she had co-founded with her friend Jane Penn, and much to my surprise was given Katherine’s home phone number. With a racing heart, I called her. She granted the interview with one very strong caveat. There were to be no recording devices what-so-ever. Paper and pen only. “You know, how reporters do that,” she said.

I arrived at Katherine’s house on September 5th 1999, one day before my forty-seventh birthday. I was carrying a mini-recorder, which she spied immediately. “No recording devices,” she said without a smile. I lamely explained that I had brought it thinking that perhaps once she became comfortable with me… but that was as far as I got. “No recording devices. Pencil and paper. Like the reporters do.”

And so I sat down in her overstuffed chair, and put away the mini- cassette and drew out my trusty yellow-legal pad and blue ball point pen and opened my mouth to ask my first question— which was entirely unnecessary because there in that tiny three bedroom home with the mountains dusted with snow rising in the distance and the dust of the Morongo reservation swirling about the yard and the date palms swaying, Katherine Siva Saubel told me the extraordinary story of her life.

For over two and one half hours this gracious intelligent sharp-eyed witty and engagingly humorous woman conveyed a story at once of deep family roots and family love and family high jinx and pranks that left children often in deep dutch with a disciplined but loving father; of gathering herbs and plants and learning medicine at the side of her beloved mother; of horrendous prejudice and injustice, and of struggle against that prejudice and triumph over it; of a society steeped in mores and practices more well-defined than any Christian society I had ever known; of a young girl determined to finish high school and to become educated and who had at the age of 42 earned a scholarship from President John F. Kennedy to complete that educate she so desired; and of a magnificent love story, the story of Katherine and the man whom she loved at first sight, Mariano, the man whom her society’s mores and customs almost prevented her from marrying if it had not been for the love and wisdom of her father at the eleventh hour.

Young and in love, Katherine and Mariano wed

I left the humble abode of Katherine Siva Saubel feeling as if I had mined gold.

And so began my journey with Katherine’s story. I developed the play from the oral history I had taken, working with an exceptional cast of all Native actors ranging in size at times from as many as twelve to our final number of six who portrayed numerous roles. In the beginning as we rehearsed, we also shaped and formed the piece.

The play premiered at the Autry Museum of Western Heritage in 2000. Katherine was at the premiere as was her brother Alvino, who is now deceased. Alvino performed some Cahuilla bird songs before the performance. Later on in the journey of We Are Still Here, Alvino gave me some invaluable advice regarding the Creation Story and the story of the twin brothers, Mukat and Temayuat. I re-worked Alvino’s suggestions into the play.

After We Are Still Here, Katherine is introduced to her fans

When Katherine was introduced after the play and before she graciously took questions from the audience, she was given a standing ovation.

The play performed throughout Southern California at venues such as UCLA, Chaffey College, Idyllwild Arts Academy, UC Riverside, the Theatricum Botanicum, Cal State San Bernardino, Cal State San Marcos, Sherman Indian School, and Anza-Borrego Desert Natural History Association..

Katherine was present at almost all performances of the play.

I was told many times that I should make a video of the play.

In early 2006, that dream became a reality when I was finally able to raise enough money to produce a documentary based on the play.

The documentary was reviewed by the Library Journal Review in November 2009:

http//www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6704052.html Native American Lives We Are Still Here: Katherine Siva Saubel and the Cahuilla Indians of Southern California. 57+ min. Leigh Podgorski in assoc. with Malki Museum, Violet Hills Prods., 818-881-5100; www.violethillsproductions.com. 2008. DVD UPC 8-37101-33298-9.

Mukat makes the sun very bright after he stops the earth from shaking

We Are Still Here chronicles an effort by Katherine Siva Saubel and the Cahuilla Indians of Southern California to preserve the culture, history, and traditions of the Cahuilla, presented through in-depth interviews with elder Saubel and her brother Alvino Siva. The film also portrays the Creation mythology of the Cahuilla, performed by a Native American cast, which is well done and sustains viewer interest. There are a lot of important ideas and traditions illuminated here. This project is made possible, in part, by a grant from the California Council for the Humanities as part of the council’s statewide California Stories Initiative. All three films will be appreciated by history buffs, students of Native American history, and general viewers.—Margaret B. Miller, Univ. of South Dakota Lib., Vermillion

The film was selected for screening at the American Indian Film Festival, San Francisco, and juried at the Talking Stick Film Festival, Santa Fe, New Mexico, as well as at the Native Pride Film Festival in Riverside, California, and is archived at the Getty Institute in Los Angeles, the Smithsonian Institute, Washington, D.C., and New York City, the Riverside County Public Libraries, as well as UCLA, USC, CSU , and numerous university, college, and cultural institute libraries in the United States and Canada.

The culture and history of the Cahuilla people is kept alive through the personages of Katherine Siva Saubel and her brothers, Alvino and Paul Siva. The Cahuilla people have lived in the tradition of their ancestors, and are teachers of their language and the songs that maintain their culture.

Princess Lucaj and Brian Wescott recreate the Cahuilla Creation Story

On Saturday, April 27, 2002,

Katherine Siva Saubel, now Dr. Katherine Siva Saubel, received the Chancellor’s Medal, the highest honor bestowed by the University of California at the University of California, Riverside. We Are Still Here was performed as part of the festivities.

Katherine not only allowed me to record her voice; she allowed me to tell her story and the story of her people, and to use her image on video and electronic recording to do it. She also allowed me to record Cahuilla birdsongs and to recreate the Cahuilla Creation Story.

On that hot day of September 5, 1999 as I sat scribbling furiously, afraid to miss a single word of the remarkable opus unfolding so freely before me, our conversation was interrupted briefly by the appearance of a visitor. Katherine’s beautiful face lit up as she peered through her front window. “Oh, there he is!” She smiled. “There’s my friend!”

And the thought flashed through my mind. “I want her to say that about me.”

At the premiere of We Are Still Here, I approached Katherine as she sat elegantly with a large group of well-wishers. She turned toward her group. “Oh, here she is!” She announced to the group. “Here’s my friend, Leigh. She wrote the play, you know.”

Over these many years of the journey of We Are Still Here, the story of Katherine Siva Saubel and the Cahuilla Indians of Southern California, now over a decade, the single thing of which I am the most proud is that I have earned the mantle of friend of Katherine Siva Saubel.

Award-Winning Author Announces Debut Novel

admin — Sat, 23 Apr 2011 18:29:45 +0000

The Women Debrowska available at Amazon, Kindle, Lulu, and Smashwords

Award-winning playwright and screenwriter Leigh Podgorski announces the debut of her novel The Women Debrowska.

Culled from genealogical records, a history of the village of Debowiec where the author’s grandmother lived as a child, Polish history, and the memories of her family’s trip to Poland in August of 2005, The Women Debrowska reveals the story of the Debski-Debrowski clan as it ignites with the history of a nation over three hundred and fifty years fraught with oppression and revolutions, riches and poverty, and ultimately, the sweet song of freedom.

Here’s what readers are saying about The Women Debrowska:

Jackie Maxwell:
I was not familiar with Polish history, but the author brought it vividly alive for me. I was particularly struck by the author’s rendition of Auschwitz and Birkenau … I would urge anyone to buy it …

Arpine
As a Polish-American author, Podgorski offers a voice to the diverse Polish community in a novel that is a page-turner.

Paul G. White
I could smell the snow and the blood in the air as the first man fell in the serf uprising setting off the cascade of events and the tale not only of a family but of a nation. I recommend this book. You won’t be disappointed

Douglas Glen Clark The Women Debrowska is destined to become a Top Pick among book clubs and readers who are hungry for a saga of love, inter-generational (and international) family affairs and history.

The Women Debrowska is now available at www.lulu.com (in print and digital formats); www. Amazon.com; www.smashwords.com (digital format); and www.Kindle.com.

You may also purchase directly from the author’s website: www.violethillsproductions.com using the easy Buy Now lulu.com button!

Katherine Siva Saubel on the cover of Native Voices Magazine

admin — Sat, 23 Apr 2011 05:22:18 +0000

Katherine Siva Saubel

Cahuilla Elder Katherine Siva Saubel is featured in this month’s News from Native California magazine. Also in this month’s issue are Barbara Drake and Lorene Sisquoc faculty members at Idylwild Arts.

Katherine celebrated her ninety-first birthday this past March. She is still teaching, leading, and singing Cahuilla birdsongs.

Katherine Siva Saubel story acquired by the Smithsonian

admin — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 17:36:05 +0000

Ernie Fragua, Katherine Siva Saubel, Michael Wise, Marjorie Tanin

We Are Still Here, the story of Katherine Siva Saubel and the Cahuilla Indians of Southern California, has been acquired by the George Gustav Heye Center of the National Museum of the American Indian at the Smithsonian Institution in New York City.

The Library Journal Review wrote of We Are Still Here in November of 2009:.

We Are Still Here chronicles an effort by Katherine Siva Saubel and the Cahuilla Indians of Southern California to preserve the culture, history, and traditions of the Cahuilla, presented through in-depth interviews with elder Saubel and her brother Alvino Siva. The film also portrays the Creation mythology of the Cahuilla, performed by a Native American cast, which is well done and sustains viewer interest. There are a lot of important ideas and traditions illuminated here. This project is made possible, in part, by a grant from the California Council for the Humanities as part of the council’s statewide California Stories Initiative.
[The film] will be appreciated by history buffs, students of Native American history, and general viewers.—Margaret B. Miller, Univ. of South Dakota Lib., Vermillion

There are only a few hundred copies left before We Are Still Here goes out of print.

Copies can be ordered from the Violet Hills Productions web site.